A surprising number of business owners view copy as a cure-all. They believe sales copy can fix whatever problems they may have in their business.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but copy is not a cure-all. It will not make up for a bad product, a bad offer, or a bad list.
Let’s look at a real-life example.
A client came to me with a problem: her site wasn’t converting as well as she wanted. I could see a few big problems right away, and told her so.
She decided to hire me to rewrite the copy on her primary landing page. So I did. The copy went live, and I thought it was a significant improvement over the old version.
A couple weeks after the new copy had been put up, my client and I exchanged a few emails (edited for clarity).
<–Start Conversation –>
CLIENT:
We put up the copy you gave me and everything went lower than it was… so we added photos and still nothing… I liked what you wrote, but I am sad that nothing has gone forward… will it take a month or so?
RYAN:
What was your conversion rate before? What is it currently?
I can help, but need to know some numbers.
Has traffic tapered off or has it been steady?
CLIENT:
We have had only 112 visits and 2 orders from the time the new info went up. Before that I had at least 5 orders in 2 weeks… I thought that was very bad, that’s why I called you. :)
My web guy said it was because I lowered my daily money to AdWords. I was at $30.00 a day and I lowered it to $10.00 a day. I just couldn’t afford the monthly bill.
This is all so beyond me… and I thought I would be rich and famous long before this! :)
RYAN:
Hmmm… it’s hard to compare results. For instance, 5 orders out of how many visitors?
It may be that the new page is converting better. Two orders out of 112 visits is 1.79% conversion rate. Not great, but certainly not bad.
If we don’t know how many visitors it took to get five sales, then we don’t really have any basis for comparison.
It sounds like at the moment you have more of a traffic problem than a conversion problem. Although with a split-test, we may be able to improve the conversion rate a bit.
Ultimately, it’s not about how many sales you get… it’s about how many sales you can get at a profit.
It does you no good to get five sales worth $100 if it costs you $300 in advertising.
But if you can get two sales worth $30, and only spend $5 in advertising, that’s much better.
<–End Conversation –>
As you can see from our email exchange, my client slashed her daily AdWords budget from $30 to $10, which probably reduced her traffic by at least 66%. Assuming no change in conversion rate, this would automatically reduce the number of sales by 66% as well.
But with no “before” numbers available, it’s hard to say if there was an improvement or not. Based on the information she provided, the numbers seem to indicate the conversion rate actually went up.
The bottom line is this: my client expected a miracle. She got good copy instead.
Copy is a multiplier.
It is important to be realistic about what sales copy can and can’t do.
If you have a good source of quality traffic, a solid product, and a reasonable offer, then good sales copy can multiply the sales you get. Depending on your volume, an extra half point tacked onto your conversion rate could mean thousands of extra dollars a month.
But let’s look at the flip side. If you have only an okay source of mediocre traffic, an average product, and a weak offer, then good sales copy will not rescue the project. The copy might get you a few extra sales, but you won’t experience the breakthrough results you’re looking for.
There are too many other variables negatively affecting the project–variables that are, for the most part, completely outside the expertise of your average copywriter.
What is copy worth?
It all depends on where your business is. Copy isn’t worth much to a person who has no plan, no product, no marketing savvy. But copy that converts is worth a fortune to a business owner who has the other critical pieces in place: traffic, product, offer.
(Here I’m speaking of what the copy can actually do in terms of real results. It is entirely possible for a person without any business sense to overvalue copy. And it is possible for a person with a well-run business to undervalue copy as well.)
All is to say, copy is worth the most when all the variables are working together in harmony. Copy is worth less when those same variables are missing or out of synch with each other. Which, really, is just another way of reiterating my main point: copy is not a cure-all.
-Ryan M. Healy
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Ryan, wow did I really need to hear this!
What a refreshing reminder. I’m going to start saying that to clients, “copy is not a cure-all. Here’s what it can do in the right circumstances.”
This was so perfect on this day,
Thanks again!
Stacie R. Cole
Humble Web Content Writer, SEO :-)
http://www.srcole.com
Stacie – Thanks for such positive feedback! It’s comments like yours that keep me going. Glad I could be of service to you.
What a breath of fresh air in a world full of clients shouting out “solve all our problems” and a large number of undertrained copywriters wishfully responding “I can! I can!”
Ryan!
I’m shocked you’re admitting that copy is not a cure all. That’s just crazy talk… Won’t this hurt your rep as a copywriter?
==> End of humorous rant <==
You have written another thought provoking post.
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the client’s viewpoint. A poorly planned product is not selling well, and they are grasping at straws. They believe that copy will save the sinking ship, and come to us to hoping we can bail them out. Instead of jumping in to help, we should step back and look at the big picture.
This reminds me of Gary Halbert’s “Starving Crowd” letter. In it he says he likes to ask copywriting students this question: “If you and I both owned a hamburger stand and we were both in a contest to see who could sell the most hamburgers, what advantages would you most like to have on your side to help you win?”
The students will usually answer superior ingredients, best location, lowest prices…
And Gary answers the only advantage he wants is…
A Starving Crowd!
So, here is one of the greatest copywriters of all time admitting that the list is the #1 factor for creating sales… Not copy, not the offer or even the product.
Gary went on to say you have to find the market before you create the product.
However, most people will spend a huge amount of time and energy creating a product. Then they will turn around and try to find customers. I’d have to say is the one thing that has surprised me the most about copywrting for clients.
Hey Ryan,
While I can see why copywriters get annoyed by this sort of thing, it doesn’t help that there are so many copywriters out there pounding their chests about how “their copy” brought in a gazillion dollars in 30 seconds or whatever.
I mean, think about it from a client’s point of view:
He or she is looking at different copywriters’ websites and sees a bunch of sites with testimonials and stories about how these copywriters are basically turning water into wine for their clients. (Most of these stories tend to leave out the list size/dynamics, the offer, the built-in credibility of the product owner/creator, the masterful product launch, etc — all of which are FAR more important than the words).
If this is what the clients are mainly seeing, I can kind of understand why they think copy is the end-all, be-all.
Especially if the client’s aren’t really marketers to begin with.
Ben
good point.
But it’s not hard to see why when you look at how copywriting is being touted as being the be-all, end-all solution to your marketing problems. ESPECIALLY in the IM/biz opp niche.
This may be the very thing that pushes people to hire a copywriter in the first place (believing that it will be the miracle cure).
I know I was guilty of this in the past.
Great post Ryan!
In our marketing as copywriters, clients seem to look for the “Joe made me $14,000 in 48 hours” so they can justify something in their minds that as copywriters, we can be their “magic pill.”
It is on us as professionals to educate the clients that is not the case…and there are a ton of other ways we can add value to their business…for the most part that process takes time.
Just my 2 cents.
Joseph Ratliff
Really interesting stuff Ryan.
I often have a similar, yet opposite problem.
We do a lot of traffic-gen work (on top of copywriting) – and many clients think more visitors is the solution to all their woes (if they make one sale with a hundred people visiting their web-site, they can make two sales if two hundred people visit).
In any niche, there’s a limit to how many targeted leads you can get – and sooner or later improving conversion rates is the most profitable action you can take for a client.
Joseph – you raise a good point – some of it we bring upon ourselves in our own marketing ;)
Brent
Ryan,
Brilliant post, dude. It’s something I’ve been saying for a long time, yet so often it falls on deaf ears.
Most clients come to me wanting some kind of literary-panacea to their woes, a sales-letter to fix their crap business. But their real problem is they don’t have the right audience, and their actual offer is about as inviting and compelling as a cow-chip sandwich.
Of course, none of this is helped by the less-than-honest copywriters who peddle their “I can teach you to write hypnotic copy to COMPEL people to buy from you” books, programmes, and seminars, is it?
Anyway, good show.
– Jon
@Jon – Nice to see you here. Thanks for the compliment.
You are correct: the notion that copy can force people to do things they don’t want to do is false… even though a lot of people believe the opposite.