I bought 2M clicks in April 2024 & write ads. See ad tactics & learnings from my a/b tests and other copywriters (Caples, Ogilvy, Hopkins, plus more)
Charlotte, NC
Joined January 2009
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Clever ad pointed out by @nevmed
The specificity and credibility of 526 sales is great. Of course, acknowledging the pain of blindly relying on a family member makes you rethink a costly mistake.
One thing is that I'd replace "List Responsibly" with the domain name or phone #
A good way to blend the benefits you'll hear with the credibility of a guest
I saw this random cool piece of advice on Reddit on how to give a solid podcast introduction, and it ended up being a cool piece of overall copywriting advice:
It reads:
'Podcasters need to start introducing their guests the same way they’d introduce a friend at a cocktail party.
If you can do that, your podcast instantly becomes more engaging.
I work primarily with business-to-business podcasts, but this applies to any genre. Unless you’re welcoming the President of the United States or Taylor Swift to your show, there’s no reason to lead with a guest’s credentials or even their name.
At a party, you don’t walk up to your friends and say, “Hey everyone, this is Jerry. He went to Syracuse, grew up down the street from my grandmother, almost became a priest, acted in 26 college plays, won 11 industry awards, and has written two books.”
No.
You say, “You know how we were just talking about the landscaping at Augusta National? Jerry is actually the guy who formulates the fertilizer they use. He spends 11 months a year working on it. It’s this insanely specific science.”
And boom! Now I want to hear from Jerry.
Your podcast audience is no different.
Start with the value. Tell us why this person matters in the context of the conversation you’re about to have.
Unless your guest is instantly recognizable to the majority of your audience, most people don’t care who they are. They care what they’re going to learn.
If the first minute of your show is just small talk and a laundry list of credentials, you’re doing your listeners a disservice. You need to sell the value this guest brings. You need to clearly explain why this conversation is worth their time.
You can always sprinkle in personal stories, achievements, or funny trivia later in the episode, after your guest has delivered some real value and earned the listener’s attention.
Introduce your guest like you’re bringing someone fascinating into a conversation your audience already cares about."
I ran into these old, handwritten notes from a seminar on unique selling/value propositions:
USP for Landing Page Optimization
1) The force of a value proposition can be measured by three essential elements of the offer:
Appeal - How much is this offer desired?…
It's the 4Ps. Price, product, place, promotion. You've gotta do one of those way better than your competition
When orchestrating an advertising campaign, it's always about the angle (which is basically the headline + introduction). When you find good angles, match the offer to it. You know it's a good angle when it brings in a high ad CTR and a low bounce rate.
A/B testing matters. I have one surprising study I'll show that boosted mobile conversions by 23.6%. In an advertorial, we flipped from Georgia font to Arial. This improvement was 99.5% statistically significant.
Also, be punchier on mobile. The beginning of my copy introduced a startup. This worked well on desktop, but what worked better on mobile was stating the results of two surprising studies. These results directly benefited the readers that acted.
The second fundamental step to boost a headline in a saturated market is to “enlarge the claim.”
Here’s an example with results. A friend of @DraytonBird ran an ad for night-driving glasses. His original headline was 'End blinding headlight glare'. Later, he added one word: 'Instantly'. Results jumped 20%.
After another year or two, he added two more words, to make his headline: 'End blinding headlight glare instantly - for good'. Once again, results went up about 20%. This example is from his book, Commonsense Direct Marketing.
Putting a spin on this famous headline from John Caples to create a viral video:
They All Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano … But When I Started To Play!
facebook.com/reel/1997299507…
A week ago, I heard some helpful public speaking tips from Charlotte-based professional speaker, Steven M Stasczak:
90% of the fear you feel while speaking is in your head — no one sees most of your nervousness.
The big speaking fear is that most people don’t know what to say.
Your speech title should communicate that it solves a problem.
Your hands - don’t clasp them or keep them straight down while speaking.
Hippocrates said there are 4 types of personalities: amiable, analytical, drivers, expressives. Know your audience and speak to them.
Body language and vocal variety is 92% of your presentation.
The advertising legend, David Ogilvy, had an unusual way of showing off this leadership principle: be humble and get help from giants.
Here's a quick background: In 1962, Ogilvy had 19 clients. In 20 years, his agency grew to 3000 clients with 267 offices.
At a meeting with the executives of his company, Ogilvy handed out Russian dolls. As they opened the dolls, they found a message. “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.” He continued this practice, sending Russian dolls to people who had been made heads of departments.
That is a humorous way to be promoted but a visual lesson on considering who to get help from.
I a/b tested whether or not we should add on a third party Javascript to the site. This extra JS lowered the CR by 1.9%
This free tool is great to help examine loading time. gtmetrix.com/ Here are the loading time difference that confirmed this issue. Having a .7 second fast landing page helps a lot to boost conversions
Insane that page speed makes SUCH a difference still.
At @AppSumo recently upgraded our homepage (via Next framework):
7.91% Conversion rate increase
When I write ads, I used a thesaurus, but it lacks context and often gives irrelevant synonyms back. Chat GPT-4 understands context. Here's an example (prompt template below):
Give me synonyms of "Unique" that fit this context: 38 Unique Pool Toys That Keep Kids Entertained For Hours
I got back some much better words, like: Uncommon, Innovative, One-of-a-kind, Creative.
To use this yourself, change "Unique" to the word you want replaced in the ad -> Give me synonyms of "word" that fit this context: ad with word
How to create a high converting ecommerce landing page. A really packed video showing you the steps, the layout, copy, etc.
A viral TikTok propels a barely selling novel into a best seller. This example matters because viral content rarely translates into sales. Here’s what we can learn about this one (links in the thread):
1- The video’s intro is: “This new author seemed super defeated when I first walked past him. So before I left the store, I decided to go back.” A good intro teases something and in this case a story. It forces you to listen to more to find out the answer to why he’s “defeated.“
2- The author introduces the story: “A teenage girls teams up with a ghost of multiple personalities to solve the mystery of her parents’ murder.” He teases a weird mystery. This is the unique selling proposition.
3- He implies what you should do next: “It’s on Amazon.com @amazon, BarnesAndNoble.com @BNBuzz …” This is where to buy it, the call to action.
4- TikTok user (internetfamouselol) incentivizes commenting/tagging with a giveaway.
Article: wcnc.com/article/news/local/…
TikTok: tiktok.com/@internetfamouslo…