Hey, SocialNext folks! Thanks for stopping by my session on “The Total Idiot’s Guide to High-Converting Copy.” The deck for the presentation is here. A few of the resources I mentioned are here: The Landing Page Checklist The Headline Formula Cheat Sheet Lindsay’s List of Q’s I hope they help! Tips and things to keep in mind: Screw-it-let’s-do-it sections combine urgency, proof, and high-priority benefits. Research the ‘world before the click’ to understand how a customer will actually enter the conversation with your brand. Map out the Q’s you need to A for your ideal prospects, and don’t ..read more

Hey, Whitespark Local Summit -ers! Thanks for stopping by my session on “The Total Idiot’s Guide to High-Converting Copy.” A few of the resources I mentioned are here: The Landing Page Checklist The Headline Formula Cheat Sheet Lindsay’s List of Q’s I hope they help! Tips and things to keep in mind: Screw-it-let’s-do-it sections combine urgency, proof, and high-priority benefits, and they work GREAT for local. Research the ‘world before the click’ to understand how a customer will actually enter the conversation with your brand. Map out the Q’s you need to A for your ideal prospects, and do ..read more

Building a writing team is hard. Especially when you’re scaling up from freelancing and you’re used to being the one doing all the work. It’s why I’ve been working, quietly (and slowly) through the pandemic to build out a course about how to build a writing team—the right way. Why listen to me? First, because I’ve tried to do it and failed miserably. I’ve put my own time, money, and reputation on the line trying to make a writing team work and had it blow up in my face. I’ve seen SO many things that can go wrong, and had to engineer around them, or learn from them. And second? Because I’ve don ..read more

December 11th is my birthday — 33 glorious trips around the sun! So I’m gonna give you some (solid) stuff. I’ve put together some ‘best-of’ resources (the ones where I definitely overshared) and a couple of special offers that I don’t often make available. If you see something you like, snap it up and make this the best birthday-during-a-pandemic-hellscape-year ever for BOTH of us! (Pssst — if you’re not part of my email list, sign up here. They got this all first.) Limited-Time Offers Offer #1: Save $50 on my sales trainings (Coupon: “HAPPYBIRTHDAYJOEL” expires December 15th) These trainings ..read more

This piece on “Pricing Rage” and how to avoid it was originally sent out to my newsletter. Once or twice a week(ish), I send an email on copywriting, persuasion, business, or… whatever’s compelling and useful to me at the time. Curious? Sign up! Have you ever felt the burning sensation known as “Pricing Rage?” It goes a bit like this… 1. You’re researching a solution and find an option you’re interested in. 2. As you read, your eyes widen. This could be it! The one you’ve been looking for! But there’s one nagging question: can you afford it? 3. You click around the navigation bar looking for p ..read more

Pssst… this piece on GPT-3 for copywriting was sent out to my newsletter. Once a week (ish), I send an email on copywriting, persuasion, business, or… whatever’s compelling and useful to me at the time. Curious? Sign up! Hear that? It’s the sound of thousands of copywriters collectively crapping their pants the moment GPT-3 dropped. That, or the dripping of sweat as many writers (yet again) start wondering: how far away are we from a robot stealing my job? Even the notion of an “AI that can write copy” tends to put a bee in the bonnet of writers everywhere: “AI can never do the creative work o ..read more

Psst… this was sent to my newsletter first. In fact, I send a lot of great stuff there that never makes it here. Want to get those? Sign up!  You’ve heard it before: “Benefits over features!” But what if that’s not the whole story? What if you’re missing a piece that can help you sell and persuade? By the end of this email, you’ll know what that piece is and how to use it. Promise. First, a quick story to set the stage: This week, two separate books hit me in the face. The first one was “Bert and the Broken Teapot” – a 1985 Sesame Street classic. There I was, minding my own business, eye ..read more

This past week Tim Soulo (the incredibly smart CMO at Ahrefs) sent me an email about a potential project (huzzah!) In it, he asked if I’d share a bit about how a typical fee structure looks and what rates look like. I wound up writing him quite the hefty email back all about hiring CRO copywriters and thought I’d paste it here to help others. As you are about to discover, hiring a conversion copywriter is very different from hiring someone to write content like ebooks, blogs, and so on. I’ve added some notes in italics that give you some more detail and context—don’t skip ’em!  BEFORE WE ..read more

Fun fact: this piece was sent out to my newsletter. Once a week (ish), I send an email on copywriting, persuasion, business, or… whatever’s compelling and useful to me at the time. Curious? Sign up! Do you know how much Mr. Rogers weighed? 143 pounds—and that’s no accident. In fact, Fred Rogers stuck to a rigorous exercise regimen to keep his weight at *exactly* 143 pounds for over 30 years. Why? Because to him, 143 = “I love you.” Yes, seriously. I = one letter Love = four letters. You = three letters. Fred wanted to step on the scale and be reminded of love. See? Not an accide ..read more

How do you write a persuasive service page in a  crowded, done-to-death niche? That’s the challenge I was tasked with when Ross Hudgens of Siege Media approached me to write a brand new page advertising their link building services. They needed a service page that sold the hell out of their capabilities, stayed SEO-friendly, and (most importantly) wouldn’t lump them in with every other provider on the planet. So that’s what I wrote ’em.   Here’s the TL;DR on how if you’re in a hurry: How to write a service page: Research the audience Survey the competitive landscape Outline the pag ..read more