Catherine Langman:
Well, hello there, it’s Catherine Langman here back with another episode of the Productprenuer Success Podcast. Today’s episode is going to be a, kind of a mini training episode. But today I’m joined by two members of my fabulous team. I have Sally and Nova. Do you want to say g’day?

Speaker :
Hi. Hello.

Catherine Langman:
Welcome to the show. Both of you Sally’s been on here before any long term listeners would remember here. I’m sure. Both of these wonderful women are creatives and we are going to have a chat about copywriting. The reason being here is that in E-commerce, oftentimes it’s really easy to kind of fall into the trap of thinking that the big, beautiful images do all of the work of attracting our audience and connecting and engaging with them and communicating everything that we need to about our products and converting those viewers into buyers.

Catherine Langman:
But the copywriting is just as important. So we are going to really dive into all things to do with copywriting, for E-commerce and how we can persuade our audience. Of course not in any kind of a slimy horrible way, but persuade our audience and profit as a result. So I guess, to, to kick us off, and I’m going to throw this open to both of you here, if you don’t mind, what would you [crosstalk 00:01:32] say is the difference between really average or kind of pretty crap copywriting and really excellent persuasive copywriting. That’s quite a big question to ask, I suppose.

Sally:
Yeah. Good question. Although I reckon you can always, you always know when its bad copywriting anyone knows when its bad copywriting. It doesn’t flow well. It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t hit the right note, it doesn’t tell people about your product.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
It doesn’t tell people what your product does and it doesn’t tell them how it solves the problem. It’s just like here, here’s my product. This is how big it is. This is what color it is.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah, not inspiring. Yeah. Yeah.

Sally:
Even if it tries to maybe tell you more than what it actually is they might use a overly flowery language or something that doesn’t speak to the target customer and then you’re reading it going, oh, this is ridiculous. You want to click away.

Catherine Langman:
That’s a really good point. [crosstalk 00:02:42]

Nova:
Yeah it needs to be Believable, doesn’t it.

Sally:
To a conversation with the customer and speak to them using their language. That’s one of the biggest things. Really.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah. So the way that we might personally write something might be quite different to how our customers want to hear it or understand it perhaps.

Sally:
Yeah, I definitely think so you [crosstalk 00:03:12], sorry Nova you go.

Nova:
Using their language and tapping into the emotions they’re feeling about a certain problem they’re experiencing, is going to reach them better than if we just go off on a tangent about some element of the product that perhaps, just isn’t quite tapping into what they need at that point.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
Yeah. I think you hit on something good there saying that, tapping into that emotion much as we probably don’t think we have a lot of emotions about a lot of our purchases, we actually do. We feel things about what we need and what we want and tapping into those is good copywriting, but yeah, when you don’t tap into the emotion, that’s when it can get really dry, boring, and you got to have some pretty darn good images to sell your products. if you’re copywriting is dry and uninspiring.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Catherine Langman:
Or downright confusing. I actually went on the website of the agency that I used to work for in Sydney many years ago, the other day. It was all very different and I was reading it. This does not mean anything. They’re just trying to be too clever, too creative. They’ve lost all meaning in the process. So I was kind of…

Sally:
Wow.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah. I was pretty confused and I know what they do. So…

Group:
[crosstalk 00:04:41] Yeah.

Sally:
That totally funny. So were they using words that obviously wouldn’t, was it more high level marketing language that [crosstalk 00:04:50] not the average business owner maybe wouldn’t understand?

Catherine Langman:
I don’t think so. I mean I’ve been in business for a while. I would’ve thought that I would understand if that was the case.

Sally:
Yeah.

Catherine Langman:
No, maybe not, but you know, definitely they were trying to come across as pretty high brow and yeah, definitely clever and creative because they are a creative agency. So I just felt in reading and I actually really lost the meaning in what you’re trying to say by trying to be too clever and too creative for context, that particular agency is business to business or digital design and branding, that sort of stuff. So yeah, yes, their audience is business and government, but at the same time we’re all human beings. Sure. We need to be [crosstalk 00:05:43] able to, to elicit some kind of meaning from what we read. So yeah, that was pretty [crosstalk 00:05:48] fascinating.

Sally:
Yeah. With copywriting, I always feel like it is 95% of the time, it’s so much better to keep it simple, keep your message simple. Don’t try and over emphasize things or don’t try and bring in high level types of words and that sort of thing that you want people to understand that you want them to feel comfortable with your brand and feel like they are understood. If people feel like the copy doesn’t speak to them, then they’re going to keep moving. They’re not going to sit and stay and buy your product.

Catherine Langman:
No

Group:
I, I always…. [crosstalk 00:06:29]

Catherine Langman:
Sorry. Yeah. I was just going to say, I always think that if we, if we expect customers to hang around and try and figure something out, whether it’s from the wording or from the imagery or whatever, we can’t expect our audience to try and forgive poor, poor design or poor communication of any kind and buy because they’re just not, they’re going to especially when we’re all shopping on our phones these days, the amount of real estate we have available to capture people’s attention [crosstalk 00:07:01] and convey some sort of meaning it’s pretty limited. So we don’t want to stuff it up.

Catherine Langman:
So before we kind of move into some examples and kind of talk things through a little bit. We are talking about copywriting so that the words that we need to use as an E-commerce brand or E-commerce business owner, the kind of words that we’re going to be using in our marketing would be on our website. So homepage product descriptions, if you have any other kind of really detailed bits of information that need to communicate. So you might have other content pages, of course, but then things like your Facebook and Instagram, social media content, as well as advertising and your email marketing. So they’re going to be kind of the main channels that we need to be communicating via words. So just keep that in mind, I guess, as we move through our examples and out about it.

Catherine Langman:
Before we jumped on to record today, the three of us were coming up with some examples to talk about because it’s always a little easier when you’re listening to a show like this to, to have a specific example, to try and understand what we’re on about. The first one I wanted to explain was a shopping experience or an unsuccessful shopping experience that I had a little while ago. Not that long ago, actually. I was looking at buying some Manuka honey, and I was looking at a few different brands. Just in case you listening to our beautiful client who actually sells Manuka Honey, this example is not about you. So just know that. So anyway, I, the three of us chatting here, we’ve all worked on that particular client. So yeah, I’m definitely not talking about that, but anyway, I had read an article or a post or something like that on social media and clicked through to this other brand.

Catherine Langman:
Obviously what I’d read on social media was enticing enough to really peaked my curiosity. I clicked through to have a look on the website. And of course that’s what you want whether it’s an ad or a social media post or an article that someone’s shared, obviously the goal is to get somebody from social media onto the website. Right? But when I got to the website, literally, and if anybody knows about Manuka Honey there’s a variety of different kinds of strengths of the main kind of chemical, I guess, is the right word. I don’t really know that makes Manuka Honey what it is. I don’t know a lot about this and I got to the website and they had about six different honeys that had different strengths, but literally all it had on the website was the product name, the number indicating the strength of it, and the price, and a buy now button, and really didn’t have anything else.

Catherine Langman:
So I went looking elsewhere on the website, couldn’t find any information. I was like, “well, what does this mean? What’s the number mean? How am I supposed to decide which ones right for me?” Is there kind of benefits of this number that I should know about that I just had no idea how to choose. I thought, “oh, I’m just going to ask the question.” So I sent them an email and you got to, you got to know, as an E-commerce brand owner, most customers aren’t going to go to that much trouble, but cause this is my business to be, to know about E-commerce. I’m going to ask the question so…

Sally:
Lets See how their buyer journey is. Yes.

Catherine Langman:
Literally the answer I got back was it’s just the percentage of this chemical in the different honeys. It didn’t give me any further info about what that means for me. I’m like, “all right, I give up.” I’m going somewhere else now.

Sally:
That’s unbelievable. It really is. It’s such, it’s such a disconnect between the messaging that they’re giving on their website and their buyer journey.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Sally:
They could really do with doing a customer survey to find out what information their customers need to know so that they can provide that information. That’s something that would help immensely. I’m sure you would not be the only person that who didn’t know what those numbers meant and what the different strengths were and what they should be used for, and that sort of thing. Most people don’t know that, but there’s so many business owners, I see this all the time when we work with clients, they assume that people already know all the stuff that they know.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Sally:
I think that’s maybe where copywriting can get a bit difficult for business owners when they are in it all the time. They assume that everything that they know is just common knowledge to everyone else as well. That’s so not the case. There’s been a lot of clients that I’ve worked with where they’ll say something during one of our meetings and I’ll go, “oh my God, what did you say? Can you explain that to me?: They’ll explain it and I’ll say, “well, this is the information we need to be giving your customers.” So we can craft emails and ads and all that sort of thing around that information, but it can be so hard for business owners to pull out that information, that particular information that their potential customers need to know. That’s where that, that customer survey and crafting the avatar and the buyer journey really carefully can just build such a solid foundation for how your business goes ahead from there.

Catherine Langman:
Mm. Yeah, absolutely. I don’t like feeling like an idiot, but I did feel like an idiot that day.

Sally:
That’s the business owner just going well, dirt, it’s the amount of chemical in the honey. It’s like, well, that still doesn’t mean anything to…

Catherine Langman:
No.

Sally:
Most people out in the community. We don’t know that stuff. I don’t know that stuff. I know that Manuka Honey, can be great and for healing and that sort of thing, but I don’t know what the different strengths mean.

Catherine Langman:
No.

Sally:
So yeah.

Catherine Langman:
So that was my, my shopping experience. I guess aside from there not being enough kind of information conveyed on the website, there was also that disjointed experience jumping from the article that I’d read onto the website. That is definitely something that we all see.

Group:
Yeah.

Catherine Langman:
I’m sure both of you have come across those sorts of examples with the clients that we work with.

Nova:
Yeah. Well, it’s a lost opportunity there, isn’t it? Because even as you reached out by email, you got a very impersonal response as well. So it stops you in your journey. It makes you go somewhere else cause you haven’t been fulfilled in what you’re looking for.

Catherine Langman:
Mm. Yeah, totally.

Sally:
That’s it. Anything that goes out on, whether it’s social media advertising or any kind of advertising the experience that the ad conveys and that it offers to a potential customer that needs to be reflected on the website and the service that you offer, not just your active service of responding to a potential customer, but the information that you give on the website. That needs to back up your ads and your emails and all that sort of thing and it’s, again, coming back to that, buyer journey that what’s the information people need to know put it on the website have it there.

Sally:
I know there’s one particular client who I work with and who has an incredibly detailed, frequently asked questions section on her website. That has come about because every time she’s got a customer inquiry or a question from a customer, she has written down that question written down the answer and then added that to her frequently asked questions. So the next time someone wants it that it’s already there.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Nova:
So they can sort of find it themselves and it saves it, it saves them dropping off the website and going, this is too hard and going elsewhere.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Sally:
But it also means that she’s already getting that information out there for people. I think people want to be self sufficient most of the time, particularly now that we do spend a lot of time on online shopping.

Catherine Langman:
That’s right. Because otherwise it takes too long. When you have to ask a question on email and then wait for someone to get back to you.

Sally:
That’s right. You might be ready to buy then and there.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
If you are ready to buy you’ve gone to that website, if you Googled it or you spoke about it and then an ad up in front of you on social you’re ready to buy. If the website doesn’t have the right information there, for those questions that come up in the buyer journey, then you’re going to drop off and go elsewhere. You know?

Catherine Langman:
100 Percent.

Sally:
There needs to be that synergy between both all the way.

Catherine Langman:
100 percent. So let’s chat about another example. So you were mentioning it before we hit record today. Do you want to introduce that example?

Sally:
Which one? I mentioned two Cat.

Catherine Langman:
Oh. Baby sleeping bags.

Sally:
Baby sleeping bags. So yeah, we’ve worked with this pipe for a very long time and her baby sleeping bags. When she first came to us, I think the first thing we did with her was go through her website and write her website copy…

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Sally:
For her. So that, because being a parent is of course, but it’s filled with emotion every single day.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Sally:
It’s filled with emotion. So we…

Catherine Langman:
Definitely don’t want to feel like an idiot then that’s for sure.

Nova:
No, that’s right. There’s so many parents who already feel enough like idiots they Don’s need an ad or a website trying to make things more confusing for them. You know, the, the more clear and detailed, you can be.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Sally:
Give all the information are better. You going to be in that kind of situation. Absolutely. That’s where it comes back to knowing you, your target customer quite well. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:17:16] Cause then you, yeah…

Catherine Langman:
[crosstalk 00:17:17] You were able to write copy about that really kind of resonated with the difficulties, both emotional and actual kind of physical examples that the customers were typically struggling with. You were really able to speak to that kind of very clearly and then also show them and in words, and obviously she had images to back it up as well, but you know, to really show the audience how to overcome that and to give customers that sort of sense of confidence that they had a solution that was right there.

Sally:
Yeah. That’s right.

Catherine Langman:
It did really make a difference.

Sally:
It did make a difference. It really did. The thing about her product and her website was that the images were, oh my God, they were beautiful. They were gorgeous and cute, and all that sort of things that really tugged at your heart strings. But there were things about, and features about these particular sleeping bags that you couldn’t convey in an image in a beautiful, cute image. So we needed the copy to highlight particular features that weren’t available in other baby sleeping bags that were very popular on the market at the time. We needed the copy to highlight those and say why they were so important and say how they were going to help the baby sleep better and therefore help the parents to sleep better as well.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
It was about that chain reaction of baby sleeping better means everyone else in the family sleep better with me. Everyone gets to have a really happy day the next day kind of thing. It’s that chain reaction from the house and we’ve all been there. We know exactly what it’s. I think it helps that I was writing this not long after my youngest was finally sleeping through the night. I was like, “yes, I remember what that was like.”

Sally:
I’m sure I’ll probably remember it for a long time yet, but not, not everyone who’s writing copy has that personal experience, but you can still talk to people who are in those kinds of situations and talk to them, find out what the language they use and what those pain points are because with a baby not sleeping, it’s not just about the baby sleeping it’s about that exhaustion. That happens day after day. The copy was very much as I said, we were highlighting those different speeches and how they helped baby have more sleep, but, but then that was tied back to everyone gets a good night’s sleep.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
Because that’s the ultimate aim that everyone wants.

Catherine Langman:
Then you were able to roll that kind of content and messaging and everything out through all of the ads. She’s got all the automated emails and all that jazz as well. Of course. But…

Sally:
Yeah.

Catherine Langman:
I seem to recall that when those changes were made, then everything started to convert a whole lot better, but especially the ads. [crosstalk 00:20:21] Yeah,

Sally:
Yeah, exactly. The ads were, were converting really well, like across the board on a cold audience and a warm audience because not only was she attracting new people, but who had already bought it, bought the product and loved it coming up, coming back to buy the next size up and all that sort of thing. So it wasn’t just about telling people about the product and getting them to come to the website, the first instance about getting them to come back again.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah. The right experience that they were looking for when they shopped.

Sally:
Exactly.They found the solution. I know a lot of parents once you find a solution, you stick with that solution, you don’t move away from it. Because especially with something like sleep, you don’t want upset that apple cart in any way.

Sally:
So once you have something that works, you will go back for it again and again. So that just reiterates how important it is to have that between your ads, your website and info that you give out in your emails and all that sort of thing. And even just on your organic socials as well, make sure that the messaging and the brand voice especially is consistent across the board.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah, totally. You just raised a really good point though, before Sally, you probably didn’t realize it. But…

Sally:
Did I?

Catherine Langman:
You said that with that particular client that you were able to write from personal experience, because you’d literally just been going through that fairly shortly beforehand.

Sally:
Yes.

Catherine Langman:
So that certainly makes it a whole lot easier when you can write from personal experience, but that’s not always the case. Also I guess sometimes as, as business owners or as marketers we are having to try our best to put ourselves in the shoes of the audience as opposed to our own cause it’s not relevant. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that because there is a process and I guess in our business, in our agency and also in our programs that we teach, we teach a process of research that really tries to get that information from the ideal customers in their own words so that we can incorporate that. So I just, “yeah”, I just thought maybe let’s have a quick chat about how we take that information from on customers and use it to inform and craft the marketing messages.

Nova:
I think using information that you’ve extracted from customers, their own words is extremely powerful because that will really make them feel that you identify and align with their values and what it’s that they’re searching for and that you overall have that solution to their problem.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah, absolutely.

Sally:
Right. I was just going to say, that’s really interesting looking at customer language. We often go when we are researching for a, for a new client, we’ll often go and obviously look through their social media and we’re not just looking at what the brand themselves post up and the language they use. We look at the language, the comments and that sort of thing, that people how the people are responding to them and the reviews that customers leave, those sorts of things are the customer’s own words. So they’re probably much more valuable than what the business is actually posting up sometimes because often a business will have a perfection of what the language is, but it’s not hitting the mark with the customers. They may not realize that until we actually go through and, and pick out you pick out words that people use that come up quite often and that kind of match with the target groups.

Sally:
So I know I was just sort of another example. There was a brand we worked with a little while ago who had a luxury spa kind of product.

Catherine Langman:
Oh yeah.

Sally:
It was a very high end one. So the language had to be right on. I remember I did a whole lot of research and I had in an exercise book, it was two pages of just words that I had picked out…

Catherine Langman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sally:
That related to that product. So whenever I had to sit down and write copy for an ad or an email or even website description there as well, I sat down with that next to me so that I could out and use those as you know, it was appropriate throughout the whole writing experience. Then it was consistent across the board. So…

Catherine Langman:
If we use the words that our customers are using to describe a situation, they’re going to understand it. I think this is probably where my old boss’ website, that’s just so meaningless now probably is fallen off a little bit, Because it’s like, nobody walks around using language like that. It’s just completely ridiculous.

Sally:
Yeah. Just like what Nova said before about, if they’re using the customer’s language, then they’re going to feel understood. So they do need to feel understood if the customer doesn’t feel like we understand the problem.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
That they have. We can’t offer them a solution in their own language as well…

Catherine Langman:
There going to go somewhere else.

Nova:
They’re going to go, this is not for me.

Catherine Langman:
100 percent. So if we, if we kind of go through like maybe the top five mistakes that you guys see all the time with copywriting, that’d have to be one of them. Right?

Sally:
I would think so. Yeah. Definitely. If you’re not talking the language of your customers, then you’ve lost over half of them right. At the start I would say.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Nova:
Yeah, absolutely.

Catherine Langman:
So what else would you think are the really common mistakes that people make copywriting?

Nova:
For me, if I’m browsing things and I’m reading the copy and I come across bad grammar, then that’s a big one for me. Because suddenly I’m not on the journey toward the product anymore. I’m stuck trying to work out what’s going on with their wording, they’ve lost my concentration. Yeah. So that’s just, it’s like stumbling, isn’t it? Then you…

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Nova:
You just, you lose that motivation or that momentum toward and they’re wanting you to investigate whatever it is they’re offering.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Nova:
But if you, if they’ve tripped you up inadvertently, then that’s [inaudible 00:27:39]

Catherine Langman:
It’s very true.

Sally:
Yep. Absolutely, and proofreading and that sort of thing is, it just has to be a step in the process. You can’t just send up, live on social media or in an email or on your website without getting it proofread by at least one other person. I still don’t think you can proof read your own stuff.

Catherine Langman:
No, I agree. You always miss it because you’re too familiar with it and yeah. That’s always, when I will make a mistake is when I’ve proofed my own stuff. It’s like, “oh yeah, that’s right.” Yep. Then someone will reply back and say, “is that the right date, because that was last week or something.”

Sally:
Exactly. Proofreading is really important and if you can’t, whether it’s grammar or whatever yeah. If it doesn’t make sense when you read it and you have to then go back, read over that sort of thing, you have lost that momentum of being guided through that buyer journey.

Group:
Yeah.

Catherine Langman:
Yes, absolutely.

Nova:
There’s a loss sense of credibility too, I think around product or what’s being lost when little things like that crop up.

Catherine Langman:
Absolutely.

Nova:
Yeah. I agree.

Catherine Langman:
On a different note, I reckon that literally just writing about what a product is and how it works so that the functionality and the features and that sort of thing, and not really talking about any, anything else. What does that mean for me? What problem does it fix or how’s it going to make me feel or what’s the experience I’m going to enjoy from using it? So yeah, literally just writing about the facts and the stats, but nothing emotive that has to be a mistake. It’s a common one that I definitely see a lot. What do you guys think?

Sally:
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Thinking about Baby Loves Sleep that we were talking about just beforehand if the copy had just been full length body, if wide sleep stack, that sort of thing, people go well. Yeah. But why are they, why have you got those features and this one over here doesn’t have those features. So you kind of explain why those features are actually going to help solve a problem. Then you’ve lost them.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Nova:
Absolutely.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Nova:
If you get the opportunity to create or tap into the memories or the stories or the imagination that can surround a product. So you go beyond, like you said, Cath, you go beyond just those facts of the product to get into, the meaning behind it, which is the important thing that we’re looking for.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
You eventually want to solve their problem, and we all know the feeling of relief and maybe a sense of achievement from when we solve any kind of problem. So if you’ve got some kind of issue or problem that’s happening in your home or in your life, and you find a product that solves for that, you have that sense of, “yes, it fixed.” I don’t need to worry about it anymore. So that’s what we’re chasing, is trying to describe that feeling of, yes, the problem is solved with this product.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Nova:
To get people over the line we want, when they get check out and confirm their purchase, we want them to feel that, yes, this is the product that’s going to solve my problem.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah. They want, you want them to feel really excited and confident and to have that, that momentum to keep moving forward for sure.

Nova:
Yep.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Nova:
Exactly.

Catherine Langman:
It’s like that analogy, people buy a good night’s sleep. They don’t buy a mattress.

Sally:
Yes.

Sally:
Exactly. That’s a really good analogy.

Catherine Langman:
So, what tips can we maybe give our listeners to help them feel like they can really nail their brand copy? So any copy that they’re writing for any of these different platforms where it’s their website, social media, emails, ads, all of that kind of stuff. What are a couple of really good tips that we can share?

Nova:
I like what you were saying before Sally, that you had created that those two pages of words. I think that’s important to do the work with the words that align with your brand. So, creating a glossary of desired words that you want to use and even undesired words so that you know, what it is that you don’t want you don’t want certain feelings or thoughts or word connotations creeping in that perhaps might guide your customer away from your product. So knowing what you do and what you don’t want with your wording.

Catherine Langman:
That’s a great one.

Sally:
Yeah, I’ve mentioned that kind of glossary to a couple of clients since then, who are struggling with their copy, the same write down everything you want, all the words you want to be associated with your product that resonate with your target customer and make sure that you use them drop a couple into each social media post and drop a couple into your email. You just got to sprinkle around like all of them.

Catherine Langman:
Yes.

Sally:
Just like that website you were talking about Cat. Just a little sprinkled, not putting everything at once. I’m like, you, you leave yourself nothing to use later on. But no, to find those words in the first place, you need to be looking at what your customers are saying. That might involve a little, a bit of snooping around and not just looking at the emails and messages and that sort of thing that you actually get from your customers, but even have a look at their public social media profiles, that sort of thing, see how they speak, to try and look at that as well and really try and nail that down.

Nova:
I mean we love doing a customer survey for our new clients so that we can really drill down that language and the right wording and the problems that they are experiencing. That’s a great way to do it, but I know some people are a bit intimidated by doing a survey, but it is a great way to get all that information there to use.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
But yeah, I think I went off on tangent and I forgotten where I was going.

Catherine Langman:
Like, you were very elonquently describing something there, so you…

Sally:
I would write on something and then I thought, was I going somewhere with this? I’m not sure now.

Catherine Langman:
My dad told me when I was young. If you make a mistake, don’t draw attention to it because no one would know. But you just did.

Sally:
Yeah. That was probably the wrong thing to do, wasn’t it. Anyway. But I think another thing that’s that I probably would like people to take note of is in terms of your social media posts and that sort of thing. Don’t forget to go back and look at which social media posts have been the successful ones in terms of engagement, because you’ll probably find that the ones that have higher engagement probably have better copy that’s resonating with the audience better.

Sally:
Same thing with your emails as well look at the emails that have the highest open rate and obviously your subject line for those emails is probably going to resonate really well. That’s a very important piece of copy right there.

Sally:
So yeah, you should always go back and look at your messages and see what there telling you about how people are engaging.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah, definitely. 100 percent. I’m going to sneak in one last question to both of you, but it’s an easy one. What’s one of your most favourite brands that you have written copy for ever. Doesn’t have to be this week or anything.

Sally:
I have to pick one!

Catherine Langman:
You can have two, if you really want.

Speaker :
Let think on that for a second, you might have to go Nova.

Nova:
Oh, goodness. One that does stand out is Sarsparilly. They’ve got a very fun brand to write copy for, yeah. Just very vibrant and yeah, just a lot of fun. So that’s one that sticks out in my memory.

Sally:
Yeah. I love writing copy for Madmia. There’s lots of fun to write copy for it. It can be really vibrant and fun and all that thing. So I love writing copies for her. I’m just trying think there was someone I wrote copy for years ago, I can’t think of who it was for, but it was so much fun.

Catherine Langman:
What was the product?

Sally:
Oh, gosh. I don’t even remember.

Catherine Langman:
Oh, gosh. There as been so many over the years.

Sally:
I’d have to go back and have a look, but yeah, there was one I ones that are fun always stick out because you can have a lot of fun with words and play around with. Words are fun. You can…

Catherine Langman:
They can be a lot of fun.

Sally:
Play around with them. Yeah.

Catherine Langman:
I reckon the commonality for me out of the ones that I’ve enjoyed the most over the years, and it’s been a lot now over of the years, but they’re, they always come into our working relationship with a very strong sense of the brand’s personality and…

Catherine Langman:
So then you can really kind of connect with that brand personality. Like, you both have said you can have a lot of fun playing around with the words, but where, where there isn’t that sense of the brain’s personality we have to try and, and guess, and if the owner is not, or the brand’s founder, isn’t confident with that, or really has no idea or flip flops between a lot of different styles of writing or of communicating, it can be very confusing to work on as well as the consumer. I think.

Sally:
Yeah. One of, one of the things I’ve seen that you just sort of tweak in my memory Cat, is talking about business owners who maybe flip between what they think they want in terms of their copies, they might say one thing, and then you write it and they say, oh, no not that I’m thinking more this and, or they’ll come to you and say, “oh, I saw an ad from such and such a brand yesterday, and I really love how they did this. Can we do that in here?” Well, that’s very different from what we’ve been talking about over here.

Sally:
So while it’s good to test different things, testing by just throwing shots out into the dark is going to be very expensive if you’re running doing that with ads and that sort of thing.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah, definitely.

Sally:
But it, it’s not going to give you very good, consistent data either because you’re just shooting out randomly.

Catherine Langman:
Exactly.

Sally:
Rather than actually sitting down and doing the work and working out exactly who your target customer is, the more you can narrow that down onto your target customer, unless you are randomly shooting around. The quick you’re going to get to the point where the copy is really resonating.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah. Well, that, that it’s exactly like, I remember what the other example was that we thought to speak about before, and that was Salubre, which is a skincare brand, that’s really exactly what kind of happened with that particular brand. It really took doing that kind of that research process first to, to work out the different kind of target customers, because she does have a few different ones and trying to go out with an UN-niched message just did not work.

Sally:
No, it didn’t. Yeah, she’s got four very distinct target customers and is rarely any overlap between them at all.

Sally:
So yeah, we were talking about this saying how first up we tried to do a general ads for, top of funnel for the cold audience to try and bring them to the website. Essentially I think our idea was we’ll bring them to the website and they can work out what they need.

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
But then that kind of disconnect them because people don’t know what’s they need.

Catherine Langman:
No.

Sally:
We need to guide them through straight away.

Catherine Langman:
So, just know what they’re struggling with right now.

Sally:
Yeah, Exactly. So we had to, now we’ve got it work that we are targeting each specific niche at the top of funnel and at that cold audience level. So that not only have we narrowed down our focus for the ads and that sort of thing, but we’re speaking directly to that customer about their problem [crosstalk 00:41:05] and to bring them to the website and go, this is a solution.

Group:
Yep.Yeah.

Catherine Langman:
Yep. Any final message that you want to leave for today’s episode? I think it’s been pretty juicy. I think that should, our listeners will get quite a lot of value out of this one. So thank you both for any last message you want to share.

Sally:
I think, I think with copywriting, it’s not something that comes naturally, people need to be prepared to try a few different things do the research, try a few different things and just put it out there and see what happens to that and look at the message and to see where things land, you know?

Catherine Langman:
Yeah.

Sally:
Don’t just go on gut instinct actually.

Nova:
Yeah.

Sally:
Have some focus about it. I think it’s going to be yeah, a good way to go.

Catherine Langman:
Definitely having that kind of focused process that you’ve both spoken about. Then yeah, like you say, just have, have confidence to give stuff a go and try not to panic about it being perfect or not perfect before you send something out.

Group:
Exactly. Yes. Proofread it. Yes, definitely.

Catherine Langman:
Genius. Well thank you both for jumping on today’s show with me. I really enjoyed that conversation. I hope bad listeners did as well. So yeah. Thanks for joining me on the show, Sally and Nova.

Nova:
Our pleasure.

Catherine Langman:
Of course, if anyone needs a little help with their copywriting, then you know where to find me. I will obviously hand it right over to one of these two lovely ladies.

Sally:
Thank you for having us. Yes.