Overcoming Obstacles
Build a successful strategy to creating the best methods that work. You will not know they work until they are tested. Try a few options per product you sell and see if the eyeballs viewing your site and pulling the trigger to purchase (or not).
This month’s challenge – test out new sales copy on a product of your choice.
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Jim Edwards: Hey guys, Jim Edwards here and welcome back to another episode of the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Podcast with Jim Edwards and my cohost, Mr. Stew Smith.
Stew Smith: Hey, Hey!
Jim Edwards: I’m going to point this way, and maybe I’m pointing at you finally. I’ll have to check sometime.
Stew Smith: Looks correct.
Jim Edwards: So, you guys may remember in the last episode we were talking about mindset and some of the internal struggles you might deal with when it comes to sales copy and some ways to get around those.
So, in this episode, we want to talk about some of the external things that may want to try to discourage you from what you are trying to do with sales copy and content.
And I will tell you the number one thing that you are going to run into is that people won’t like your copy.
Some people, especially when you’re first getting started, you’re going to say,
“Aw man, I need somebody to take a look at this for me. I need a proofread.”
And you’ll give it to somebody on this.
“That sounds awful salesy. I don’t know if I would say it that way.”
Stew Smith: Ha ha ha!
Jim Edwards: And, and you want to choke them and say, “Well, that’s fine. Chuckles. You don’t have to say it that way. I’m saying it this way.”
And I’m just letting you know.
You will get criticism from people you know, people you don’t know.
People love to talk shit on Facebook.
I mean, I know it’s never happened to you only to me, but there are people that will talk smack on social media.
You will run an ad, and somebody will talk smack about your landing page right there on your ad on Facebook.
And you’ll have like no comments, nothing. And then some ass hat will come along and say, “They’re just trying to sell you something.”
Stew Smith: Yeah, it’s an ad.
Jim Edwards: No shit! Dumb ass. Yeah. We’re trying to sell something. Yup. Exactly. You pegged it. Wow. You win the award.
Stew Smith: That’s why Facebook is free.
Jim Edwards: Yeah, exactly.
Stew Smith: Because they charge for ads.
Jim Edwards: “Can you tell us, Mr. Zuckerberg, how you are able to offer all this for free?”
“Uh, senator? We sell advertising.”
“Oh.”
Genius.
Stew Smith: That was a bad question.
Jim Edwards: People, people will criticize you. You will get criticism from all corners.
I guess I have skin like a leatherback turtle or something now, cause it just doesn’t bother me.
In fact, when, when people jump me, “I said, okay, cool. There they’re paying attention.”
In fact, I’ll tell you a quick story.
I had been writing for the newspaper for about two years, so this was around the year 2000, and I was at a Christmas party and the deputy editor, my boss, I never really ever had any contact with the editor of the paper.
The deputy editor was there, and he said, “Um, hey man. I got to complain about an article you wrote.” And I immediately, my heart just sank. My, just, just that whole time I was like, Oh crap! I’m gonna lose my, they’re not even paying for this article, but I’m going to lose my newspaper article.
I said, “I’m sorry.”
He said, “I’m not.”
I’m like, “What?”
And this is, I mean, I had already stopped drinking. So it wasn’t even like, “Excuse me?”
It was, “What are you talking about?”
He said, “Nah, I don’t care if they’re giving you attaboys or they’re complaining, it means they’re reading. All I care about is that they’re reading.”
Stew Smith: Yeah, you know what? Eyeballs on your stuff.
Jim Edwards: And you know, that was a life-changing moment there for me when I realized that some people… 10% on one side or fanboys 10% on the other side are just bitter, know-it-alls.
And that’s great.
Stew Smith: Yep.
Jim Edwards: So the key is to carve it out in the middle too. So understand that people are going to criticize you.
I mean, Stew, you’re like the original Badass suburban dad.
I mean, you’re now you’re a suburban dad and all mild-mannered and what-not, but as a navy seal and someone who’s in shape and someone, I definitely would never mess with.
People don’t ever mess with you? They never criticize your workouts or your video, your articles, right?
Stew Smith: No, I mean, they do all the time. You know, the worst are like either 14 years old competitive swimmers, or they’re 50 years old and…
Jim Edwards: And that’s not the way we did it when I was in the Kentucky National Offense, Kentucky National Guards…
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: “When I was dodging the draft back before ‘Naam. Um, this isn’t how we did it.”
Stew Smith: So yeah, you get plenty of comments.
Sometimes I like messing with them back, but sometimes I was just, I just delete it and don’t even worry about it.
Jim Edwards: It’s not worth it. I mean, have you ever had those times where were you…
Somebody says something, and it just rankles the shit out of you, and then you go in, and you type a response in like
“Nah, can’t say that.”
Then you try and go do something else, and you come back to the period, you type another response. And
“Nah, I can’t do that.”
I finally, I mean…
Does that ever happen to you?
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: And it sucks, but you just, you’re better off not responding.
Stew Smith: Yes. Just ignore it unless you know, yeah.
Jim Edwards: Or unless you know where they live in, you can go TP their house.
Stew Smith: Hahahaha!
Jim Edwards: So here’s another thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to have ads rejected. That’s another thing.
You’re going to spend time on ads, or you’re going to have this really cool piece of content that you want to boost because everybody’s saying, telling you, “Wow, this is really cool!”
And you’re getting the kind of reaction that you want, and then you go to boost it, or you try and run an ad, and little ZuckerTurd is going to tell you,
“Oh, you can’t run this because it violates our terms of service.”
“What?!”
And no matter what you do, they won’t let you run that particular ad, and you’re going to get pissed.
Well, there’s nothing you can do. It just happens.
Stew Smith: Yeah. I had something happen to me the other day. It was a, you know, have a whole series on fitness over 40, right?
And because I had that in some of the description of it, it was…
Age discrimination.
Jim Edwards: Yes! Yes!
Stew Smith: Age Discrimination. And then I had, I think I have a gun, you know, guy holding a gun on one cause it’s tactical fitness over 40.
Yeah. And they were like, yeah, you can’t have guns in your pictures either.
Jim Edwards: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s why I stopped posting, um, shooting videos from my shooting range ’cause I didn’t want to lose my Facebook account.
But that’s something else you’re going to learn is that some stuff like questions, if you ask…
Questions are great hooks. But if you try and use a question in an ad, you’re running a 50/50 that they’ll tell you,
“You can’t do it because…”
They’re saying that because questions are so awesome at causing people to identify themselves and say,
“Okay, yes, this is me.”
That apparently…
Because of collusion with the Russians or election interference, apparently now you can’t ask questions.
Or you can, but they’ve got all these rules.
It’s basically whatever they want to do,
Stew Smith: Right.
Jim Edwards: That’s what you need to understand. So you can’t get pissed off and give up because ZuckerTurd and his minions are telling you you can’t do something.
There’s tons of other ways to get traffic.
There’s Google Adwords…
There’s direct buys from websites…
There’s affiliate stuff…
There’s endorsed mailings…
There’s all kinds of stuff you can do.
So, but just understand that, that your ads are going to get rejected every once in a while or maybe pretty frequently if you try and pull stuff like I do.
Another thing that’s going to happen that you can’t control sometimes as your stuff won’t sell.
You will bust your butt.
You will create your video sales letter…
You will create your regular sales letter…
You’ll do all this stuff…
And you’re all pumped up and you know…
This is the ad man!
This is the sales letter! It’s going to put me over the top.
This is the thing that’s going to let me pay my fricken house off!
And then it’s crickets.
Not even crickets! The crickets are even ignoring your ass.
You know, what’s new?
We’re going to have to get one of those parental advisory…
I have always wanted to have a parental advisory sticker on my whatever.
And now because I’m using explicit language, I finally get to have a parental advisory thing on a podcast.
Stew Smith: PG?
Jim Edwards: No, no parental advisory. Like I am a gangster rapper where it is just filth, filth, filth, filth, filth.
Stew Smith: Yes. That’s what it, that’s what it sounds like.
Jim Edwards: I am OG. So your stuff’s just not going to sell. Don’t be a little baby about it. Just know that, hey, it wasn’t…
Something was wrong with the hook.
Something was wrong with the way you explained the offer.
Something was wrong with your story.
Something just did not jive
Stew Smith: Could have been timing too, you know, sometimes people aren’t buying can be your all right after Christmas, people don’t buy stuff…
Jim Edwards: but we saw a lot of stuff around Christmas too, so it just depends.
Stew Smith: After Christmas, January, people are paying off bills.
Jim Edwards: That’s true.
Stew Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jim Edwards: But I mean that’s, that’s just anyway… Sometimes you’re stuff’s not going to sell. Now here’s the other thing is that you have to test.
You have to test your copy.
You have to test your headlines.
You have to test, test, test, test, test because you are never…
Maybe once every 10 years you will come out of the gate with a piece of copy that is perfect with the perfect headline…
With the perfect offer…
With the perfect story, the perfect sales order, the perfect video sales letter…
And you can’t beat it!
But you have to test.
You are leaving so much money on the table if you don’t test,
We’re going to have to talk about testing in a future podcast episode.
Stew Smith: Absolutely.
Jim Edwards: But externally, I mean we’re talking about external mindset and things outside of you and the testing is the big one because you don’t decide what your best headline is.
You don’t decide what the best price is.
You don’t decide what the best offer is.
You don’t decide what the best story is.
You don’t decide any of that!
The people who decide that are the people you’re trying to get to pull out their credit cards
Or to click a link
Or to call the phone
Or to fill out a form
Or whatever action you’re trying to get them to take.
THEY’RE the ones who decide whether that’s the best sales message or not.
And you will not know if that’s the best sales message or not if you don’t test.
Stew Smith: Yup.
Jim Edwards: So you’re an idiot if you don’t test apps. There you go.
Stew Smith: Yeah. Don’t make your market too broad too, you know?
I mean that’s the cool thing about online advertisements is that you know you can, you can specialize that search.
Jim Edwards: and really tighten it up,
Stew Smith: Yeah, tighten it up and not waste a lot of space.
Jim Edwards: And I guess the bottom line is that another thing you need to understand externally is that, and this is, this is going to disappoint a lot of people.
I’m not going to say most of the stuff you try won’t work because that’s not really true.
But a huge percentage of the stuff that you try, especially when you’re first starting out, won’t work very well at all.
And you need to understand that it’s nothing personal, it’s just the market giving you feedback.
And if you look at it as feedback, then you can get better faster.
But if you look at it as failure, then you might as well just go put on that hair net and practice the best upsell line of all, which is:
“Would you like fries with that?”
That is the only sales copy you will ever utter for the rest of your life.
“Would you like a large drink with that?”
“Would you like fries with that?”
That’s your whole sales copies shtick.
Unless you’re going to learn this stuff and really do it.
Stew Smith: Ouch.
Jim Edwards: It’s true.
Stew Smith: You know what you really good point because you know we previous previously discussed the internal obstacles that we face with copywriting, right?
And learning how to do good sales copy.
Right now, these are all the external obstacles that we’re facing…
And the two are really, in sync together because you will get some negative feedback from market, right?
Jim Edwards: Sure.
Stew Smith: You have to be positive enough in your abilities and just motivated enough to keep trying and testing.
Jim Edwards: And focused enough and clear enough on the end goal that you’re trying to get to that you just keep going.
You have your eye on the prize, and you don’t let a particular obstacle stop you. It’s like a 25 obstacle “tough mudder.”
I mean you, you know, at the very end they’re going to shock your ass.
I mean, all the stuff you’re doing right now at the end, they’re going to hit you with some juice.
So you know, something bad’s coming at the very end…
But glory waits on the other side of getting your ass shocked. Okay.
It’s true.
Stew Smith: That’s pretty funny.
Jim Edwards: You don’t, now I almost made stuff come out of your nose.
That would have been epic.
I would, you know how much, how many slow-motion things I would have had like Stew’s tea coming out of his nose…
Stew Smith: Hahaha!
Jim Edwards: It would have been amazing. Um, so just to understand that it’s not always going to work and, and we learn that…
I mean, even experienced marketers learn that over and over.
You get in love with an idea, you get all turned on by your own smarts and, and just how in tune you are.
And every once in a while the world just needs to tune your ass up.
And you learn a new lesson, and you’re like, okay, time to go…
And then just like we said the last time need to get back to basics.
Get back just like Rocky.
When Apollo Creed took him back to the gym after Clubber Lang beat the crap out of him and he took him back to that dirty, nasty gym and just made him, you know, shadow box, shadow box, and shadow box.
And you got to find that hunger.
You’ve got to get back in touch with what makes you what you are.
Stew Smith: Eye of the Tiger, baby. Eye of the Tiger.
Jim Edwards: We need to have a watch party or something with all those Rocky movies.
Stew Smith: Oooh Yeah.
Jim Edwards: Maybe when you guys come down for the Sloop Creek, whatever, we can watch creed up in the home theater.
That would be pretty amazing. You know all those guys up there. Get them fricking going nuts.
Stew Smith: Awesome.
Jim Edwards: Just don’t break furniture.
Um, so you were saying that there’s something you’re going to be doing a here as a result of this conversation that we’re having?
Stew Smith: Yes. My goal, as I mentioned in the previous podcast, was to Redo all my sales copy for all my products, but I’m doing it this way.
I’m starting off with the worst selling products and working my way up.
Jim Edwards: Okay. Why?
Stew Smith: Right. Well, I want to see if it works immediately.
Jim Edwards: Okay.
Stew Smith: They want to see if maybe that was what was holding it down.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: Me getting lazy on an, you know, a product that, uh, you know, was just an idea that I had. I said, “Let’s see how this works.”
And then I just got lazy with the sales copy because I just wanted to get it up there and now it’s kind of sunk down to the bottom, you know, 80% of the sales that go out.
Jim Edwards: Right. So can I ask you a question?
Stew Smith: Yes, sir.
Jim Edwards: Are you basing this on total sales, or are you basing this on traffic and conversion numbers?
Stew Smith: Ooh, good question.
Jim Edwards: Um, it could not be selling because it’s not getting traffic.
Stew Smith: That’s true. But I can look at that. I have the statistics right there, and I’m going to do one of two things.
I’m going to look at the last year and go from bottom to top on what’s selling the best, what’s selling the worst.
And that’s my list.
And then I can look to the right and look at the conversions.
Jim Edwards: Right?
Stew Smith: And see what’s going on too.
Jim Edwards: But what I’m also, what I’m, what I’m saying is you might…
just a thought, I’m just throwing this out there. We’re having a discussion now, this is not rehearsed…
But thinking in terms of if you’ve got a product that is only getting 100 visitors a month…
And you’re getting three sales a month as opposed to one that’s getting a thousand visitors a month…
And you’re only getting five sales a month…
Stew Smith: Good point.
Jim Edwards: One is converting at 3%, the other one’s converting at a half a percent.
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: Me personally, this is just me.
I would go after the ones that are getting the most traffic that had the least conversion.
Stew Smith: Okay.
Jim Edwards: And I would do the redo those first because that’s where you’ll see the most remarkable difference.
Because like that example of a thousand visitors and five sales…
If you could raise your conversion rate to 1% or to one and a half percent, all of a sudden you would jump from…
Five sales up to 15 sales as opposed to the other one that even if you, you already got a 3% conversion rate…
Even if you could take your conversion rate up to 4% and you’re only going to go from three sales to four…
so you’re not going to see, you’re not going to see the result based on the work.
Stew Smith: Yeah, that’s a good point. Well, I can organize the list in several different ways.
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: Revenue, eyes on it. Conversion, you know, and then rank it.
Jim Edwards: I would rank it by eyes on it and then see, you know, this is the product that’s getting the most, what’s the conversion rate?
And I would do it that way.
I wouldn’t put from least selling the most selling… I’m just saying.
Stew Smith: All right, no, that makes sense.
Jim Edwards: And one thing. Another thing, this is, this is something else to keep in mind.
I know you say, Hey, I’m going to Redo all my sales copy and stuff, but if you’ve got something that’s really selling well…
You never redo the whole sales message.
Stew Smith: Sure.
Jim Edwards: You only test one thing at a time.
So, and also when you start making these changes…
Especially something that’s selling…
Make sure you save a clean copy of your existing sales copy somewhere…
So that as you start making tweaks…
Stew Smith: I can go back to it if I need to.
Jim Edwards: If you… if it goes in the toilet. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean I know people, I know somebody specifically that ruined their whole business because they started tweaking on their sales copy…
Didn’t save it…
And could never get back to it and then just gave up.
Stew Smith: Ooohhh.
Jim Edwards: I mean, I don’t know. It was, it was bad.
Stew Smith: Yeah. I think I’ll do a, you know, like a document for each product.
Jim Edwards: Right?
Stew Smith: That way I’ll have the old sales copy and the new sales copy make its own separate document, make its folder and tackle it that way.
Jim Edwards: You know what we could do, and again I know we’re recording this and you can say,
“Hey, you know, I know the code for him ain’t going to do that.”
“The code is, oh well, maybe we can talk about that later.”
Stew Smith: Hahaha!
Jim Edwards: But what I would suggest, and I don’t know if you’d be open to this or not…
But what would be cool is if we looked at that and said…
And we chose like two or three products and we said,
Okay and I would help you with this…
and we’ll go in…
And we’ll look at it and especially ones that are getting high volume traffic…
And we could say,
“Okay, let’s run this test on this one. Let’s run this test on this one. Let’s run this test on this one,”
And then we can report the results.
Stew Smith: Absolutely.
Jim Edwards: And we can kind of share the results that we get from that because I would be very eager to help you do that.
Stew Smith: Yeah.
Jim Edwards: Because I don’t, especially when that’s the thing when you’ve got something that’s really selling well, don’t ever make a wholesale change…
In my opinion…
Stew Smith: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Jim Edwards: Never make a wholesale change to your entire sales letter.
I know people that have done it, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
But with something like this, like with a book or with a product, it’s, you know, sometimes it’s as easy as just a headline or a picture.
We know that from your…
Stew Smith: Oh, absolutely. Saw a big jump when I just did book covers, right. Instead of logos that made a big difference. So yeah.
Jim Edwards: Awesome. So I think we can wrap this up and, and basically summarize for everything that we’ve been talking about with external things to think about what sales copy in a couple of words…
In a sentence or two.
And that is basically, it’s not going to go perfectly every time and don’t be a baby and give up.
It’s a process.
And what you need to do is keep your eye on where you’re trying to go, what your objective is.
You try something, you get feedback…
You try something else, you get feedback…
And try something else, you get feedback…
You try something else, you get feedback…
Until you get it to the point where it’s doing what you want it to do.
And then from there, it becomes a game of testing, to incrementally improve.
That’s all it is.
Jim Edwards: Yep.
Stew Smith: So, yeah.
Jim Edwards: Absolutely. I’m all in.
I like your ideas.
Um, great advice and uh, you know, don’t get overwhelmed by the obstacles in front of you.
Stew Smith: Exactly. Just find another route.
Jim Edwards: And don’t listen to knuckleheads that talk smack either.
Stew Smith: Keep tweaking.
Jim Edwards: Did you know that tweaking is actually a term related to druggies that are tweaking as another way to…
Stew Smith: Did not know that.
Jim Edwards: We can break out your thesaurus.
Stew Smith: I’m glad I did not know that.
Jim Edwards: On that note, you guys have a great day.
And by the way, if for whatever reason, you are not a member of the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Group on Facebook, you need to be. And definitely go out and check us out over at thejimedwardsmethod.com.
You can check out the blog and all kinds of cool goodies, neat software to help you do amazing stuff like write sales letters and do all kinds of cool junk.
So that… how’s that for my great close?
That was like, that was like my perfect call to action.
Right?
Stew Smith: Excellent. Come join us on Facebook.
Jim Edwards: There you go. Everybody have a great day, and we’ll talk to you soon!
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