Presented live on Tuesday, July 3, 2018
When you write copy, you’re supposed to fill the page with something that’s compelling for every reader. But how?
In this tutorial, conversion copywriter Joanna Wiebe walks you through the 3 copy techniques you really should know if you care about your reader. You’ll also see how to make sense of what you learn so you can use these techniques in the next 20 minutes.
TRANSCRIPTÂ
Introduction [00:00]
Joanna Wiebe: Cool. All right. The replay will of course then be available on CopyHackers.com. as all of our tutorial replays are, almost all of them. We usually let you know if something will not be available as a replay, and you have to attend live to get it. Today, three essential copy techniques. I want to walk you through three of them, and then I want to kind of show you ⊠Thanks, Brenda. I want to kind of show you how you would apply this on a website. This is again a live tutorial, so weâll do our best to get through the details. But yeah, absolutely ask questions as we go through it, okay? All right.
Joanna Wiebe: I am going to share my screen. Because Iâm not in sharing mode, sometimes you will see interesting chats pop up from people. Okay, here we go. Let me put that back over there. All right. Cool. Iâm just going to get rid of that for now. All right. Three essential copy techniques. Iâm going to walk you through them quickly and then weâll head over to a homepage and take a look at them. All right.
The 3 Essential Copywriting Techniques [01:00]
Joanna Wiebe: Some of these you may have heard me talk about before, thatâs why Iâm calling them essential. But I donât know if youâve heard me talk about all three of them. The front-loading technique is ⊠Iâm sorry, I was just sharing the link. Which may or may not work for some of you, and may crash [inaudible 00:01:26] if you all try to get in there all at once. But weâll see how that goes. Okay.Â
1. The front-loading technique [01:20]
The front-loading technique is really, itâs a pretty simple thing. It goes back to essential user experience design, where you are ⊠if youâve heard of the F Pattern. Iâm sure some people in the room have heard of Jakob Nielsenâs old and still perfectly valid ⊠I think it was Nielsen, valid F Pattern, so the way people read online.
Joanna Wiebe: But [inaudible 00:01:52] so the idea is simply that when youâre thinking about how your copy sits on a page in particular. Because you can control it pretty well on a page. I know mobile and response and things like that. But kind of just donât worry about that right now. When you are wire framing a page, when youâre laying out the copy for it, you want to front load. That means the most important stuff comes to the front of the line. Not the sentence, the line. We want to make sure that when youâre looking on the left hand side, when you go down and read the two inches that are left most on the page. If you were to scan just that you should be able to see leafy information, important information.
Joanna Wiebe: A lot of us have warm up copy and preamble stuff where we fill our sentences up with ⊠I don’t want to say fluff, but it often does feel that way. When youâre like asking it if itâs doing important work, itâs not often doing important work. What you want to do is front load the words that people most need to see. That may be benefit type words like âfastâ and âeasy.â That may need to go at the far two inches of the page. Make sure that, again, people are just scanning and able to see the most important stuff as they move through. Again kind of with the F pattern. Which feel free to look up what the F Pattern is if youâre not familiar with it. But itâs really just like thereâs an âFâ on the screen. People read that way. Theyâll pay a lot of attention to the top part of the screen. Then less and less as you go. But they still pay attention to the things going over on that left margin. Thatâs why we want to front load. Thatâs where people are looking.
Joanna Wiebe: Put the important information where theyâre looking. When people are running through scanners theyâre often thinking about, âOh. They need bullet lists; they need one sentence lines or one line sentences,â and things like that. Thatâs useful too but never underestimate the power of front loading your information. That includes when you are formatting a headline, letâs say. If your headline is two sentences like itâs two lines tall. You want to make sure that the words that are at the beginning of both lines are important information for the reader. If you are worried about voice, if you are trying to make your copy sound really light and easy ⊠Yeah. Brett, the link may not work for you. Weâll get into that at the end by the way.
Joanna Wiebe: If you are trying to make that headline sound like, âOh. Itâs got a lot of voice.â Donât put voice at the front of anything that youâre writing. Kind of try to push it in the middle of the sentence that youâre putting together. As you go through and write copy, think about front loading. Thatâs one of the three techniques. Can you reorganize your sentence to put the important information at the front? Again, I said sentence and I truly mean just the line. Or just thinking about how people look at the content on the page.
2. The âyouâ technique [04:50]
Joanna Wiebe: Okay. Technique number two, the âyouâ technique. I talk about this all the time because it almost instantly makes your page better, makes your copy better, makes your email better. The âyouâ technique is really, really simple. Take ever line of copy that you have, every sentence that you have and re-write it with âyouâ at the beginning of the sentence. Every single one. You might be like, âThatâs exhausting. That gets robotic. That takes too much time.â Itâs all time well spent, for one, because youâre forcing yourself to make sure that every single statement you make on the page puts your reader far before you. A lot of us default to putting ourselves first and we donât mean to. But we have a brief that sounds like we should. We have a thing that we want to communicate, et cetera, et cetera.
Joanna Wiebe: When you force yourself to re-write every sentence with âyouâ at the beginning. You then are more likely to be sure that youâre actually writing copy that your reader is going to care about. Then once youâve re-written every line like that, and trust me you will notice a difference every time you do it and youâll get in the habit of just always starting with âyou.â Then you can go through when youâre editing, you can go through and pull out or re-write sentences that come off sounding a little robotic. Thatâs just a really simple technique to use to make sure that youâre always putting your reader first. Okay?
3. The âeven ifâ technique
Joanna Wiebe: Technique number three is the âeven ifâ technique. This is an objection stomper that is phenom. We want to overcome objections wherever possible. Perfect, okay? Now when weâre doing that, that means that when you put a benefit on the page usually, always you need to support that benefit with real proof. Proof is great. Social proof, data proof, videos. All these different types of things you can do to support a benefit and make it more believable. However, when you want to take a benefit that has real objections attached to it like you can write a home page faster with these techniques. Letâs say that was a benefit. You can write a home page faster with these techniques. Whatâs an objection that your prospect has? âIâm a crappy writer. I donât have time for this. Youâre going to tell me things that are way over my head.â Then youâd add âeven if you think youâre a crappy writer.â Or âeven if you think lessons on writing are over your head all the time.â Things like that.
Joanna Wiebe: You take the benefit you want to say. You tack on âeven ifâ and then you go forward and put in the thing that theyâre actually thinking. The real objection they have, you just pop it in there. Now youâve got a benefit statement thatâs more likely to be believed. You still want to use social proof to support it but youâre actually on the page addressing the real problem, the real objection that your prospect has.
Joanna Wiebe: Okay. Cool. Those are the three techniques. The link is not a template so you should not have actually been invited to that at all. Because itâs just for me and Sarah so I think Sarah was just being super nice in popping it in there, but we didnât need to share [inaudible 00:08:26] docs so donât worry about it. All weâre going to worry about is looking at whatâs on the screen. Donât try to get into it because itâs just three techniques so just look at them on the screen. This is the lesson. Thereâs no point in putting this project into your [inaudible 00:08:40] projects at all. Okay. I didnât tell Sarah that so itâs my bad.
How to optimize your content on a web page using The 3 Essential Copywriting Techniques [9:00]
Joanna Wiebe: We have these three techniques: front loading, âyouâ and âeven if.â Now if we were to go through and you were going to optimize the copy ⊠Yes, because sheâs a saint. If weâre going through and youâre going to optimize the copy on a page. Letâs say your job is to come in and this is the new ⊠I think itâs pronounced Seva for anybody who uses ConvertKit or is familiar with the ConvertKit team. Seems that they are coming out with a rebrand where theyâre turning from Convert Kit into this. Thatâs an email I got yesterday so I obviously clicked through to learn more about it. I donât know when this is ruled out or if this is entirely ruled out because when I signed into ConvertKit, which we use, itâs still called ConvertKit.
How to front-load your copy first [9:40]
Joanna Wiebe: We could look at this copy and ask how to apply those three techniques. Front loading. We like to start with front loading over [inaudible 00:09:44] Again. Front loading, âyouâ and âeven if.â Look at front loading before you look at âyouâ. Because âyouâ is about re-writing copy thatâs in a really good form already. Front loading has to come before that because if you first re-write every sentence to begin with âyouâ and then you realize, âOh, I didnât front load anything here.â Then thatâs problematic. All Iâm saying is do it in this order. Donât over think it. Donât even think about it. Just do it the way I tell you to. Front load first, then the âyouâ technique, then worry about âeven ifâ later.
Joanna Wiebe: We can go through and look at those steps. Two inches along the side. Approximately two inches, right? Iâd look at this page, you would look at this page, and weâd go down. Weâd say, okay in the first two inches over to the left, am I getting important information? Am I understanding why I should read this as a reader? Why am I spending time on this? Now this home page may be meant for people who are already ConvertKit users. I donât know the stage of awareness. I donât know anything about the background. We have to keep that in mind when we are going through and assessing anything. I know that I donât know a lot about it. All Iâm going to do is take these techniques and try to apply them here. Thatâs that.
Joanna Wiebe: Two inches to the left, âHi, Letâs chat.â That means nothing to me. Thatâs not meaty information at all. Thatâs okay but weâre just assessing right now. Is it okay? It might be okay. Letâs look for something important in those two inches. You can go to Seva.com yourself. S-E-V-A.com, and look on your own screen if you want to and do that two inch test. They get into that, Heather. Why they actually changed from ConvertKit to this. Theyâve got blog posts on it so you can look into that.
Joanna Wiebe: Youâre a creator. Weâre not in the âyouâ side of things yet. Weâre not applying the âyouâ technique but itâs reasonably good that theyâre already leading with âyouâ a lot. But what weâre looking for is important information thatâs a benefit, thatâs a feature, thatâs something that you can actually sink your teeth into and doesnât feel like filler. Thatâs right. Letâs go down ⊠Sorry. Thereâs a lot of things. âYou might be a writer, podcaster ⊠what of all these rules and creators want you donât want to spend ⊠How to make what you do,â ⊠Are we getting anything? âThe real work, the work you love. You donât want to spend this,â ⊠The only thing that really stuck for me. Just rapidly go through. âAll creators experience ⊠spent turning no ⊠because without the money.â Okay. Thatâs beginning to be an important point.
Joanna Wiebe: You can see that when you read through this and you look along the left thereâs not a lot to hold onto as a reader. No matter what weâre doing ⊠and this is not a cut on ConvertKitâs copywriters at all. This is what we all have to just think about when weâre laying out a page. What is going on for our reader? Are they getting any information when theyâre just kind of plowing through our copy? Knowing that, as much as we want them to read every single line and optimize for that, sometimes they wonât. They might be on their third visit, now theyâre ready to read it. But when we look at something like this and if itâs your first visit or your first time reading it, is the important information front loaded? Or is it buried somewhere in there?
Front-load important information to your reader [13:00]
Joanna Wiebe: For me, Iâm not seeing it front loaded at all. When I read through it, of course, theyâre telling their own story and itâs a softer message on this page. But theyâre still ⊠As conversion copywriters, which is what we are, we need to make sure that weâre writing copy that actually expresses something that really matters to our reader. It canât just be âI want to hear your story.â I would never do that because Iâm a conversion copywriter. If weâve got people on the page we need them to, yes, feel something for our brand. If this is about, âOh, weâre shifting direction and now weâre all about creators.â Very cool. How much does your reader really care. That doesnât mean thereâs no room for this kind of thing. But do we want to dedicate a whole page telling a story behind our brand. Is that the kind of thing that we should be doing?
Joanna Wiebe: Iâm not talking about their strategy here. I really want to focus on whether important information is being shared. But you can see if Iâm scanning this, thereâs some points about money. Spending my time. I saw spending my time on something. I saw âbut without the money,â is a thing ⊠âThe ground only to be crushed,â I have no idea what that means. Took a big risk. Okay, cool. But you can see as you go down and look at these over the front loaded stuff. None of it is going to stick. None of it has real staying power for people. Again, it doesnât mean itâs wrong. Weâre looking at this as conversion copywriters. Thatâs all.
How to express important information from a brief? Front-load it [14:45]
Joanna Wiebe: So âfrom coming up with first product.â Okay. Something about products support. Okay, fine. Fun. Are these important messages that needed to be expressed? If someone gives you a brief to express certain things. If someone does that then you want to make sure that those points are at the front of the page. Front of what theyâre reading, cool? Front loaded, just like I said.
Joanna Wiebe: When we look through it and assess it critically, this is not front loading information. I start to wonder, is there information on this page outside of them telling their story? Which again, okay, thatâs just different from what we would normally do. âHi, Letâs chat.â Iâm not going to get into an assessment of the copy outside of that. We looked at front loading. Doesnât seem to pass the test.Â
âWhatâs in it for me?â You need to front-load it in every paragraph [15:30]
We want to go through and see what the point is for every paragraph that you have here. Whatâs the point? What is in it for your reader? Why do they care? Thatâs right. Youâre a creator even if you donât think of yourself like that way. Theyâre trying to express something about you feeling one way and actually being a different ⊠whatever. But you have to go through and assess it. Whatâs the point? Why does that line exist? Why am I taking my readers precious time. We all know how precious that time is. Spending it on something where there is no essential message to that line because we ⊠I donât know what I would front load here. Right?
Joanna Wiebe: Just like Brett just chatted. It goes back to really essential copy righting stuff like, whatâs in it for me? Exactly what Brett just chatted over to the panelist. The rest of you didnât see it. But 100% whatâs in it for me. When you can front load things then you can see, Okay. Is there any meat in the sentence? Is there a reason for this paragraph to exist? If thereâs not, what is it doing on the page? Thatâs where when we talk about long copy versus short. You might say, âOh. Thatâs a long page.â But all long copies still has to exist for a reason. There still has to be a reason for every single paragraph or sentence to be on the page. Thatâs how we edit things down to the point that theyâre actually still long in a lot of cases. But meaningful for your readers so they know why theyâre spending time there. Theyâre getting something of it.
Joanna Wiebe: This could just be a branding exercise which it seems to be. Theyâre not looking to convert. Theyâre looking to get their brand out there. Okay. Fine. But even still, when youâve got readers on the page, you want to respect every second of their time. Thatâs where a conversion copywriter would do something other than this.
How to use the âyouâ technique in copywriting [17:18]
Joanna Wiebe: The âyouâ technique we can see. âAwesome. Youâre a creator,â starts with you. Great. Iâm connecting on this page. âThatâs right â youâre a creator.â So cool, they still said youâre a creator. This is clearly a âyouâ focused sentence. Fantastic. âYou might be awesome but regardless of how you identify yourself,â awesome. I donât need every single line when itâs published to follow the âyouâ technique. We need to make sure, though, when weâre going through it that we rewrite every sentence to begin with you. Then tweak it so it doesnât sound robotic. âCreators want to create,â there might be a way to re-write that to have âyouâ on there again. âYou donât want to spend your time on marketing tactics,â cool. Good. Weâve got a lot of âyouâ going on.
Joanna Wiebe: Then it switches to âour.â âOur team is no different. Each one of us.â Now theyâre talking about them. Because this is a branding exercise you could see why they would want to talk about themselves. When you read through it does it still matter to you in the same way, when you seem them talking about themselves suddenly? If I really loved the team then, yes. If Iâm a fan of these people. Imagine if some person ⊠if itâs Taylor Swift. You love Taylor Swift. The you love hearing about whatâs going on in her life. Iâd have to believe that for this to switch over to âOur team is no different. Each one of us,â for that to still keep engaging people, where they keep talking about us ⊠You can see, âWe exist ⊠Thatâs our mission ⊠We exist.â This whole section is about them.
Joanna Wiebe: A common mistake that people make ⊠Again Iâm not tearing down this copy, weâre just talking about it. But a common mistake that people make when theyâre writing theyâre âAboutâ page. They actually think theyâre allowed to talk about themselves. Youâre still not allowed to talk about yourself. Just forget ever talking about yourself. You can express things about yourself through the eyes of your prospect. Always thinking about your reader first. Howâd you re-write these so that theyâre still about your reader. That doesnât mean you should know, âOur team is no different.â It means maybe this line doesnât belong here. Or maybe only this line exists as in âour team is different.â Then you still get into this and re-write this.
Re-write the âourâ sections to lead with âyouâ [19:40]
Joanna Wiebe: What do I care about this? What do I care? Each one of us could tell you a story about how we got stuck doing work we didnât believe in. Make that matter to me so youâre connecting with me. But how can you re-write this? Thatâs our challenge as copywriters. Re-write this, donât just cut it, donât just throw it out. Can you re-write this and the sentences that follow all the way down to here, to lead with âyouâ? Raven just mentioned this, âAbout pages are not actually about you.â Honestly, unless youâre like Steve Jobs with fan boys way back when. Where you want to hear ⊠tell me. Just give me a little insight into your life. Most of us will never, ever, ever care about this much detail. Not on your home page especially. Then when we talk about âAboutâ pages still make it about your reader. Your story told through them.
Joanna Wiebe: Awesome. Thatâs the âyouâ. We go through and re-write with the âyouâ. This is a huge opportunity from this point on to re-write the sentences with âyouâ. Thatâs why I chose this page, by the way. It was fresh and it had a few things that directly aligned with what weâre talking about today.
How to use âeven ifâ in your copywriting [20:55]
Joanna Wiebe: Now âeven ifâ is something where youâve got, again, that benefit that youâre saying and then you have an objection that you know your prospect has to believing that benefit. If you can go through your page and you canât think of any place to put the âeven ifâ clause that may mean either you have written the most compelling page ever, or you donât have a strong benefit on the page. Benefit when itâs phrased right, and this happens pretty easily for most of us ⊠that means really for everybody. A benefit should generally have at least a small objection behind it. Really, really, that can really happen. Then youâd say the âeven ifâ side. Weâd go through and weâd read every line and ask âeven if.â Can we put âeven ifâ on there?
Joanna Wiebe: âCreators want to create,â even if, we could through something on the end of that. But that doesnât make sense. Weâre going to look for a benefit and then pop âeven ifâ onto it. Whereâs the benefit? This is all about you, which is cool. Your story. We donât have anything happening here that could allow us to do the âeven ifâ technique. We kind of get into something a bit meatier when we get into these bullets here. âWe play by rules that help us, help you.â Again, weâre back to a we challenge. âWill this help creators earn a living?â These are just telling you important things. If anybody, when youâre reading through this, if you could identify anything ⊠I read through this and couldnât identify a point at which we would naturally put in an âeven if.â Except possibly in the âWe care more,â but thatâs my challenge.
Joanna Wiebe: No matter what I read on this, thereâs no ⊠Obviously this is about branding. Totally. But again ⊠why? Why go into this much detail on a home page? Thereâs a strategy there. But from a conversion copywriters perspective, I donât walk away with anything more than a branding exercise that Iâve been a part of. Iâve just had my eyes open to something thatâs going on behind the scenes and is now about to be shared with everybody. The âeven ifâ technique ⊠that I didnât see any place where I could apply the âeven ifâ technique.
Joanna Wiebe: We finish this page going, âOkay. This is not a page thatâs designed to convert people. Itâs designed to make them feel something about this new Seva brand.â However there should still be important information that you would front load. Otherwise, whatâs it doing? There should still be âyouâ focused language, not âweâ focused language. There should be a point at which people to be asked to believe in something bigger. Something that they didnât understand before. Otherwise, it feels just like a lot of puff. Not my cat, Puff. A lot of puffiness, right? Thatâs the problem that a lot of us have to face as copywriters. People think our job is just to put things on the page and fill it up with stuff. Thatâs bad for all copywriters. In my lengthy experience doing this, itâs not beneficial for any copywriter to write copy that doesnât have a thing that itâs actually trying to sell people on. You are still trying to sell people on being part of this mission, in this case. Make sure itâs all about creators.
Joanna Wiebe: Did we see any important information outside of those bullet points? I didnât. Thatâs where if anybody was hired for this, any copywriter, if they were like, âCool. Letâs bring in a conversion copywriter to take this and actually make sure that weâre still getting the branding information across. But weâre also filling the page with something that is going to be truly compelling for every reader.â There are opportunities there.
Joanna Wiebe: Karen just got a little ⊠Yeah. Again, Iâm not tearing down this page. This is one example of a million examples out there where a conversion copywriter would look at things differently. It doesnât mean we donât believe in branding. But we do care about our reader more than we care about ourselves, and talking about ourselves.
Q&A [25:40]
How to use the two inch rule when you have responsive pages? [25:40]
Joanna Wiebe: That is it for the actual tutorial itself. Iâm going to stop sharing. I see that there are two questions here. Okay. Lisa asks, âBut how does the two inch rule apply when you have a responsive page and canât control line breaks?â Itâs admittedly harder. There are times when you actually canât control it. But then there are times when you can like the first word in a sentence, or a new paragraph. You can always control that. Always do your best to make sure that the first word along the left, wherever possible. That might just be the first word in a sentence, the first word in a headline, the first word in a paragraph. I say word, but that could be two or three words. Those are the most important words that you can possibly work on in that space. Do your best with what youâve got to apply that rule wherever possible. When you canât, you canât. But when you can, you should.
Do the 3 Essential Copywriting Techniques apply to emails? [26:21]
Joanna Wiebe: Maureen says, âDo these three techniques apply to email as well as web pages?â Okay. Yes. For todayâs email, that went out to bring you all here, I rewrote that after putting the email together. I rewrote it with these three techniques just to make sure that anybody who was attending and then later went back and saw the email, they were like, âHmm. She did apply those rules.â I absolutely did. If you look at todayâs email you can see leading with âyouâ, you can see front loading information, and I donât think I put an âeven ifâ in there. But I thought about it! It didnât make sense to put it in there. Do it in your emails as well. Absolutely. The âeven ifâ technique alone ⊠like each one of these alone. You donât need to do all three, you should. But each one of these alone will make your copy better. Just the âyouâ technique. Just use that for the rest of your life and everything will get better that you write. Then add in other things as well.
Joanna Wiebe: Okay? Cool. So Sarah has posted a link where this replay will be available if you want to watch again, or get someone on your team who keep reviewing your copy and rewriting your âyouâ sentences in the wrong way. Be like, âHere. Watch this. See what Jo said about it.â Then you guys can discuss it. You can have those tutorials ⊠Oh. Jorge just asked a question. âTherefore, is it better to left align the key message or headline at the homepage rather than centering it?â No, the point is not just to follow the F Pattern. Itâs to front load. Thatâs the thing.
Joanna Wiebe: If you have a centered headline, or a centered cross head, or a bullet point, or whatever it might be. Itâs not about left aligning things. Itâs about thinking where your readers eye is and putting the right information there. This is just on page messaging hierarchy stuff. You want to make sure that if you have a centered headline. If you can control the line break for that centered headline, you do so in such a way where the front two words of line one and line two are the most important words. You wouldnât want to see âtheâ. âTheâ would be pointless at the front of your second line. It might be okay at the front of your first line. This is stuff you get into as you start playing around with it, right? But when youâre trying to decide where do I break my headline? When you can decide that, what goes on the next line, make sure that the place where you break it puts the most important information for the second half off that ⊠we just want to make sure weâre not burying stuff. Thatâs it.
Joanna Wiebe: Itâs so easy to bury this information and just go like, âOh. Thatâs just how the page is formatted.â But we can help control how the page is formatted and apply these very simple techniques to make sure that our headline has the right line breaks, at the right parts. That we have the right breaks wherever we can control it, okay? Okay. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Cool.
Joanna Wiebe: All right. Awesome. Mark just asked, âWill Copyhackers get rebranded to CoHa?â I like it. I do. I think weâre going do it. Yeah. I like that change. I donât see that happening. Again, Iâm very excited for ConvertKit. We love the team at ConvertKit. Theyâre awesome people. Theyâre doing great work. It just happened that I saw this page as I was preparing for todayâs tutorial and thatâs why we brought it up. But nothing against anything else. You can assess any page and find problems according to conversion copywriters with it. Cool. A branding copywriter would be like, âJoanna, I got news for you,â and we would have a big discussion about it.
Joanna Wiebe: All right. That is all for this weeks tutorial. Next weeks tutorial, if you launch anything. If you are part of anything. We have Abbey Woodcock coming in. She was Ramit Sethiâs copywriter for years. She has been behind launches like Ryan Levesque Ask Method. Ramit Sethiâs many launches. She has been part of millions and millions and millions of dollars in launches. Whether you do course launches, product launches. Any kinds of things that youâre trying to put out there with a bang at any point. If youâve ever done these before you know that these are hard things to pull off. People stress about their launches. Iâve stressed about my launches so Iâm so excited to bring Abbey in. Sheâs going to talk about how to create a launch command center. Basically how to project manage your launch. Very important information. If you have launched before, if you havenât launched before, if you might be part of launches at any point. Be sure to join us for our next tutorial Tuesday on July 10th.
Joanna Wiebe: Thanks, everybody. Awesome. Thanks, Sarah for taking care of everything as we went through todayâs tutorial. We will see you all next week. Have a great week. Bye, guys.
