[00:00:00]

And people are coming in here now to start up club. Hey, Hey norm, did you know that, um, startup club is the largest club on clubhouse. Now we became the largest club, uh, I think a week and a half ago. That's incredible. How many members now? I think we're almost up to 600,000 followers. If anyone here is in the room and they are not a member, um, please follow us and we'll, we'll try to activate you as a member.

[00:00:36] There's a lot that goes through the other alternatives. You could follow it in men like myself or Jeff, and we can just, uh, add you a much easier, um, startup.club, almost 600,000 members. We've got great speakers and let's just get to today's show and norm, look, you've done this five weeks in a row. Every time I come in, I learned so much as you know, Well, Jeff and I are invested in two e-commerce companies, um, here in the incubator, uh, and, uh, we're really excited to learn more and more about how to make those companies successful norm nobody's better than you do.

[00:01:13] You, you, you run a, a podcast that you've run for two years. I think it's probably one of the top podcasts rise of the micro brands, uh, by norm Ferrara. And I know you call it lunch with norm and you won that three times a week and it's just incredible. Keep it going and take it over. It's just a norm before you start, just want to remind everyone that we are recording today's show.

[00:01:37] So if you do come on stage to ask a question or participate, you are giving us permission to record you. And also a reminder go to startup.club and sign up for our mailing list. So you can be informed of e-com weekly and other great rooms that are happening on a recurring basis, as well as special events.

[00:01:56] Thanks norm, back to you. All right. Uh, thanks Colin. Thanks Jeff. Um, Hey look. Yeah, it's five weeks in a row. I think Mitch, I think Michelle, no, just meet you. There we go. Uh, so it, it has been five weeks in a row and hopefully we keep building, uh, just like the podcast, uh, what we're trying to do. Is bring everybody solid content in a no pitch environment.

[00:02:27] Okay. We're not going to be pitching. And the people that are coming up to ask questions, please don't pitch. We just want to give solid content. So the room is called welcome to e-comm. We are, uh, well, uh, e-com weekly learn to sell online today's topic is how to write. Great copy. So like Jeff said, we are going to be recording.

[00:02:49] If you come up and ask any questions, just let us know if you don't want to be recorded. And we have got some really fantastic guests that know how to write. Copy. So, uh, we've got Rob burns, Diane bolster and Michelle Harris and uh, oh. And you know, Jeff, Jeff sass, of course. And we're just going to dive right into it.

[00:03:12] Uh, by the way, if you like what you're hearing, please invite guests or your friends over to, to pick up any content if you like to start up. Uh, or if you see the little green house up there, this is new to me, the greenhouse, but click on it. And I guess you get notifications and if you like the panelists and what they're saying, please follow them.

[00:03:32] They've all dropped great expert advice. Okay. So let's start off, Mr. Rob burns. How are you? Hey, how you doing? Good. You were, you were just on the podcast and we were talking more about video marketing, but scripting and copy it. It's so important. One of the things that you were mentioning the other day, and it was writing for the, the, the, the customer and not writing with ego.

[00:04:01] And I think this is how we can start it up with everybody on the panel. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about writing for the customer. Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I sound like a broken record, but, you know, I mean, I would say probably kind of rule number one is, you know, it's not about you and it's not about your product.

[00:04:22] It's, it's about, you know, the customer and you know, what, you know, what kind of pain are you fixing for them? And, you know, what's in it for them because, you know, honestly, that's, that's, that's really, you know, anybody that's, that's viewing your content or your copywriting, you know, they're just looking at yeah.

[00:04:40] You know, how does this make my life better? Or how does this solve some problem? Or how does this fix, you know, some kind of pain. So that's really what I lead off with. And that's really kind of at the top of my head, you know, anytime we write anything,

[00:04:56] Diane, what about you?

[00:05:03] Can you hear me? Yes, I'm doing great. Norm. How are you? I'm doing great. And I know your techniques are crazy, but let's talk a little bit about that. You attack this, you know, I know that you're tacking on a very similar way Rob would, but you've got some really great strategies and, and also different styles that you work with.

[00:05:27] Can you just explain a little bit about that? Sure first, I want to say, Rob, I believe you were absolutely spot on. And, um, one of the things I would like to add to that specifically is if you're going to write to their heart and you're going to focus on solving the customer's problem, make sure that you look at whether or not they feel that they're capable or jaded, which I believe is customer awareness, level five.

[00:05:47] And I know Rob already knows this, but I figured it's a good add on because a lot of the reason people see a product and they, you know, they, it has everything. They want everything they need, you can paint their dreams and you can solve their problems. But if they don't believe that they're capable of using that product to solve their problem, then they're going to bounce.

[00:06:05] Right? So it's, it's kind of a, I believe that theory is called copywriting is therapist. You know, when you go into a therapist, you think about, you know, you're going there because you don't know how to solve your own problem. And you're not aware if you're capable or not. And so you almost have to hold their hand and show them.

[00:06:22] That this particular product works, even if, and that's a big copyright. Do you see them cooperating everywhere, even if you failed at this before? Because a person's biggest fear is not that the product will fail and they'll be annoyed or that the waste time it's, that they'll fail. Right. So, and then they're going to feel embarrassed because they're, you know, buying with emotion, they're justifying with logic and right in between, there is that failure.

[00:06:43] So, um, I do have a lot of advanced copywriting techniques that I use that I believe a lot of top copywriters use it. Is there anything specific norm you want me to touch on?

[00:06:57] There's like we could do this for five hours, um, so

[00:07:04] that I want you to make sure you hit on, uh, during this call is your Hey, um, hypnotic anchor text or whatever you're calling it. I forget what you said. The hypnotic anchor. Okay. Okay. Okay. So that kind of, that goes back to the fact that most of the product things sold on Amazon and across e-commerce are actually private label rights products.

[00:07:29] And so they're me-too products. And so you have to look at positioning, right? And if let's say you search for dog leash and you pull up 18 search results on the first page of Amazon, um, if you look at those, any consumer, any customer and consumer can look at those and say, okay, these all look like the same dog leash in different colors.

[00:07:46] So why is this person charging 26 99? And this person charging. 13, right. Um, if they get curious and they clicked because you did great with your images, you'd well with your title, um, you've been persuasive enough to get that click right then your next job is going to be to position your product is one that superior enough to gain that price, to gain their respect enough for them to pay that price, that extra $2, $5, $10.

[00:08:10] One of the ways that we do that is with something called a hypnotic anchor and a hypnotic anchor is literally something you make up about or uncover, um, that combines a feature and a benefit of your product that you're selling on Amazon. That's a me too product, right? Because you probably sourced it from someone in a factory, just guessing.

[00:08:30] And you, you create a name for, for either a feature or a benefit or, you know, a high-tech part of that product, even if it's just a basic dog leash, right. And that sticks in people's brains and you justify it after creating that feature. And then when they go to search for other products that they bounce off your page, because if you're charging $10 more than everybody else, they'll probably go do some more searching just to make sure you're as good as you say you are.

[00:08:52] Right. And that you're worth it. Um, they'll have that hypnotic anchor stuck in their mind and they can't find it anywhere else. So their subconscious mind is running through the cycle of looking for comparisons, looking for superiority. Is there anything better than this? Is this going to work for me? And so with that stuck in their minds, it's kind of an openness, a loop.

[00:09:11] They have to close by knowing that they made the best decision and purchase your product. And that's part of how we get such high conversion. Love it and gave some really great examples on the podcast about how people are using them. I think you used the, a vacuum for an example, but you see this all the time.

[00:09:30] Like once you, once you explained this to me and this goes back probably a couple of years ago, but then you start looking at TV commercials or even you successful products and okay. On the Amazon listing, you might have a thousand different competitors, but you have this hypnotic, uh, anchor and well, you know, none of your competitors have it.

[00:09:52] So they're going to, if everybody's the same price point and you have that one thing, whatever it is, you know, hypo sock for a vacuum, what Hoover's Gore-Tex technology can pick up a bowling ball. Everybody else's can pick up a bowling ball too. You just have to stick the end of the hose on it, but they have vortex technology, right?

[00:10:12] Exactly. The other thing that's really cool about this is if you're doing this, if you do this right, and you have a good quality listing that vortex, uh, technology will also take it from a hundred dollars product to $149 product, because nobody else has it. That is correct. It's all about positioning and you want it.

[00:10:36] The reason that hypnotic anchors works so well is because the human brain does not like to process a lot of information, right? It's you, everybody has filters. It's almost like from the moment you're born, you have this video camera stuck to the front of your head and it creates these things called meta programs that.

[00:10:51] Mean that your brain specifically, your subconscious mind will push out most of the information. So you're only looking for specific things when you're looking at a listing, right. And that's only based on what you know, so if your brain sees something that's curious and it's in a small enough bite of information, that makes sense to your brain, your brain will remember it instead of trying to go through and explain where your product superior in, you know, five different bullet points when everybody else's product is flashing up below it on Amazon.

[00:11:15] Right. So it is helpful. It's kind of thinking about the brain as being a child, as opposed to thinking about the brain as being a highly intelligent processing unit. Right. You know, um, I'd really love to get some input on you because, uh, I know anytime we're getting together and we're talking about branding or anything, uh, you always come up with incredible, amazing copy.

[00:11:40] And it's like an aha moment. I remember sitting down with you with a PR reach and you just within minutes went, oh yeah, you should do this, this and this. And this is how you position it. And I went, how did you do that so easily? It makes complete sense. Any thoughts on copy? Uh, thanks. Thanks, Norman. Thanks for that.

[00:11:57] Yeah, I remember that was, uh, in, in new Orleans. I think we did that. Um, which was a lot of fun. Yeah. I think, you know, I really liked, um, what both Rob and Diane have said. Um, and I wrote down the hypnotic anchor. I, I think I've been doing that without really knowing there was a name for it. And, and, and another way to look at that is really just branding your features, right?

[00:12:18] Come up with a name for the features that is memorable. Sometimes it's also an acronym. Sometimes it's an acronym that's catchy and easy for people to remember. That'll serve the same purpose. So expand on what Rob was saying. Yeah. You know, when you're selling something, you're never really selling a product or a service, you're always selling the outcome.

[00:12:37] Right. It's all about the outcome. That's, you know, what is it going to do for the customer? How's it going to make them feel what kind of problem it's going to solve for them? So if you write your copy thinking in terms of what is the outcome and how can you convey that outcome effectively to your customer so that they understand, you know, why they want this?

[00:12:56] Not because it has these features, they want it because of what it's going to do for them and how it's going to make them feel after they own it. Um, and I also think it's important to have kind of a consistent voice, you know, find the voice for your brand and make a decision. Is, is it going to be very serious and technical?

[00:13:12] Are you kind of humorous? Are you light and friendly? Are you talking like a business or are you talking like person to person and then try to be consistent and have your copy fit within that voice? Those were a couple of suggestions I would make I'm Jeff and I'm done speaking you. Thanks a lot, Jeff.

[00:13:28] Hey, we're going to get to the questions in just a second. Hey, Paul. You're here. I am. I am here. Sorry. I was a couple of minutes late. This is, uh, uh, uh, I love listening to smart people. Talk about what they're good at and like I'm a geek about psychology. So, um, just that the concept of anchoring. Um, I know I'm not sure if you've were out or you're familiar with, um, Dan Arielli, Diane, but he talks about it.

[00:13:55] He calls it, uh, keystoning. It's a keystoning effect that everybody does. All, all Diane did is, uh, use an anchor. Uh, there are a hypnotic anchor. That's all Paul I'm I'm hypnotically anchored back to, but it's funny cause this is making me think through our listings and like we were category leaders and it'd be very easy for us to just trademark a phrase, uh, you know, have it be a part, a part of, one of our feeds.

[00:14:25] Exactly. Like how cool is that once, once you like really anybody who's listening, if you're watching TV tonight, just watch any of the beauty commercials watch. Oh, um, what is it called? Olay, whatever it is, skin, what's the bloody thing called yeah. You know, beauty products. Um, but anyways, just watch any of those commercials and you'll see these anchors that come up time and time and time again.

[00:14:53] It's so cool. And, and, you know, just try it. I've got another question just for the panel. Uh, copywriting looks so easy. Like I said, I sat down with Jeff in new Orleans and I'm not a great copywriter. Um, I'm smart enough to know that that's probably my weakness and to let somebody else handle it. You guys make it look so easy.

[00:15:17] I sit down, you know, like I said, we're, we're sitting down having lunch in Jeff's in five minutes, solve my problem that took me weeks to do. And you know, why? And this is, this is true, by the way, uh, by changing this a little bit of copy on my website, all of a sudden I went from very little or few subscriptions to mega subscriptions because people got what I was trying to say.

[00:15:43] How do you make it look so easy? And when should you job it out?

[00:15:53] Anybody? I mean, I think on the, on the easy side, I mean, it's not, it's, it's, it's like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule. I mean, if this is something you've been doing. You know, for your whole career, um, is writing and massaging copy and, and writing in different ways than it just comes faster. Just like if you, you know, talk to anyone who's been doing something, if you, if you know, someone who's can climb a mountain, they can climb it a lot faster than you can.

[00:16:19] Cause they've done it before and you're just starting out. So I think it's just practice and experience that makes it seem like it's easy. It's like that classic. Uh, there's a story I'm going to jumble it up, but it's like someone went to some famous designers to have their logo, um, designed, and they literally met them for coffee, a cup of coffee, and the designer took a napkin and sketched out the logo.

[00:16:41] And that was the logo for a big brand, just like that. And so the client said, okay, well how much is that? And the guy says $250,000 and he says, well, wait a minute. You just took. 15 seconds to do it on a napkin. I'm not going to pay $250,000. He says, you're not paying for the 15. The designer said, you're not paying for the 15 seconds I just did in front of you.

[00:17:02] You're paying for the 30 years that I've been doing this, that led up to me being, being able to do it in 15 seconds. Right. So I meant that's how I would answer that question norm. Um, you know, um, I forgot what your other question was, so I completely agree with that. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Well, I mean the concept that something, you know, it may seem easy to somebody.

[00:17:27] Well, the reason why it seems easy is because you do it all the time. You know, it's not like you say, I play old fart, barely cocky. Right. Um, I'm not under any delusions that I'm going to be making the Stanley cup playoffs, but, you know, I watch, you know, the ads just get their butts kicked, unfortunately by the golden Knights.

[00:17:45] And you know, some of the stuff that Nate McKinnon does, it's just like, it looks so easy. Well, why does it look so easy? What cause the dude trains all the freaking time, like he's a beast. And so you look at that in sports and that makes sense. But then when you go to skillsets and service-based stuff like copywriting, it's the same exact thing it's easy because you know, you do it all the time.

[00:18:07] I mean, it's definitely a skill that you can learn, but that's where you have to look at your value proposition. Um, or, or what is that value proposition? The, um, Opportunity cost. You have to look at your opportunity cost of like, do you really want to become an expert in this? Do you have the time to do this?

[00:18:23] And is it something that you really think that it's actually worth your time? Um, you know, considerations that you have to take into things you have to take into consideration, or obviously how much capital you have, you know, if you can't afford to hire a copywriter, then you're going to have to do it yourself.

[00:18:41] And you're going to have to, you know, learn some things. But I think that you should always look at it with an eye towards we're going to earmark this for the future to go with the professional, because you know, clearly, you know, I'm not a pro copywriter or something like that. Yeah. And like I'm looking at, um, a bunch of, I, I know a bunch of people that are listening right now that are incredible e-com and, uh, uh, Amazon sellers, like there's I see Dr.

[00:19:10] Cause and Vernon and rad and Tom Hartley, Roslyn, um, Jani kid. I mean, there's, there's so many people that are listening right now and there's a fine line because I, I can see by writing, letting somebody else right. And doing it myself, I can see a dramatic increase and, uh, in conversions, uh, and that could be in your emails and conversion rates, their click through rates that could be for your Amazon listings, that could be for e-commerce.

[00:19:44] Um, but there is, at some point you've got to take a look at it and say, yeah, I can do this. Okay. Um, but should I really go out and look for that copywriter questionnaire? How do you find, or what questions do you ask? A great copywriter. There's so many people I've gone to free up. I've gone to Upwork, I've gone to, um, online jobs pH and a lot of the times I see crap that comes back and you're, you're paying pretty good money for it.

[00:20:12] Any thoughts on that?

[00:20:19] Hey, I don't know if I'm still figuring this whole thing out. So I think the number one thing you look for when you're Jennifer copywriter, obviously from a financial perspective, is going to be, what are their conversion rates? You know, um, obviously how much what's their experience? How much have they made others in sales in your industry?

[00:20:36] But I think the biggest thing that most people miss out on is they don't look for copywriters who have a passion to help other people. Um, and a copywriter who that's, that's why I started doing it is because I figured I could help families actually leave their jobs. And I just had a daughter. This was like 12 years ago, um, who was in the NICU for four months and I was working a job 80 hours a week and I was okay, I've got to do something.

[00:20:55] So I pulled my copywriting skills back out of my bag and started doing it again, you know, but if that person is not passionate, if they're not thinking about how, what they're doing is so critical to your life, that they're putting food on your table, making sure you can feed and clothe your children, making sure that you have the dream that you want.

[00:21:10] Then I wouldn't touch them with 10 foot poles. So whenever I'm looking to hire somebody else for copywriting, I don't handle and handling your own copies a little tricky because most copywriters know, um, I'm always going to ask the questions about, you know, how passionate are you? Are they paying attention to me?

[00:21:22] Are they going to care enough to make edits? You know, are they going to care enough to, um, make sure that, you know, what's on the line, which a lot of times is your family. Survival is actually going to be imminent by getting you those conversions on those sales.

[00:21:38] Yeah. And I guess you also want to make sure that it's the right writer for the right copy. Uh, I know with press releases, uh, we'll end up targeting people that have, they might be incredible blog article writers, um, but they really suck at press releases or press release writer that sucks at being an email marketer.

[00:22:02] So I guess you should be targeting those types of, um, you want to see that portfolio and you want to make sure that you're targeting the right person. Correct. All right. Yeah, I would add, I would add one thing too sometimes. Not always, but sometimes it's also important that the copywriter has, um, domain knowledge of the industry, right?

[00:22:24] Because depending on what your product or service is, if it's in an, in an industry where there's particular language, you know, common phrases, terminology, the way things are. That your customers would understand because of the industry they're in. Then it's going to be important to have a copywriter who has familiarity with that language has familiarity with that vertical.

[00:22:46] So that's not true in all cases, but in certain verticals, it could be very important to have someone who has the technical knowledge of that industry to understand terms of art, understand the language it's commonly.

[00:23:01] Thanks. Jeff, I'm just going to reset the room. Uh, you're listening to, uh, you're listening to e-comm weekly, uh, learn to sell online and today's topic is how to write. Great copy. Uh, I've got, uh, an incredible panel of guests today that are all, uh, great copywriters. Uh, if you like what you're hearing, uh, please give them a four.

[00:23:24] If you like the, if you like to get notified, click the greenhouse up by startup club and always appreciate it. If you can bring in friends. So, you know, please invite friends. If you think that they get anything out of learning a bit more about copy. So before we go, oh, and I guess this is a Jeff thing, they'll always say, oh, you forgot to talk about the recording.

[00:23:46] If you come up on as a panelist or speaker, um, please, if you do not want to be recorded, uh, make sure you let us know. Okay. Let's start with a question, the Veeam, welcome to the stage.

[00:24:06] And if you have a question,

[00:24:12] I just invited Johnny. I think he has a question, but I actually have some questions too prior to this. So this is just gotten my brain spinning. Like how important is it to trademark? Like this hypnotic phrase. Um, so that it's something that only you can use. And then is that also something that you then you could go in and like do a press release about, for example?

[00:24:31] Well, that's a great question. So the first thing that we do is we make sure that hypnotic phrase is going to work and actually add power to the listing. Um, and for some clients we'll test a few different hypnotic phrases. Of course they'll split test. But after that, I think you can go to legal zoom and it's like, or U S PTO.

[00:24:47] And I think it's less than $200 just to copyright that. And you want it to be yours and owned by you because it's part of your brand, right? So it's relatively important for legal reasons and financial reasons. If you don't want someone to swipe it, once you find something that works

[00:25:02] from your perspective, norm, is this, do you feel like this is something that would be public, uh, like press release, publicity type words? Oh yeah. Uh, not only that, I I'd write a. I'd give it as much exposure as anything. If you've come up with is hypnotic phrase. I write an article about it and put it on my blog.

[00:25:26] I would, if I had influencers or brand ambassadors, I get them to promote the heck out of it. Uh, and, uh, you know, you could even get them to do contests or whatever, just to get the word out that you've got this really great, you know, a vortex technology. Uh, the other thing is make sure that you're sharing and repurposing this all over your social media.

[00:25:51] Everybody's got to know about vortex technology, nobody else has it. And of course, um, a press release would be a great, uh, uh, source for you to get a lot of exposure. Don't go cheap on the press release, um, you know, make sure it's not a free press release or you'll get what you pay for. Um, but you know, pay a hundred or 200 bucks.

[00:26:12] I mean, you could pay 750 and get some really incredible exposure and to link the press release back to your blog article, but yeah, just pumped the heck out of, out of it. I think it's a great idea. Well, no, no. I'm, I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a moment and just put some caveats in that, in, in that I think, you know, when, when Diane was first mentioning the, uh, hypnotic phrase as an anchor, um, I really liked the way she described it and how it's, how the human brain works and what you're really using it for is to make your listing stand out above all others for same or similar products, right.

[00:26:51] So that I think is, is a great concept. If you're going to names a feature that's really not particularly unique and not really proprietary, I wouldn't go, hog-wild doing press releases about that feature. Um, if it's not truly a unique feature, even just because you came up with a clever name for it, um, because that could potentially backfire, um, when people realize it's really nothing different than what everyone else has.

[00:27:19] So I would, I would put a little bit of a caveat. Um, but I would also agree with you that, you know, if you're going to use that phrase to brand a particular feature, whether it's unique or not, you want to use that every time you're talking about the product, whether it's having an influencer promoting it or social media, whatever you always want to highlight that feature using the brand or the hypnotic phrase that you came up with.

[00:27:42] So I would just put a little bit of caveat or not going overboard, unless it truly is. Uh, something that will be perceived as proprietary or unique. And that's just my opinion. I'm Jeffrey and I'm done. Jeff's always got a good opinion. Uh, but let's take, um, an example. That's a use a plastic shoe stretcher and he's horrible product.

[00:28:03] Um, everybody that's selling, it has horrible reviews. Uh, anyways, if I take a look at it and I take a look at these seven people that have got an average of a three and a half star rating, that's over all seven. Um, anyways, it's, if you look at the reviews, the spring breaks, the plastic breaks, and this is a perfect example of what you were saying, Jeff, where you could bring in some product innovation, we had awful of Eurocon on the other day, talking about just slightly be slightly different than your competitors.

[00:28:38] And what you're saying is exactly that, um, you know, if you want the one, two punch with the hypnotic anchor, uh, yeah. Change the spring, make it a better, you know, it's a titanium spring, or you've got w you've gone to wood instead of plastic to show a little bit different. So I don't know what you would think about that.

[00:29:00] Actually, I have a couple of things to say about this. First of all, um, as you know, there's kind of a code of ethics and top copywriters, where if there's a product that's bad, we call it throwing back the fish. And so we're not going to go out there and try to convince somebody to buy something. That's not going to benefit their lives.

[00:29:15] It's kind of a, you know, just a core ethical thing. So, um, the second thing is, yes, you can create a hypnotic anchor for it. Uh, I would also focus on letting people know how you've updated the product. So make your first bullet point about how you've updated it, because if you yourself have those bad reviews and you're not going to launch a new listing, cause you don't want to lose traction in terms of ranking, you know, see if you can place updated in the title, see if you can place update at 2021 and the title and the bullet points, um, make your make part of your golden thread about the fact that you've updated that product you've gone out.

[00:29:45] You've spoken with your con your consumers and your customers. And you have fixed all the flaws that people are seeing in other products on the market. And that's what makes it innovative. And you wouldn't necessarily need a hypnotic anchor for that, but you could certainly use it.

[00:30:01] Hey, Rob, you're quiet. I'm not quiet. I'm curious to see if you have anything to say. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot of good stuff. I think. Um, uh, well, one thing I like touching way back on, on some of the stuff that Diane was talking about, like almost kind of writing for therapy, um, what, what, which I totally agree with, it's almost kind of like a, um, uh, kind of a subset of, of, of the hero's journey, you know, kind of Joseph Campbell stuff where, um, I think a lot of times, um, When you write, you know, to create a mindset is, you know, you're really, you know, you know, in the hero's journey, there's always kind of like the hero, but the hero usually, you know, has this obstacle or this challenge or this thing that they need to overcome, you know, which is a customer, you know, what, you know, whatever pain they have, you know, but then there's always like, you know, this, this person who who's, you know, um, you know, as Diana was mentioning, you know, maybe, uh, doing, you know, you know, doing kind of therapy, you're helping them out.

[00:31:14] But, you know, in, in a hero's journey, it would be, you know, somebody that's kind of wise and knowledgeable, that's a guide or an advocate. And, you know, and I always use like the star wars analogy where. You know, there's Luke Skywalker, who's kind of, you know, rising and coming into his power, but he has all these challenges and things he doesn't understand.

[00:31:33] He doesn't know, you know, and then there's Yoda, you know, who, you know, who, you know, in reality has all the power, but, you know, he's really kind of just sitting back and he's just kind of guiding, you know, Luke into, you know, in his own personal, you know, personal journey. And I think when you write like that, um, you know, either, you know, as therapy where you're the person that's helping and solving, you know, the challenge or, or, um, or, you know, if you know this, which is really kind of, you know, similar to the, to the hero's journey thing where, you know, you're the, you know, you're the Yoda to Luke Skywalker where you, you know, you're helping them out, you know, and, and if you can keep that mindset, I think it makes a huge difference, you know, and I, I would say.

[00:32:17] And this is really, you know, kind of copywriting 1 0 1 too, is, you know, people, you know, people make purchases, you know, based on emotion, you know, except for, you know, maybe a few exceptions where, you know, maybe it's like B2B where, you know, the boss said, well, you know, just go out and buy, you know, part number, you know, 35 dash eight or whatever, you know, we need a bunch more of those, but usually, you know, the decision, you know, from on a consumer level, um, is going to be more, you know, based on, you know, how is this going to make them happier or smarter or better looking or feel better or solve a problem.

[00:32:51] And so if you can kind of keep that, you know, in, in your brain, you know, why you're writing copy. I think you'll probably be miles ahead of most, you know, most folks. Um, also you, you guys were talking about, uh, you know, how do you pick, you know, how do you pick a good copywriter and, um, you know, for us w when, when we're hiring, you know, usually we just test them out, right.

[00:33:16] Um, and, and like, we don't even say, Hey, you know, we're just giving you a test drive, you know, because we basically just want them to be thinking the way they would think as, or as they have a normal gig and not like they're auditioning and trying to get a gig. And, you know, w w you know, and see how are, how are they through the process?

[00:33:32] And, you know, what are the questions are they asking? Are they asking more questions about the product? Are they trying to ask more questions about, you know, who is your customer and trying to get into their customer's head? Because that'll tell you a lot about, you know, just the mindset of the copywriter, you know, and I'd say, you know, maybe one in five, one in 10, you know, are going to be those, those golden copywriters.

[00:33:51] And then, you know, the other ones are going to be, you know, okay. Or not work out. Very good. Hey, Yani. Welcome to the stage. Hey, norm. Uh, thank you for inviting me up. I have a one question regarding copywriting. It is. Why do we keep seeing, uh, Amazon listings? A killer, like selling a ton and we don't see actual wholesalers or vendor accounts investing in a good copy.

[00:34:28] Well, my thought is, uh, especially on the vendors side, um, vendors side is probably because of Amazon itself. Right. I don't know. I, uh, you know, Paul probably could answer that one as well. I see the same thing with, um, with vendor central, you know, it's very, you know, 50 characters, that's it. And you know, there they go.

[00:34:52] They're off selling. I don't know. Maybe the algorithms picking them up a little bit differently. Maybe they've got a little unfair advantage. Um, I do know on the seller side, It's all about the copy. So, yeah, especially now, uh, Steve Simon son got it goes back a year and a half ago, he was talking to me about short listings and it was like, oh, no way.

[00:35:16] We've got to have these longer listings and, you know, put in pain points and put in the benefits and put as many keywords as you can while making it legible, um, for the, uh, for the, for the buyer, but shorter titles, all of a sudden started ranking better, not, um, like no duplicate keywords started ranking better anyways.

[00:35:41] Um, I can't tell you why, unless, you know, Paul or anybody else has an idea why an Amazon listing or like, Hey, rad or any of the guys that are listening. If you've got an idea, why vendor is outselling on shorter? Um, shorter titles, let us know, because I really don't have an answer for that.

[00:36:05] I have no idea. The hypothesis that I have would be that Amazon typically test stuff in vendor before they roll it out to everyone else. And what I would, what I would think is that they're testing something. And it, my guess is that it has to do with the, like the, the actual user, like data that they're getting from users clicking on links.

[00:36:32] Um, I would assume that, you know, people are more, more, more likely to click on a link that has a title that's not stuffed with keywords and like, you know, 250 or 500 characters long or something insane like that. So that that's my hypothesis, but there's no, I have no proof to back that up. It's just make sense.

[00:36:52] And it couldn't be, so don't take my word for it. And Yani. One of the things that, you know, we, we could look at too, it's not just the title, right. What's in their bullets. Typically they're pretty short, what's in the back end, but also how are they doing their PPC? You know, maybe that's optimized and maybe they're, you know, doing a better job, but really, I don't know.

[00:37:17] And I wish I did because I, I see it all the time and I just kind of cringe when I see, you know, we're putting in all this effort and they put in 50 characters killing it.

[00:37:29] Sorry, I didn't mean to jump in on your thought you were finished. Let me, okay. So I have a couple of theories we've been testing over on our end as well. One of them is ranking organically without any keywords in the listing. Um, hint because of PPC and because of Amazon cycle of love, it works. So we've had people with shorter titles, titles, like 80 characters are shorter.

[00:37:49] They're more mobile optimized, their ranking higher. The way that we're still increasing conversions is by moving the sales copy over to the images, right? Um, they may not auxiliary, obviously they're not the main, but the auxiliary images and then also an EBC because 48% of sales from the last measure, start on mobile phones and end on mobile phones on Amazon.

[00:38:08] So what people are seeing first is your title. They're not really paying a lot of attention to it right below that when they look on their cell phone, Your images, you put your sales copy on your images, right? And then people know about the product. And we're finding that a lot of people, even if we're not including bullet points sometimes just because we like to test things, right.

[00:38:23] Or maybe like 50 characters or fewer, which some people are locked into and we're not doing ABC, people are looking at for these listings. People are looking at the images and the copy on the images and they're buying anyway. Right. And those sales with, if someone searches for a keyword and it gains a cell from that keyword and continues to gain sales from that keyword, that is a lot of how it seems Amazon's ranking on the backend right now.

[00:38:43] So not having huge bullet points in a lot of categories, isn't really mattering. As much of those people feel comfortable making a decision, uh, by starting their search on their mobile phones. I don't know if that helps at all, but it's a theory, but it's one more testing and it seems to be working pretty well.

[00:38:59] That's awesome. And one other thing, uh, which, uh, you know, this is all part of copy, but for those people who are writing their book, that they wish it would be published on their image. Don't do that. Nobody's gonna read it. They're gonna skip past your images faster. They they're just not going to look at your images.

[00:39:21] Nobody wants to read it. Your ego on an image, especially on Amazon, you could put the highlights like Diane was saying on the image and you can mirror it in your bullet point, but a couple of words or three words per bullet, you don't have to write a paragraph or two or fill up the whole thing because it's for who was it?

[00:39:48] Diane. Were you telling me about Burt's bees where they don't use any words at all? They use? Like, I, I don't know. I'm going to say chocolate mint, you'll see the container or the lip balm, and then you'll see this incredible gorgeous, um, photograph of chocolate and mint and it says everything. And then it's also over in the, um, over it.

[00:40:14] They, they describe it more in the, their bullet point, but, uh, yeah, I just see so many, um, sellers. Sell a book on an image. So I'm not sure. Um, if you agree with that, Diane, I definitely don't sell a book. We don't want to have five bullet points on every single image. Um, we want short, punchy, powerful specifics, anything that you want if you're using testimonials.

[00:40:37] And then in terms of companies like Burt's bees, um, I'll say two things. One, they have a multi-multi multimillion dollar budget. So. Where the customer is at in their acquisition process is different than where customer will be when they're searching through several private label products. Um, so while I love their images, an image is worth a thousand words, but that means there's a thousand different ways a customer can interpret your image, right?

[00:40:59] So it is important to put something on there that sells your product, right? That shows you understand their problem. You can solve their problem. Um, two big things that, you know, we're just kind of copywriting 1 0 1 are put the car, people read things that are right below an image. So make a block below your image and put the copy down there.

[00:41:16] If you have more than a few words again, don't overload it. And also people like to read things at the end of straight lines. So if you're doing a, you know, all my features image, draw a straight line to a box that has a few words about that particular feature, a benefit. Don't just slap it up there as a checklist, even though people read checklists, they like to know how the feature, the benefit tie together, right?

[00:41:41] Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I have a follow-up question to Diane. Uh, probably you have already discussed how, uh, I mean, you probably are already gave some hints on how to do the mullets in images. So you said that basically it's going to be better to transport, uh, bullets to the images, but, uh, do you, uh, uh, probably do you do like a whole story, like, um, have a sequence of three, four images, which link together?

[00:42:13] Like you're going to do it in the book. It just depends on the product, honestly. Um, some products, you know, we write for B to B and B to C business to business and business to consumer. So, you know, it really just depends. I actually, I've created a few trainings on that that are free. You can always shoot me an email and I can send those over, but it would take a whole episode of this to explain.

[00:42:34] Um, I'm not trying to Dodge your question just to explain what to do with your images. And I don't want to take up everybody else's, um, panel time. Thank you. Thanks for that. Can you check that on your website then you can just shoot me an email. I think norm probably has my email. Yeah. Diane maybe is your, um, Instagram or information in your profile in your clubhouse profile?

[00:43:01] I just opened this thing yesterday. I'll put it in there. I'll put it in there right after this. I'm so sorry. I'm just, I hadn't jumped on board yet. I just put up an image and said yeah, I'll show up. Yeah, absolutely. I'll get you Diana. Now, one other thing that, um, I wanted to talk about since we're on Amazon and writing for four, um, Amazon listings, eight plus pages.

[00:43:27] So for those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's just, uh, an additional, um, page that when you scroll down, you get to see sort of rich content, um, and a little bit more information about a product listing. So I heard something incredible the other day from Stephen Pope. So, uh, he was saying that he just tried this out and it blew him away and he didn't try it out with one, but he tried it out with multiple products.

[00:43:55] So he added a plus with very little, like he wasn't targeting specific keywords in the listing. These keywords were very specific, um, in a plus and every single one. Was indexed, even though none of them were in the backend or above the fold, you know, where your product listing is, they were only in the A-plus I'm listening.

[00:44:23] I don't know if any of you have seen that, but Amazon saying that they don't index a plus listings. Yep. They do. They index. And so does Google because they are now following Google's protocol, which a lot of people aren't aware of, they index the keywords you put as descriptions underneath your images in your A-plus ABC section.

[00:44:42] And that's very important too. So, Hey, Paul, I know we talk about, um, naming images properly. Again, this is still copy, but uh, why don't we talk about, uh, how to name a file, how to upload it? Not only for Amazon, but for Google ranking. Yeah. So is this, I mean, I guess one question I have is, do we know for sure if, um, Amazon actually looks at the, the image titles and all that stuff?

[00:45:14] The like the, or from what, what I had seen is that they had actually, they didn't look at the titles, they looked at, uh, like all texts and description description. Right. But even with Google, so the images will show up on Google as well. Right. So what, so I know for sure this works on Google. I'm not sure if this works on Amazon, but basically let's say that you're, you know, you talked about your, your plastic shoe stretcher.

[00:45:41] Um, you want the name of your image to be like, you know, searchable, text, you know, you know, best plastics use stretcher and. You know, for large shoes or something like that. And if you wanted to go a step further, you could modify the metadata by using something like Photoshop, or I'm sure there's online tools that do this as well.

[00:46:04] But you could have, like, in, in a lot of photos, there's metadata, meaning it's not actually in the, in the file name, but it's saved in the file and it'll have like location data, um, like sometimes even subject of the photo, it can get pretty deep and you can modify all the metadata. And that actually helps really a ton with SEO.

[00:46:27] Very good. Okay. Uh, we're getting close to the top of the hour. If anybody does have any questions. Oh, I see. There's one there. I missed. I see two, we missed that. There we go. Gosh, I got to far on these questions, please. Uh, come up, answer your, asking your questions, Muhammad. Welcome to the panel. Thank you very much for giving me space.

[00:46:52] I have a very quick two questions for one. Is that as a consideration. What's your recommendation. I, uh, this is my question from the panel. That was the recommendation as we are just going on standard pattern, just whenever you go for the Amazon title, page title for the, the, we just select the two most relevant keywords in the title.

[00:47:19] And as suppose saying of the Dan that we go for the pain point, we go for the emotion we go for the benefits rather than the features. Sure. How, uh, what's the best practice to, uh, to what's the sequence? How would we the best sequence to give on the, eh, uh, about the pictures? Uh, like first will be the hero image and second world.

[00:47:44] Uh, the diamond options or the, the comparison or how, how, what the best practice is they have seen till now. And second thing about that, how you, uh, how you, uh, sequence the bullet points. What should be the top one? The second one, the third one and fifth one. What are the buyers prospective? And if you see the Biogen buyer click, the main listing is it goes down directly towards the reviews or he is just going to images and then to the bullet points and then going to description, would you please, uh, uh, share your knowledge about that?

[00:48:28] That's a whole couple of hours session, but Diane, why don't you, uh, uh, just summarize it. Okay, that is, I'm not good at summarizing things. I apologize. Um, so in terms of what I'm going to say is that I have that I I've been asked that question so many times I created a training and the training turned out to be 12 hours long.

[00:48:48] So the training is free. It's on YouTube. I'll put the link up. You know, after this, cause there's a lot of really great questions, but there's no one standard answer. And the people who there are writers out there who say, well, I follow the specific process of like this bullet points about this and this bullet points about this and this bullet points about this, this bullet points about this and this image is about this.

[00:49:05] It really depends on who you're speaking to in the person you're selling. Um, the first bullet point should always be about summarizing and positioning and why your product is superior. The last bullet points is people read the first and the last ones is the last one should be a guarantee that knocks them off the fence, right?

[00:49:19] Um, that you're going to, if you don't solve their problem, you're going to make sure that you solve the problem you created, which is that they bought a product that didn't work for them. So I hope that that explains it. I, like I said, norm, I can get you the link. I can put it somewhere. I'll figure out the profile thing too, but it's, it's a very long explaining.

[00:49:37] Okay. Yeah. And I, I agree. So Muhammad, uh, yeah, just, we will get that link from, uh, Diane and, uh, you can check out that free YouTube, uh, lesson. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much at the last thing. Can I, can I ask w is the S the concept of hypnotic anchor, how it's differentiated from the, uh, the other things that, uh, in the, mostly we are seeing that go for the emotions hit for the, uh, benefit rather than the feature, how it's differentiated from other people, uh, concepts, can you please, a bit, a little bit.

[00:50:19] Well, you definitely want to tie emotion and, you know, your benefits and especially the transformation that the product provides into your hypnotic anchor, wherever possible, but to have not an anchor is more about positioning and anchoring, or I believe I can remember it was who said it, but keystoning, um, your product into, or sometimes your brand into the customer's brain.

[00:50:40] So when they go hunting for another product, because they haven't made the decision yet, because they're just not at the decision making phase, they can't find another product that has the exact same thing. And so it's about superior positioning. So you gain more sales. Um, it's not, it's not just the benefits and it's not just a feature thing.

[00:50:56] It's benefits and transformation as well. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward for the link of YouTube training also. Thank you very much so nice. If you everybody, Hey, Rosalyn. Welcome. Hi norm. Um, I just want to say before I asked my question that I just enjoy you're my lunch partner, these Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with your guests and Diane, I listened to the episode that you were on and I just could not take notes fast enough.

[00:51:33] And Rob, the same thing was true for you. And, um, I'm a big Joseph Campbell fan and I was a classics major as an undergraduate and I've read the hero's journey and all these things, and I'm, I'm just enjoying this so much. And when Jeffrey comes up with something where everybody, yes, we've been doing it for a long time, so we can do it quickly.

[00:51:57] I think. I don't think it's just because somebody has been doing something for a long time. It's just that you're you see it. You are, you have already a partial picture and that's, that's a perfect segue for myself for my question, because I'm, I'm a lawyer I have over 30 years of practicing law and telling stories and writing to be convincing, starting from an, a set of rules and an analytical model.

[00:52:36] And so my question for who ever will answer it. Yes. I understand that you have competitors listings that you want to stand out, so you would need to study them. You also have a market, so you're marketing and you want to write copy that will appeal to your market. Where do you start? How, how do you, how do you balance the two is, is one, do you start with one because it makes the process, um, flow better for you.

[00:53:12] And then the other question that I have, because I've been reading a lot of, a lot of, um, really interesting stuff on marketing and, and, and all of that is how much different is it selling a product on Amazon than if you were. In terms of copy, I'm talking about now, then if you were to do a radio ad or a TV ad, and, uh, w I'm reminded when I was in my twenties, I was watching a TV show with my husband and it was for a new laundry, um, soap.

[00:53:53] And I remember thinking, wow, that's designed to get the husband to ask the why funny have you tried that? And before I could say it to him, he turned to me and he said, Ross, if you ever tried that, I mean, it was that effective. It blew me away. So I'm guessing that all of you have the same standard. You just want it to be automatic.

[00:54:16] It's like anybody would, would do this. So how do you get there? I'm done.

[00:54:25] I'll, uh, I'll leave that up to Jeff Paul, Robert, Diane. I have a few things on, on the second part, as far as, and this is coming from a video perspective, not a, uh, I'm not real familiar as far as, you know, just the Amazon product copy, but as far as the video stuff, um, you know, and especially like compared to infomercials back in the day.

[00:54:50] Um, so, so Amazon is very, very, uh, from a video perspective, anti direct response. So, you know, no claims, no hype, you know, no, you know, really kind of just hyper, you know, emotional type things. Um, you know, they're, they're, they're very much against that. So, you know, w with Amazon, um, you know, from, you know, from a visual perspective and a lot, and honestly our best converting videos are ones.

[00:55:21] Actually don't even have, um, a lot of talking in it, but actually just really kind of put the product in the user's minds eye and they imagine using the product. And then, you know, we kind of support it with benefit point texts and things like that. So, and, and those work out really well, because then again, now you're creating a story that, you know, the users, you know, creating in their own head about, you know, why this product, you know, why they need this product or what it's going to solve.

[00:55:48] Um, you know, the others, you know, the other stuff, you know, kind of the back of the day infomercial stuff. I mean, those, you know, I would say would be the almost complete inverse of an Amazon, uh, video where, you know, it's just, uh, you know, it's, it's just a guy with a spear. This is stabbing you with all these emotional cues, you know, just like every three seconds.

[00:56:08] It's like, ah, you know, you know, why you got to buy this and why it's the greatest thing on earth and you know, all, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, um, you know, you know, the infomercial ones are really trying to really kind of. Build this huge emotional reaction and a sense of need, you know, super fast because you know, they're on a limited time, but, you know, they just wrap it up and they just, you know, it's almost like you just get blasted with a shotgun of emotion where, you know, Amazon would be the inverse where you it's much more subtle, um, uh, a subtle type of video to make.

[00:56:48] That's it for me. All right. Thanks Rob. Did that help Roslyn? Well, yeah, it did. I mean, I, I understand that I. I want my listing to tell a story. So maybe Diane, you could, you could tell me how you start. Do you start with the competitors and how to distinguish yourself from their listings? Do you go to the, to the marketing and where, where do you start?

[00:57:22] I start with their hearts actually. So, and that probably sounds really woo, but I know appealing to me because I can relate to doing it. Yeah. Yeah. So I, so what I do is I like to go to the different forums and the different Facebook groups where I'm see, um, that they're actually openly talking about their problems.

[00:57:43] Right. And some people might call it complaining about other people, maybe. Ching out, right? You want to look at where people are reaching out and actually discussing the problems and start with a listing of a list of words and phrases. I don't know if you guys can hear me. I'm like I live in the middle of the woods in Washington, so you can still hear me at this.

[00:58:00] I have a funny connection. Um, so I like to go and look and kind of dig into their minds and hearts first and see what their, what they, how they're framing their problem. Before I even look at the competitors, because if I'm just trying to position against the competitors and the competitors, aren't speaking to their hearts and minds, I'm just going to get it wrong.

[00:58:16] Right? So start with forums and Facebook groups where it's solving the problem, everything from, you know, I have, you know, like my ankle is injured and I need an ankle brace because I'm a runner and this keeps happening too. I feel embarrassed when people come over to my house, what kind of wine rack should I get?

[00:58:32] Right. Um, start looking at that and then go to Facebook. Um, audience insights. And you can see that they're kind of expand upon those groups and see what else they're interested in and start kind of looking at those groups and get to know the person, right. Get to know the person you're selling to get to know the person you're solving the problem for.

[00:58:48] And until, you know, how you need to speak to their heart, don't go and look at your competitors because your competitors, um, you know, that's kind of, that's kind of a checklist when you go to your competitors, you say, okay, is there anything they're mentioning that we have, that we should look at mentioning, right.

[00:59:02] Just in case the client didn't mention it, um, in the copywriting brief, and then also looking at the reviews of their products, the competitors, product reviews, um, and looking for. You know, use it looking for hot words that you see their customers repeating over and over and over again. Right. And Amazon's now made that pretty easy because if you look at the top of their reviews, it'll say something like, um, you know, like for, let's say it's hair dye, right?

[00:59:26] It'll say something like staying hands, right. And then you can click on that and you'll go through all the reviews for stain hands and say, okay, this is a problem. I have to see if we can overcome and our listing, or, you know, if it's like a pet CBD, I mean, you know, not CBD, but it really is CBD. Amazon.

[00:59:40] Doesn't let you sell it product. Um, you know, if it talks about calming, if it talks about chewing, if it talks about biting, if it talks about nine, you can get a lot of insights from their customers, but always start from the point of the problem and solving their problem instead of just trying to compete and then you can compete even better.

[00:59:55] So you start with the customer first and you try to tell a story that your customer will want to hear. If it's truthful about the product yet,

[01:00:10] we don't want to tell a story that the customer wants to hear and then have a bunch of battery. I wasn't thinking of committing fraud here. I'm not a legal expert. This is not legal advice. I can, I'm not your attorney. You were in a courtesy to this. Yeah. I mean, you can definitely tell their story. And a lot of it's about where they're at right now and their mental state and where they want to move to.

[01:00:31] So you want to focus on, you know, what's you kind of story on paper of that transformation, right? And then the trick is getting it down into bullet point format and making it, putting it down in a way that's organized for the human mind. So they can actually absorb it. Instead of, you know, you can write a 500 character bullet point.

[01:00:49] I wouldn't advise it, but you can write one that someone can absorb. Um, but you see a lot of these bullet points out there that are keyword stuffed and people don't even want to read them. Right. I mean, you're not gonna be able to tell somebody, right? So the more you can reach into your heart and think, or reach into their heart and have them thinking, this person really understands me.

[01:01:06] They understand what I'm going through. They've done the research. They've looked into solving the problem and they know how to solve it, and I can trust them and they've overcome my incapabilities right. Um, the better you're going to do in terms of conversions. Okay. Last question. That's that's just sounds brilliant.

[01:01:23] How much, how much Roslyn, um, Paul, I've got to head over. I tried, uh, pinging you, uh, you didn't see the message. Are you able to continue the room? I've got a I'm on a plane. Uh, yeah, I can, I, I've got to hop off at about 1230 though, cause I have a call, so perfect. We've got one question left. I've turned off that the hands, uh, or the questions, but, uh, I see Chad's there Roslyn, we're going to continue to answer your question and just, uh, because I'm not going to be able to, uh, talk a bit later.

[01:01:59] You guys are probably happy about that, but next week I have got some really incredible people that are going to be coming on. Um, the first person, Andrea lake, I don't know if you know her check her out. Uh, she, her partners have done over a billion dollars worth of sales in the apparel industry. And I've also got a couple of other treats that are going to be coming on and we're going to just be talking about entrepreneurship and uh, so anyways, selling on e-com and oh, by the way, All of these sales are going through, um, either a Shopify store Amazon.

[01:02:39] So it will be a really interesting, um, uh, really interesting room. Anyways. I gotta run. Thank you so much, Paul. Thank you for carrying on the room. Absolutely. So, um, Roslyn, I feel like we hadn't fully answered your question, but, um, so I want to kick it back over to you just to hear if there was any, thank you.

[01:03:00] Yes, just real quick. I just want to know, um, from, um, anyone, Diane, um, Rob, do you ever in your copy include, um, quotes from previous customers if they've left reviews? Um, we also for our videos and it's funny, like almost nobody does it, but, um, And I'm not sure like how much you can do that in Amazon, because, because of their tos stuff, but, but other videos, like say if you don't, if you're on a Shopify site or are actually even running ad, but you know, tacking on real testimonials from real clients, um, are huge, like, like huge, as far as your conversion.

[01:03:46] And sometimes you can just string out that ad or that video, you know, with just, you know, because if somebody get a watch, you know, watch your stuff, there's interested in your, you know, your product long enough to go all the way through the end of the video. And they still want to stay more than then.

[01:04:00] All you're doing is you're just solidifying that. And then we also, actually, we, we create a kind of video that it's pretty much all testimonials. So it's, you know, we're giving the products to real people, um, and they're trying it out and they're asking real questions. And then, and then those things convert like, like gangbusters.

[01:04:17] So from a video standpoint, I would say, yeah, um, you know, and Diane can, can speak more to as far as, you know, writing copy, um, you know, on some of the other platforms and other.

[01:04:29] I mean, I know from an advertising perspective on Facebook, the, some of our best converting ads have direct, um, you know, reviews on the creative and like whether it's video or still, if it's just an image. Um, so yeah, that's, I mean, if you can do it, I don't, there's no, there's no rules against it on Amazon when it comes to your, your, your second, any, anything other than the main image, the main image, there's pretty strict guidelines as to what you can have in it and how it needs to look.

[01:04:59] But after that, I mean, going back to what Diane was saying with, I'm gonna love that bullet, you know, you, you have here's the primary feature, have a line going people's eyes follow the line. I mean, You know, I would test putting in a testimonial because that's really what people are looking for is they're looking to have a problem solved and they want to make sure that it will actually solve their problem.

[01:05:20] And so when they have somebody who looks and sounds similar to them, that has said raising their hand, this has solved my problem. And that problem happens to be the customer's problem. That's reading it. Then the chances are that your, your conversion rates are going to go with are going to go up. Yeah, I think, um, also, uh, it depends on a testimonial because we've had one or two clients where, where, uh, their videos got bounced, just because, you know, it was real people and it's real testimonial, but, you know, it's like, ah, this is the best thing since shaved ice or that kind of thing.

[01:05:55] Amazon, you know, they're, they're so hyper vigilant as far as not having that kind of direct response, feeler that, that real hype-y thing. Um, but I'd say for the most part, yeah. You know, it's, it, it is, it's really good. And yeah. You know, and testimonials kind of, you know, going back to kind of the caveman thing is, you know, where we all just sat around and you know, that that's how we got her information on what was good and say, you know, was like, Hey, this, this club, you know, kill saber tooth tiger is way better than that club, you know, kind of thing.

[01:06:27] And so, you know, just getting a referral from somebody who's actually using this stuff is, is huge on the, on that point, Rob, that you made about like the, the hypey stuff, there are certain things that you're not allowed to say about your products ever, such as like the best, the, um, there's a, there's a whole list.

[01:06:43] So you just need to make sure that if you're putting a testimonial into your copy, um, you know, people, people can leave reviews and they can say whatever they want in the room. And so they can say in the review, this is the best, you know, shoe stretcher ever. Uh, but then once you say that about your own product, and then you put it in your image, that's when you're going to get in trouble.

[01:07:05] So, um, make sure that you look up the tos on, um, what you like, what you can what's allowed and what's not allowed, but that's, I think that's a great question. I don't know, Diane, if you had anything else to add when it comes to copy and photos and whatnot, but, um, if that was. I do, but I was having a hard time.

[01:07:26] Unclicking my microphone for some reason on my phone. So, sorry. Um, first of all, well, I love your idea of using the lines in the image and then backing with testimonials, as long as they're short, specific kind of spicy, not super spicy on Amazon, but kind of spicy. And then of course believable. Right? Um, you need to make sure that it's, you know, obviously not someone saying it's about.

[01:07:46] That one of the places that we know we cannot use testimonials is in the A-plus and ABC content. Most of the time we've had listings originally you could, but we've had some listings flagged because of that. Um, so my general, when we've tested, right, we split tested images with copy on them, the place to position the testimonials, again, short, spicy, a little bit, or a little bit spicy, specific, and definitely believable is in your second image and your seventh image where you use it.

[01:08:13] A lot of times we'll add a guarantee seal on that, right? So you can split test that and just make sure that it's, you know, th that the language that you choose, the testimonial you choose to speaking a language of your target customer and not just something that's hype-y okay. Oh, thank you all so very much.

[01:08:31] This is just, this is wonderful. Thank you.

[01:08:38] Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming up and asking that awesome question. And so, Chad, good to see you, man. Um,

[01:08:48] That was, oh man. Are you, are you, are you a Vegas fan or you're an absent? Well, I'm a hockey fan. I love ice hockey. I played it all. I played all my life and I just think it's, oh man, it's the greatest, whatever I've spent way too many hours trying to convince basketball fans that that's stupid and hockey is amazing, but it hasn't worked out so far.

[01:09:09] Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. I don't know. I mean, there might not be help for him, but yeah, it was devastating. I want to honor. I want to honor the stage and everything, but let's let's uh, what question do you have for copywriting, man? I just wanted to add something. I know, um, like Roslyn when she said starting, I might be taking this too literally, but, um, I was, uh, I wrote television sitcoms in a previous life and, uh, while I consider myself sort of a sane person.

[01:09:39] Punched, uh, more than one monitor because the cursor was blinking at me and it was just, I was staring at it and it wouldn't stop blinking and there was nothing else on the page. And just starting to write anything is it's all about starting and rewriting and no one ever writes the perfect sentence the very first time, like every, I would say 90% of the, of the things I've written start with.

[01:10:07] I hate this exercise. This is so stupid. It never works. And then I wonder what my main character would say about having to do this exercise. And then I look up and there's three hours of past, you know, of, of just writing. And so literally just starting to write is how you write. And then you rewrite it and you rewrite it again and you re-read it again.

[01:10:33] And you rewrite it again. Um, rewriting is much easier than writing is what I say. Um, so I, as just some advice, if you guys, you know, if anyone is thinking, oh my God, I can't write. I'm a, I'm a terrible writer. I guarantee you I'm a terrible writer, but I can rewrite. And that to me is, is for people who are just totally freaked out and overwhelmed by having to write anything, just start like stream of conscious, write down exactly what you're thinking.

[01:11:07] And eventually it will just flow into what your task is. And you'll be amazed at how much you can actually. I love that. I mean, that, that advice is good for business in general, because if you wait for everything to be perfect before you get started, you're never going to get started. Yeah. I mean, I've had entire I've ha I've written entire scenes in my head that stink.

[01:11:30] Like, I'm like, this is terrible. It's awful Bubba. And if I had just written it down, I could have made it better. But in your head, you're just like, no, I don't want to put that down. That's stupid. Like, it's your own computer or your own notepad? Like, no, no. One's looking over your shoulder saying yes, that is, that's a terrible idea.

[01:11:46] You should not ever put that down so that anyone can ever see it. You know, you're by yourself. You're just writing nothing. There's no bad. And so I would, again, just urge everyone. You can do it. Um, you know, no offense to people who want to buy professional copywriters, they want to sell copywriting. Um, they obviously have way more experience and, and it'll take them far less time, but, um, just starting, just start that's it.

[01:12:15] I, I've got a few hats too, if, if anybody's interested in it. Okay. Yeah. So, so I, I totally agree with like the, just starting part. Like, I, I would say probably the biggest, like my biggest learning lesson, and I would say most folks kind of, kind of think that too is like, there has to be like some kind of zone that you're in when you write, you know, and you're always waiting for the zone to happen, and then you just gotta sit there and, and, and it, it usually just doesn't happen.

[01:12:44] It never occurs. And so, so w one thing I do, um, that it'll sound kind of weird, but, um, Actually boredom is your, is your best friend. And especially now, because if you think about it, like, like almost everybody, they live their lives, you know, and they're just like tethered to this social media crack, you know?

[01:13:05] And they're just like, all they're doing all day long is this input, input, input. Like everything is just coming into your brain and you're just getting fed all of this media. And, and so our brains are, you know, and more so recently, you know, are, are just wired just to, to, to take in all this little micro content and stuff.

[01:13:26] And so you're not, you know, you're not necessarily really thinking about stuff that much. And so like sometimes all I'll actually go and I'll sit in a, in a room like that has absolutely nothing in it. And, and for like 30 minutes or an hour, and I'll just stare at a wall and it's funny, cause like you'll, you'll get really super antsy and then, um, You know, like your brain just starts freaking out because it's like, where's the input, where's the input.

[01:13:54] And then, um, there's like a little switch that'll happen. And all of a sudden your brain is like, well, there's no input coming in. So maybe I'll do some output. And then all of a sudden, like you just get all these ideas and like literally a flood of ideas. And so, so kind of, you know, it, you know, how to, you know, if you feel like you have to be in a zone or, you know, you're, you're just kind of creatively stuck, you know, that, that's probably one of my, one of my best tricks.

[01:14:21] And then, um, just like Chad was talking about, you know, usually what I'll do is I start out is, is all just all bullet point out first, just the structure of whatever script I'm writing and just like the main points. And they're just bullet points that are related to, to that. And then I'll just start around those bullet points.

[01:14:39] I'll just kind of expound on it until. Yeah, there's a script and I'll just read the script and I'm like, oh my God, this, this sucks. And like, I don't really care about grammar or quality or anything. I'm just putting ideas down, you know, th that are really related to those bullet points. And then, you know, and then I'm just like, oh, I hate it.

[01:14:55] You know? And then, and then my brain just kicks it on. Like, how can I, you know, how can I make this better? And then I just, I just keep refining down. And pretty soon, like, you know, Chad mentioned like three hours is like five minutes. And so those were kind of a few things for me, as far as this gaining momentum and actually getting the copy down.

[01:15:13] And you know, that whole thing about being in the zone is, you know, is a bit of a fallacy. Um, I mean, there, there are flow states and things like that, and that's a whole different rabbit hole to go down and, and, you know, something that I studied quite a bit, but you know, really just the act of just writing is, is usually.

[01:15:36] Enough to really get, you know, get things going. And so, so I, I totally agree with Chad so well, thanks. Um, um, we're a little bit over the hour now, so we're actually going to end the recorded part of the show, but if you guys want to keep, um, chatting afterwards, that's fine, but I want to just remind everyone, this is e-com weekly.

[01:15:55] Um, and norm hosts his show every Thursday afternoon at 1:00 PM Eastern time to 2:00 PM Eastern time. And, um, if you go to startup.club, you can sign up for our mailing list and stay informed about this. And other recurring shows on startup.club, uh, on startup club here in clubhouse. And of course this show is being recorded.

[01:16:16] So the recordings will be available afterwards. And I want to thank everyone for coming and joining today. And, uh, that's going to end the recorded portion of the show, but thanks for everyone for all the great comments and feedback. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks Jeff.