Here she is, Abby Prendergast from aptcontent.co You're

listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member

of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that's all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he thinks literally anyone can build a successful online business. But not everyone has the patience to do it. Pat Flynn. Abby, welcome to SPI. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

So you are a conversion copywriter. In your own words, what does that mean exactly?

Okay, so a conversion copywriter makes it their mission to understand the audience that they're selling to. So rather than just guessing at what kind of messages are going to convert, guessing at what's going to make the sale, actually doing extensive audience research, doing voice of customer research so that rather than just pulling marketing messages from thin air, you're actually speaking in the language that your audience is speaking, hitting on the pain points, the frustrations, desires, in their own words, and that not only increases conversion, it's also an opportunity to create a really meaningful connection between you and the customer. I

think when people hear the word copywriter, it's like, oh, they're just writing words so that I can make sales. But I love how you went directly to where those words should be coming from, the sort of origin of that. How did you first get into copywriting? Was this something you were always into and what you started out with or what were you doing beforehand? I

think like most copywriters, I just loved writing. I did an internship in China while I was studying and that was doing copywriting and editing for a PR agency. And then at the end, I said to them, you do realize I can just do this at home for you. And you don't have to deal with all of these interns that don't know what they're doing, just I'll do it from home. And they said, sure, let's give it a go. And then when I realized that I could make money with my words, I became obsessed. And to start with, it was content. Then when I realized you could use language to sell people, when I found out what a copywriter was, I started moving towards websites, sales pages, and then eventually got introduced to the world of online course creators, which is where I found my passion. And since then, that's the audience I've been writing copy for.

Who have you helped with their copy?

I've helped, I would say probably hundreds of course creators now. Some of my big fish clients, I guess would be Amy Porterfield. So I worked with her in 2022. That was cool because she has a wonderful team, a great team of strategists. I got to work on some of her big funnels like List Builder Society. I've worked with Copy Hackers, which was fantastic because Joanna Weeb is my mentor. She kind of got me into conversion copywriting. So when she asked me to write a sales page for her, that was very nerve wracking. But that was really exciting.

That's really cool. Well, I am so excited to dive into more of your superpower today. And if, you know, a lot of the audience who's listening is not quite yet at any Porterfield status and may not be able to hire a professional conversion copywriter yet. I mean, if they are, then they should definitely check out what you have to offer. You have a book as well and resources will share at the very end. But for the beginner who's starting to sell their very first thing, let's say it is an online course or community or something. When it comes to the voice of customer, the VOC that you mentioned earlier, discovering from who it is that you're serving, how does one go about doing that? What is the mechanism, the actual tactics to get that information from them? How do you do that? Is it a giant survey? Is it, like, tell me a little bit more about that process. So

my absolute favorite way to collect voice of customers by having one-to conversations with people. This can be your sales calls. I mean, I've in the past, I've gotten on calls with coaches and the empathy that they extend when they're on that sales call, that empathetic sales call really is their best source of voice of customer. And once you get into the challenges people are experiencing, what they want your customer kind of ends up writing your sales page for you and your sales page becomes your best most empathetic sales call in print. I also love Facebook groups, Facebook communities, people posting there when they're feeling frustrated and those emotionally charged moments are just epic for voice of customer So rather than people saying, I'm struggling to grow my blog, they'll say something like, I'm losing my mind over SEO, it's so confusing. I'm crying on the kitchen floor at 3am because I just don't know what I'm doing. And these YouTube videos are not making it any easier. And that's the kind of thing that when you put that into your coffee, your reader feels like you've read their mind. I think in the entrepreneur community, people talk a lot about how we buy from people we know, like, and trust, and that's awesome, it's true. But I think there is a false dimension that we buy from people who understand us. So that really is the purpose of Voice of Customer, to understand your audience and drop into the conversation that they're having with themselves. So to loop that around, yeah, sales calls, always record those as well. That would be another tip. Use a tool like Otter or Fathom, I think, to just transcribe those. So when you're writing, you can just pull from them, Facebook groups. And then if you do have an evergreen funnel, you can build various touch points into that funnel to collect that voice of customer. So my, my favorite is a thank you page survey because, um, people have literally just signed up for your lead magnet, your webinar. Um, that's what marketers like to call a seducible moment. You've just given them something there. They feel obligated to reciprocate and they're going to tell you what was going on in their life when they made that decision to opt in. Amazing.

When you have a transcript from one of those conversations and or survey results in front of you, and they're just, it's a sea of words, and you have a blank page, if you will, that is a sales page that you're trying to write, what's going through your mind? What are you looking for in particular? Are there any signals that like, okay, this phrase is the right one versus this phrase? How do you filter what is said and captured to what ends up on a page?

So the first thing I do is I have a messaging guide, kind of a framework. So I'm looking for problems, desires and unfulfilled dreams. And then beyond that, it would be objections and frustrations with their current behavior. So what I start doing is just looking for frequency. So what's the most common problem that people have? Because if it's coming up a lot that's usually the one that you're going to want to lead with. If I'm going through thousands of responses I'll do it on a spreadsheet and then I'll start looking for the voice of customer once I've kind those messaging buckets. For example, a freelancing course, people might say their number one problem might be struggle, getting clients, and then their second one might be management. I'd organize it into messaging buckets. Then the next thing would be to look for a sticky voice of customer. I've tried really hard to break this down into something concrete, but the best way I can describe it is, does it make you feel something? When you're reading it, does it engage you? Do you find yourself smiling or feeling empathy for that person? I mean, if we are looking for concrete, things like specificity. So rather than people saying they save time, you know, I see that cross-head a lot on people's websites like save time with this. The person that said I saved 25 minutes a week and I use that time to do X, whatever that is. So those specific elements belong on your page and storytelling, emotional content, again, just anything that makes you that you feel pulled into. If you're engaged by it, your audience probably will be too.

That's so true. And that's a great starting point for sure. I'm sure that that being the sort of beginning process on one hand It's okay. That's where we start for somebody who is maybe more advanced or like, you know You're at the top of your game in this. What are some of the things that you're doing that are very? So here's what I'm trying to get at so that mr. Be straight is a youtuber. He has people he hot He literally people to watch his videos before they go live because he's paying attention to when people are not paying attention anymore. When are people lifting up on their chair because of an exciting moment? And he's going all out with that. What is the copywriter's equivalent to that? Is there something like that that all of you who at the top of your game in the copywriting world do, to get to that sort of level of detail of what's working and what's not? Like, is it to the word and your split testing words? And like, I'm just looking for a little insight in this world that you're obviously a part of. Yeah,

I guess it's just testing everything. It's accepting that, know, as conversion copywriters, we love to say we're eliminating guesswork because we're doing voice and customer research. We're always guessing. We never know how anything's going to perform until it's out there. You know, the idea is to reduce guesswork as much as possible and also acknowledge where you've guessed. So when you've got a sales page and then you're going to optimize it, actually looking through and say, okay, this crosshead here, that's the bits and bolder just scrolling down the page. I guess did it. And then when you're reviewing your thank you page surveys, the results of any A-B test you've run, your punch launch surveys, the Q and A, all of those touch points you can build into your funnel, then pulling and knowing what to optimize, guess. It's just, yeah, it's testing everything. Yeah,

test is typically the right answer for most of the stuff we do online, no matter what platform you're on or what you're doing. If a person launches, let's say an online course, they did their best work to do some research and they have now a baseline conversion rate. How do you know what to change? Because that sales page has a headline, it has images, it has connecting copy, it has testimonials. I mean, I could rearrange things a million times. What's guiding your decision to what actions to take or what even to test? Are

we talking about just a sales page or a full funnel? Yeah,

just a sales page for now. We'll stick for that and then we'll go.

Yeah, so to optimize, I mean, one of the first things I would look at would be a customer heat map to see where people are dropping off on the sales page. I think there's something crazy, like 80% of people will only read the headline. So if people are dropping off straight away, start with the headline.

Change the headline.

Yeah. And the goal, I think a lot of entrepreneurs feel the pressure to get all the information about their course above the fold. People say you've got five seconds to capture a reader's attention, otherwise you've lost them. And I think it's important to remember the goal is literally that, to capture attention. You don't need to really read everything. You just need to get them to read the next sentence. So headline, that's where, yeah, where start a B test and then I'd pull from thank you page surveys where I've actually made the sale. So having a thank you page survey after people have enrolled in in your course or your program and then looking there for the voice of customer because that's going to be the richest because people have literally just bought. they're really excited, they're going to share what was going on in their heads when they bought. So start with the headlines and then, yeah, if people are excessively scrolling up and down your page, that's usually a sign they're confused. So clarity, if people are dropping off early, I would then go into the copy and just make sure it's really optimized for the richest voice of customer. I think the other thing is, people do skim read and that is the expectation. I'm a coffee writer, I literally live for words and I skim read and that's fine. Just make sure your sales page is optimized for the person's skim reading. So your headline, your crosshairs and people tend to read in an F-shaped pattern. So make sure juiciest benefits are at front of the sentence. So rather than saying, my course will show you how to benefit, just saying, benefit right at the front so that it's catching people's eye and you've got that opportunity to pull them back in.

That's really great. What tools are you using to understand all these metrics?

So I love Hotjar. Hotjar is great because it gives you overall metrics like the number of that have clicked a button, the average time on page, but you can also actually watch videos. So I like to just watch 10 to 20 videos, nothing excessive and just see how people are reading where they're drawn. It also will tell you which FAQs people clicked. So I found in my course that pretty much everyone who made it to the FAQs was clicking on the question, how long will this course take me to complete? So that told me, okay, time is clearly a bigger factor than I anticipated for this audience. So I built that into my email sequence. I had a whole email about time and about how the course will save them time.

So rather than some parameter inside of that action, like a click to determine things. You're literally watching anonymous recordings of visitors to determine these things. And I think that's such an easier way to do that. And so you said Hotjar, which is great. What tool are you using for, you'd mentioned this several times, so I wanna make sure we touch on it, the thank you survey. So this is after either a person subscribes to your email list, they get a thank you page, and then you're asking them questions. And or you mentioned in this last example, after a person purchases a course, a survey, so you can get some more voice customer in that. Did you call it like a moment of seduction? What was

that? Something you call it? Yeah, it's a seducible moment, a seducible moment.

Seducible moment, yeah. I gotta make sure I get that right next time. What tool are you using for the thank you survey? And what are like questions you're asking during that

time? Yeah, so I literally just have a, it's on my Squarespace site. That's where my thank you page is. So when they opt in, it takes them there and it's just embedded on Squarespace. So I get emailed the answers and I, they all go into a folder and my VA will then put them into a spreadsheet for me. She'll organize it into the messaging buckets I've created and then I can go in and look for the sticky voice of customer. Cause that's the fun bit.

Oh, it's just the form you said.

Yeah, it's just a form and you can use type form or even Google forms. There's so many ways to do it. It doesn't have to be complicated. So yeah, I always set up for my clients. It's non-negotiable, because I want that voice of customer. And as for the questions that ask, I mean, this was coined by Joanna Weave, this question, what was going on in your life that brought you here today? And I love that question. That's

a great question. Holy moly. I tested so

many versions. Can you say

that one more time?

What was going on in your life that brought you here today?

And that was from Joanne.

Yeah, Joanne. I mean, people will tell you the challenges, they will tell you what they want, they will tell you what's getting on their nerves right now. Some people just put like curiosity, but you, like you tend to get, you get such a wide variety. And I'm always surprised by how much detail I get. Like I get sometimes I'll get a couple of paragraphs. That's even more true for my programme because it's an even more seducible moment. Your thank you page survey, it doesn't need to be static. So I mean one thing I'm working on at the moment is building my authority. So I'm going to change my thank you page survey to say where do you go for information about selling your online course. And then people will tell me the podcasts, the blogs they read, and then I can plant myself there. If things change in the industry, if AI releases a new update, and everyone thinks that they can do my job, then I can have a survey saying, you know, what are your expectations around AI, what are your biggest fears around AI, and then I can plug those specific messaging kind of gaps. So yeah, I mean, whatever you wish you knew about your audience, ask them on your thank you page survey because it's not like emailing them a question. It's you're literally fresh on their mind. They've just downloaded your freebie. And one more tip, while I'm on a roll, stick to what questions, questions that start with what. Questions that start with why can just sometimes feel a bit accusatory. Like if I said to you like, why haven't you set your evergreen funnel up already? You might be like, whoa, okay. But if I say like, what's kept you from setting up your evergreen funnel, it's just, it's softer. It opens up the question more. To answer your question, anything, whatever you want to know, put it in your thank you page seven.