Copywriting: An Underestimated Conversion Influencer

For those who are hearing about VWO for the first time, VWO helps you identify leaks in your conversion funnel and provides tools to fix those leaks and keep your revenue growing. Now copywriting is often an overlooked element of a website. Yes. Of course, marketers or website owners spend a good amount of time writing copy for their product pages, but the same is not revisited or analyzed from the conversion point of view. Rishi Rawat is the Founder of Frictionless Commerce.

He has been helping businesses identify measurable and attributable conversion opportunities through copywriting and running tests on them. I’m excited to have him here with us today. Hi, Rishi. How are you doing?

Rishi Rawat:

I’m doing very good. I’m very excited to be here today.

Vipul:

Perfect. Would it be possible for you to switch on your webcam so that the audience can see you?

Rishi:

Most certainly. Oops. Can I do something? There we go.

Vipul:

Perfect. Oh, it’s great to have you, Rishi.

Rishi:

Great to be here.

Vipul:

Perfect. So, before, guys, I let Rishi start with this presentation. I just request all of you to, ask whatever questions that you might have during the course of this presentation using the Go to Webinar questions panel. So yeah, with that, Rishi, let’s begin.

Rishi:

Great. Thanks a lot. First of all, I wanna say this is a great privilege. I’ve used VWO for many years. And I’m very grateful that all of you could make it to the webinar.

And this is a topic that is very near and dear to me. And so I’m looking forward to sharing my insights. What we’ll be talking about today is the unique relationship between the human brain and the add-to-cart button. And I’m gonna show you everything that I’ve learned in the last 11 years, hopefully. So let me start with the backstory because I think this is really important.

I’ve talked to a lot of A/B testers, and a lot of CRO professionals, and copywriting as an A/B testing tool is not used as much. There are a lot of UI changes and things we focus on. I wanna give a little background. My journey also did not start with copywriting. In fact, I think I’m not a copywriter.

I just stumbled on copywriting because when we were running A/B tests, we obviously tested everything and what we discovered was ideas that were kind of based on a very specific point of view of copy or a very strong copy perspective had the best statistical outcomes. And that’s how we kind of over the last 11 years really zeroed in on this. So that’s my backstory. And I wanna talk to you about my most valuable asset. It is a reprint of an 1897 Sears catalog and I just love it. If you look at the picture from the inside, you’ll see they had drawings of products and they had this like font size 2 or font size 3 to actually describe the description.

Keep in mind, that these catalogs were mailed to small towns and small little villages in America, and we were asking people to send us upfront payment. So this is, you know, these people were the best copywriters in the world. Can you imagine how hard it must be to write copy to convince someone to buy a product that they can’t even see? There’s no return policy. It’s from a company that they’ve never heard of. So to me, these are the best copywriters in the world.

So the first question you might have is does making copy changes lead to anything? Of course, it sounds good, but does it actually make a difference? And I’m gonna talk to you about a test that we did for a client. I think this very clearly and persuasively illustrates the power of copy. So this is the client’s category page.

This is their moneymaker. This is their star product. It’s a star product category and you can see the four tiles of three tiles on top. They talk about 3 types of wheelchairs and it’s an incredible company. They have an incredible product.

It’s very, very popular. And so the thesis that the client had was that, hey, let’s quickly show them what our product is. Let them click on one of those styles, get to the product page, and make a purchase. Seems very logical. Let’s remove all the friction, which is a great idea.

But our view was that, no, we want let’s see what happens if we tell people our story first. Let’s see what happens if we explain to them who we are, what we believe in, and what we stand for. So we did something that was very controversial, but the client was very adventurous and very open to new ideas. And so they allowed us to try this experiment. And what we did is we actually removed the products from that page.

So this is a page that gets tons of traffic. It is their moneymaker and you’ll notice in our layout you actually have to click the ‘see products and details’ button on the bottom of my screen to even see the products when we’ve hidden the products by default. And what that does is, it focuses the reader to actually understand what Handicap X is all about, and why they exist. We add your videos. We add the picture of the founder. We put a team picture.

We did all of those things, and we noticed conversion rates went up by 28%. So this is evidence that copy really makes a difference. You can notice in this example that we’ve removed the product. So this is the backdrop of what I’m gonna be presenting. Now the question is, of course, what style of copy makes a difference?

So we have a 12-point checklist and I’m not gonna this is page 1 and this page 2, but what I’ll do is I’ll actually walk you through each of these checklist items. It’s a 12-point checklist. Each of these checklist items is with examples for each idea. So the first one is buyers are skeptical of too good to be true. We need to be very mindful of this.

What happens is as marketers, we just assume that the amazing things that our products can do are things that people would just make sense of. For example, I’ll give you an example from e-commerce and you’ll have to now correlate that to your own business. Imagine a scenario where I came to you and I said I could improve your conversion rates by 8%. Versus a variation where I came to you and I said I can improve your conversion rates by 80%. Mathematically speaking, an 80% improvement is 10 times more impressive than 8%.

However, realistically, I would have way fewer people hire me as a consultant to improve conversion rates if I claimed I could improve by 80%. Why? Because 80% seems too good to be true. It’s completely unrealistic for me to go to a customer and say, I can improve their conversion rates by 80% because they’ve been testing themselves and they know that a 10% improvement is hard and it may be reasonable but 80% is out of the question. So just because even if I could improve conversion rates by 80%, it’s too good to be true, so I would have to give context.

Think about your own product. Think about your own service. And if you are way better than your competitor, just the fact that you are way better than your competitor is actually potentially a disadvantage. You want to add more context in copywriting to address that too-good-to-be-true kind of thought that the buyer would have. Trust me buyers think about this all the time. So make sure your copy addresses it.

And this could be in multiple dimensions. It doesn’t have to be just in terms of price. It could be in terms of, you know, product quality, your engineering, your return policy, any feature that you have, anything to your marketing to users, ask yourself. Could people say that this is unrealistically true? And if you feel the answer is yes, then make sure your copy addresses that. That’s the first one.

The second idea is that buyers find expertise sexy. We are drawn to experts. We’re living in a world of super experts. So this is an example from Casper where we sell mobile product pages. They say we slept on more than 60 different pillows to find the pill that thrills.

Vipul:

Can you hear me? Yes. I’m really sorry for interrupting. There seems to be a bit of lag in the audio. So I think it could help if you could, go a little bit slow, so that the lag doesn’t affect the listening experience of the audience. I’m sorry for interrupting, please go ahead.

Rishi:

No. That’s it. Thank you for the feedback. So this is an example from Casper. And when you look at the headline, it says we slept on more than 60 different pillows to find the pill that thrills.

They’re clearly demonstrating their expertise. When I’m a potential buyer, I’m on this page. I know that this below is the best because they’ve tested all the other alternatives out there. So how can you in your copy address and make sure that your buyers understand that you are an absolute expert? Just stating that you’re an expert is not good enough.

You wanna make sure that your copy demonstrates that and illustrates that. So, that’s the example from Casper. The next one is that shoppers are influenced by implied messages. This is a really powerful strategy and I want to share an example. So let’s look at, and, you know, the point here is that if you can have your readers fill in the blanks, then you will win.

So don’t state stuff. Let them draw their own conclusions. I’m gonna show you a headline example. So the headline says there are over 120 energy drinks on the market we’ve tried them all. That’s the headline.

But contrast this to an alternative headline where it says there are over 120 energy drinks on the market. Ours is the best. The second option is the stated option where you as a marketer are actually spoon-feeding to the reader that you are the best which is very, very ineffective. Much more effective is to simply end it by saying we’ve tried them all. Now the user has to actually fill in the gaps and the way they would fill it in is by saying, well, they’ve tried them all.

They still are in business. They probably are better than the alternatives. Otherwise, why would they still be in business? So anytime you can help the user fill in the gap, fill in the blank, there’s a likelihood of you winning. So go through your copy and find places where you are spoon-feeding the reader and then ask yourself if I shortened the copy a little bit and I didn’t spool feed.

Could I actually get it? Could I create the implied version of the same message? And if you can create an implied version of a line of copy, always do it. It’s always gonna benefit you. The next one is that we root for people who beat the odds.

As human beings, we are wired to support people who have overcome the odds, you know, David versus Goliath kind of story. Play on this because the thing to keep in mind is that every single business has to go through incredible odds to survive. Just the fact that you have a business, just the fact that you are working for a client that is, you know, selling a lot of products online. It’s a very, very hard thing to do, but I think what happens is that because we are so immersed in our own world. We have such a siloed view of the world.

We just assume that what we do is kind of commonplace. It’s not that special because we deal with it every day. But remember, you’re trying to convert a first-time buyer. Someone who has never bought from you before. They’ve come to your website and they don’t know who you are and what your product does.

For them, it really makes a difference. So extract from your story. Extract from your story the things that make you incredibly unique because I can guarantee you that even though right now you might feel like, well, there’s nothing really special about this. If you really do some soul searching and you actually start writing some of those things down, you’ll find there are at least 15 to 20 things about you, if not more, that are truly unique. And once you can extract that, you wanna make sure your copy reflects that.

I’m gonna show you a pretty good example. So this website skip-lagged on their homepage. I mean, what these guys do is that you put your destination in and they’ll find, you know, hotels and flights that are much cheaper than what you would find on other websites. But to drive home this point, they’ve added something on their homepage. I’m gonna zoom in a little bit. If you look at the sub-headline, it says our flights are so cheap United sued us, but we won.

So they are very persuasively leveraging this whole idea of people who have overcome the odds. You know, United is a huge airline and these people are saying, look, we’re small, but we were so good that we actually got sued by them, but we won. So how can you apply this to your you don’t use the exact same strategy for your website, but what are the aspects of things you overcome? If it’s a product that you’ve designed, what were the manufacturing challenges that you overcame? When I interview my own customers and I talk to them about the products that they have, it’s amazing.

All the amazing things that they have done but that is not reflected in their story so extract those elements because your readers are craving for that content and it’s a conversion catalyst. The next thing is that readers and buyers are in love with surprising details. So anything about your business that is unique, quirky, and surprising. Pull that information. There’s tons of that stuff.

So I’ll give you a great example of hearing aids. So I found a research article that said on average, it takes people 7 years to recognize that they have a hearing problem. And why is that? Well, because nobody likes the idea of wearing a hearing aid, I don’t want to feel like I’m old, so it makes sense, but it’s very surprising that it takes 7 years to figure it out. So I’m gonna show you an example of a mockup that I’ve made for a website called here.com not a client of ours, but I’m sharing this to demonstrate exactly the kind of work that we do for our clients.

So what we did was right on their homepage, at the top, we’re saying, guess how long it takes for the average person to accept that they need hearing help. So it’s kind of like an interactive element and we know from studies and tests that we’ve done that shoppers love to participate in interactive things even though, you know, it might seem counterintuitive that we’re kind of adding friction, you’ll be amazed at how it affects conversion rates. So the way you participate is there’s a drop-down. You pick the options. If you say 1 year, we say, no.

No. No. No. It’s more than that. If you say 7 years, we say, yes.

You’re right. You’ve nailed it, it takes the average person 7 years. Now, the reason why this works so well is because it’s a very surprising detail that most visitors to the website had not even thought about, but what it’s doing at a subconscious level is if I’m the kind of person who’s on this website, obviously, I have myself been avoiding to get a hearing aid. It’s actually a reminder that do you really want to wait 7 years to acknowledge that you have a hearing problem and miss out on 7 years of your life? So it’s very persuasive from that perspective.

So think about your business. Think about what are surprising details about your business that you didn’t know about and one thing you can do is you can actually have conversations, email conversations with your customers, people who have bought and used your product, and interview them to understand what they loved about your product. I guarantee you, they’re going to say things that you simply had not considered. Very surprising things that like, wait a minute. This is what people love about our product.

Interview your customers, talk to yourself, talk within your team, and you’ll find some very interesting details, then inject those details into your product page, in your communication, and anything that’s quirky and interesting, and you’ll be amazed at the kind of results you can get. The next one is that we are visual animals. You know, our visual processing in the brain has so much more real estate than anything else. We’re very, very visual. So don’t give boring copy and talk about some very you know, a wall of text, can we convert some of those into visual elements?

I’m gonna show you an example and I wanted to really limit myself to copywriting. So I wanna show you an example of a card that I found in a hotel. You know, all these hotels are trying to get us to recycle and not wash our towels as much. But what is clever about this example is that what they’re saying is that they’re letting me know that by not washing my towels, they have actually been able to fill 1200 Olympic-sized pools of water. And what’s amazing about this is the moment I read this, I had a visual of 1200 Olympic pools and it’s a very powerful visual.

So you can use copy to activate a visual we know from research that visuals are way more effective. So think about ways in which you can visualize your sales pitch. And you’ll find that it has an amazing effect on conversion rates. The next one I wanna talk about is that buyers need the motivation to break habits. You know, this is a really interesting idea.

We spend so much time obsessing about our competitors, which is so stupid. There are always gonna be new competitors. There’s always gonna be more competitors than you can actually even handle, but what you need to focus on are two things that are much, much bigger, you know, hurting your business way more than that. The first one is buyers who pretend this isn’t a problem. Right? So no matter what you’re selling, there’s a whole bunch of people that are on your website who have convinced themselves that this is like, for example, with the hearing aid, tons of visitors, the websites say, I don’t need hearing it.

This is not a problem. So if that’s what they’re thinking if your competitor is not this other company that’s also selling hearing aids, your competitors, this person who’s on your website who’s convinced himself or herself that hearing is not a problem. You know, having a hearing issue is not a problem. The second one is workarounds. People are very creative.

They will always find alternate ways of getting the same thing done. So if you have a product that solves a problem, someone’s gonna figure out another workaround way of doing it. It’s not perfect, but it’s available to them. So how do we overcome those barriers? And I’m gonna show you an example for each.

So let’s look at the pretend this isn’t a problem strategy, which I said everyone uses. So I’m gonna look at an example of a company that sells long-term food storage. You may not be aware of this category, but it’s a very interesting category. Apparently, you know, there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of people that want to have food supply, which they typically will store in their basement or somewhere in the house, which is for uncertain events in the future. We all know, we all have uncertainty about the future and so they’re these long-term food storage companies that sell freeze-dried food that you can buy which has a 25-year shelf life.

So, you know, that’s the product. But the thing is that it’s 25 years into the future or maybe 10 years into the future. How do I know I’ll actually need this food? That’s what they’re competing against. So an example of copy you can craft to overcome that is by having this example which says it’s tempting to hope no one ever has to be in an emergency situation. And nine times out of 10, that’s the case for most of us.

Notice what we’ve done here. So first of all, we are singularly attacking that thought process that this is not a problem. And by saying that, you know, 9 times out of 10, you know, most of us find, but 1, 10% of the time we’re in a situation where we need food we’re attacking that problem. But remember, another thing we talked about earlier in the presentation about using implied messaging. Notice we said nine times out of 10 that was the case for most of us.

So we’re saying 9 times out of 10, you’re totally fine. What’s the implied message here that 1 out of 10 times you’re not fine? And so this is it would have been way less effective if we had said 10% of the time, you’re not fine. So we use the roundabout version, which is the implied version of the same message to communicate at this point. The other aspect is workarounds.

Right? So people always have workarounds. Let’s look at a scenario where you are trying to sell an adult hybrid exercise bike. Right? Your competition is not other .com companies that are also selling adult hybrid exercise bikes, your competition is people that are using workaround because people have figured out other ways of being healthy.

They might run on a treadmill. They might run outside. They might do other forms of exercise. But if they’re using a treadmill or if they’re running outside, one of the downsides is they might be hurting their joints. We know from research that running on the road or running on a treadmill puts a lot of pressure on joints whereas bikes ease that pressure.

But every bike product base that I’ve been to and I’ve seen at least 20 of them because I’ve been looking for a bike myself never talks about that. They talk about how great their product is, but they don’t actually talk about addressing the workaround that I’m using, which is running on the treadmill. So my idea is that instead of talking about other bikes or how amazing your bike is, why not talk about the fact that you put a lot less pressure on your joints if you ride a bike? That’s a much more persuasive message because I’m trying to compete against you running on a treadmill. Okay.

The next one is that shoppers love personalized experiences. Any opportunity you get to personalize an experience in any way, shape, or form. It’s going to have a conversion effect. Even if that personalization doesn’t really make a difference. Just the fact that the user can personalize it has a magical effect on conversion rates.

Here I’m gonna give you an exam and an actual A/B test we did for a client. So, the client sells an air purifier. It’s a very complicated product and it’s fairly expensive. So it’s a fairly long buying cycle. And what we noticed was that on the product page, we had communicated all of these, like, lots of jargon, lots of details about purification, about, you know, about allergens in the air and how it works and all that. You can’t do that in one paragraph. And so we had a debate and we said, okay. Well, let’s see what’s the average amount of length of content people are willing to read. But we said that’s a stupid idea. Why are we going on averages? You know, keep in mind one thing which is average is a lie.

Right? The average, what is the average of a man and a woman? There’s no it doesn’t make any sense. So forget about averages. So we basically said, listen, there are 2 kinds of people that are on this page.

There are people that are very methodical, then they want to read lots and lots of technical jargon, but then there are people who are not methodical humanistic and they want to quickly read what this purifier can do for me and they just wanna buy it. They just want the summary, the elevator pitch of it. And so what we did was we said, hey, let’s just give them those 2 options. So when you go to the product page, now it has 2 buttons. How much time do you have?

I have 2 minutes, which means I need to show them the shortened version of our sales pitch, and I have time which is a much more detailed version of our sales pitch. And this test improved sales of this product by 30%. So that’s a monumental improvement and it happened because we make the experience personalized for the buyer. So it really makes a difference. Look at your product pages.

Look at your homepage and say, how can I personalize this? I have different audiences. How can I personalize it for them? And you’ll have lots of interesting ideas. The other one is that as buyers, we love the idea of discovery.

We love to know that we’ve stumbled on something that’s rare. And I think as marketers, we don’t do enough talking about this. So I’m gonna show you a couple of examples. So for example, one of these is a copy example. It says for most people hunting.

So imagine you are a company that sells emergency medical kits. Now you might wonder what the heck is you know, these are little kids that you can buy for a hundred bucks or whatever, and it has all of the emergency stuff one would need in a situation where you are maybe injured or you’re, you know, out of communication with people and you’ve got some kind of emergency. So the copy beads most people hunting for the perfect emergency medical kit give up in frustration, they never make it to this page. So this is the copy that we’re gonna use on the product page. And what it does is, it subliminally communicates to the buyer that they’ve just stumbled on something that most people never got to.

So it’s a little accent, and these little accents can make a difference. I’ll show you another example. Imagine you are a company that sells raw pet food. It’s a very big category and it’s very popular these days. So the copy could read over 63,000,000 households own a dog in the US, only 1% of those households buy raw pet food for their best friend.

So again, 99% of people don’t do it So this is the implied version of that statement and the fact that it’s so scarce, makes me feel like I’ve stumbled on a solution that most people didn’t have access to, which makes me feel good about myself, and we buy online because we wanna feel good about ourselves. The final one is that we buy from people that we like. So how can we inject personality into our copy? So this is an example. It’s a company.

It’s a product called 1 Fast Cat. It’s a cat wheel, an amazing category. And basically, your cat goes inside it and it starts running and the wheel goes round and round. It’s an exercise wheel for your cat. And so in order to inject personality because, you know, as I said, the thing about e-commerce is that we are socially distanced, right, from the buyer and the seller. The thing about a retail store is you actually have a relationship with the person who’s trying to sell you the product in the retail store. With e-commerce, there’s so much gap that’s created. It becomes very transactional. In fact, one of the reasons why retailers are so focused on bombarding us with emails and kind of giving us discounts is because they’ve converted that relationship into pure transactional. And if you can inject likability into that process, then there’s a higher likelihood that there’s gonna be a recall and there’s a much higher likelihood that people actually gonna buy from you.

So how do they inject likability? How do they get people to like them? So they want to talk about building muscle tone and they kinda put a little graphic that shows a cat with muscle tone. Now this is a comical way of driving likability. You can do it in many, many different ways.

You can skin the cat in many different ways. So ask yourself, how can I show my authentic personality? Remember, these people don’t have the opportunity to sit in your office and see how much your customer service people care about, you know, taking care of customers or your shipping team, how much they care about making sure packaging happens appropriately how do I communicate that? Copy is the way to communicate that. So make sure that you’re injecting this in all aspects of your copy. All of these strategies that I talked about don’t look at them as being like a checklist that you literally, oh, I’ve done this. I’ve done this. I’ve done this. 

Think of them as they need to permeate through all of our copy, whether it’s at the ad copy level, whether it’s on the landing page level, the site experience level, or email, even email conversations. Make sure that these aspects are reflected and you’ll notice on an aggregate that it’s having a very good effect on conversion rates. And of course, if you have enough traffic, you can even run it as an A/B test.

And then the final thing I should share is that buyers are curious. We are naturally wired to be curious. So how can we leverage that curiosity? And there are many ways to do it. Curiosity typically is used on the advertising level because you can kind of apply that technique to get people to notice your ad and want to interact with your ad which brings them to the landing page.

So it’s used there, but it can also be used in other instances. I’ll show you an example. It’s a pretty clever one. So look at this pop-up. It’s like a normal pop-up.

It says get 10% off your next great idea, give us your email address. Shoppers know about this standard procedure, but look at how they’ve actually done it. What they did was they said to give us your email address, but below that, they’ve added, when is your birthday? It’s a very interesting strategy. Because now you know what’s happening is that I’m looking at this and I’m saying to myself, they’re asking for my birth date.

I wonder because the copy on the top says that you get a 10% discount right away. So I’m gonna get that right away, but they also know my birthday. So maybe I’m gonna get something on my birthday as well. That’s really compelling, and it’s, you know, we’re so curious. We don’t know what that means.

They didn’t explain what that means. And so I’m now fifty times more likely to give up my email address because I just wanna figure out what the heck is gonna happen on my birthday. So here’s an example of curiosity. So kind of go through your entire marketing pitch and ask yourself what aspects of curiosity can we kind of use in your sales. This is one example.

And like I said, it’s used quite effectively at the advertising side of the equation as well. Primarily. So that is the end. I think I’ve gone really fast. So hopefully that’ll open us up for some questions, but this is essentially the range of the core tactics that we use.

If you think this is interesting I have lots more examples for each of them. If you want to explore any one of them, I would suggest that you sign up for my weekly newsletter every Monday morning will share one simple idea with a screenshot, a mock-up with an explanation, something you can digest very quickly and then apply to your business. Once a week. So if you’re interested in that, you can take out your smartphone and take a picture of this, and then they’ll take you to my sign-up page. And you can sign up for my newsletter. And, that’s it.

It’s been really interesting to share what I’ve learned in the last 11 years with you and I will now hand it over to Vipul so we can maybe answer some of your questions and I can go back to some slides if anyone has any questions. Thank you very much.

Vipul:

Sure. Thanks a lot. Rishi, that was an insightful presentation. I was, like, very closely listening to all those points, and even though you had shared slides with me yesterday itself, but the real, you know, value, out of those slides, I got it today. By listening to you.

It was really a pleasure listening to you and the examples that you shared. So before I actually move on and, you know, start asking the questions from the audience, can I ask you a question about, you know, you are very passionate you know, copyrighted? Right? So you have been in this in this space for many, many years. Of course, more than 11 years, I would say. Right. So do you see yourself, like, observing, and analyzing just any copy you see anywhere? Because as a marketer, I just tend to, you know, whenever I see any ad when I’m going on a picnic with my family or, you know, to just anywhere or just, any TVC playing anywhere. I just, look at it and sort of tear it apart into pieces and be like, hey. This is not right.

That’s right. That’s great. That’s brilliant. So do you also see yourself doing that quite often?

Rishi:

I do a lot of very strange things which most doctors would not do. I spend a lot of time watching infomercials, you know, and, you know, this is like late-night TV commercials that last for like 30 minutes. People think that’s, you know, that’s kind of not very sexy advertising, but I think infomercials are in influential writers are very, very good copywriters. So I want to learn from that. I actually also go to retail stores.

I spend a lot of time in physical retail stores looking at product packages and I always find so many gaps in how they’re telling their story. So there’s opportunity everywhere. I also listen to and watch QVC, which is a TV shopping channel in the US, and HSN. And I find lots of interesting ideas there as well. So you’re exactly right. Once you open Pandora’s box, impossible not to see these tactics being used everywhere around us.

Vipul:

Right. So do you end up buying any items when you go into a shop or do you just, you know, take note of whatever copy you just read and come back?

Rishi:

This is a very interesting insight. You know, unfortunately, what has happened is that because I have learned so much about how the sausage is made that I actually most marketing messages are completely ineffective in terms of actually selling to me. So, you know, I don’t think I buy as much as maybe I should. In fact, you’d be surprised to know that I’ve actually made a policy for myself starting this year to buy 1 or 2 products every month from online retailers just so I can see how because there’s, you know, I’m looking at just their websites, but there’s so much communication that happens, through emails once you buy a product as well. So I wanna kind of force myself to do more of that stuff because, you know, it’s a really important thing, but you’re right.

I mean, unfortunately, because, you know, so it’s like the same reason a heart surgeon doesn’t smoke a cigarette is because they know how cigarettes are made. So I kinda feel to some extent I have a little bit of that of course, I still love marketing so much and I’m, you know, I’m an average consumer and so that allows me to kind of experience fit from the perspective of buyer. I never try to be I try not to jade myself. I never have an opinion I try not to have an opinion because I know that there are always new ways of marketing being invented. So I’m very curious about it, but, hopefully that answers your question.

Vipul:

Right. Right. So totally relatable there. I see there are a lot of questions in the questions panel. And I’m going to have a hard time picking up all of them.

So I’ll pick them up one by one. So the first question is from Jesse Bruce. They’re referring to one of your slides wherein you presented the example of the air purifier company. Yeah. So they’re asking, for the air purifier company, do you have any details on which button was clicked more?

Rishi:

So that’s a great question. So, you know, in the first test that we did, we only focused on unit sales of this product. So we don’t have tracking for individual button clicks, but we have actually subsequently designed another test where we are tracking for interaction with the buttons as well. And we’ll have that data, and I’ll be happy to share it once we have data on that. But I don’t have it for this test.

Vipul:

Okay. Perfect. The second question is also related to one of your slides wherein you talked about the rarity point. Right? So the question is from Chris O’Brien. So Chris is asking, how do you think about the rarity versus the example of saving water? So communicating rarity works and communicating that everyone is doing it. Both work. So he’s trying to ask, how do you think about the rarity versus the example of saving the water?

So I can see here that you have highlighted 1200 Olympic-sized pools, part in order to, you know, make the measurement more relatable and understandable.

Rishi:

Yeah. Visual. Yeah.

Vipul:

Right. So, even I’m not sure, what the exact question could be. So, Chris, maybe it’ll help if you can just rewrite the question a bit. Try reframing the question, and we’ll definitely try to take it up.

Rishi:

Yeah, I can also monitor through email as well after the webinar for sure.

Vipul:

Sure, guys. So, yeah, forgot to mention that since we have a lot of questions, I’ll be passing on your questions to Rishi. Along with your email addresses and, of course, you know, if time suits him, he can definitely reach out to you individually with the answers to your respective questions. So please don’t worry about that. The next question is from Nancy Hart. She’s asking, do you find one of these, as your go-to most effective approach? Like, out of the 12 triggers that you have listed. Is there any go-to approach that you follow? Find yourself going to any time.

Rishi:

That’s a really good point. Yeah. I know I’m trying to think now. I would, you know, actually, oddly enough, I would say using the visual element is very much underused and so I like to use it a lot.

I also think that you know, this implied message idea, which I think I had a little earlier, that’s very powerful as well. You know, as marketers, we tend to spoon-feed a lot. We want to tell people, hey, we’re number 1. We’re the best. We have the best shipping prices. We have the best product.

If you don’t spoon-feed in use, it’s almost like being a standard comedian. And, you know, if you just stop right before that point where the user then, you know, our brains are so incredible, we are constantly filling gaps. Whenever there is silence, our brain is filling the gap. So if you can just leave a gap for the brain to fill in that gap, they will fill it in the way that you’ve designed that previous statement, and that is so powerful. So implied messaging, I think, is also significantly underused by marketers.

Vipul:

Great. I hope you got the answer, Nancy. Okay. So here’s an interesting one. Koda Shammu is asking, do you have any advice on telling a story when we have constraints on the number of characters on the page or the banner?

Rishi:

It’s a very good question. So, you know, what I would say is this is something that we’ve worked on all the time. So going back to that example that we had hopefully I can get to the example. Yeah. This example right here, you know, instead of you kind of breaking your head, trying to say, okay. I have a character limit. Why not let the buyer tell you what kind of stories they like and what length of story they like? So figure out some clever way like we did over here saying, do you have 2 minutes and do you have time? Someone who says I have time, they are telling us they’re raising their hand and saying, I have time. This is an important problem for my family.

I want to buy the right air purifier. I’m gonna stay on this page and learn everything I have to learn. So it’s a great question, by the way, but don’t worry too much about the length of the copy and the limitations around the length of the copy. Maybe you could kind of inject a mechanism to ask the user, you know, do you want all the details or just the more important stuff. And then if someone says I want all the details if someone is selling you as a buyer that I have 20 minutes for you to make your sales pitch, that’s a dream come true for a salesperson.

So why not just like make them a 20-minute sales pitch? And if someone says I only have 5 minutes, then tell them the final sale page. Don’t have one sales page and say, okay, I’m gonna force-feed this to every buyer because every buyer is different.

Vipul:

Perfect. Thanks, Rishi. I just found this question to be really intriguing. So I’ll just ask it. It’s from 10x writer. They haven’t mentioned the real name, but they’re asking, do you think a copy should be created before design? Or design before creating a copy?

Rishi:

You know, in reality for me, because of the way we work with customers, we already have a container already existing structure, but I’m absolutely crystal clear about this that copy should come first 2nd and third design once the copy has been crafted.

Vipul:

Right. So, my personal question there. So let’s say you’ve written, you just have, you know, seen the layout, right, and you’ve written a copy that will fit in that particular layout. However the final design requires you to modify the number of words that you’ve used in the copy. So how would you do that? Like, will it not, impact the meaning that you were trying to create in the first, in the initial case?

Vipul:

It’s a good question. It’s also nuanced in my mind. It doesn’t feel like there’s going to be that situation. I think design should play a secondary role to copy. Because in my view, the copy is super important.

Right? But yes, maybe a more practical basis if there may be instances where you have to adjust the copy to match the layout, and as a good copywriter, you can make those adjustments. But, you know, I still think that know, the copy I mean, you know, I’m very biased. Like, I just can’t not see copy everywhere I look. So from my view, I think everything else is secondary.

But yes, on a more practical basis, I understand that there are going to be compromises, so the copy would have to make some adjustments. Right. Yeah.

Vipul:

Okay. Perfect. The next question is from her. She’s asking, how do you decide the fine line between content to be perceived as working or as misinterpreted while addressing a larger audience?

Rishi:

A/B testing

Vipul:

Right. So would you want to elaborate on that answer?

Rishi:

Yeah. I mean, I think, as you know, when I talk about, like, letting your personality shine, you know, you have to just be your authentic self. So if your authentic self is extremely quirky, or is, you know, you like to write in a certain style or the brand, it has a certain voice, reflect that voice. All I’m trying to say is that I find when I work with clients that they’re so conservative, even though in private when we talk to them about ideas, it’s amazing how creative, quirky, and fun-loving they are. But what if for whatever reason, once that personality is trying to be, we are trying to communicate that personality to our buyers, we wanna have a toned-down version of it and I don’t know where that comes from, but at least the data that I have is based on the testing that we do, what we find is that showing your personality drives up conversion rates.

Now you have to be authentic. So if your personality is not quirky, then don’t inject quirkiness into your copy. It’s fake and it doesn’t matter if it improves conversion rates. Don’t do it. But if your personality is interesting and quirky, then certainly make sure your human side, if you do remember that humans buy from you.

We buy from people we like. We are very irrational actors. We assume that, oh, if you have the best price, people will buy from you no matter what, I would argue that’s not true. We are completely irrational actors. We behave.

We are completely driven by emotion, and our emotions are based on likability. And so if we connect with someone, then we are much more likely to buy from them irrespective of their price point. The price point is the story that we’re telling ourselves. So when you buy something that’s cheaper, that’s the story you’re telling yourself – that I bought it both because it’s cheaper. Or when you say, you know, I’m buying a premium product, you’re telling yourself a story.

The truth is that you’re buying something because you actually like the product. You like the way it’s being sold to you. And you’re using rationality to justify something that you did that was irrational. So it’s very strange for me for a buyer to say, you know, the reason I bought your air purifier was we’ve done a test, for example. It’s a very interesting test where we actually gave the product a personality.

So instead of having a product page, be a description about what the product does. We get the product name and we wrote it in the first person voice where the product is actually speaking directly to the buyer. Very interesting way of testing. A very interesting way of writing copy. But the thing is that for the buyer if I interview them and later on, I say, why did you buy this air purifier?

They’re not gonna tell me that I bought it because I noticed that your product page had copy written from the perspective of the air purifier speaking to me directly and I loved it. They won’t say that. They will say I bought your product because it’s the best air purifier. You have the best price point. It fits in with my home needs. They’ll give lots of rational reasons for the truth being that they’ve actually bought it for completely emotional reasons. So keep that in mind as a copywriter. What people say in a survey is different than how our brains actually process information.

Vipul:

Right. That’s an interesting point because we are all at the end of the day before pressing. We’re not very logical about making any purchases per se. We are very emotional creatures and are just sort of extending your answer. So since it’s a very legit question about, you know, being very adventurous about your copy, but also not taking the risks so that it gets misconstrued and, you know, creates a bad impression of the brand.

I think one element that you should always look out for while writing a copy is not playing with people’s identities because, identities are very fragile positions of humans and if you try to present them or try to include them in your copy in a very adventurous manner, it would I don’t have the number, though, but it is shown to backfire. And it’s going to impact the brand on a, you know, on a very negative front. So do not play with people’s identities. Right? So you can go as adventurous as you want to as quirky as you want to. But, yeah, make sure that you’re not, you know, getting too personal or not invoking evoking any sort of negative thoughts or emotions out there.

Rishi:

I completely agree.

Vipul:

Right. So, quickly moving on to the next questions. There are many. So in the interest of time, I’ll just take a few more. I see a couple of people have actually, asked this Elizabeth, someone Paul as well, I think. So they’ve all asked since the majority of the examples that you’ve shared are from the B2C side. So how do you apply the techniques of copywriting for a SaaS business, for a B2B business? How does the dynamics change, or does it change at all?

Rishi:

It’s a great question. You know, I worked with a few B2B clients in the financial services space and the healthcare space. Even in other cases as well, I believe that ultimately humans are buying from other humans. So as long as you’re selling to humans, whether it’s a committee of humans or it’s an individual human, I think these same principles apply. Yes.

If you are selling in a B2B environment, you know, there are certain aspects of these strategies that you will have to modify. Again, it’s all about being authentic, but for example, you know, the fact that people are curious about an individual, whether I’m buying, you know, buying a cell phone, I’m curious, but even if I’m buying something that, you know, is as in a B2B environment where it’s me and the CFO and the sales head. All these people in mind were buying a new software package. I’m so curious. I’m still the same human being.

In a different context. So I don’t think it’s worth thinking too much about, oh, we need to have a different playbook for B2B. I would say start off with these 12 checklist items and then essentially, you know, put it in the context of your business and test it out to see what’s working and what’s not working. Know that in a B2B environment, your sample size is gonna be pretty small, so it’s hard to run an A/B test. But you can certainly measure it by using some other proxies to figure it out. But if you notice something that doesn’t work in a B2B environment, share it with me as well. I would love to update my model as well based on what you guys are seeing.

Vipul:

Right. That does make sense. Okay. I’ll just pick one more question, Rishi. I’m going to send you a really big list of questions, after this webinar.

So the next question is from. So she also has an interesting question about, you know, when you are working for a client, and the client has all the other constraints in place as well. Right? So they want you to focus on SEO as well. Right?

So they have a list of keywords that they would want you to include in the copy. Right? So what do you do in those cases? Because force-fitting certain keywords might again impact the meaning and the associated emotion with it. What’s your take on it?

Rishi:

Yeah. It’s a great point. I think SEO really matters. In fact, when I work with clients in our contract, we state one of our action items is that we are not SEO experts, but what I would say more broadly about that topic is that I personally feel that creativity happens within constraints. So when a client tells us that these are the rules that you have to play with. Like these are my SEO rules, I actually find I can write even better copy than when a client says, here is an open canvas. Do whatever you want. So I can’t, like, talk specifically about, you know, what those keywords might be and what those constraints might be and how and it’s a very valid question. But I think there’s an opportunity for us to actually be very creative even within that environment.

So I know it’s, like, seems like a non-answer. I don’t have it. I’m not I can’t comment on the SEO part. What I can say is that you know, try it out. I mean, try these techniques and see if it’s causing constraints. And if it is, let me know and I’d be very curious to learn about that as well. But I think you should be fine.

Vipul:

Sure. And of course, if you have any more help that you would require from Rishi, feel free to reach out to him. You know, subscribe to his newsletter; he has provided the QR code on the slides as well. Rishi, could you please move to the last slide so that people can again have a look at it and maybe scan it? Yes, absolutely.

Rishi:

And also very active on LinkedIn. So if someone spends time on LinkedIn, just search for my name, Rishi Robert, on LinkedIn, and you can connect with me. I’m sure I’d love to connect with you. And of course, my newsletter is a great resource if you are looking for inspiration once a week on things that you can apply to your practice.

Vipul:

Right. So there are a couple of people in the questions panel who have appreciated all that you post on LinkedIn, all your posts, and all the insights that you share. I’m not able to filter them out because there are a lot of questions, but in the recent comment that I have from Tommy Bill, he appreciates your report and said that this was great. Rishi, your knowledge is rich, and you make operating fun. This totally resonates with me as well. It was great listening to you and taking notes from your presentation.

I hope this was really insightful for the audience as well. Yeah, I think, thanks again for preparing this presentation for everyone. And we would love to have you again in the future for a different aspect, of course.

Rishi:

Yes. Absolutely. This has been my life’s work. I’m very grateful that everyone’s taken the time to be here today and listen to what we have to say. I’m so happy. Thank you very much.

Vipul:

Perfect. So, guys, it’s now time to close the webinar. Please fill in the survey that will turn up once the webinar is closed. Your feedback will help us in delivering the best knowledge to you that you desire. Also, do check out our upcoming webinars. Visit vw.com/webinars or visit the Masters of Conversion webinar series at vw.com/webcast for all the information regarding our past and upcoming webinars. Thank you, Rishi, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Have a great day, everyone. See you.