How to Stop Guessing and Make Copy and Marketing a Science

WARNING: This blog post is deep. If you read end to end, you may suffer from the following…

Writing copy so good your audience would crawl over broken glass to buy your product…

Writing copy that ‘hits the nail’ first time round…

Sudden and on-going epiphanies of “Ahhhh, that’s why that ad didn’t work…”

Fits of rage for no one having explained this to you before in such a simplistic manner…

And worst of all…

A newfound ability to be better than 80% of ALL media buyers.

You’ve been warned – read on at your own risk.

Disclaimer – We CAN be held liable for sudden, MASSIVE increases in conversions, prolonged lifespan of ad copy/creative and new found stability within your account based on the content of this blog post.

Today we’re diving deep and unpacking Value.

80% of the questions we get asked by up-and-coming media buying stars in our HemonX program ultimately end up being about value enhancement.

Or perhaps more accurately, the issue could be resolved with a full understanding of value enhancement.

It’s almost like people WANT to overcomplicate successful demand generation and direct response marketing – as if it HAS to be more complicated than it seems…

And thus we allow our brains to run amok with “best practices” and buttons to press, “this one weird hack” narratives, and “my buddy tried this and it worked” stories…

The truth of the matter is that it’s simple.

There’s really only 3 components you even have to worry about: Value, Cost, and Acceptability.

Value is always the answer to the question, “How much do I want this?” The main thing in demand generation marketing is to make people want something, so this seems intuitive.

If you can make the value – “How much do I want this?”

Seem greater than the cost – “How difficult or expensive is it going to be?”

With an acceptable narrative – “How much do I like/believe in you?”

Then you get conversions. Simple.

Enhancing perceived value while diminishing perceived cost is the entire game.

Often, when we get serious about analyzing performance of media buyers, we find that those who understand this concept are successful with high ROAS accounts, and those who don’t understand it seem to struggle.

So how does one go about enhancing perceived value?

It starts with empathy.

I sometimes wish there was a shortcut to writing super copy that converts at the highest levels, but after thousands of hours of writing and many thousands more reviewing the copy of others, I can tell you that the pattern of success skews heavily towards those that have done the pre-work.

It all starts with empathy mapping.

Make a list of the following:

-What are your ideal clients/customers thinking?

-What are they hearing?

-What are they saying?

-What are they doing?

Now mine those lists for pain points.

Make an exhaustive list of all the pain points that your ideal customer is going through, and then rank them by how completely your product or service solves that problem.

Remember how “value” is the answer to the question – “How much do I want this?”

Well, – “How much do I want this?”

Is just a proxy for – “How completely does this product address/solve my pain?”

So naturally, the pain points you have discovered that are most completely solved/addressed by your product will move the consumer towards conversion with the most force.

This is not magic. It’s conversion science.

The operative concept here is called “appeal.”

And since re-writing copy that doesn’t convert is a very costly and time-consuming process, it turns out that the “shortcut” here is to do the whole process correctly the first time.

Next, we need to get clear.

Without a doubt, the single biggest sin of young or inexperienced media buyers is writing a clever, pain-based hook and then neglecting to fully explain what the product is and what you’d like the consumer to do.

Clarity trumps persuasion, always.

There’s no point in trying to persuade someone to do something that you haven’t fully explained and articulated.

If people have not clicked, be sure you have asked them to click.

If people are not signing up, be sure you have told them what they’re signing up for exactly.

Then, we invite them to the VIP room….

There’s one huge conversion trigger that greatly enhances value and boosts conversion that we’ve yet to discuss, and that’s exclusivity.

Exclusivity is the answer to the question “How special is this, or how many other places can I find the same/similar product?”

It’s hugely important that you learn how to differentiate your product or service from competitors.

For one reason – availability of market substitutes creates downward price pressure (and who wants to lower prices?).

For another, consumers are always walking around with one big, hairy, audacious question in their minds:

“Why should I choose your product over any other product, or no product at all?”

This question is the knife that slayed a thousand bodies.

More ad campaigns fall down in this aspect than almost any other facet of value enhancement.

This is the place to talk about your 500+ 5-star reviews.

Your patented methodology.

Your intellectual property.

It’s time to make me believe that you are different and special.

This, ultimately, is productization at work.

How to become a monster of digital advertising:

Combining these components; appeal, clarity, and exclusivity; will level you up as a marketer.

Most of the “big dawgs” in direct response advertising are simply very, very good at applying these fundamentals with high fidelity.

Moreover, to this day, when I launch campaigns that are an instant success, they are found to have adhered to this process roughly 80% of the time.

When they fail, they almost always phone it in or skip over parts of the process (especially the pre-work).

In short, you can be 80% as good as the best media buyers on the planet by doing these few things exceptionally well.

You’ll find that if you do them, platform and campaign structure and bid types matter less and less.

Enhancing value matters more.