I’ll start with the favor. I recently started posting on Facebook. If you could give me a follow on there, that’d be awesome. Now, here are 10 strategies and insights I shared in Copyblogger Academy over the last week. I’ll start with 5 crucial questions you need to ask about your business. Then I’ll get into other stuff. Join for $1 if you want full explanations of these and everything else that comes in our Academy.
Is what I do clear and appealing? Don’t be vague. Don’t be clever. The absolute bare minimum is that people know what you’re promising, so make that as clear as possible, and make sure it’s something people actually want too.
Am I showing that I’m good at it? Specific results, total results, brands worked with, personal results, testimonials, and more. If you have those, use them. If you don’t, work for free until you do. Nothing is more persuasive than proof.
Am I showing that I’m different? After proof, positioning is the second best persuader. Get it through niche specificity, uniqueness in philosophy, making your offer especially appealing, or a combination of those.
Is it easy to say yes? Make taking the first step easy. For example, a copywriter might offer a free conversion-raising idea for someone’s website instead of trying to get them on a sales call before anything else. Get your foot in the door.
Am I maximizing exposure? Be hyper-consistent in getting the word out. Send cold DMs daily, send cold emails daily, network with people, and figure out a content schedule that makes sense. Never take your foot off the gas on this.
Eugene Schwartz once said: “Copy is not written, it’s assembled.” He was right. Writing is maybe 20% of having persuasive copywriting. The rest is assembling persuasive building blocks (proof, USP, etc). Understand this and act accordingly.
Reducing friction is an essential piece of selling more. That includes logistical friction (e.g. your website doesn’t have a clear path to booking a call) and or a large jump (e.g. trying to go from stranger to sales call in one message).
Quick networking tip: People often assume you’re selling something to them when you send them a message. So, if you’re not, disarm that assumption with a quick “Hey, I’m not trying to sell you anything” at the beginning of your message.
Cold email is a hard game. But if you want to have any shot at winning it, you need a custom domain (no gmail, yahoo, etc), a landing page to forward that domain to, and a free thing that’s easy to say yes to. Get those first.
Cold outreach shouldn’t feel like copywriting. It should feel like a mildly persuasive conversation. So don’t write it like you’d write an ad. Write it like you’re just meeting someone. That’s the only way to make it work.
Thanks for reading. And thanks for following that Facebook page.
Talk to you next week ✌️