Polishing Your Salescopy for Max Sales – SCCMH [Podcast 19]

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The Transcript…

Jim Edwards: Hey guys, Jim Edwards here and welcome back to the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Podcast with Jim Edwards and…

Stew Smith: Stew Smith.

Jim Edwards: And today we’re going to talk about polishing your sales copy for maximum sales as opposed to polishing something else that you could polish.

Stew Smith: Your car! With a car buffer that I use for a massage tool.

Jim Edwards: That is true.

Stew Smith: People get things confused all the time.

Jim Edwards: How to take home appliances off as medical devices on your taxes.

So yeah, today we’re going to talk about polishing your copy.

Do you know anything about polishing copy, Stew?

Stew Smith: You know what, I was going to ask you this question actually. Good segue!

No, what is polishing your copy?

Like I have sales copy that I need to rework.

I know that it needs, it could be a little better.

It could be a little fine-tuned, and I’m assuming that’s the route we’re going. So am anxious to hear this.

Jim Edwards: Okay. Well basically in my mind, polishing your sales copy…

When you write sales copy, I envision it like heaping everything up almost like clay, and you kind of assemble it into what you want,

But then all the parts are there.

But there are certain things you need to do to the parts to make sure they all fit seamlessly…

And that they work and that you’re creating a finished product.

So it’s kind of like maybe…

You took shop in high school, I’m sure.

I did too.

And you know, your woodworking project was 90% done when you got it off of the band saw and had it over at the belt sander and all that other stuff.

But the last 10% was using fine sandpaper and staining the thing.

So this in my mind is kind of the same thing you’ve done when you’ve:

Created your sales letter…

We created your video sales letter…

You’ve created your opt-in page…

You’ve got your hook-story-offer…

You’ve done all these things.

Depending on the size of your copywriting project…

Whether it’s a little email teaser…

Or whether it’s a giant 20-page long sales letter…

That’s going to dictate the degree to which you’re going to need to polish.

But there are certain things that you should do when you are polishing.

And a lot of these are second nature to me, but when things become second nature, you know it’s easy for them to get skipped…

And it’s easy to take shortcuts.

And that’s why we always operate from a checklist.

That’s why we don’t just say,

“Hey, I’m going to go work out today.”

It’s:

“Hey, here’s my workout today.”

And I’ve got the whole checklist because it’s easy to forget stuff.

So, I have a checklist that I operate from that I endeavor…

I’m not always successful because I’m not perfect…

But I always endeavor to go through this checklist…

Or at least parts of the checklist…

Depending on what is the thing that I’m creating.

So, if you’d like, I can take us through some of these checklist items for polishing our copy.

Stew Smith: Yes. And you should be taking notes people!

I’m taking notes.

Jim Edwards: There you go. Stew always takes notes.

So, the first thing is actually to not necessarily look at your copy, but actually to get your frame of mind right before you look at the copy.

Because you want to look at the copy from the standpoint of the person on the receiving end, not you as the person who’s presenting it.

So you want to, if you can at least get the person in mind that you’re aiming it towards.

And there are three questions I always come back to all the time and it’s:

“What problem do you solve?”

“Who you solve it for?”

And

“How do you solve it?”

Those are always thinking, cause at least gets me in tune with, okay?

In this particular thing, I’m aiming towards authors, we’re talking about getting your book done quickly.

And the problem that I solve is that you don’t have to write for weeks and months in order to create a book to build your business.

So again, I’m just getting me back into:

“Okay. What is my purpose here? Who’s my target audience? And how does my message match up with that?”

Because when it’s all about us, and we’re thinking:

“You need to come buy my stuff!”

“You need to come sign up for my shit.”

“You need to come register for my Webinar!”

That comes through in our copy as opposed to having copy that is going to resonate with people.

So, you just want to get them back top of mind.

That’s the first thing.

And please feel free to stop me and ask questions whenever you like.

Stew Smith: Yeah, yeah, you’re good.

Jim Edwards: So, the next thing I look at on any page…

Or if it’s an email, I look at this as well…

But on a page, any page, I look at the headline…

And if it’s an email, I’ll look at the subject line.

If it’s an email, the purpose of the subject line is to pre-frame people and to have them open your email.

With a headline, the purpose of your headline is to pre-frame people and get them to stop and start reading the rest of your sales letter…

Or absorbing your video sales letter…

And/or both.

So, the big thing is,

“Is it benefit driven?”

“Is it pay off driven?”

“Is it curiosity building?”

“Does it hook the intended audience?”

Now, it doesn’t necessarily have to be benefit-driven if it’s cold traffic.

It made to be problem driven but meaning cold traffic people are… we’ve talked about this before so I’m not going to belabor it…

But cold traffic people only know they have a problem, they don’t know there’s a solution out there.

So, if I’m driving to cold traffic, it might be…

“Sick and tired of not making any book sales?”

Or

“Does it really have to take six months to write a book?”

Or

“Do you need a real publisher?”

“Do you need to get a real publishing deal in order to be considered a real author?”

I mean those are examples in my mind of cold headlines.

Stew Smith: Yeah.

Jim Edwards: So the thing is, the first thing I look at though is,

“Does it hook them?”

“Does it create curiosity?”

And is it going to resonate with your target audience?

And can you actually read it quickly and does it make sense without a whole lot of thinking?

Because the thing with sales copy, but especially with your headlines, and your hooks, and the beginning words that come out of your mouth in a video…

They’ve gotta be simple.

They’ve gotta be emotional.

They’ve got to be targeted.

They’ve got get in sync with people because they’re not paying attention to you.

That’s the other thing…

People don’t read.

People don’t listen.

People react.

They don’t read, they react.

People don’t listen.

They react.

You gotta give them something that they can react to in a way that’s going to make them feel like there’s something here for them.

So that really has to take place in your headlines.

So we talked in the past about headlines, and benefit-driven headlines, and desire-driven, problem-driven, all those things.

You’ve got to have that emotional hot button in there.

Stew Smith: Well, let’s think about all the different headlines and titles real quickly just to say, and let’s pick one to maybe change, right?

Jim Edwards: What do you mean?

Stew Smith: It’s just… let’s make a challenge for our listeners today to change a title or headline.

Jim Edwards: Oh, Okay.

Stew Smith: Because obviously when you fix sales copy, you’re number one go-to is let’s fix the title.

Jim Edwards: Oh, let’s fix the headline.

Stew Smith: Yeah, let’s fix the title or the headline. Then let’s go into polishing the rest of your sales copy.

Jim Edwards:

Stew Smith: So, maybe create a five-step system of check the title.

Jim Edwards: Sure.

Stew Smith: Check the first paragraph…

Jim Edwards: Check the email subject line yet.

Stew Smith: Yeah, there you go.

Jim Edwards: Yeah.

Stew Smith: And they would do that and then maybe say, you know, let’s do this for an article.

Let’s do it for a product or a service you provide in your store.

You know the actual front page of your store, even.

What’s that headline there?

Let’s look and, and maybe challenge each other to finetune it a little bit better.

Jim Edwards: Absolutely. That’s a great thought. And the biggest thing is if… let’s say you’re coming out with your first or your next sales letter or your funnel…

It’s just being conscious of what the thing says.

And if you can, hopefully you’re using a tool that will allow you to do this.

You should really be split testing right from the beginning.

So, pick two that look good and test them side by side to see which one wins.

Jim Edwards: So don’t just arbitrarily change, especially if you’ve got something that’s working.

You want to test. So you know, if it’s to be the one thing over the other, and we’ve talked about testing in the past as well.

The other thing that you need to look at is what we call above the fold, and above the fold is real simple.

But I’ll draw you a picture here in my little redneck iPad.

Above the fold is whatever they see on their computer monitor without scrolling.

And what you have to understand is that there are all kinds of different monitor resolutions that people have.

And so if you’ve got one of those giant Macs that you have set to a resolution of 9,682 by 15,783

As opposed to me, I’m still like 1200 by 780, because I got old eyes…

What they see is going to be very different than what you see.

And so you need to preview your website, your funnel on many different browser settings.

You need to look at it in many different browsers…

Not just the browser and the monitor settings, but you also need to look at it on mobile devices.

You need to look at it on a phone.

You need to look at it on an iPad.

You need to look at it on an android…

To make sure that you see what people are actually seeing.

Because a lot of times I’ve seen people lose out simply because of formatting because the visitors don’t see enough stuff above the fold to catch their interest and their like,

“Nah, screw it. I’m out of here.”

So at a minimum, if you have a video sales letter, you need to have your headline, and your video sales letter above the fold so that people can see,

“Okay there’s a headline here, this interests me, and there’s a video, let me push play.”

If it’s not automatically playing, cause it won’t automatically play on a mobile device.

You can make it autoplay on your desktop, though you can’t autoplay with sound on anymore.

And that’s why we load in all the closed captions and stuff.

Stew Smith: Yep. Okay. And that’s really important. Also, if you’re going to produce a youtube video…

you’re going to make a Twitter post…

Something like that because you have to be really concise with what you’re going to do on those first really two sentences under the title.

You’ve got to have a catchy title.

But then you know, you’re going to want people to be able to see your link in that first part of the fold.

Like if you take a look at some of our videos that are on Youtube, there are a couple that don’t have them in there, but we will fix that.

Actually, I’m gonna fix that today…

But most of them will see the JimEdwardsMethod.com in that, first part of the fold.

In fact, I can show it to you if you’d like.

Jim Edwards: Sure.

Stew Smith: You want me to share?

Jim Edwards: Yeah. Share real quick here.

Stew Smith: So let’s go, look at that already there. So there we are. That’s adding sales copy to content.

And you can see how in the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Youtube Page where we have multiple sets of podcasts.

This is podcast number 16, and we always link in Jim EdwardsMethod.com in that very top line.

Because that’s what you have for people to see.

They’re going to see the video…

They’re going to see the top little, what’s that?

Two and a half lines…

Three lines.

But I mean you could obviously hit the “Show More” and see more about it and get more

Jim Edwards: But most people don’t.

Stew Smith: Most people don’t. Exactly. They need to see that first part.

Jim Edwards: So thinking in those terms of really any…

That’s a great point to bring up about the fact that we become conscious of these principles of “above the fold.”

When they’re looking at my sales letter,

“What are they seeing?”

When they’re looking at my email?

“What are they seeing?”

When they’re looking at a Twitter tweet?

Whatever it is.. or Instagram posts,

“What are they seeing?”

The most important stuff is the stuff they see without doing anything other than arriving at wherever they are.

Be conscious of that and don’t say little punk things like,

“Well, they just have to scroll.”

Stew Smith: Hahaha! Unfortunately. How do you scroll?

Yeah, I got to say something until you see something that you like,

“Oh, that’s cool. What’s this?”

Jim Edwards: Yeah, you react to it. It fires off a little dopamine hit.

So, there are some other things that I look at. I’m just going to group these together.

But grammar and spell check.

I’m guilty of this sometimes, especially when I’m in a hurry.

Stew Smith: Yeah.

Jim Edwards: And so it helps to have a second pair of eyes, but there’s no excuse for grammar, bad grammar or misspellings.

People will judge you and you’ll say,

“Well, they should just pay attention to my content.”

Yep.

They should.

In a perfect world, they would.

This isn’t a perfect world.

So you got to remove excuses…

They’re looking for an excuse to ignore you, disbelieve you, and move on to something or someone else.

So, start removing those excuses.

The other thing is colors and fonts, and font sizes.

It’s got to look right.

It needs to be well proportioned.

That’s why I don’t do my own design.

I either use a template that I know the design works, and I just stick with that.

Or I hire somebody to do the design.

I’m not a professional designer.

And there are certain rules of good design that just work.

And you see those…you’ve seen websites, you’ve seen funnels that are so ugly that it makes you, if it was a baby, you’d want to slap it’s Mama.

I mean it’s that bad.

So you need to be conscious of that.

And if you don’t have an eye for design, then like I said,

Use templates that work or hire somebody to fix your design for you and make it look good.

And if in doubt…

Keep it simple.

That’s the other thing.

It’s when people get drunk with fonts that,

“Oh man, I could use this font and this color and then I look really good.”

Yeah. Maybe if you’re on LSD, but… there you go.

So, we talked about that…

The other big thing that I see is most, and we’ve talked about this previously, I just want to bring this up…

But any kind of bullets that you have, most people, and we talk about “One Inch Chuck.”

The bullets need to be benefit and meaning driven.

Most people’s bullets are feature driven.

So, if you’re looking at your own feature, I mean if you’re looking at your own bullets, ask yourself this one question about your bullets.

“Is this a feature, or is there a benefit and meaning in this as well?”

It doesn’t matter what it is.

Whether you’ve got one bullet or 10 bullets…

You need to ask that question about all the bullets, and I can guarantee you…

You’re going to see some that don’t meet that formula.

Stew Smith: yeah.

Jim Edwards: The other thing is make it really clear.

Have an offer stack. Have some sort of offer summary.

If you’re offering something, let people know at the point of purchase exactly what they’re going to get in a bulleted form and preferably with some sort of a value stack so that they can see,

“Hey, this is worth something.”

You’re going to get my tactical strength book, which is worth $19.95.

You’re going to get tactical fitness for worth $19.95

You’re going to get the original navy seal book that sold for 20 years for $19.95.

You’re going to get a tee shirt that’s worth $29.95

You’re going to get a hat that’s worth $19.95

So that’s a total value of $119.93 cents.

Today, all this is $74.95 it’s like,

“Oh, okay. That’s a good deal. This and this is everything I should expect to get in the box a or online or delivered as an ebook.”

When all the bullshit is said and done.

Stew Smith: Here’s the offer.

Jim Edwards: When you’re asking for the money, here’s what you’re going to get.

And you do that for a couple of different reasons.

1. Because people aren’t going to scroll back up and say,

“Now, what am I getting again?”

2. It cuts down on bs were the ones who do buy but aren’t sure start asking you,

“Hey, now what do I get?”

“What do I get? I thought I got this.”

“I thought I was getting that. Why isn’t this?”

“I’ve been waiting for a book in the mail for the last two weeks. Where’s my book?”

And you’re like,

“You bought an ebook there, scooter.”

So, that’s why you need to just tell them exactly what they’re going to get…

Exactly what it’s worth…

Exactly what they’re going to pay…

And “Click Here” to buy now.

That’s key.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on people’s webpages, and their sales letters and you look at it and think to yourself,

“What?”

“What are you actually selling? What am I actually getting?”

You don’t want to be that person.

Stew Smith: Very good.

Jim Edwards: And then the last thing that you want to do is you want to look at your sales…

Especially a sales letter…

As if you were a five-year-old with kindergarten level reading skills who just snorted a pixie stick at midnight on Halloween.

And you’re trying to figure out what this is all about.

What I mean by that is you need to skim your sales letter REALLY fast…

And see if they can get enough information to want to make the decision to go back and actually read it.

And so you have to look at what we call the Slippery Slide…

The Secondary Reading Path…

Read your headline…

Read your sub-headlines…

Look at the pictures…

Look at the words that are bolded.

Look at where you show all the cool stuff that they’re going to get.

Using pictures!

Not. Just. Words.

Look at the total value.

Look at what you’re going to pay right now…

And then read the Ps.

That’s another reason why back in the day…

I don’t know if you remember the Stew…

But back in the nineties man, and in the early two thousands…

Having, I’m talking to the wrong person about this, having a good virtual cover was a necessity.

You had to do it and if you didn’t have it, you were at a disadvantage.

Yeah.

Somewhere along the line we kinda got away from that, and I don’t understand why, I mean I did too.

And even when I started coming out with software seven years ago, I mean a lot of software seven years ago…

I, for the few first few ones, I didn’t get a software box made…

Which I thought was really stupid.

And I think it’s because people say,

“Oh, they’ll think that that’s a physical product. And so we need to explain…”

No! Bullshit.

People understand that it’s a virtual cover.

It’s a software box, but I’m not getting physical software.

And so when someone’s skimming down, and you’re giving them a bunch of stuff…

If they’re getting three or four books in the box…

Make sure there’s a picture of every single book.

If they’re getting software, have a picture of a software box.

If getting an Ebook, have an Ecover…

If they’re getting some sort of a membership…

Have a membership card.

If they’re getting a video set, have little video players with each title in it.

Have some sort of visual representation, because

1. A) it builds value, and
2. B) it adds to that slippery slide, that secondary reading path.

And so that would be the other thing.

If you can’t read down like that like the Pixie stick five-year-old, if you can’t get the gist of what this is all about…

Then you need to go back and make some adjustments.

Stew Smith: That’s really good advice. That’s how you polish it.

Jim Edwards: Yeah. And there’s other stuff that you can do. I mean, I’ve got my own checklist that I go through that we’re not going to go through today.

But that’ll get you started, and that’ll definitely help you, especially if you’ve just finished up your first or your next funnel or website or you’re trying to sell something.

But I think this is really what’s going to put you on the right track.

Stew Smith: Absolutely. And when you go through the wizards at the jimedwardsmethod.com, you’ve got to go for the premium service to that and get access to all these wizards.

You will see those wizards actually do that for you.

Now, there might be some minor tweaks you have to do, but very minimal,

It’s like the wizard does the 90% of the work for you and then all you have to do is just tweak it just a little bit to make it exactly what you are selling.

And now you have that 95% – 96% of optimal level. Right?

And if you think about anything that we do in life, academics, athletics…

We all try to strive for that missing 10% right?

Jim Edwards: Right.

Stew Smith: Is that missing 10% you know, you can get yourself up with moderate work, you know, to a 90 but then it takes a little extra work to get to 95 takes a little extra work to get the 98 you know, so… The missing 10% can be done by polishing that sales copy.

Jim Edwards: Right. And the cool thing with the tools that we have, like the Jim Edwards Method Premium and, and Funnel Scripts is you can get that 90% done a hell of a lot faster than everybody else. Oh!

That’s the other thing.

It’s hard to do that last 10% when you are bone tired mentally and physically from doing the 90% but if you can eliminate 90% of the effort to create the 90%…

Then you got plenty of steam left for the 10% of polishing and thinking.

Stew Smith: That’s a good point. Yeah.

Jim Edwards: Cool. Great job, Stew! I just want to remind everybody, if you’re not already a member of the Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks group on Facebook,

You should be!

And it’s free to join, but you must apply and be accepted. So…

Stew Smith: Yeah, it’s a club!

Jim Edwards: It’s a club.

Stew Smith: It’s a nice club.

Jim Edwards: If you don’t join the club… You suck.

Stew Smith: And the cool thing about the club is that we see a problem that you guys put up there to the community to answer, and we’ll say, “You know what, let’s pull you on the podcast and answer it for you right there.”

We did that yesterday.

Just posted it up yesterday. So you guys got to check that out.

Jim Edwards: Cool. All right, everybody. Have a great day, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye, Bye everybody!