Summary
In this webinar recording, we bring in Kaia Van Zandt. Kaia is an author, teacher, novelist, yoga instructor and a great copywriter. She has worked with some of the biggest brands out there and for us, she will talk about the five biggest copywriting mistakes. You will learn how to write copy that converts so than you can actually implement highly resonant copy for your business.
Now, here are the five biggest mistakes in copywriting:
1. Using formal language
To make their writing feel bright and smart, people shift to formal language. It’s not a great choice because you don’t really connect with formal words. Using ‘hard sell’ languages, some even pray on people’s pain, fear, shame and insecurities. But that is not how to get customers for life. Instead you have to use ‘heart sell’ languages which is when it comes from a place of giving value, providing service and painting the promise picture of transformation. Formality is off-putting and you really don’t create a connection that way.
2. Talking about yourself too much
While running a business, it might be tempting to talk about you, your business and what’s happening. But your words and emails are read and converted more when you talk about your customers and what they love. To stand out, you want to keep the language in their garden. As a result, it will equate to sales as people will resonate with what you wrote.
3. Lacking value and being consistently salesy
Nobody wants to be sold all the time. You have to be a giver and provide free value at the ratio of at least three value emails to every sales email. Do it more if you can. If you try to sell every time, you will burn out your list and people will unsubscribe or never even open your emails. So, be of service and when you give in abundance, people will also be ready to buy from you.
4. Using negative sales trigger words
Negative sales trigger words are those like promo, buy now, sales, deals, purchase, money etc. When you use such words it becomes uninviting. People are known to avoid emails and links with such words in subject lines and email spam filters are triggered as well. You have to use words that sound more elegant and invitational. So as an example instead of ‘Buy Now’ use ‘Order Now’. Such invitational words prevent commitment phobia and more people come your way.
5. Improper webpage and email formatting
Sales pages, opt-in pages and emails that lack paragraph breaks feel more like reading a book. On the internet, people love to skim through text and you have to have white space breaks that allow people to scan through. Also be careful about the font and their sizes. When you include links, make sure that they work and aren’t placed too far down. Make use of your ‘above the fold’ space so people get the most without even scrolling.
Transcription
Jam: All right we’re live in Peaceful den which is all tingling goodness over here. I’m Jam at Peaceful Media and I have got my good friend and soul sister Kaia Van Zandt…Do you know, I just went to my 20th anniversary, high school reunion. That’s what they’re called and someone pulled me aside and said, “Dude, do you remember when we had that Mr. so and so, P.E. teacher who I guess was really militaristic and you just suddenly asked while he was explaining some sport like wrestling, you just suddenly raised your hand and asked, coach is it okay if my nipples are lactating?”
When I squeeze them, they lactate. I guess this stood out in this guy’s mind. He’s like, he traveled so far to take me back to this moment.
Kaia: You didn’t even remember it.
Jam: No, I don’t remember. Wow.
Kaia: The best thing about people we went to high school with, they remember things we don’t.
Jam: Yeah, okay so…that’s why I got really excited. I think my nipples started lactating and but Kaia I go pretty far back, not far back in the 20th reunion far back type of thing but she used to work a lot with us and our clients and she has worked with, if you’re not familiar with her already, she has worked with some of the biggest brands out there and thought leaders out there including some of my personal heroes like the Brendons and Michael Beckwith and Ocean Robbins and Joe Polish, Mary Morrissey who shared a client with…
Kaia: Yeah.
Jam: And so, when their CMO, Mat Boggs said, I said, “I’m looking for a really, really sharp copywriter”. He’s like, “Dude done.” And so Kaia comes from over a decade, 7 or 8 certifications. Kaia you’re probably 9 now of yoga. She has been on the cover of yoga journal and all the amazing; she is a world renowned yoga instructor or was in a past life and so when we hopped on this webcast, I was like, “Hey…” Actually Kaia, you can tee this up. You are the one that said, “Hey, I’m just like … just came from putting my sign out.” I had to go to school, I’m a little disoriented. I need to like sit down, get here.
Kaia: I sort of missed my yoga this morning. I’m going to do it after our webinar but I’ve got the fog thing.
Jam: And so I said, “Well, shoot isn’t this what most of our viewers get to; get on their, they hop on their laptop in the morning”. Maybe, they haven’t done their morning walk; they haven’t done the meditation, they haven’t done yoga. So, I was like, this is Peaceful Media. We need to start, get here activites.
Kaia: For anyone who feels like they’re feeling behind already, yeah this is, we’re going to do a little something to get us all here together which is a great idea from Jason. He wants to do alternate nostril breathing which is the Vulcan yoga technique; it’s weird. So…just know that some yoga is like really normal and we see it everywhere and some yoga is a little weird. So, we’re going to do some weird yoga today.
Jam: Weirder than my nipples lactating in gym class.
Kaia: We’ve gone off to a great start with weird in this webinar. So, Jason is going to be my demo student person and I’m going to guide you all through it so you can follow me and Jason together.
Jam: I promise there is some like instruction about your copywriting and being a better…
Kaia: Oh yeah, we’re going to do that.
Jam: And selling from the heart versus a hard sell and getting more clicks and conversions; all of that stuff, that’s coming but we want to all get here together.
Kaia: Big money making tips for you and your business on the way.
Jam: Yeah, okay, okay I’m ready.
Kaia: Three minutes of this. You guys can handle three minutes before we dive into the content. Okay so, raise your non dominant hand. For me, that’s my left hand. Non-dominant hand. You’re going to cross if you can your middle finger over your ring finger. Middle finger.
Jam: I got it.
Kaia: And you can help it a little bit. And then, you’re going to put your pointer finger on your third eye.
Jam: Wow cool.
Kaia: And bring your ring finger to the side of your nose and your thumb; told you it’s Vulcan yoga and then your thumb goes to the other side of your nose. Don’t close that nostril yet okay. So, since Jam and I here both on the ring finger to the right nostril. All we’re going to do is inhale through the left nostril. I’m not going to put a counter yet. Just inhale through your left nostril, seal your right nostril, hold it at the top and then reverse and put your thumb on the other nostril and release your right nostril and breathe out with the right side. You’re going to inhale through the same side, through the right side and then you seal the right side, pause, release the left and breathe out through the left.
This is a brain balancing technique. You’re going to inhale through the left, seal it off and exhale through the right. You will notice one nostril is more open than the other. By the way, that’s normal and the dominant changes every couple of hours. Inhale through the right, pause, exhale through the left. Close your eyes and just look up toward your third eye. Inhale through the left, pause, exhale through the right. Inhale through the right, pause, exhale through the left. One last time, inhale through the left, exhale through the right and you can lower your hand.
Jam: Wow. Wow.
Kaia: Hopefully you feel a little more here than you did 2 minutes ago.
Jam: That is good stuff Kaia.
Kaia: Nadi Shodhana.
Jam: Nadi Shodhana to you. I’ve been doing that wrong. Well I’ve been out there as there wrong but I’ve been doing that in the more crude fashion and getting half the result that I, neat.
Kaia: Yeah, the hand stuff is fun. When you get into the mood the yoga gets fun.
Jam: But also switching like that with the thumb and the Vulcan fingers that was neat Kaia. See there you go. One little trick, one little adjustment. This is a perfect Segway to copywriting right? Because one little adjustment and that technique made a significant difference. I increased my conversions of airflow and … by 150% just by doing a simple little one second manipulation of my technique. Kaia, thank you.
Kaia: You’re welcome. I hope everybody at home enjoyed that.
Jam: You feel more here?
Kaia: I do, yeah. That was good.
Jam: So, Kaia is beyond helping some of the world’s best position, write copy that converts and all of that. She is also and obviously being a novelist and really well rewarded, awarded writer in her own right. What is the book, something ashes.
Kaia: Yes my novel Written in the Ashes is being released by Harper Legend in a couple of months. So, that’s my fun. I love to write novels and write copy. It’s a, I got asked recently by a literary agent like if there’s similarities between marketing writing and fiction writing. And absolutely there is because nobody really wants to read a book where you don’t feel something. You want to get in and be like, “I’m rooting for this character. I want them to win.”
And when you really get into a story like that whether you’re watching a movie, it’s like Lord of the Rings or whether you’re reading a book, if you’re into reading novels, you want to identify with the character, root for them, feel like devastated if they lose, feel excited if they win and ultimately that’s what we do in copywriting is: Well, if you can get your prospective lead’s prospects to turn them into customers, they have to feel something. They have to feel something for you, for your product, for your service. They have to feel compelled inwardly to be like, “I want to connect. I want to buy from you. I want to be part of your network and your tribe”.
And that comes from feeling. That doesn’t come from intellect or somebody just telling them, “Oh, you’ve got to try this thing.” Like it ultimately comes from something inside that says, “I want in” and so that’s the beauty of words when you know how to use them to get people to buy from you, be your customer for life.
Jam: And I feel like Resonance is a big word over here at Peaceful Media. How do you create resonance with the six mediums of online marketing—video, design, photography, writing, social media etc. So, but when it comes to actually implementing and executing highly resonant copywriting Kaia and people need to tap into that emotion and people need to tell story and sort of give that heroes journey approach to their marketing copy or their website copy, people feel like, “Wow that’s a tall order. I’m not a writer. I don’t have experience with all this writing stuff. How do I get into that mode of communicating from that hard space and…”
Kaia: Yeah a lot of people are intimated by writing. I get a lot of students who come in the door who are like this is the scary thing for me and because you’re getting vulnerable, you’re sharing something from your world whether that’s about your product or your service or whatever you may be offering and some folks have been shut down back in school and told they can’t write and things like those. They feel like they need assistance but really in copywriting, the beauty of copywriting done well is writing just like you speak.
Just super casual, super connected, we’re chums here, we’re buddies, let’s talk and the mistake that I see like intimidated writers get into is they start speaking very formally because they want to come across as intelligent.
They’re like, “Oh I want to make sure my writing seems bright and smart.”
So, they suddenly shift into a formal language that isn’t really that, you don’t really want to connect with formal language. None of us really do. If you, I’m on so many email lists for non-profits, that’s what they do. They communicate in this very, very formal language about and then it’s always like, I want to know what’s going on with the dolphins and the labeling GMO and stuff like that but I have to slog through this very formal kind of disconnected language.
So, when we succeed as marketers, we succeed only because we’re making a connection. So, that resonance whether it’s the resonance of the images on a page or the words on the page which are really, really responsible for the resonance that our customers feel toward us. It’s about creating that connection with our customers.
So, I want to give you an example just so that we ground this in a really practical way. So, one of the mistakes that I see happen a lot with people who are just conveying and speaking about what they offer for the first time is, you might be so excited about your product or service because of its features. Like that is what lights you up at the end of the day and you’re so excited, “Oh my god, I can’t wait to share this thing with you because it’s so great and here’s why.”
And we often at times will skip over the promise of why you are offering this in the first place and it’s very high level and it’s the most important thing you can convey to your customers. So, here’s an example like: Jam, you probably have a phone. Don’t you have a phone?
Jam: Yeah. It…go ahead.
Kaia: I’m going to sell you a better phone.
Jam: Okay.
Kaia: Here’s me trying to sell Jason a better phone than the one he has. I don’t know which phone he has. But I’m going to try to sell him using features.
Okay, so this new phone is so amazing because the camera is like the most cutting edge camera you’ve ever seen and you’ve got instant access to all of your apps and you can even download more apps than on any other phone. It’s so cool.
Jam: Whoa. Wow.
Kaia: Those are a couple of examples of features. Jason already has a phone. I am selling him something he already has. In many cases that’s going to be true of your customers but I’m doing it in such a way that selling him features. Now if he is a real geek which some people are, he may go into that but here’s me knowing a little bit about Jason who is let’s say he is the avatar of my company. Now, I’m going to sell him on a promise. Okay?
So, I hear you’re a dad.
Jam: Yeah.
Kaia: And I have something for you that you are going to love and here is why because I know as a dad, you never want to miss that moment where your child is doing something so amazing and cute and maybe it’s for the first time so this phone lets you instantly never miss a moment because you can immediately that video. It’s faster than any other phone so you will never miss a moment of your daughter’s childhood.
Jam: Ah hah. So, I got an exclamation point right in my heart going, “Oh now I see myself using that product. I get the benefit of its…I’m getting better video and it’s easier for me to get that better video. Ah okay, cool.”
Kaia: And then I can get into features like it uploads faster, it downloads faster, it’s got better images like whatever but I sold him on the promise of ‘you will never miss a moment with your daughter.’ So that is the way that we want to come about like anything that we’re selling, whatever product, whatever service.
Whether you’re selling a like smart drink or you’re selling your online course or your program. Whether it’s 20 dollars or 2000 dollars, you are selling people on the promise of: “Here’s your life before you have this thing that I’m going to give you and now here is your life after when I give you the thing.”
And you’re like, “After is going to be way up here and here is why.”
And then people start to see the transformation and if it’s a transformation that they want, if they are your true avatar, they’re going to go, “Yeah that is what I want to be. I do want to meet the love of my life. I do want to succeed in business. I do want to be able to have an online platform that enables me to work from anywhere, anytime.” Like the dreams that we have that’s what we’re connecting to your avatar on.
Jam: Okay, Kaia. So maybe this blends in with your five biggest copywriting mistakes but I think one of the things for anyone who has gone into an intermediate level of copywriting, they start sounding; because they’re doing the whole promise thing or promise and benefit of those feature, they start sounding clichéd and just like everyone else in their particular niche or vertigo.
So, how can someone take and go like more detailed and more juicy and more different?
Kaia: You just used the word detailed which is great because although I don’t list this as one of the top 5 copywriting mistakes, it is one of the mistakes and I do get into it in my free training. People who use general language sounds salesy. “So, this is the best thing on the market. This is so incredible and amazing and great.”
And when we use really general hyperbole language, we sound like idiots. We sound salesy, we sound like, what does that actually mean. I don’t know. I encounter it all the time with copy where people sound like magicians. The amazing whatever. Here for you for just 24 hours until it goes away.
So, when we want to start picking, I use this example. The weight loss example. Such a common one, right? Everyone wants to lose weight. The idea of selling weight loss support or supplements whatever online is huge and often times people say, “This is the very best weight loss system on the market and this is endorsed by this person and this person and this person, whatever.”
But one of the best examples of specific what we call, this is ancient copywriting language but I still use it. The USP. The Unique Selling Point or the Unique Selling Proposition of this particular service. So, there’s a woman who wrote a book called Sins and her USP was, this is the only diet where you will lose weight while eating chocolate every day.
Jam: There you go.
Kaia: But that enables you to get specific, it’s fun, it’s different, you haven’t heard it before, it’s a little bit of a…she didn’t say ‘the most amazing diet’.
Jam: Or yeah the cliché of: How to lose weight in 30 days and never get it back. Like, oh there’s some creativity. There is something juicy. There’s a hook. There’s something I can, my mind will remember that detail about chocolate. I get excited about chocolate.
Kaia: Right and losing weight and chocolate, the two things I want at the same time.
Jam: Chocolate. I’m pouring tea.
Kaia: Yeah, pour some tea. That sounds good.
Jam: It’s got lemon in it. You’d like that.
Kaia: Yeah, tea is good. So, what I talk about in my, the terminology that I use to talk about the kind of copywriting that I do because it’s a little different than what’s out there and I just want to delineate for folks who are listening, who are learning about copywriting maybe on the newer side that the classic language out there. Now let me tell you, it works is called the hard sell. And the hard sell language in a lot of industries prays on people’s pain, fear, shame, biggest fears, stuff like: If you want to meet the love of your life and you’re reading some copy where somebody is trying to get you to buy a course and they say something like, “Let me tell you something. If you don’t get this part of your life together right now, the odds are you will never meet the love of your life and you will be alone for the rest of your life.”
That kind of hard sell, “Let me tell you that I believe in your fears. That your fears could come true if you don’t buy my thing.” And that sort or language, let me tell you something, it works. The avatars who are out there, who are like really scared are going to go, “Oh yeah, I do want to get that part of my life together. I don’t want to be without the love of my life. Oh that’s terrifiying.”
So, that person will become your customer. Will they become your customer for life? Probably not because every time they read your copy they’re going to feel nauseous. At some…
Jam: Voodoo doll them.
Kaia: Yeah, you just Voodoo doll them. At some really deep level they’re going to be like, “God every time I read this I feel like I need to take a shower.” And that feeling is motivational. Yeah exactly that feeling is motivational and people will buy from you a few times may be. But ultimately, they’re going to want to distance themselves from that pain. That’s what people kind of move to in the long run.
So, when I started my own copywriting techniques with a lot of these personal development leaders, they were like, “We don’t like copywriting. We don’t like sales. We don’t like…” And this was early 10 years ago in the space where there was this sense of like, “I don’t want to give up my spirituality or my integrity in order to sell my services” and I recognized, I need to sell my services. So, how do I do that?
So, I started using languages that I call the ‘Heart Sell’. The heart sell. So, the heart sell comes from the place of giving value, providing service, using benefit language, painting the promise of the picture of transformation that someone will get when they buy from you when they become your customer and then, ultimately the connection that they get to you and your tribe which is going to be more true for the personal development type of expert, online versus someone who is like selling a product of some kind. But when people …
Jam: Well obviously no. I mean, you’ve seen some products become tribal.
Kaia: Yeah, that’s true actually and a lot of people try selling it that way too like Pepsi. The Pepsi commercials are always like the tribe. You know? So, it’s like…
Jam: Yeah, your tribe is really a bunch of sheep. They do commercials that show all the people standing in line around the block for Apples.
Kaia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, the heart sell language is what I teach a lot of so that folks can feel an integrity with their message delivered in such a way that the customers can self-identify and go, “Oh my gosh, that’s for me. That’s what I want.” And then, those folks can get on board.
And the folks who don’t resonate (to use your word) will just kind of slip away and drift away and go, “Umm no, this isn’t something that I’m interested in.” And that’s great. You want them to disappear because you want the customers for life. You want the people who really go, “Yes, you are it for me.” And not somebody who is going to date you and then not want to marry you three months down the road after you’ve invested.
Jam: And you’re really speaking to the difference between quantity and quality because there is so many people talking about, “Increase your list size by X percent.” You know, “Oh, I’m getting 50 leads per minute over here.”
But then, you look up the quality of those people. How many people are opening up and engaging, replying, doing, clicking through to all of your goodies out there in the universe? And that’s going to come to the quality of those leads which the heart sell approach is designed for.
Kaia: When you have high quality leads, you would only need a thousand of them when you have a viable business.
Jam: Oh yeah. I’ve experienced of working with someone who had less than 2000 person list and they were doing easily six figures.
Kaia: And you’ve probably like me work with people who have like a four hundred thousand person list and they can’t get open. People aren’t interested. And they are like, “How do I make money off of all these people that I have who aren’t interested in what I have to sell.” And that’s a big problem.
Jam: I remember some people that are on Brendon’s stages right now are people who are sending traffic not just traffic but customers as affiliates and partners who are sending traffic and they were completely unknowns in the industry. It was like, who is this person who is next to the people who I know have millions of people on their list and yet they are number 2 or sometimes even number 1. Who the heck is this?
And they go and look them up and it’s someone with the five thousand person list, subscriber list who freaking go nuts whenever that person makes a recommendation and tells the story of why this promotional product or product in general has changed my life and they do, they’re vulnerable, they speak from the heart and all of a sudden, you see those people rising and rising. And suddenly like, Brendon has no choice. “Okay, clearly like you’re doing something right. Get on the stage.” I’ve seen that happen.
Kaia: That’s wonderful. And he means Brendon Burchard for anyone who is listening who isn’t sure who Brendon is. Brendon.com now, I know he has Brendon.com.
Jam: Right.
Kaia: So, he is the man. He is the one and only Brendon.
Jam: He has upgraded to … So, okay, so what are the biggest mistakes that people are making with their copy.
Kaia: Sure, we’ve touched on a few of them of the five. Number one is using formal language. So, let me give you an example of that.
“Hey everybody, I’m going to talk to you like you’re a football stadium because I know I’ve got ten thousand people on my list. So hey everyone, don’t you want to come see me when I go speak on stage at such and such and such and such a time. And I hope you guys are doing really well and…” that kind of like speaking to everybody or sending out an email that doesn’t have somebody’s first name, that says, “Dear Friends” … “Dear friends of my organization, let me tell you ….”
So, that kind of formality is off-putting because you don’t create a connection that way. You create connection by speaking to you. “Hey Jason. Jason, I’m so excited. I’ve got this special event. I really want you there. I think it’s going to be so much and here’s what we’re going to do and you’re going to learn this, this and this. Come, please come.”
I’m speaking straight to you and it’s an easy headspace to get into where you feel like, if you’re sending out an email to a bunch of people, you’re talking to a bunch of people but you always want to keep that one person in your mind that you’re talking to that you write the email to and I encourage my students to write like to a best friend, to your mom, to your avatar. Someone that you know that you can even put a picture of next to your computer and say, “Hey I’m writing to you Betty. Betty I know you’re up at 4 o’clock in the morning struggling. You’re concerned about paying your bills and you’ve got 3 kids and you really want to make it in this industry and you’ve taken out a second mortgage on your house to do it. Now I care about you and I want you to succeed and here’s the tools I’m going to give you today so you can succeed at your dream.”
That avatar feel spoken to, connected to, heard. And if you can achieve that with informal language and there is few tricks in copywriting we used to that. Like for example: Dear … not saying ‘Dear’. Dear is the one that is the formal way. So, you say, “Hi. Hi Kelly. Hey Jason. When you greet somebody in an email.” Also using contractions.
So, if you write without contractions they are instead of they’re, cannot instead of can’t. That also formalizes language and that’s language that you would use in contracts and people feel that kind of at an innate level where they go, “Oh that’s contractual language. That’s lawyer stuff.” Right. When you get real formal and people kind of, “it doesn’t feel so good.”
But when you start writing/typing the way that people speak in conversation and it turns into lingo and then I don’t mean like drifting into emojis and getting like really crazy with your writing unless that’s your list and you’re writing to teenagers (I don’t know). But just being casual. Just being casual, just being friendly.
Jam: I love emojis.
Kaia: I use them sometimes. I use a little happy face but not overdoing it.
Jam: Right, right. Okay so that’s one.
Kaia: For a lot of people that’s their brand and so again, it’s like know yourself, know your brand.
Jam: I mean, yeah. And how do you talk and if you’re reading it out loud and it doesn’t sound like the real you then you got something you can tweak there. I like…
Kaia: It should be the way you talk to your friend.
Jam: I like to really get…I like to get real casual.
Kaia: He likes to dance actually. We got to figure out a way to like what’s the emoji for dancing we can put in an email. Sales page. Now it’s time to dance everybody.
Jam: Okay, what’s the second mistake?
Kaia: Okay number 2. I sometimes face this as you talk about yourself too much. So it’s tempting in a business that you own and run to talk about you, what your business is doing, what’s happening now, the latest news, things that are kind of all about you and even if you’re telling some of your own personal stories, kind of overdoing it like, “Oh there is this other thing that happened to me this week.” Only in the last two emails you’ve sent, you’ve talked about things that happened to you and it’s important to remember customers matters. They’re the ones who need to get their needs met so whatever you’re sharing should land with them around a way that they can connect to the work.
So, here’s an example of how I did that in a recent email that I sent to my list. So, my list because of an affiliate who promoted for me has a lot of folks on it that are older than I am and I have to speak to them differently that particular bucket than I would speak to my peers or the folks who are younger than me.
So, I was watching this documentary on Winston Churchill. Just like lounging in bed a couple of weeks ago and I noticed what a freaking brilliant copywriter Winston Churchill is. He wrote all his own speeches, he has some of the most famous lines in all of history. Some of which are really spectacular like: “The truth is so precious, she must be accompanied everywhere by a bodyguard of lies.” The man was just such a turn of phrase.
So I said, “You know most of the folks of my list are a little older than me. I’m going to write them this thing about how Winston Churchill was a great copywriter” and that got like 55% open rate with all these clickthroughs and shares. People were like emailing. I got all these new opt-in for my list from that email because folks of that generation loved Winston Churchill. This was high value to them. I showed some amazing Churchill quotes that I particularly loved and shared if you are wanting to do stuff like this in your business, this is how you want to stand out and here is how you can do it.
Quick little simple email not about me, not about my business, not about anything aside from celebrating something wonderful in life that I thought they would appreciate. So, actually our friend Mat Boggs has a great line for that. He calls it: Keeping it in their garden. Mat’s the CMO of Mary Morrissey that Jam mentioned earlier. He says, “You want to keep the language in their garden.” Not in your garden.
So, if they are opening your email six o’clock in the morning with their coffee maybe they’re going through a divorce. And they’re like, “What am I going to read through in my email today?” Because we’re all scrolling through the inbox. You want to be that person who stands out who goes, “I get where you are right now in your bathrobe having had a terrible night sleep. Your dog just died. Whatever, you know and this is the email you’re going to want to open because you’re going to have a connection to me and I’m going to do something for you” versus folks who … and we call it getting salesy.
It’s one of the ways in which somebody gets salesy. Oh you know, they just talk about themselves all the time and salesy is something that turns us off.
Jam: Yeah, I mean that there’s so many parallels to that offline that you can use just to remember how do you behave when you’re going into a party or a networking function? Are you the one that’s constantly like “I, I, I, me, me, me. I didn’t this. I did that. I went to this school. I went to that school.” Read or write the Orioh Mountain Dreamer.
Start there and then get into this piece of, “How can I add value? How can I empathize with you and be in your shoes for a moment and understand how we can connect here? What’s in between our bodies that we can share energetically?”
Kaia: Yeah and that equates to sales because people will resonate and they will connect.
Jam: It equates to real connection. It’s more, it obviously transcends.
Kaia: It connects to building a tribe.
Jam: Yap, yap.
Kaia: Yah. Which is ultimately what we all want out of our business you know.
Jam: That’s when people go, when they come to your funeral, they go, “I always just felt heard and cared for and better walking away from my experience with Kaia” or me or whatever.
Kaia: Yeah, it’s what we all feel in our business. That kind of took me to a really somber ways over there.
Jam: Oh. I go over there every morning. I just experience my funeral and go, “What will that be like?” Anyways, another conversation. Let’s go back. Let’s go back.
Kaia: Back to the Vulcan yoga technique.
Jam: Was that ring finger over middle?
Kaia: I do ring finger over middle. Yeah, that’s how I do it. I think probably. Can do do it the other way? I don’t think you can do it the other way. I can’t put my ring finger over my middle. I put the middle finger over my ring.
Jam: It’s a lot easier if I put my middle finger over my ring finger.
Kaia: It’s middle finger over ring.
Jam: That’s way easier.
Kaia: Yeah, it’s middle finger over ring. I can’t even get my ring finger over my middle finger.
Jam: Okay trying to recharge. Let’s go to number 3. I’m jotting it down.
Kaia: Number 3 is really specifically to emails because so much of us have businesses where our emails are what’s bringing in the sales. So, that one is selling something in every email and that comes back to what you said earlier about providing value.
For example: The Churchill email that I sent out. That was a total give. At the bottom, I think I said, “Feel free to forward this email to anybody who think would like it.” And then I had the link to my website but I didn’t even sell who I am or what I’m doing. I got a bunch of opt-ins from that email but it wasn’t, I wasn’t selling anything.
You want to have a ratio of at least 3 value emails to every sales email. I like to even go more—4 to every 1. Some businesses will just try to sell something in every email. Whether they’re selling their own stuff or they’re selling and promoting for an affiliate or a partner and you will burn out your list. They will get tired of hearing from you. Nobody wants to be sold to all the time. We’ve all had that experience of you know either an over enthusiastic friend or going to a seminar where we just feel like, “I have to sit here through how many sales pitches. Oh my god, really?”
We’re there to take notes for ourselves and our business and our lives and if we just feel like we’re sitting through one endless sales pitch, we shut off, we want to go out and have a martini or whatever you want to do when you want to escape that.
Jam: Hug trees.
Kaia: So yeah, selling something all the time can actually damage your business. Now, a lot of people get scared and they feel like, “Well, I got to sell something all the time because I’ve got to make money at this. I don’t want to go back to my day job.”
So, there’s this sense of panic around it and you’ve got to unplug that and be like, “I’m here to provide value. I’m here to give my gifts. I’m here to be of service. And it’s totally cool if not everybody wants to buy from me. I’m going to be the giving tree. I’m just going to keep giving abundance and creating abundance and offering abundance and then there will be a few people who want to come in and buy from me.
Fantastic. And that will stay in my life.” But it’s staying away from the fear factor in the copy.
Jam: There is two books now that are on the recommendation table. Kaia’s recommendation, oh actually, both of our tables. So, you’re going to go get the invitation from Oriah Mountain Dreamer and then you’re going to go The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Okay.
And we could go on a extreme tangent here but I’m going to…just humor me for a second audience. Is this why you see, do you think this has something to do with why you see some online teachers or thought leaders do one big marketing, sales push per year or maybe two. But one big one that sustains revenue across the entire years’ worth of cash flow instead of doing promotion every month or promotion every week.
Kaia: Depends on the business. Depends on their business model. I mean I’ve seen certainly like Ocean Robbins is a good example where he has the Food Revolution Summit and it’s every May (often end of April into May) and once a year he brings in, they had over a million hours listened to the last Food Revolution Summit and reaches just hundreds of thousands of people, it’s incredible.
And the rest of the year, he is sending out emails about like, “Hey the dark act is about to pass and we’re going to lose GMO labeling so please call your senator” for people who really care about that like me. So, this is my kitty. He wants to say hi for a minute.
Jam: Is that where fat cat copywriting came from?
Kaia: Yeah I have several kitties. This isn’t one of the fat ones but this is cat. Say hi. Hi.
Jam: This is the best webinar ever.
Kaia: My copywriting buddies.
Jam: Mistake number four.
Kaia: Yeah.
Jam: Not having enough contact with your cats when writing copy.
Kaia: Not writing, not putting enough photos of your kitties online. Of course, I’ve named my course Fat Cat Copy so you know. I’ve three cats here. We love them. So number four is very specific tactic in copywriting that we call avoiding the abuse negatives sales trigger words. So, negative sales trigger words will repel people from buying from you and I’ve got a list of them in my course but here is some examples.
If you have an order button where you say, “Buy Now”. The word Buy is a negative sales trigger word. People don’t like it. It sounds cheap. So, when you say buy something, people look at that word and they go, “Well, I just bought something this morning for a couple of hundred bucks. I don’t know if I need to spend more money now.” It prompts them to think of all the things that they bought recently and the money they want to save and it just puts them into that place.
Another one is Promo. You never want to tell people that you’re giving them a promo and sometimes it shows up, you will use that word in the sub-url, the sub-domain. Subdomain, is that right?
Jam: Oh right. Yeah. Got it.
Kaia: It will say promo like your website dub-dub-dub dot com forward slash promo and somebody going to that site is going to see that and go, “Yuck, I don’t want to be promoted to.” And it gives that kind of yucky feeling.
Yet another one of those words is sales or sale. This is a sale. Get your deal. Deals is another one where if you put that in the subject line of an email depending on what year it is, occasionally that one gets picked up by spam filters also. So yeah, these are words that also spam filters look for. Money.
Jam: Sale, deal, money, buy, purchase. Sometimes purchase is on there so there is more elegant ways of speaking about it that are invitational. So, you might want to call your promo, an opportunity. Here is this opportunity to work with me.
Kaia: You might want to, if it’s a larger ticket item, you might want to tell people this investment with me is 997 dollars because that way they feel like, “Oh, I’m investing in myself, in my business and this opportunity to learn” rather than “I’m buying something”. If you have a button on your sales page that says buy now, you might want to take that word ‘buy’ out and replace it with the word ‘order’, Order Now.
And it’s also a less, we talks sometimes in copywriting about commitment phobia. People have commitment phobia. There’s a lot of abandoned shopping carts in the world. So, if you’re ordering something, it doesn’t feel as big of a commitment as buying it. Oh I’m buying it, that means I’m committing to this one thing and I can’t buy something else that I might also want. There is this like commitment phobic thing that happens to folks. Whereas I’m ordering it. Well maybe I could cancel my order if I needed to sometime. So, you end up bringing more people in the door that way.
Jam: And if anyone wants to know what works from a data standpoint, just go to Amazon and start ordering some stuff and you will notice what they have tested over 10 years to work best.
Kaia: Yeah.
Jam: So you know, I mean, order now is what they use when you’re ready to complete your order.
Kaia: There you go.
Jam: So, they’ve tried everything a thousand different ways. It’s currently working best today so, good model there. Okay number five.
Kaia: Number five.
Jam: Don’t be evil.
Kaia: Don’t be evil. Yeah please don’t be evil. And so, number five is what I call improper webpage and email formatting. Sounds really small but it actually can turn out to be really big. For example: Have you ever, Jam, received an email that had no paragraph breaks and it was just a whole bunch of words? What do you do when you get those?
Jam: Those are so fun to read.
Kaia: He says in his sinister way.
Jam: I’m just settling down for a night of little War and Peace on my screen.
Kaia: Yeah, War and Peace is great. Don’t be war and peace, that’s step number five. Don’t be war and peace. So yeah, the lack of whitespace is very, very common. Sales pages, emails, opt-in pages. We want to invite people to read because on the internet it’s not like reading a book. If you’ve decided to open up a book and read a book, you are committed to reading whatever it is you want to get out of that book.
Now, whether you are a skimmer or you’re a hardcode reader like I am where you read every word. There’s a commitment involved. You’d opened a book. We know what a book means. But if you are online, you’re a click away from Facebook, you’re a click away from Twitter, you don’t have to commit to anything.
Jam: And things are like popping in from the left and the right and the top.
Kaia: One click away from other places that are more fun to be.
Jam: Not to mention, this is in your pocket going, “Touch me, touch me. Talk to me. I want to lick you.”
Kaia: My point isn’t …
Jam: Oh it’s a great apple.
Kaia: I need a new, I need a new phone.
Jam: Mine is a scratch and sniff and lick.
Kaia: So like here’s another example: The font is too small. Maybe your white space is good but your font is so small that anyone over the age of 40 like, “I can’t read this.”
Jam: I love that demonstration.
Kaia: Then there is also like your links don’t work or they’re just so far down the (there you go). They’re so far down the page that nobody ever finds them. So like, you know, you resend out an email and it’s War and Peace with a link at the very bottom. How many people actually get to the very bottom?
The average that I’ve heard. May be the statistic is something that shifted in the recent year because I heard it about a year ago is that the average number of people who come to your webpage that will scroll is about 17%. So, that is your email. That is your webpage. That is, how are you going to get people to scroll and it needs to be an invitation.
So that takes me to the last bit which is your above the fold. Some people don’t know that term. Above the fold means (we got it from newspapers) the headlines above the fold are the most important on the page one of the newspaper because then you flip the newspaper over. That’s the fold, right? And on page one.
So, on your website, the above the fold is what they come to without ever having to scroll and I’m had some students send me links saying, “Hey, take a look at my new website, I’m so excited or my new sales page, I’m so excited.”
And there’s like just a picture of them with their name and that’s it above the fold and then they have to keep scrolling down to like read more about whatever it is they’re selling and that is just a total waste of space. If you look at something like Amazon or Zappos or some of these websites, what you will see is every single thing they can possibly pack into the above the fold is there. Menus and sub-menus and your recommendations. Everything is that tiny little square because they know you’re not going to scroll and that’s what they have found is going to convert the best. So they give you all these options.
So you want to use your above the fold real estate really, really well. Often times these days a video goes in the above the fold real estate with an order button or a really nice headline. If it’s an opt-in page, it’s often a very beautiful photograph with a call-to-action and the fields to enter your name and email in order to subscribe to whatever it is that you want there.
Jam: Right. Ideally, that’s a, you’re using that approach over on your master class opt-in. This is a great time to just recommend, I would recommend going and checking out Kaia’s free master class, copywriting master class. Kaia what’s the sub-headline on that one?
Kaia: I knew you were going to ask me that and then I was like, “I will remember it.”
Jam: I have it up but I have some of my other tabs.
Kaia: Oh you do. Okay so, hang on. We will see who finds it first. It’s hilarious. I was like, “Oh yeah, I don’t even know my own…”
Jam: Professional copywriting secrets for clicks, conversions and customers for life. And I have this great screenshot. Right now, I’m watching it right now.
Kaia: You know what it is? It’s fatcatcopy.com/masterclassgift. So www.fatcatcopy.com/masterclassgift (all one word).
Jam: Oh that’s different than what I’m looking at. Gosh.
Kaia: It is?
Jam: I feel like I’m missing out but I’m sure it’s got the same video of you teaching some of the same thing we talked about today, yeah?
Kaia: Oh yeah, that’s the opt-in to the masterclass and it’s free.
Jam: Got it. Got it, got it. Okay I’m another site watching the video and Kaia is so … just if you want to watch someone teach copywriting and teach it really well and teach it from a grounded space and a space that didn’t cost Kaia a hundred grand to go and shoot.
Kaia: Not it’s me. Actually, I’m sitting right where I’m sitting right now.
Jam: It is. Yeah right. I mean this is…so there is a lot of takeaway from this. Whether or not you’re interested in being a better copywriter or communicating with your audience better, watch it from a learning standpoint of, “Oh okay, interesting. I guess, I don’t have to go drop 10K on all this … out there in order to get my message out there effectively.”
Kaia: Yeah well, take the free training, please because it’s out there, I create it for you. There is a free masterclass and then there is three high value videos that come after the master class and you just absorb it all and go use it in your business because copywriters are one of the most expensive people to hire for your business. So, I have been on some retainers for 60 grand a year as a copywriter. Some copywriters who are senior copywriters like me make sever hundred dollars an hour. If you’re going to hire a junior copywriter, you may not even get your needs met paying something like between 20 and 50 dollars an hour. So, that’s a lot of money to spend in your business on somebody who isn’t you.
They don’t know your voice. They don’t know your message. So the very, very best investment you could make in your business is to decide I’m going to write all my own copy. Guess what? Brendon Burchard writes all his own copy. Jeff Walker writes all his own copy. A lot of these big thought leaders, Eben Pagan, I mean, I could go on and on but all the thought leaders in this space, they write their own copy because they know their copy is going to resonate with their audience, their voice in a way that somebody else isn’t going to. So that’s my best recommendation for you, for money saver in your business.
Jam: I cannot tell…I could not recommend/endorse what Kaia is doing anymore because it is the secret magic lever in your business, copywriting is. That so many people overlook. When you look at the volume of content and copywriting that you’re going to produce as a thought leader or expert, just building your personal name brand, it is incredibly large. It is probably the number one thing you will be doing in your business, is getting the word out via email, via pages, registration pages, sales pages, opt-in pages.
I mean, that is as a digital marketer you are always writing copy and if it takes you 20 hours to produce what a master copywriter like Kaia would produce in an hour, then you got some work to do because you’re wasting your time. Well, not wasting your time, you’re just, you’re taking longer than it needs to. You need to become more efficient and proficient.
Kaia: Yeah and big on shortcut. I definitely share a lot of shortcuts like I did in this call today to like…folks don’t realize that your copy will kill or create your business. It is that powerful. I’ve had students come to me with like an opt-in page that looks gorgeous, why is it only converting at 5%? They don’t understand, they haven’t conveyed the value. They haven’t shared the benefits.
The second they bring the copywriting language and skillset into play with that hard sell, 55% conversion rate. Look at that. Same opt-in page, different words and we all fall into this trap of thinking, “Oh I should try a different image. I should try a different software, platform. I should try …” You know and we don’t realize it’s because the message, the words are really what’s selling or not selling or failing to sell.
Jam: Sadly that’s very, very true. Sadly. And copywriting, at least, from a master marketing copywriting standpoint goes well beyond the words that you choose. It goes well beyond these mistakes actually. It goes into the format and a sequencing of your message, your flow so that people go through a proper journey to the point where they’re willing to invest a thousand, two thousand, three thousand and beyond with you.
You take a very different approach than, “Here’s the title of my event. Get your ticket right here 997”. Okay. Wow, okay. I got no value from this. So all that needs to be communicated in such a flow that someone goes, “Oh wow that’s a deal. I can’t believe that that’s not 5K.”
Kaia: You just brought out a really great point actually because we have a phrase in this industry that a confused customer won’t buy and often times the copy is what’s creating the confusion. So if you are finding, “I’m not getting the results I want. I feel like I have explained this so well.”
Go show your work to somebody else. Go show it to a fresh pair of eyes. Step back from it and say like, “What is…is there anything here that’s confusing?” For example: I went to a sales page a couple of days ago for a competitor on a product that I’m working on selling right now and the page was gorgeous, the copy was great, the benefits were there, it was really, really well done and then we get to the order section and it says, “Buy Now”. And there is just button. I don’t even know what I’m buying. I have no idea. They haven’t even told me like…
Jam: Who knows…work or deliverables or what you get kind of section.
Kaia: No. Nothing. No discount, no deal, not even like a, the itemized list of like, “Here are the things” that would actually be in your shopping if you push this button. Like oops. You know so like how many people are reading through that whole page and going, “I’m sold. Wait, but what I am I buying?” They don’t even know.
Jam: Yeah.
Kaia: There’s nowhere they’d find out. So little mistakes like that turn out to be really big mistakes.
Jam: And so like, my takeaway from this is, well first of all, five mistakes:
- Being too formal
- Being too me, me me
- Being too consistently salesy, salesy, salesy, lacking value
- Being too negative sales trigger oriented (promo/buy now), and
- Forgetting or not knowing any better about email formatting and also your page formatting.
But also one of my takeaways was, is that when you think about these legends of internet marketing who have used the web to build massive thought leader platforms and massive business empires in the making, the Brendons, the Joe Polish, … Brendon, Mary Morrissey and Evan Pagans; these people studied their asses off. They spent probably hundreds of thousands, ten thousands; tons of money on mastering copywriting.
You need to go and check out Kaia’s free opportunity to get in this course because you will save yourself a lot of time. And it’s really cool to work with someone who has been behind the scenes of a lot of these major, major brands because you get all the secret ninja. I like talking to Kaia because she is all, “I got some secret ninja stuffs and things that are working over here.”
You’re like, “Tell me. Okay tell me about it.”
So, go cut your path through the woods in doing thousands and thousands of dollars of courses and books and events and so far about copywriting.
Kaia: Yeah.
Jam: That’s not plugged.
Kaia: Oh you are so sweet. I thank you so much for having me on the call. I hope that, that was helpful to you who are listening. Thanks for being here with us. Practice your nadi shodhana.
Jam: In so many ways. In so many ways Kaia, we’re blessed to have you on the planet. I can’t wait for your book to come out. I want a copy. What’s it called again? Written in ashes.
Kaia: Yeah, Written in the Ashes is about the events that led up to the burning of the great library of Alexandria, Egypt. So, it’s my historical fiction novel that I spent years researching and got picked up by Harper Legend and so it’s going to be out on e-book in a couple of months.
Jam: Okay so we will put a link to Kaia’s master class gift underneath this and then we will also, as the book comes out, and it’s available on e-book or whatever we will send you a link to that as well underneath this video.
Kaia: Thanks yeah, absolutely. And if anyone has any follow-up questions, you know you want to write Jam, you want to bring me back for just a Q&A or answer some of your questions, I love working with people directly and if that’s something that would be meaningful to folks, I would be happy to do that so that I can be available as a resource for you.
Jam: Use the comments below so that we can communicate with you and have another Q&A. That would be so fun. I love…feeling better, being better and knowing better in every single way Kaia.
Kaia: Oh thank you. Thank you so much. This was fun.
Jam: Alright. Alright, we’ll buzz. We will talk to you soon. Peace.
