TCC Podcast #107: the Instagram-ification of copywriting with Joel Klettke

Copywriter Joel Klettke shares his thoughts with Kira and Rob about how copywriters like to show off only the best parts of their business and how that affects other writers struggling to make things work. It’s a great discussion, but we covered a lot more than that. Here’s a look at what you'll hear in this 107th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast: •  what he’s doing and how his business (and life) has changed in the past year •  how audits and research have impacted his business •  what Joel does in an audit and how he prices them for his clients •  how he sells the audit and then hands it off to the client or another writer •  why he’s taking on fewer projects and the season of “no” •  the instagram-ification of some copywriter’s businesses—and why it hurts •  why we end up chasing the wrong goals (and maybe what to do instead) •  what to do if you aren’t performing as well as you think you should •  what is “enough” •  a few ideas for building confidence and the impact on your business •  the biggest mistakes copywriters make that ruin your conversion rates •  his advice to new dads and why you might need “guilt cancelling headphones” To get the low-down on how Joel’s business has changed since the first time we talked to him more than a year ago, click the play button below. Or if you’re the reading type (and lots of copywriters are) scroll down for a full transcript. And you should be able to find it on your favorite podcast app as well.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Joel’s first interview Joanna Wiebe Case Study Buddy Chantelle Zakarisian Val Geisler Laura Belgray Joels’ Conversion Killers Presentation Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes, and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira:   You're invited to join a club for Episode 107 as we chat for a second time with freelance copywriter and case study specialist Joel Klettke about what he's accomplished in the year since we last talked. What it really takes to grown and run a six figure business, balancing copywriting with building a second business and being a new dad, and the biggest conversion killing mistakes copywriters make. Kira:   Welcome Joel. Rob:   Hey Joel. Joel:   Hey guys, thanks so much for having me. Kira:   Yeah it's great to have you back. All right, so let's kick this off Joel with what you've been working on over the last year. What's changed for you? We know quite a bit has changed for you, but what's changed since the last time that we had you on the show? Joel:   I kind of started off the year, I made the promise to myself I said, ‘I'm going to step back from the copy projects, and I'm going to press into the case study business, and focus on growing that.’ And so, that was kind of my mental goal. I thought, ‘Yeah I need to see what I've got in that.’ And that went well for all of like 10 minutes, and then projects cross your desk, and it's difficult to say no. But, I have kind of stepped back a little bit from writing. I'm taking on fewer but bigger projects now, which was a big goal of mine. But I think obviously the most significant change is now I'm a dad, so I've got a little guy in the house, and learning to work, and live, and adjust my sleep schedules and life in general around this little person, which is pretty interesting. And then the other side of it on a totally different side of things, I looked up kind of midway through the year and realized outside of case studies, and outside of my writing projects I've actually made more money, and had more work on the audits and review side of things, which was a surprise even to me, because it wasn't something I really willfully thought, ‘You know I'm really going to spin this up and focus a ton on these audits and reviews.’ It just sort of started snowballing. And so, now I'm in a place where big life changes, potential shifts in the way I spend my time in my work, so quite a lot going on. Quite a lot to kind of grapple with, and a lot to be excited about too. Rob:   Just for context Joel, do you mind talking a little bit about what the auditing and those services that you're doing that you weren't necessarily expecting to be a big contribute to your business. Tell us about those kind of projects, what you do, how they come to you and what you are helping clients accomplish. Joel:   Yeah, definitely. So, I've always been a proponent of to be good in this business, especially when it comes to the conversion side of copywriting, you can't just be a good writer. It's not enough to just be good with words, or to be a wordsmith and make things sound nice, you have to be really good at the research part. You have to care about getting it right, and doing the research, and analyzing data both qualitative and quantitative. And so, part of my process for a long time with projects has been this research phase where we do things like look at heat maps, and recorded user sessions. We survey their customers. We interview customers. We talk to their internal team. We talk to their chat logs. And so, for the longest time that was always just phase one of bigger projects. And then as I started kind of venturing into an area where now there's kind of a pretty significant contingent of businesses, you know small businesses, and even some smaller midsize businesses that can't necessarily afford to have me on a full project, but there's projects I was interested in, wanting to engage on. And so, I came to them and said, ‘Well, instead of having me put together all your pages, and do the writing, and the wire framing, I could give you the research portion, analyze what you've got, make recommendations for what I would change, and you can take that and do with it what you will.’ And so, these audits and reviews, what I'm doing now yes I'm assessing the copy and the messaging, but it's more than that. I'm looking at identifying, okay where are obvious obstacles to conversion based on the way people interact with your site and your information? How do we fix those? And then handing them kind of a blueprint of next steps for what to do with that, and how to action that. So, it's become even though it's still phase one of projects, it's now become kind of a stand-alone thing that I'm able to offer at different tiers and levels. Everything from quick little video reviews to these full blown 5,000 plus word reports. But I'm really enjoying it, and I'm loving kind of the forensic, detective side of looking at a site and trying to figure out what's wrong, and how to fix it both with words and sometimes UX, and other elements too. Rob:   You mentioned the tiers, I'm curious how you price that for your clients. Joel:   Yeah, so I wanted to have a tier that was really accessible. I wanted to be able to say, I have five spots open for audits this month. And I wanted to be able to sell that out quickly. And so, kind of on the bottom end, kind of right now it's a video review where I send them a brief, they fill it out as best they can with the details they have. We go in knowing, nobody's kidding themselves, we're not pretending this is a data driven audit I'm doing, but they're counting on my experience and my ability to kind of sniff out big obvious problems, that's the goal with these ones. So for that, I started billing really low, so I was first charging kind of like $250 for those. And I've kind of been testing the ceiling on that. I know now that I can close those at around $900. So everything from that, which is still within reach for a lot of businesses, to some of theses deep dive audits where they're multi-week affairs, we're talking to a lot of people, we're doing a lot of things, those can be anywhere from on the lower end $5,000 to $7,500 and up, just depending on how much we're analyzing what the end deliverable is. So, it kind of runs the gamete what companies are interested in, but especially that bottom tier has been really popular because it's a way for companies just to get a sense of what they can do next and action on it. Kira:   Can you talk through the deep dive audit and what that looks like in more detail? Joel:   Yeah. So, the things that I just talked about with regard to qualitative and quantitative when it comes to a deep dive audit, the difference when you look at a video review there's just the brief, and sometimes I throw in a bit of ... I might look at their Google search console for kicks, and that's it. And it takes me maybe an hour or two in the morning, I'm done, I get on with my day. With a deep dive audit usually they're larger sites, they're more nuanced problems, we look at more pages, we look at more specifically quantitative data, so those types of companies usually are measuring with varying degrees of accuracy what's actually happening on the site. So, the deep dive audit I just bring in more of those data points. So on the bottom end it's just a brief and maybe one other thing. On the other side of things that's where it's that full surveys, and interviews, and 100 plus recorded sessions, and Google analytics, and if they have VWO we're looking at that. And maybe we're running a survey and I'm analyzing 100, 200 responses. The other piece that changes is the deliverable too. So, if I don't have to write up a deliverable that obviously saves me a ton of time. An interesting thing I've kind of found is people tend to value ... I could send somebody a deliverable that would take them an hour to sit down and read, or literally two hours of video and people will still prefer to just watch the videos. So,