Editor’s Note: This transcript was created using AI transcription and formatting tools. While we’ve reviewed it for accuracy, some errors may remain. If anything seems unclear, we recommend referring back to the episode above.
Episode Trailer
2023 was tough as somebody who works with copywriters – a lot of them got freaked out in 2023, fair enough. We’re not seeing the same sort of panic in 2024, which makes it a much better year already.
Growing up, I had no idea I’d be in this field. I always liked writing and was always very quiet, so listening came pretty easily to me compared to doing much talking. I remember watching “Who’s the Boss” – Angela was in advertising, and there was a scene where she was presenting an idea. I was like eight or nine years old and thought, “Wow, you can get paid for having creative ideas?” That was mind-blowing to me, but I put that aside thinking it was for people who moved to New York City, not for people like me.
Fast forward – I got exposed to copywriting, and then AB testing became more democratized. When I was working at a tech company where AB testing became a big part of the organization, I got led into a growth department focused on experimentation. It was always kind of there, this idea of being able to get paid to come up with ideas that influence people and then see if those ideas work.
About VWO
Welcome to another episode of the women in CRO series by VWO podcast. This series is an ode to the contribution of women in the CRO industry. VWO is a leading experience optimization platform that helps fast growing brands optimize their digital experiences using our latest product VWO insights. You can understand user journeys and identify conversion roadblocks on your website and mobile apps.
Guest Introduction
Today’s guest is Joanna Wiebe, founder at Copy Hackers and the copy chief at Copy Hackers agency, known as the OG copy hacker. For nearly 15 years, Joanna has been entrusted by incredible companies like VWO, Canva, Glowforge, Intuit, and many more. She’s done incredible work cracking the game of copy for them. She’s a personal favorite and audience favorite at events like SearchLove, Inbound, MozCon, where she’s taught us to create copies that convert. She has worked with over 70,000 individuals starting from startups to international agencies.
Evolution of Copy in CRO Industry
Industry Changes Over 15+ Years: The industry has widened as more people in organizations take on experimentation, even though maybe they don’t love it – they’re just put in that role. There’s been a shift from everybody being excited about AB testing to taking it more seriously, and then not taking it seriously at all – not implementing the winner of a test, calling tests before they’re statistically significant, or going with variations they liked better despite lack of significance.
In the early years, early adopters were very excited about direct response techniques. Copy was a watchword – everybody was “copy, copy, copy.” Design was focused on persuasion architecture and emotion. Then there became more mass adoption of CRO, but maybe all the techniques and terminology didn’t go along with that.
People graduated into growth rules without being there in the beginning when we saw what split testing can do for a business. The enthusiasm for what CRO and copy can do has shifted. I’d love to see people in CRO talking again about those key elements: your offer, the words on the page, how that gets expressed emotionally with design elements.
Being a Woman in Tech Leadership
Advantages and Challenges: An advantage of being in tech and speaking at events – this is a joke – there’s no lineup at the bathroom. There’s never a lineup at a CRO event or tech event in the women’s bathroom. That’s a problem, right? It’s good because I don’t have to wait in line, but it’s clearly a problem.
Men hold the majority of positions of power, so men do get to choose – are they going to bring women with them or not? They have a level of privilege that comes with that, and some are willing to share that privilege. That’s really meaningful for women who don’t want special advantages. I don’t need you to treat me specially – just don’t hold me back because of whatever you see or the network that I’m not allowed to be in.
I’ve been really blessed to have men in positions of power say “hey, let’s do this together.” I’d rather think about people like Rand Fishkin, Hiten Shah, Rob Walling, Andrew Wilkinson – people who along the way have not even seemed to consider any differences and just go “we’re all cool, we’re all working towards big cool things.”
The Shine Crew: I’m part of this group called The Shine Crew. Shine is based on an article from 10 years ago about women lifting each other up consciously. Instead of traditionally being in competition with each other (there’s only one role at the top for a woman), this is about actively reaching down to people coming up and trusting someone above you will reach to pull you up.
My shine crew includes April Dunford, Talia Wolf, Gia Laudi, Claire Suellentrop, Tiffany Silva, Tera Robertson – we have a wonderful group. That’s been a huge advantage and helped me grow my business as a woman.
AI Impact on Copywriting
2023 Panic to 2024 Acceptance: I was having dinner with copywriters in November/December 2022 talking about ChatGPT. That set off 2023. Then last November at an event near Amsterdam, there was a session on AI that was pretty dismissive, and I found it refreshing because I’d been going to events with so much panic and fear for the first bit of 2023.
I honestly don’t think there’s cause to panic. Copywriters who survived 2023 figured out by the end: “Oh wait, my job has not been to do the work that AI does. That’s never been my job. I was just stuck doing it because nobody else could.”
AI is like having an intern. It can synthesize research in sometimes useful ways (sometimes it’s wrong), it can take care of a first draft that can be really great. But it doesn’t replace me. We’re not word monkeys who just sit there and type stuff out. That’s never been the job.
It’s strategic, it’s thoughtful, it’s thinking about how humans think – not just a formula for a headline, not just word choice, but so much more. We are in persuasion, we are in the skill set of psychology and really thinking deeply about how people make decisions.
Conversion Copywriting Process & Framework
Creating a Culture of Conversion: Creating a culture of conversion copywriting starts with measuring. I’m always fascinated by people in marketing who are hesitant to measure. To me it speaks to a fear that you’ll be found out for guessing and not thinking in your customers’ or prospects’ shoes.
The most persuasive people in the world are inherently packed with empathy for the person they’re listening to and trying to motivate toward the right action.
The System: The conversion copywriting process begins with research and discovery. You listen to the voice of the customer, then move it into frameworks and formulas. You can take the problem you’ve heard them say they have, agitate how it manifests in their lives, then solutions they’ve tried that have failed them, and then your solutions. That’s problem-agitation-solutions that have failed-solutions (PASS framework).
You throw voice of customer into those parts. What you start to see is: “Oh wait, I’m not guessing anymore.” I can listen to what customers say, write it down, take their language almost verbatim in most cases, then place it in a framework.
If I can do that, now it’s not me that failed in that test, and it’s also not me that made the test win either. It’s the system. Follow the system, measure, then repeat iteratively. You feel better and better about the results you get, and it being a culture of experimentation because it’s not about you, and thus a failure is not about you.
Case Study: Rehab Center Success
The “If You Think You Need Rehab, You Do” Campaign: I was working with a rehab center called Beachway in Florida. I couldn’t do customer interviews because transformation is so real and feelings can still be very raw. Instead, I did an audit of competing websites for their tone – very wordy, soothing, patting you on the head.
But I understood that a vast proportion of people who go to rehab centers are firefighters, men in roles of heightened masculinity. I went through Amazon review mining for books on 12-step programs, addiction, alcohol addiction, drug addiction. One line in a review was “what I can tell you is if you think you need rehab, you do.”
We tested this as a headline against three others in a four-way split test. Nobody thought “if you think you need rehab, you do” was going to win. It blew everything else out of the water – 400% increase in clicks on the homepage through to the landing page, plus a statistically significant 26% increase in completed leads.
You go from having empty beds worth $20,000 a month to a waiting list for your rehab center. What I’m proud of is we were able to listen to what people say, get a winning test, and walk away with a framework – the “if…then” framework that we could use to repeat that sort of success.
Psychological Triggers in CRO
Beyond Party Tricks: Psychological triggers are hugely important, but they shouldn’t be used like party tricks. It’s not a magic act. The word “because” isn’t as magical as we heard in Cialdini’s influence. We need solid base understanding and ongoing education in how people make buying decisions.
We can’t just use these psychological triggers and get a winning test, but we can understand that these triggers include talking to the lizard brain. When a person lands on a page, their lizard brain is the first thing enacted to make sure the space is safe. Our designer designs the page to look safe for the lizard brain, and our copywriter doesn’t write anything that would make the lizard brain freak out.
Favorite Principles: My favorite principle is just mirroring – reflect back the person that they want to be. There’s always a time and place for urgency or scarcity, social proof goes a long way. Most of what Cialdini said I would say are my favorites.
Anyone in CRO should have an account on psych.david.com – that’s all the academic studies you can imagine on all the things people are learning in academic settings that can influence what we’re doing.
Industry Challenges
Biggest Challenge – Non-Experts Acting Like Experts: It’s the same challenge it’s always been, and this sounds snobbish, but it’s non-experts coming in and acting like experts. It can be difficult for somebody who’s very good at their job and takes it seriously to watch people who don’t take it seriously garbling things up.
I was at an event where a speaker talked about results of an experiment and used the word “percent” to calculate the outcome when there were fewer than 100 people involved. Anyone who takes this job seriously is annoyed by that.
We need everybody in the room to buy into this being skilled work done by smart people who care about this stuff. We need a culture of experimentation that respects it deeply, like a scientist in a lab respects it.
Fostering Women’s Inclusion
Creating More Inclusive Environments: Women do need to work to lift each other up – that’s part of the work. We get to help other women and men too. We need to get into leadership positions that can help people who don’t look like the standard leader we’ve seen forever.
How do we foster inclusivity? It’s just this: everybody is equal. When a woman says something in a meeting, you listen to her equally as you do when a man says something. If somebody is cutting somebody else off when they’re talking, you stop and correct that behavior because very often it is a woman being cut off.
You don’t have to treat me specially – just take your foot off my neck. Just stop. We have to be really active in trying to push away unconscious biases. As people in experimentation, we’re studying biases to get good at this stuff. We’re already trying to eliminate biases in our experiments, so we know these things in ways other industries might not.
Future of CRO
Predictions and Hopes: The future of CRO will be heavily facilitated by AI, which is great. Let AI do the job we don’t want to do as marketers. Let’s be more strategic and thoughtful and use our human-powered brains to get ahead.
We’ve come through this period where all the initial hype around AB testing has passed. People who are now in AB testing either were dropped there and don’t want to be there (we need to get those people out), or we need to bring in a generation who understand direct response and get that we can actually influence what a person does when they land on our website.
We need to get people who care about CRO speaking up about it again. Share what you’re learning in really thoughtful forums. I’d love to see our CRO events go back to really thoughtful conversion strategy that expands beyond an experiment on the page into growth funnels we’re creating for people.
Rapid Fire Round
Quick Questions & Answers
Top 3 Apps: Sketchbook (for teaching), Instagram, Many Chat
Movie Title About You: Something with “awareness” in it – maybe “Most Aware” or “Unaware”
Change About CRO Industry: More women talking more loudly
Random Fact: Dogs and bees smell fear (from Jerry Maguire)
Guilty Pleasure TV: Any Real Housewives, especially Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
First Podcast Guest: April Dunford
Book Recommendations:
- Influence by Robert Cialdini
- Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
- 10x is Easier Than 2x
Superpower Desired: Invisibility – to eavesdrop on everybody and make the job easier
Tired of Explaining: Statistical significance
3-Year Goal: Buy a big plot of land and turn it into a flower farm
Upcoming Book: “Mine” – about finding messages that will make people buy through review mining and data mining
Final Message to Women in CRO
Keep going, keep showing up. I’ve kept showing up for almost 20 years now, 13 of them at Copy Hackers. Just keep doing it. Push through and make sure you are bringing other women and people in minority situations along with you.
If you really love it, stick with it, keep going, make your ideas heard. If nobody internally is listening to you, you don’t have to only stay internal. You can start sharing your thoughts as your own thought leadership on Instagram and places where you can grow and build your authority.
You’re allowed to use your voice – use it. Don’t be quashed. Don’t let people tell you that you can’t say that or do that. They’re going to tell you that, and sometimes they might be right, but that’s the risk you got to take to make that change.
