4 Simple Fixes For Improving Conversions In Your Marketing Copy with Tom Trush
In the podcast:
00:43 – Episode & Guest Overview
03:19 – Common Mistakes on Copy
08:02 – Convincing vs. Persuading
16:27 – Fixes through Message Matching
22:24 – Fixes through Emails
26:14 – Combining Email Marketing and Facebook Ads
29:16 – Adding Charts & Graphs on your Copy
35:29 – Check What Prevents your Prospects from Moving Forward
38:51 – Learn More About Tom Trush
Episode & Guest Overview
Ilana:
So welcome back to another episode of Teach Traffic. I’m your host, Ilana Wechsler, and today I’m really excited to interview this guest. His name is Tom Trush from writewaysolutions.com and Tom is a copywriter. And although my job, I focus on ads and teaching people how to set up the right targeting and do all these funky ad stuff.
At the very heart of good you know writing good ads is a good copy so I thought no better person than to speak to Tom today and really what we’re going to be talking about are simple fixes that you can use to improve the conversion on your marketing copy. So welcome to today’s episode Tom.
Tom Trush:
Thank you, Ilana. appreciate you having me
Ilana:
No, the pleasure is all mine. And for those of you who are just listening today, we are actually Tom and I are actually doing a video podcast and this is going to be my first one so you’re my first time ever doing that, Tom?
Tom Trush:
I’m happy to be a test subject for this.
Ilana:
Okay, sounds good. So, before we kind of get stuck into you know, really the nuts and bolts of what we’re going to talk about, uh, you know, simple fixes that you can use to your convert, to improve the conversion of your copy.
Do you maybe want to tell our listeners a quick five seconds about who you are and what you do?
Tom Trush:
Yeah, oh, five seconds. I’ll try to squeeze it in real tight.
Ilana:
I use that loosely. (laughs)
Tom Trush:
Yeah. So, basically, as a copywriter, I have a feeling that most of your audience recognize what a copywriter is.
Sometimes when you say the word copywriter, people are thinking like little registered or trademark symbols that kind of stuff on a copy.
And, you know, in this case, it’s basically you know, I like to persuade people with the written word and get them to take desired actions based on the words that they read on a piece of paper, they read on a website and email, landing page, whatever it is.
Taking some of the, you know, the psychological aspects of language, you know, work it into marketing copy, and again, just getting you to take some kind of desired action and, sometimes it’s a sale you know, other times it’s there’s other things that are involved, you know, opting into maybe it’s just to get some information or just looking to get a response.
So, really zeroing in on what is that desired action you want, you know, a client wants somebody to take, and they figured out ways that we can get them to take that action.
Common Mistakes on Copy
Ilana:
Yeah, awesome. So, before we get into the fixes that people can use to improve their copy, and really improve the conversion of the copy, what would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that people make that cause their bad conversion on their copy?
Tom Trush:
Well, I think that the most obvious is, it’s very easy to do is that people want to talk about themselves or their company, rather than the prospect. So prospect concerns, their desires kind of get thrown out the door and they get, you know, put on the back burner.
And you know, they look to say stuff in their marketing copy that really positions their company as like the greatest thing where your prospect is only concerned about them themselves.
And then the challenge a lot of people will sit down to write a copy is they’ll get in front of the computer, they have the blank screen up.
And their mindset is what can I write to get somebody to buy something for me. And so when you have that mindset, it becomes number one, it becomes very difficult to write a copy because you’re trying to think of the exact phrases, the exact words and you’re focusing all on yourself and not on the prospect.
The other thing that makes it very challenging is that you’re not really looking to deliver value because you just want the sale, you want it to benefit you instead of the prospect.
And one of them, when I look at a marketing piece, and I sit down to write a marketing piece, and this can be an email, it could be a website, copy, landing page, whatever.
I’m really looking to deliver value. I want to reward people for reading my marketing copy and I compare it a lot to being an artist, so an artist, just imagines you have a canvas. So an artist would say a painter, our painter starts with a blank canvas.
And that Canvas, there’s no value to that canvas that blank canvas. The value is determined by what that artist puts on the canvas. You know what the painter draws or you know, paints on there.
And then depending on what’s on that Canvas determines the value. Same thing with the marketing piece. I mean, most marketing pieces, there’s no value behind them.
But if you look at a blank, just blank document, you think about how I can deliver value, then your marketing, it starts people start perceiving your marketing in a different way because they see it as a reward.
They read your content and they got something out of it. I want somebody when they read my marketing copy or sales copy, even if they don’t buy it they get to the end and they learn something or they felt rewarded for taking that time.
And if you’re sitting down and thinking about and the only thing that you’re thinking about when you’re writing a marketing copy is how can I get, how can I generate a sale? You’re gonna lose that opportunity?
Ilana:
Yeah. And I think there’s so much skill and power in compressing that information in a really short, concise, you know, amount of words.
I mean, I think it was Mark Twain who famously said, I didn’t have time to write your short letter, so I wrote you a long one, you know, and I think that’s really, that’s really apt because it is really difficult actually to persuade people and to communicate value in what you offer in a really short and concise number of words.
So yeah, I totally agree with you on those points and I love your analogy of the artist and you know who’s to say that you need to use all this money to make something really valuable.
I mean, we’ve all gone to a museum where it’s been a couple of scribbles and their chart says $20,000 or something, you know?
Tom Trush:
Well, in your one other thing to think about, you know, art is, you know, the value is, you know, in the eye of the person purchasing that art and it in another similar way with marketing is the most effective marketing the best marketing often doesn’t look like marketing.
So, if somebody like you, your marketing just looks like it smells like marketing, you know, it looks like marketing. And when somebody sees it, they immediately think, oh, that’s marketing.
Well, again, their mindset is completely different. The natural reaction is I’m going to ignore it, you know, so, if you can make your marketing sound like marketing smell like marketing.
Yeah, then I mean, that’s gonna give you an advantage.
Convincing vs. Persuading
Ilana:
Yep. So I guess that really comes down to the distinction between persuading people and really convincing them, you know, would you say?
What would you say is the big differentiator between that?
Tom Trush:
Well, and this is, you know, where mistakes come into play again, there’s a lot of times where I’ll say marketing copy.
And the marketing copy is trying to convince somebody that they need that product or service. It’s not necessarily persuading.
And the difference between the two is that convincing is you’re trying to change someone’s beliefs to match yours. And when you do that, what happens is, when you try to convince somebody, they’re going to hold on to their beliefs even stronger.
I mean, you look, especially like here in the US, the political climate, look at politics and people trying to change someone’s beliefs about something related to politics.
The more you try, the harder you try to convince them that your way is the right way, the stronger they’re going to hold on to that.
And so in marketing, the way that this comes across is, you’ll read the copy and it’s almost like there’ll be random facts about that product or service.
And oftentimes, when they’re trying to convince when somebody is trying to convince, it’s almost like you get the feeling that they’re begging, or they immediately present their product upfront with no real build-up of identifying the problem, targeting desired outcomes.
All that kind of stuff is just, here’s my product, this is why you need it. And there’s the fact of trying to convince you that you need the product.
Now, the difference between convincing and persuading is persuading is where you’re tapping into desires that already exist.
And so you’re speaking to someone who is already in their mind, they recognize that they have a desire for what it is that you’re offering. And so the mistake comes into play with the convincing stuff.
You’re trying now to take your copy and convince somebody who wasn’t going to buy in the first place or had a very low probability of buying, where you could switch your copy around and talk to the people and talk to those who already have a desire for what you have.
And that copy sounds completely different. Because no longer do you have to try to convince them that what you have is the best. You’re more targeting the desires, the end outcomes.
And that’s when you start getting into the emotional appeal that you tie into the copy. So there’s it’s there’s a lot of people who use like convincing and persuading interchangeably, but there’s a big difference between the two.
So again, convincing is you’re trying to sway someone’s beliefs to match yours, whereas persuading is you’re targeting a desire that’s already there.
Because when you’re selling something, you can’t create desire, where none exists. And I’ll repeat that over and over again, you can’t create desire where none exists. So if nobody has a desire for what it is that you produce, emit what, for whatever that you offer, whenever you say is not going to change their mind.
So you need to have your copy speak to the desires that they have, like you hear about, you know, enter the conversation that’s going on in your prospects mind.
I mean, it’s a common phrase, you know, or a variation is very common in advertising and marketing.
And so when you do that, again, you’re targeting people more on emotional appeal, and you’re targeting that desired outcome that they have, rather than just talking about your product and service with random facts about how great it is.
Ilana:
Yeah. So yeah. So would that be one of the simple fixes that you would apply when looking at somebody marketing copies of…
Are they trying to convince people or are they actually doing a good job of persuading them and identifying that difference?
Is that sort of something that you would fix?
Tom Trush:
Yeah, yeah, that’s, that is a fix. And I guess to make it easier to understand, let me give you an example because this came up today with the client where the client had sent over a landing page.
And he was looking to improve the conversion on the landing page. And I said, well, let me see the ads first that are driving over to the landing page, because we got to see what the we got to look for a message match, so that the ads are, you know, similar what’s being said to the ads are similar to what’s on the landing page.
So what this was, it was a course on real estate, what was it, our real estate true real estate license getting your real estate license?
Okay, so the ads you sent over for ads, they’re all about, you know, get your real estate license. And then in the header, I think it was there was a price like $282 and then use this code for 10% off.
Now if you see an ad like that, most likely somebody clicking on that it’s going to be, you know, a potential buyer. You know, they have probably already recognized that they are looking for the real estate license.
They’re shopping around for different ways to get that real estate license. they clicked it because most likely because in that header, it had a price in it.
It said that they could get their real estate license online and there was a special offer with it. Yeah. But then you go over to the landing page and the landing page.
At the top, there was a little bit about that offer. But then the next section was why you should be getting your real estate license. So it’s trying to convince somebody that they need the real estate license.
Now, it seemed crazy to me because you know, somebody who’s clicking, you know, again, they’re most likely a buyer. Let’s talk about the benefits of this course.
I’ve taken this course in this particular course, the benefits of having online, what are the difference between the other options that are out there, but instead, they use all this space to try to convince somebody that they should be getting their real estate license.
So it was a total disconnect from the ad. So I mean, that’s an example of convincing or persuading, in this case, there was a mistake because they’re trying to convince people that they need a real estate license.
But, in fact, what they should be doing is talking about the desired outcomes. What is somebody who is looking to sign up to get the real estate license? What are their concerns?
What outcomes are they looking for? That’s the kind of stuff that should have been on the landing page. And then you know, those things that are related to the course and what makes it different from every other option that’s out there.
So I mean, that’s, that’s an example there. And I mean, and that also ties into another big mistake with the disconnect between message matching as well.
Ilana:
Sounds good. I mean, I guess this really comes down to really knowing your ideal customer and what you know where they are, obviously, in that sales process, and identifying, yeah, why would somebody want to become a site licensed real estate broker, for example, versus, you know, is this a viable option for them?
I saw a really good copywriting quote, that, “You know, a big reason why so many businesses compete on prices is that they can’t prove the value they offer. So they’re stuck with one selling point. That’s a breeze to communicate as cheapness.”
And I think that’s really true because people, many business owners think that people only decide on price.
And it’s not true, like many people will pay more if there is a higher perceived value, and that’s where the job of the marketing and the copy is to, is to convey that value that they get, which I think is it’s easy to identify when you’re on the outside reading somebody else’s copy, but when it’s your own copy, for some reason, it feels different because it’s your own product and stuff. Do you agree with that?
Tom Trush:
Oh, yeah. Hundred percent. I mean, and the other problem with if, if the the price if, if you’re marketing or advertising via a price you’ve immediately commoditized your product is now the only decision that you’ve given prospects, the only way they can turn determined if your product or service is better than anyone else is that one-factor price, the lower the price, the better you know it for many buyers, and that’s unfortunate because it’s that it’s just a race to the bottom.
Fixes through Message Matching
Ilana:
That’s right. As soon as somebody is $1 cheaper, they’re often gone to them.
And so what are some other simple fixes that people can apply to try and I guess improve the conversion rate of their marketing copy and I guess probably separate that into sort of two areas maybe in relation to your website or landing page versus email because they are completely different communication mediums.
So why don’t we address the website first?
Tom Trush:
Yeah, well, let’s uh, I mean, we can go into the whole message match that I touched on there a while ago.
So, you know, the message matches. Basically, the idea behind message matching is whatever you’re using whatever channel you’re using to drive over. And we’ll just use the website as an example.
So maybe you’re using an email, and you’re driving over to a website for somebody to, you know, view something specific on your website.
And that email, you know, is promising something, you’re teasing something on that website, you need to make sure that when you’re driving people over that message matches from your email over to your website.
You see this all the time, just like we talked about here with the real estate example. You have ads that will promise one thing. And then when you go over to the landing page, there’s something completely different.
You know, another thing like today, I sent out an example to my list about optimal tax relief, which is a, you know, a big company here in the US that offers relief for people that are behind on their taxes.
And so I have a client who’s in this space and attorney who’s in this space. So yesterday, I was doing research. So of course, today I got, you know, presented all these types of ads for it.
And so, today I saw this ad, and it was, what was it, 10 things, something like 10 things the IRS doesn’t want you to know about your taxes.
And so I was like, okay, it’s from optimum tax relief, I want to see what they’re offering. And so I clicked the ad and I went over and it drove over to, I mean, it was sort of a landing page, but more kind of website-ish.
But there’s nothing there about the 10 things you need to know about the IRS. They had something that said, how much do you owe in back taxes, and then you had to fill in information. I’m like, wait a minute.
So there’s like there’s zero message match between them. And so I mean, so this applies to again, in this case, we’re using this as a Google ad, you know, we’re Google Ad over and over again, it wasn’t much of a landing page.
It was more interesting with a website. Whether it yeah, there’s a total disconnect there.
And the same thing goes, let’s say, if you’re emailing, you know, you’re sending out an email and you see something in the email and you say, click here, you know, to get whatever it is that you tease, and then you drive over to your website.
And oftentimes we’ll see this well, where companies just drive over to a homepage, oftentimes a homepage, the language is very vague, there isn’t anything specific and you’re kind of assuming that somebody said, go over to that homepage, and then they’re going to look around and find it with what they’re looking for.
And you’re giving people a lot of credit because they’re not going to necessarily do that. You gotta make it as easy as possible.
Ilana:
So yeah, I say that all the time actually, because inside traffic I often offer account reviews for people so I review people’s you know, Google AdSense and I constantly see a message mismatch going on with their ads. So I see what they’ve written in their ads.
And then I click on, you know, where they’re sending the traffic to. And it’s a completely different place and like, and then as soon as I pointed it out to people, they’re like, yeah, I guess you’re right. I never really thought about it.
And I’m like it, sometimes you just need an outsider to say, you know, or, you know, really, it’s quite hard to do.
But you as a copywriter would be really good at this, in that you’ve got to be able to physically transport yourself into the mind of that target customer and think and almost, like, embody them as what would that if I was that person what would I be thinking, you know, and people don’t realize that they’ve never heard of their business before.
And they just Google search something and they click on that ad and then they end up in this foreign place, you know, with no map, you know?
Yes, no, like, yeah, I completely agree with that message mismatch.
Tom Trush:
Yeah, it’s amazing how often you see it. I mean, it’s very, very common. And it’s just a matter of just like you said, you kind of have to bring it up with the client, and then they’ll, they won’t make the mistake, you know, ever again or yeah, not ever again.
But it’s such an easy fix that’s so common and someone like, you know, that example I use with optimum tax relief. That company spends a fortune on advertising.
And I can only imagine how much it would save them, you know, the return, you know, just if a better return on investment than they would have if they just did a better job of marketing or sorry, message matching.
Ilana:
It’s one of those things, it’s probably you know, that small hinge could move a really, really big door for them and they wouldn’t have to change much to make a massive difference to their bottom line.
Tom Trush
And that’s where you come into play.
Ilana:
Well, no, I mean, you know, just even with an email, I mean, you know, like, my running good ads, I always say to people is one piece, an important piece, but it’s a piece of a whole pie.
Running ads is not the pie. And your email marketing is such a powerful tool. And I see in Google Analytics all the time that for 95% of customers, their main source of revenue is from email.
And even if they spend a fortune on ads, they make that return, obviously, from their ads, but off the back end of the leads, they generate. So, you know, I think that’s really important.
Fixes through Emails
Tom Trush:
Can we talk about that for a minute with the email?
Ilana:
Yeah, let’s do it. Yeah.
Tom Trush:
Because I mean, one of the things and this is, another easy fix that I see with email and simply people don’t make enough offers with their emails.
And so many times people get scared about emailing too much. And I’ll tell you, I have a campaign that went out today for a client. And this is going to make some people cringe.
But for this particular campaign, it was a 24-hour thing. We sent four emails, wow, email, so the same people on the same day.
And, you know, we’ve done this for several years now, the similar types of campaigns. And if what you’re delivering again, go back to what I said at the beginning, you’re delivering value.
People aren’t going to mind. Yeah, sure. You may get to know some of those outliers, you know, that may get upset and that’s okay.
Because oftentimes, people when they unsubscribe if they don’t like what you’re saying they don’t like your messaging.
Well, most likely they work in a buy in the first place, so don’t worry about losing an occasional subscriber.
But you know, with email, I mean, encourage people to send more offers out, like make specific offers. And it’s one way to generate more revenue. It’s just really logical if you want more revenue, make more offers.
Ilana:
Wasn’t there a famous quote? I’m gonna remember the quotes. I don’t remember the author of the quotes, which is probably bad. But someone said, “I only send emails every time I want to make money.” something like that. (laughs)
Tom Trush:
Yeah, and by that I mean, of course there are, you know, people who tell them to me, the only email you get from them is an offer.
Ilana:
Especially sort of US marketers, they just, they go hard with, with their emails, and I mean, I’m being bombarded with emails and being an Australian.
We have a natural aversion to that really heavy sales focus, like sale, sale marketing, but there’s obviously a happy medium probably somewhere in between.
Tom Trush:
Yeah, I think you just have to, you have to develop history, you know, with a subscriber. And that’s when email allows you to develop that. So when they see an email coming into your inbox, there’s been some history thereof you delivering value of them.
Have you rewarding a reader for consuming the content that you shared in your email so that when it does come to tie time to run a campaign, it’s gonna be more well received.
I mean, that’s the advantage with email is you have that ability to communicate consistently. But you just have to, you know, you have to be careful, but make sure you are delivering value, but then when it does come time to run a campaign, don’t just send one email out, you know, you’ve because, I mean, the reality is, as great as email is we’re still seeing, you know, lower open rates.
And that’s where you have to start working on some other channels as well. You know, the online, you know, online traffic, you know, with online ads, paid ads.
I still love direct mail. I think direct mail is incredible because of the experience that it can create. And then if you compare it with open rates, you’re gonna get a lot of eyeballs, you know, on a list that you’re emailing, especially if you develop the list. Well,
Combining Email Marketing and Facebook Ads
Ilana:
Yeah. I mean, one thing that I often do and teach people is combining ads with email marketing. So, you know, often with an offer that’s being sent out, we just have a very targeted custom audience or list and we yet run those ads for like two-three days whilst the emails have been going out.
And we will consistently see an uptick in sales. For as you say, the very reason that email open rates are not 100% number one.
We typically just do this with social because people will see the Facebook ad and what is an amazing thing that happens is because of the viral aspect of on Facebook is people will share that ad or they’ll tag someone go also inside check this out, you got these guys do great stuff, you got to buy it or, or whatever and but you know someone’s not going to forward an email to their entire contact list they will if it’s a if it’s an offer of value and relevance, they will happily share a Facebook ad.
Tom Trush:
Oh, you bring up a great point here because we want to say thanks for social media is that people share things, if it makes them look good, you know, which isn’t necessarily the case with email, like you said, you know, you’re exactly right.
They’re not necessarily gonna forward their email to an entire list. I love that tip. Because I mean, people will do that and social media will share it with everybody, especially if it makes them look good.
Ilana:
That’s right. And even the people who have opened your email, if they say they are of the, you know, 30% if your email open rate is 30%.
Let’s say somebody has opened your email and they also see that social ad if they say that Ad that’s got all this social proof on it.
Well, that’s a further kind of endorsement of your offer, that they go, Oh, hang on a minute, like I saw that email, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it, but hang on a minute, like, look at all these shares and comments of people saying all these lovely things.
It’s um, it really sprinkles really beautiful social proof. But yet I find so many businesses and thinking, well, why would I want to pay for that ad when I’ve got free access to these people?
I mean, I pay them to be a subscriber, you know, why do I have to pay extra for them to see it? And obviously, those are the reasons but also, it’s actually a tiny amount of money.
I mean, depending on how big your list is you probably talking like 20 or 30 bucks. Like we’re not doing big, big amounts of money. You know?
Tom Trush:
Yeah, the return on that investment is well worth it.
Ilana:
Yeah, it’s well worth it. Exactly. So it’s just a way of kind of, I kind of like to say it’s like the surround sound audio experience, but just with you, you’re offering your ad
Tom Trush:
I mean there’s a credibility that comes in addition like you said with the social proof, but she’s seeing you on multiple channels.
Yeah, I mean, that that just in itself provides a level of credibility and you know, that you want people to think like, man, I see these guys, I see this, this company, I see him everywhere. You know, that’s, that’s a good thing when prospects have that in their head?
Adding Charts & Graphs on your Copy
Ilana:
That’s right, exactly. And, as we all know, like, you know, not everyone will buy straight away, they will typically delay making a decision if they can.
So it’s just like a little gentle reminder. Okay, so we talked about convincing versus persuading.
And we talked about message mismatch. Are there any other simple fixes that people can use in their marketing be it on their websites, or, or email?
Tom Trush:
Yeah, I’m gonna give. I’ll give you another one. Well, actually, I might have a couple more that come to mind.
The first one is super simple. And it’s once I say that it’s very logical that this works, and it’s the idea of having charts or graphs to copy what happens here is that the mind does not think in words. I mean the mind thinks in pictures.
And so when I say the word elephant you’re not in your mind you’re not thinking “e l e p h”, no, you’re looking at a gray elephant coming to mind.
And so you have to think about this when it comes to saying for example, like statistics, when you present statistics, the mind really can’t picture anything with statistics, you have to help the mind picture what that statistic means.
And so the other good thing with graphs and charts from a visual perspective is great, but then also they provide credibility.
Now give you a quick story here. This was and I go into this on a post on my website. It was a study. I hope I don’t butcher this too much. But it was a study done by scientists at Cornell University.
And basically what happened is the scientists had a medicine. And they wanted to put this medicine in front of an audience and get an idea from the audience if they thought that this medicine would work.
And so they did this through ads, they basically had two different ads. And they presented the ads were identical, except for this one change.
And I’ll explain here in just a moment. So they had these two ads, one ad, I think it was like 67% of the audience believed that this medicine based on the ad would work well.
And then the other ad, that number jumped till it was like 97%. And now those numbers I mean, it’s, they’re rough. I forgot the exact numbers but it’s like 67 and 97%, where the difference again, it was identical ads. The only difference is the second ad, edit a graph or chart to demonstrate the numbers that were shared in the end.
And that provided this level of credibility and the scientists what they came back and they said, well, charts and graphs, they prove truthfulness, you know, so you need to see that you think scientific, it’s gotta be there’s gotta be some research behind this when you see a graph and plus it also again it helps the mind put an image to the numbers that you’re presenting into in your copy.
So it could be very effective to simply add some kind of graph or chart to your copy and you often see you know, response rates increase by simply doing that.
And it also provides, you know, some visual relief for the eyes, especially if you have a lot of copies, eyes will naturally gravitate to that graph or chart.
So if you have it, put a caption under it, people read captions under photos, eyes naturally go there.
And so I mean, that’s one easy fix that you can do it again, especially if you’re using numbers and you want to prove a point, you know, with some kind of statistics or show history, you know, between numbers, data, whatever it is your charts and graphs are great.
Ilana:
Yeah, I love that because I think it also implies precision. And there’s no you can’t be vague with numbers.
Like you’ll give, I guess, unless you give me a range. But if with a chart, it’s so precise that there’s kind of no area and space for misinterpretation really like it is so precise.
That, you know, 3.2% increase is, is calculated as the kind of cant run away from that is subject to interpretation.
Tom Trush:
And, you know, another good way to use these are comparisons, if you’re making comparisons between two items, there’s a scrape.
This was several years ago, you know, here in the US, we’ve got cell service, like two of the big companies, Verizon and AT&T big competitors.
And this was back when 3g was like the, you know, that was like the big thing to have with your phone.
And so Verizon ran these ads, and it showed a map of the US, and it showed Verizon 3G coverage, versus AT&T’s 3G coverage, you know, and in another map, so immediately, you didn’t have to read anything.
But you could see the difference on those maps. And it was so effective that AT&T filed a lawsuit against Verizon. I mean, because I mean, it led to Verizon getting incredible market share, just from simply running these ads.
And again, it’s another one I have on my website, you can see the two differences. I mean, it’s just that it’s so different. It just jumps down like it’s like price. It’s a logical choice here of course.
Ilana:
Probably a case of instead of a pitcher, you know, saying 1000 words from like a pitcher saying 10,000 words always but with some Got that picture?
Tom Trush:
It’s incredible. I encourage you to start using graphs and charts to provide a visual representation to data.
Ilana:
Cool. All right. Well, that seems like a pretty applicable fix that people can use. Almost regardless of the industry. You’re in. Some people are thinking, Oh, how would I apply it to dentists or something, but I’m sure people could find a way.
Tom Trush:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, there are definitely ways.
Check What Prevents your Prospects from Moving Forward
Ilana:
Cool. All right. Are there any other fixes you could recommend to people?
Tom Trush:
Yeah, I’ll give you one more, and this ties into persuasion as well. Yeah, this one is I mean, it’s easy to do, but you have to be careful a little bit.
And that is you always want to have in your, in your, especially in sales copy. You want to have a common enemy. People, naturally like to, to put ourselves into groups.
That whole idea of like in sports, you always have the team that you love. And then there’s the rival team. And you’re the people that you love the team that you love.
If you meet somebody who loves that same team, there’s this instant connection you have that shared hate for the rival team. In politics here in the US, Democrats and Republicans, their opposite ends.
There’s always and made it in politics, it gets the enemy. I mean, this is used a lot. But in business, you have to think about, I’m not a big one like, your competitor has to be your enemy, like talking bad about your competitor.
Instead, look at like, what are the alternative options to what it is that you offer?
So if we go back to that example, I talked about today, the real estate example that I gave, so think about the other options that are out there. In this case, this was a real estate license, all the training was online.
So The enemy could be all those other companies where all they do is their real estate training. And it’s in person, you’d have to sit in a classroom and you’re in a chair for eight hours a day.
And so you can position your copy is that that’s the enemy. So you want to think about what’s preventing your prospect from moving forward, like, what are those things that they just don’t want to deal with, that can also tie into who that common enemy can be.
But I would encourage you to necessarily just look at your biggest competitor and say, Oh, hey, they’re the enemy. And they don’t do XYZ. I mean, that’s what they do in politics.
You’re always targeting the other politician. So I don’t really like that in a business setting. Instead, I encourage people to look at what are those things preventing your prospects from moving forward, and then position the enemy as the companies that are offering those types of things and don’t necessarily focus on a company that focuses on the way that they present their product or service?
Ilana:
Yeah, I like that. And I think sort of in the space that I operating, you know, the common enemy for us would be the Google Ad platform that all these sneaky settings there, you know, so rather than the competitor who’s also advertising it’s, it’s Google the behemoth that, you know, 50-pound gorilla in the room that is always trying to steal everyone’s money.
And I see it all the time. You know, when I order people’s accounts that you know, this sneaky sitting here, do you realize that you’re not, you know, just doing what you want?
You’re showing ads to millions of people all around the world that never gonna buy your product, you know?
Tom Trush:
Yes, you’re exactly right. Because now your prospects when you say that, you know that Google is essentially stealing your money.
They’re doing all these sneaky things to get your money and they don’t realize it’s happening. And prospects like yeah, that’s right. I hate that.
And so you immediately have that shared connection.
Learn More About Tom Trush
Ilana:
That’s right. Yeah. That’s awesome. I think you’ve given us some really actionable tips and definitely things that people can now.
You know hopefully apply to their own marketing via their website copy or emails or even if they’re doing direct mail. So thank you so much for taking the time out of your day.
I know it’s late for you even though it doesn’t look like the sun shining on you. But it is late in the day and it is before we wrap up where people can find out a little bit more about you and where you look.
Tom Trush:
So the easiest way is just go to my website which is writewaysolutions.com and I can get a little confusing I probably back when I started my business should have made it a little clearer but the word right is “WRITE” so as you’re writing with a pen or pencil, so writewaysolutions.com that’s the easiest way and that site, you know not always your information about me.
I have a ton of blog posts on there that just share helpful information, you know, look to deliver value, and share these types of tips with everyone just help people with their marketing and do these little things that can often make a big difference in response.
Ilana:
That’s awesome, so thank you again for coming on today’s episode, we are going to get some show notes created. So you can head on over to teachtraffic.com to download those show notes and yeah thanks so much for tuning in.
Tom Trush:
Thank you Ilana, appreciate it!
Ilana:
No worries!