Copywriting and Value Proposition: Unleashing the power of compelling copy
Every Wednesday, we hold a free Marketing LiveClass as part of ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel. Everyone is welcome to join and learn, as we build marketing funnels with members of the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort.
In the LiveClass, marketers and entrepreneurs can ask questions in the webinar chat. And we answer them right here…
Hi Dan, I’m trying a new angle on copywriting for one of my products. If you have time to give feedback, I would really appreciate your wisdom. I also know you’re super busy, so no pressure. I also know you’re the master of copywriting, so your guidance is invaluable. Thanks for all your wisdom. I’ll load it into Notion later today. Here’s the link: [anonymized]
Here’s the CFO: To help motivated volunteers in the church boost their ministry effectiveness and gain spiritual confidence by giving them 4 theology/ministry courses (“Advanced Bootcamp”) in exchange for a cash payment and a significant investment of time.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. Let’s see if I can help.
First, let’s define copywriting. I define copywriting as ‘Helping the customer come to the best decision about a brand, product or conversion goal.’ (from Marketing 101: Copywriting vs. copy editing vs. content writing). And this person had taken a step in that direction, starting with a CFO (customer-first objective).
I don’t think it would be practical or fair to paste their entire page in here, but I also don’t want you to focus too much on what his copy says, but rather understand the principles of how you can optimize your own copy.
I also cannot definitively say whether the copywriting will be successful or not, because I am not the landing page’s ideal customer. But I think I can best help this person (and you) by calling out how the different levels of value proposition should appear on a landing page.
The landing page should primarily focus on one of the levels of value proposition. But for most landing pages (and certainly this landing page) all four levels should be present, usually with the other three levels supporting the main one you are focused on. (If you are unfamiliar with value proposition levels, you can read Customer Value: The 4 essential levels of value propositions).
So let’s look at those levels:
Product-level value proposition
This page is focused on the Advanced Bootcamp, which consists of the courses. The page clearly informs people what they are getting (“4 precisely selected courses”), has a section for each course that explains what it will enable the participant to achieve, discusses the elements of the course (video lecture, downloadable charts, etc.).
You’re probably doing this pretty well on your product-focused pages as well, so I won’t dwell here. You likely understand the basics of communicating what is involved with your product.
Prospect-level value proposition
According to the customer-first objective stated above, the prospect this page is focusing on is “motivated volunteers in the church.”
However, the tone of the copy is not what I would expect for that audience. “You’re a happy little Christian gerbil,” “It’s too hard. You don’t have enough time. Your brain will hurt. It costs too much. You’ll want your mommy,” “Fix Your Boring, Lame, Mediocre Spiritual Life.”
Again, I am not the ideal customer, but my best guess is this copy will turn off more of the ideal prospect than it will attract.
Remember, it’s not just what you say with your copy. But how you say it.
So one of two things has to happen. Either the Customer-First Objective has to change with a clear definition of exactly what subset of those motivated volunteers the copy will attract.
Or the copy needs to change so the tone speaks to the desired prospect.
If your prospect stays the same, what is the resulting experience of the tone of language like “G-d, , Jesus, Church, blah, blah, blah?” Does this emphasize the importance and relevance of spirituality in the ideal customer’s life? Would replacing phrases like “treadmill” and “happy little Christian gerbil trotting endlessly nowhere” with more positive and empowering language better speak to the ideal customer?
In the case of this page, I suspect much of this is intentional and the result of some deep thought. As the questioner mentioned, he is “trying a new angle.” But I would argue this is much more than a new angle. This is changing your ideal prospect. And so it is worth the time to change the Customer-First Objective, and force yourself to first clearly define who exactly the prospect is that you are trying to serve with this copy.
With that exercise, a few things may happen:
- It may help you better target your ads
- You may realize there is not a big enough total addressable market
- You may identify new ways to reach that audience
- You may find new avenues for messaging
I’ll give you an example. Right now, the product is called an Advanced Bootcamp. And the primary visual is a big black boot. However, that title and that visual connote to me the military. And the military is known more as a group that can strictly follow a rigorous process without dissent.
But the way the copy is written, I would define the ideal prospect as “demotivated Christians who haven’t found the right church to volunteer for, have a deep soulful connection to the faith but feel disconnected, cast out, and overlooked by church doctrine and/or communities.”
Now this might connote a different name for the product. How about the Faith Rebellion Experience. SoulFire Quest. Spiritual Reboot. I’m not sure any of these are the right names. But having a clearer definition of the prospect, we can better tailor the name – a key element of the copywriting – to connote that this is a product that is for people like them.
Process-level value proposition
The CTA buttons have a similar tone. “Let’s Kick the Devil in the Teeth. Clicking can be hazardous to your apathy.” “Get Off the Couch and Into the Battle. CAUTION: Clicking Here Will Wreck Your Excuses.”
These are evocative.
What they aren’t is clear.
You may get a curiosity click. But the challenge is, the next page is not something that would pay off clickbait. It’s a cart page (with supporting value in the right-hand side) that has a form for credit card info and a purchase.
It also has a line that says, “You have a free 24-hour inspection period. After that, your card will be charged.” So maybe you could change the CTA to “Get Free Preview” and change “inspection” on the cart to “preview.”
A few other thoughts to help this particular questioner as well as other readers:
- The buttons don’t look like buttons. Make sure your buttons look like something that can be clicked on. Compounding this problem, they have really long CTAs. For example, the first CTA is 15 words long. I was a little confused on where I can click. These looked like pull-quote boxes to me.
- Above one of the CTAs, we see four markdowns on the price from $16,500 to $387. This strains credulity. If the markdown is really this big, it needs a pretty compelling explanation for why. Otherwise, this will feel like a hype-y sale, not like help. Nobody wants to be sold, they want to be helped (look back to the definition of copywriting at the beginning of this blog post). Especially for an educational and faith-based product like this, trust and the feeling of not being sold to are essential.
- Is this even the right process-level value proposition? If you were selling socks or cameras, a process-level value prop focused on adding to cart and putting in a credit card number might make sense. But this is an online course. You do give a free 24-hour “inspection period.” But could you give the first full session for free? You have a full page of hype-y copy explaining how this is going to shift my paradigm, so let me actually see it!
As Anton Chekhov said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” The best copywriting shows, it doesn’t tell. And the best way to show the value is not with sales copy, but by giving them a taste of the actual experience (when possible).
Primary value proposition
What organization is standing behind this product? Why should I believe they will deliver on all these promises?
Especially in this case when the task is so big – to challenge one’s approach to their religion.
There are typical, good evidentials on this page – “40+ years, written over 27 books.” (written over 27 books? So… is that 28 books?)
But is there enough primary value prop there to get someone to act? If you are challenging their approach to their faith, shouldn’t we know more about why you are uniquely qualified to do this? Why the ideal customer should trust you?
This is a deep, and difficult, question to answer. And it will take more than simple evidentials. Frankly if you can crack that, you will likely unlock many insights that will help your organization better communicate its value to potential customers.
In addition, the footer of the page has no email address, phone number, physical mailing address, links to social media accounts, nothing that would help me build trust in the organization behind this offering and let me know it isn’t some sort of scam.
I appreciate today’s clarity, so let me expand a bit because I feel you’ll be able to provide a bit more depth on it. I also provided a super quick overview of exactly what they get out of the offer (60-minute consult). The rest is mainly a discussion on what I asked at the very end with my own struggles in intelligence, competency and meshing it all with AI.
This SuperFunnel cohort member is using some of the thought tools included as part of the program to help discover the most effective value proposition for his offer. By interviewing customers and reviewing competitors, he uncovered some elements of value he didn’t realize when he came up with the value proposition on his own, using his gut.
Getting this outside perspective can help us challenge our own assumptions and unlock value that truly matters to the ideal customer when communicated on our websites.
You can do this by interviewing potential customers. But also, what feedback are you already collecting in your organization and how can you systematize it? How can that better inform your primary value prop, but every level of value prop as well…including the process-level value proposition of your website’s usability. Here’s a quick example – “In our customer service group, we found that 50% of their calls at times were based on ‘I can’t find my order status,’” said Matt Clark, Global Head of eCommerce and Digital Marketing, Newark Element14 (from Customer-centric Marketing: How market research and listening to customers informs website optimization).
But when you get this outside research and go through this corporate soul searching, you end up with… a lot. And then when you add AI to the mix to help with competitive analysis, you have a lot more to work with.
At this point in the process the element of the value prop we need to focus on is clarity. We need to winnow, pare down, simplify, condense. There shouldn’t be one unnecessary or unclear word in our offer value proposition statement. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
And this is the struggle facing this particular cohort member. He’s doing some smart and impressive stuff. And in his Customer-First Objective, he discusses what the customer can get out of the offer, but he doesn’t carry that through to his offer value proposition. For this reason, I question if his value prop is clear enough. For example, “streamlines processes through augmented intelligence systems.”
While the value prop isn’t the direct language in your marketing, I worry language like that isn’t the sharpened tip of the spear this business owner needs to clarify his marketing. What does that stuff do for the customer?
He opens the value prop by talking about “increases profits and reduces expenses.” But does that really clarify anything? Really, what B2B product or service doesn’t help a business owner increase profits or reduce expenses?
However, he knows how to winnow, simplify, and clarify for his customers. His main deliverable takes a lot of different data and puts it into a simple dashboard (it’s so much harder to simplify communication about our own work).
So how could he answer the offer value proposition question, “If I am your ideal customer, why should I act on your offer rather than offers from any of your competitors?”
That deliverable may be the tangible piece he leads with. “Because [ideal customer described] will get a dashboard that simplifies complex data needed to make key business decisions that affect costs and profitability. This dashboard is the only [ideal customer] tool powered by [a very high-level explanation of the business process here, supported underneath by evidentials]…”
This isn’t exactly right, of course. And may be way off. But it’s an example of how we can add the tangible to our value props and clarify the value the customer will receive…which is especially difficult for a complex offering.
Should the OVP include specific evidentials?
Yes, your offer value proposition should include specific evidentials. Credibility is one of the elements of a forceful value proposition. Every claim you make should be verified. Or else, why would your ideal customer believe it?
That said, to keep the value prop clear and simple (as discussed above) the best way to use evidentials is with footnotes. Put a superscript number by each claim that needs to be verified in your value prop, and then include that number below the value prop with the evidentials supporting it.
To give you ideas for evidentials for your value prop, you can read my former colleague’s attempt to create an evidential for a hypothetical car dealership I might own in Value Proposition: 3 techniques for standing out in a highly competitive market.
Question for Daniel’s next article: What role does SEO play in our current climate? We’re talking about paid ads… is that the best way forward? Thanks.
I’m sure by now you can see I love quotes. A great way to learn from the wisdom of the ages. So let me remixed Robert Frost who said, “The best way out is always through” to tell you that “the best way forward is always through…the customer’s eyes.”
Because the customer should be your focus. Yes, the current macro-climate is important. But the most important climate is the micro-climate. How do they want to receive information? Where do they look for answers to meet the pain point you are addressing or goal you are trying to help them achieve?
And don’t just put yourself in an SEO-or-paid-digital-ads box. Consider every conceivable option.
For example, our own research has shown that consumers trust print ads in newspapers and magazines more than any other advertising channel when making a purchase decision (see Marketing Chart: Which advertising channels consumers trust most and least when making purchases). Or as The Wall Street Journal reported, rising digital-advertising costs are leading many brands to open old-fashioned physical stores (see Digital Rebels Want Real Stores Now.)
So the real answer isn’t the current climate. The real answer is hammering out a go-to-market model for your business. For ideas on that, you can listen to Episode #58 of How I Made It In Marketing. Shruti Joshi, COO, Facet, describes her GTM approach at Verizon and at her current organization (listen to Marketing Operations: Process is the foundation for success).
You are welcome to join us on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. EDT to watch and learn from a Marketing LiveClass. You can RSVP now by clicking this link. Here are excerpts from recent LiveClasses to give you an idea of what you can experience…
Be Passionate about the Marketing Challenge You Are Trying to Solve
Chris Berkenkamp Talks about the Most Important Things He Learned from the MECLABS Cohort
