Good Marketing, Good Business

052: Why You Should Finesse Over Your Copy

• Shannon Stone • Episode 52

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A few word changes can be the reason for going from crickets to clients, even with a mighty small audience. Every time you get in front of your audience, whether it’s with a social media post, an email or a downloadable, is an opportunity to etch them closer to working with you.

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

  • The power of a headline, how one of my clients went from 0 downloads to 700
  • Even with low audience numbers, why your copy will trump any average conversion rates
  • How important strategy is combined with your copy

There’s a special gift inside this episode too [!] - I’m gifting you a copy review where I’ll review a piece of your marketing and give you feedback to help generate more clients. Have a listen or jump to 13:13 to hear how you can get this.

Enjoy!

Resources:


If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.

Shannon Stone:

Hey guys. Welcome to the podcast.

Shannon Stone:

Super excited to jump into this episode. Today we are talking about why you should finesse over your copy and I cannot believe we are at episode 52. Like, how did that happen so quickly? But super excited to be sharing all these episodes. But definitely excited to be diving into our conversation today all about copywriting in businesses. So when we're talking about copy or copywriting, we're talking about the words on the paper, the words on the screen, and I even extend it to the words that we use when we're actually talking to people, whether it's in sales conversations or networking or explaining to people what you do. All of it really is copy and it lends itself positively to both sides. So the better you get at copy or the better you invest in copywriting and being able to communicate what you do and how you help people. If you can do that in a written format, it's automatically going to help transition to any verbal conversations you have as well. So I'm definitely a fan of copywriting. I've seen the power of it hands down and if I wasn't a business and marketing consultant, I would definitely be a copywriter. I think my only drawcard as to why I wouldn't be a copywriter is that I I cannot spend all my days behind a computer typing things out, which is why I'm a consultant where I rather talk to people most of my days. But I'm definitely a fan of copywriting and I can see and I have experienced myself with my clients how positively it impacts their sales, not just in more sales but also better conversions, communicating to the right people. Stronger conversion, so converting more people to the right people. Stronger conversion so converting more people and just having that clarity of what it is they do.

Shannon Stone:

Sometimes, or a lot of the time, when people struggle to, they say people just don't get what I do. Often it's because in one regard, you don't actually get what you do. And this is where, if you kind of take yourself on this journey of getting clear of what you do to the point where you can really easy communicate it so that people understand people other than yourself and the thoughts in your own head, when you can get to that level, that's when the penny drops for you and I just see it as this positive domino snowball effect that can happen. So definitely a fan of copy snowball effect that can happen. So definitely a fan of copy.

Shannon Stone:

Now, when I talk about copywriting, and even just if we just talk about any kind of communication that you have with people in business, every touch point that you have is an opportunity, I see, either to work for you or against you. It's like, if you look at it, as we're always gathering or being deducted points. So if you think of every email that you send out, every post that you do, every time you talk to someone, it's an opportunity to work for you and to move you forward and essentially that person forward if they're going to work with you. But if you don't do it justice that post, that email, that every touch point that you have, it's not working for you. So it's got to be either working against you or just keeping you exactly where you are. So I see communication and copywriting as that opportunity to really progress people forward. And it's this whole big topic around. I guess the power of communication and I want to say this in the nicest possible way but the power of getting people to do the things that you want them to do, which is essentially what marketing is, I think you have to have that conscious streak where you're not twisting people's arm, you're not using marketing and sales and copywriting skills negatively. You've got to be using it the right way around.

Shannon Stone:

But another thing I wanted to mention around why you should be finessing over your copy is, even if you have and this is most people, most small businesses, even if you have low audience numbers, you don't have much of a mailing list, or it's a small one, same with social media, maybe even your network as well. Even with low numbers, your copy and the words that you put together are the thing that can help you to win. So you could be talking to 10 people and maybe five of those people sign up with you, like that is a very good conversion rate. Or maybe you sent an email out to the hundred people on your mailing list and 20 people get back to you. That is a very good conversion rate. Typically people are not looking at those numbers, but that's why I just don't completely agree or believe in the traditional or average conversion rates, because I see there's so many variables that cause the outcome to happen, so that cause clients to sign up with you.

Shannon Stone:

It's not just a numbers game. There is like an argument for it being a numbers game, but it's not entirely just a numbers game. It's like when you kind of go through with a fine tooth comb, say you've got an email that you want to send out or a campaign and the goal or the idea is to get clients from it. It's not just about smashing their inboxes, you know, with 10 emails over a couple of days. It's not just about smashing their inboxes with 10 emails over a couple of days. It's that every single touch point, even if it was like one email, does the trick it needs to do. And that can definitely happen. It's happened with me personally.

Shannon Stone:

One of my business friends says Shannon, you're the only person I know who can send out a post or send out an email and make X amount, five figures and beyond from it. I don't want to say the specific numbers, but it's kind of cringy, do you think people sharing their specific numbers in business, but just trust in the fact that it definitely does work. So you can put and this is like you can sit down for an hour, two hours these are the things that I've done to craft something, a post or an email, and you do have to have the copywriting skills and the skills to really be able to communicate. I think all of this can definitely be learned for sure, and I think it should be learned for sure, but sitting down and not just slapping something together for a couple of minutes, five or 10 minutes or 30 minutes, like when I have intricately sat down for an hour or two to write something Like, it's just without a doubt that it will work at this point, whether it's my stuff, whether it's for my client stuff, and that is why I know people should really look at what they're sending out. The same goes even just for a headline. You know the top line at the top of your post or the title of your ebook.

Shannon Stone:

I had a client who put together an amazing ebook it was a roadmap and she published it and put it out there and I might be generous in saying three people signed up for it. There might've been zero, it was a little while ago, but I looked at it the next day and you know you can have all the best intentions but nothing's going to give you the feedback like the market will. So that's why you have to do things in tandem. We can't just like isolate and come up with the best ideas in silo and then push it out and expect it to work. That can happen, but if it doesn't, you need to take that feedback of three people signing up or zero people signing up. So she sent out her ebook. Little to no people signed up for it.

Shannon Stone:

We redid the headline, nothing else it. We redid the headline, nothing else, reposted it exact same place and 700 people signed up for it. Like, and the only thing that changed was the headline, published at the same place, changed, nothing else. Everything beyond that headline was exactly the same. All we did and like such an easy thing let's just change the headline and see what happens. And 700 people download it. And that's happened time and time again. I've had other clients where 700 was definitely the peak. I've had clients where it was 300. We just changed the headline. I have clients where they've put together job descriptions to hire and expand their team and you know little to no people signed up, I guess, flagged their interest, put in applications, changed a couple of things and basically found the dream person who was a perfect fit. But it was like it's night and day differences, the tweaks that or what can happen when you make tweaks to your copy, whether it's your headline or the body of the text as well.

Shannon Stone:

So I want to, I guess, share this episode with you to bring attention to your copy. You know whether it's posts, whether it's emails, whether it's your opt-ins, your website, and once you get clear, I think my approach is to get clear on it in a written format and then, once you kind of get clear there, you can translate it to your verbal conversations. I think that's most people. Some people need to get more clear verbally and then they can translate it into a written format. But my focus with this episode today is just to bring your attention to your copy. Don't just slap it together and hope for the best. You can achieve so much by, I guess, getting that clarity, communicating more properly what it is that you do and finessing over your copy. Like I'm definitely a geek in this regard, I will finesse over a couple of words, I will finesse over headlines and you know just the placement of two different words, and I guess it in one sense it is the geek in me, but also as a business owner and the work that I do, it's also because I know the differences those couple of words can make to having people to sign up to work with you and all those kinds of things.

Shannon Stone:

I will lastly end on this note around copywriting Now, just like anything and you would have heard me say many times, it's never just one thing. So you know you could put together the most well-crafted X, y, z, perfectly written this, that and the other, but, like I said, it's never just one thing. But I do believe when you copy with strategy and getting in front of the right people, because it's nothing if it's just done in silo, you've got to have people to share this all in front of, even if it's small numbers 10, 100, 500, even south of any of those numbers. So when your copy is tied with strategy, that is a beautiful mix. It's like you can have an excellent email put together great subject line, all written, but you've got to have that strategy behind it as well.

Shannon Stone:

And if you haven't read between the lines of a lot of this episode today, I guess the goal of the copy is to generate leads, to generate clients, and so, if that is the idea, you don't want just something that's beautifully written, that goes nowhere. You actually want to get clients out of this. So I'll quickly share two simple or two ways that I found to work with it. One is your copy is written in a way with the call to action, where it's designed to get people to do a step forward, to book a call, to pick up the phone, to fill in a form, something like that. You want them to take some form of a next step, so the copy has to align with those next steps you want them to take the other way, which I think is more of my personal way, more of the way I like to do things in business, and there is not one right way, but I prefer to lean more towards I wouldn't even call it storytelling, but you can actually generate clients without call to actions. It's like a crazy thought for the internet, but you definitely can, and so you can write your copy in a way you can tell the right stories or highlight particular things or showcase certain parts of your knowledge or case studies or client stories in a way that prompts people to reach out to you without being salesy, without having hard and fast call to actions, deadlines, scarcity, urgency, any of those kinds of things. I will say that is probably more of a craft that can be developed, obviously something I had to develop, but it's not like I was born out of university or the womb being able to do any of this. But, yeah, I would say those two ways.

Shannon Stone:

So have strategy surrounding any any marketing that you do, but particularly the copy that you do. So it's not just about I'm going to document my best five ideas into this ebook and people are going to love it and then they're going to come work with me. It's like if only it was that simple, especially in 2024. We have to be so much more savvy, so much more. I don't want to say strategic in the wrong way. Be strategic in a way that gets people to take the action that you want without being salesy. Okay, that is what I wanted to share around finessing over your copy, the importance of it, the difference it can make. The action step I have for you is a little bit different for us here today.

Shannon Stone:

So I would love to do, if it's something that you would like, a copy review for you. So if you have something or are creating something to help you to generate clients in your business, so this could be as simple as a social media post. It could be an email that you're planning on sending. It could be the promotional material to an opt-in that you have. So maybe it's a lead magnet, an ebook, a checklist, like what's the promotional material that's going to get people to sign up to that.

Shannon Stone:

So if you've got something or you're planning on creating something that you would like to use to generate clients and you would like me personally to review that copy, I'd love for you to send it across to me. So the best way is to email it. So, shannon, at shannonstonecomau, and in the subject line just capital letters, just type in copy review. So that's the best way to send it over to me. If it is on social media, I would forward it over to me. So, any platform Facebook, instagram, linkedin if you've got a post or something up there, forward it to me on that platform, but still send me an email with the subject line saying copy review, in capital letters, so that I know to go looking for that. So I'll do a couple of these and, as podcasts are, they're live forever. So in the future, if anyone wants a copy review as well, still send it over.

Shannon Stone:

And if I have the capacity for I will definitely do some of those copy reviews. These are like my favorite things. Like I love to just assess not just people's copy, their marketing, their strategy. Like I love to just assess not just people's copy their marketing, their strategy. Like I love to just I guess it's why I'm a consultant and strategist all in one I just love to review these kinds of things. You're really seeing the true geek in me. But that is what I have for you today.

Shannon Stone:

If you have any more questions around copy, definitely let me know. I think I come towards copy with a different lens in a way than your pure traditional copywriter, because I'll bring with it the strategy and the, I guess, the marketing and consulting pieces that I bring to the rest of the work that I do, and copy is just one very powerful component to that. So that is what I have for you today. If you have any questions, definitely reach out and if you'd like a copy review, email me at shannon at shannonstonecomau, and in the subject line put copy review in big capital letters, and I'll look out for your emails. Anyway, have an amazing day and I'll chat to you soon.

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