The 2021 Guide To Conversion Focused SaaS Copywriting – Annie Maguire

Todd Chambers
Todd Chambers here. Hello!

Welcome to another episode of the Masters of SaaS podcast, brought to you by Upraw Media. On the podcast we speak with top performers from the SaaS community. And today we have another tactical deep dive for you.

I speak with Annie Maguire, a conversion copywriter who has previously worked with companies like Samsung, Visa and L'Oréal. And, like all good copywriters, research is a huge part of her process when it comes to crafting high converting copy. I've worked in performance marketing for over 12 years, and, in the last 18 months, I have pretty much become obsessed with messaging and positioning, because, in my humble opinion, they are massively undervalued and overlooked in the wider marketing mix. PPC ads don't work if your messaging sucks! You can spend 100k a month on ads, but if you don't know how to communicate to your customers, you've already lost. So what are you going to learn in this episode? The most common mistakes SaaS companies make with copywriting, the data you need before you even think about putting pen to paper, different methods to collect qualitative research, how to conduct customer interviews, how to structure a landing page, the most impactful copywriting changes you can make, and how to craft a strong value proposition. So, tons of tangible tactical advice you guys can learn from. Alright, let's do it!

Hey Annie! Welcome to the show.

Annie Maguire
Thank you so much for having me!

Todd Chambers
Yeah, the pleasure is all mine. Well, if we can just start off with a basic introduction... Who is Annie?

Annie Maguire
Right now, as of today, I'm a conversion copywriter. I've been in copywriting in general for about 10 years or so, conversion copywriting more specifically in the last five or six years, and in freelancing for the past five years, which has been really fun. Yeah, what I do is I work with clients and I help them capture and convert more leads using customer research as the base, and using copywriting after that, you know, to kind of guide the choices we make in terms of structure and messaging.

Todd Chambers
How did you get into copywriting? Because you've been doing this for some time, like, how did you end up here?

Annie Maguire
So, I started off working in agencies, because I, like a lot of, you know, early twenties people, didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, and started kind of just thinking, "okay, I like writing. So what can I do in that realm"?

I took a couple of internships working with, you know, an editorial team, and then another one working in social media analytics. And that social media analytics job turned into an agency position where I was in charge of the reporting for social media accounts, like, back in the day, I'm talking 2010, you know. This was when stuff was first starting to get, you know, people were starting to use it for their businesses. Through that process part of my job was to review what people said about the product or the brand, or whatever it was that I was working on at the agency. And I realised at that time how important customer research really was, because it was helping to shape choices around the product and around the marketing. And even for TV shows that I was working on, you know, I was doing the social media for USA Network. And it was like our job to learn what people were saying about the shows and provide that back to the writer so they could shape the content and marketing and all that. So that's kind of where it started.

I realised throughout that process that I really enjoyed working not only on the the analytic side, but also the creative side, and slowly sort of transitioned into a copywriting position within agencies where I was focusing a little bit less on the the analytics themselves and more on the strategy, the content strategy, and the actual words and the copy and the creative that went along with it. And then that kind of morphed into what I do today!

Todd Chambers
It's super interesting that you had some experience on the analytic side, with conversion copywriting. That's quite important, right? And do you think that's kind of shaped how you ended up being more conversion focused copywriter?

Annie Maguire
Absolutely, definitely! I remember working at agencies and feeling like there was so much money being spent on campaigns and ideas. And there wasn't a lot of tracking and analytics and proof to show that the work we were doing was actually, you know, helping or converting back to sales. And that was something that I never understood, I always felt like that was sort of the missing piece in creative. And so I felt really drawn to that side of it, because I understood it kind of from like a, you know, minute level because I was reading through comments and that sort of thing, like the early stages of research. But I realised just how important it really was.

I kind of made that decision for myself that no matter what path I took in my career, I wanted to focus more on marrying the creative with the science and the research aspect because it was important for me to show that the work that I was doing was actually benefiting the brand or the client in some tangible way.

Todd Chambers
It's so interesting that you come from that side, because I come from the other end of the spectrum. So the mass eleven-ish years of my career have been in performance marketing. I've been like, straight up LTV, CAC, you know, trying to dial in campaigns like optimisation, all that stuff. And it's only really in the last 18 months, I just suddenly become obsessed with messaging, copy, positioning. It's just so goddamn important.

But today we want to talk about SaaS copywriting, and your experience isn't solely in SaaS, but most of the copywriting frameworks and the way of doing things can be transferred across different industries. So, on that note, I was thinking maybe we could mix things up and we can talk about what in your opinion, before we get into the deep diving of how to think about, you know, copywriting, what do you think are the most common mistakes that SaaS companies make, or many companies make, when they try to approach conversion copywriting? Like, what are those two, three things that you always seem to see?

Annie Maguire
Yeah, absolutely. And, like we've talked about, this certainly isn't only SaaS. But I feel like, when I think about SaaS, the thing that comes to mind in terms of mistakes is, you know, historically, the industry has been very design first over copy first.

So I think that's probably the biggest problem area that I see for SaaS specifically. And so because of that approach, usually, you know, a lot of the the copy and the structure of the of the sites can tend to feel a little bit generic, kind of lifeless, like, that's, I think, sometimes people look at SaaS, and they're like, It all sounds the same. Because I think when you take an approach, that's not messaged, first, pass it off to the copywriter and have them fill in some lorem ipsum for a headline that's too short, in the wrong spot, you know, the whole messaging kind of idea hasn't been threaded throughout the site in a in a sensical way. So you often end up with web pages and, or rather, sites and landing pages, that, you know, maybe don't have the best flow, they might not make a lot of sense. The headlines are usually really short and generic, and there's just they're not selling you. They're not persuading you, they're not telling you anything important. They just kind of sound like... So, it's easy for people to kind of gloss over it.

And then on the other part of that, I think sometimes to SaaS companies, they're so, like, within themselves. And I think that tends to create copy that's really abstract and difficult to understand, because they're thinking about it like, "oh, well we understand how we talk about it. So it's got to make sense to everybody else". But when you actually, you know, put it out there and test it or even just pass it off to a copywriter, they're scratching their heads trying to figure out what the heck this is even trying to say, because it's just too out there, or it's like too clever and just doesn't really land.

So I would say, yeah, the main pains are a design first approach to structure and copy that doesn't necessarily always translate properly, and then copy that's a little bit too short, generic and vague. And then, also, copy that can just be too abstract and out in the clouds and really doesn't make sense to anybody who doesn't actually work on the team.

Todd Chambers
Yeah, I could not agree with that any more!

What about speaking about selling features and not speaking to the real emotion and the the human behind it? Do you think they are... Is that more of a common mistake? Not just seen in SaaS? Do you see people trying to compete and speak about features?

Annie Maguire
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it certainly depends on the kind of business that you're in, right? Like, if you're selling a product where there's not a lot of competition, it can be easier, because you're not trying to compete on this feature or that feature, you're not so focused on positioning, it's more about putting the product out there telling people why it's great, or why it solves a problem for them. And, you know, showing proof, that sort of thing.

But yes, when it comes to SaaS, obviously, because it is tends to be more of a competitive market, a lot of companies do lean on that like feature competition sort of thing, which I don't think is a bad thing, especially when there isn't a ton of differentiation between products. And it could be a single feature that actually is the differentiating part. But I think that sometimes companies can just get, they don't necessarily want to hang their hat on that feature, or they're trying to sell a bigger concept and not drilling down far enough onto that specific feature, which is the thing that actually differentiates them and would attract people to the product, you know.

Todd Chambers
I think another thing as well I see is that people will just put pen to paper, and they'll kind of make assumptions. They they don't use research, we already spoke about, kind of, analytics and bringing more kind of scientific approach to copywriting. And that's kind of one of the things I love about conversion copywriting. It's not just making an assumption, putting pen to paper, you actually take the time to do the research first.

And I think, and this is only my opinion, not being an expert copywriter, that most of the work in fact is in the research, right? Once you kind of know those pain points, you know, those potential anxieties, you get in the mind of the user, and you kind of have an information hierarchy that you really kind of thought about it and researched. Actually, putting pen to paper is kind of the easy bit, instead of just like, yeah, diving straight in, that's something I see is as a common mistake.

Annie Maguire
So true, completely agree!

Todd Chambers
And also just not using the voice of the customer as well. It's so obvious now when you kind of get into the weeds of it. But so many times when I've been thinking about writing copy for landing pages or ads or messaging in general, I'll just listen to what the actual customer says - whether it's in an interview, whether it's in a review - and I'll just take those exact words, and it just, it just fits absolutely perfectly.

Annie Maguire
I know! Well, so just to go off of that, I mean, people don't realise how much the research can help them, you know? It's like, you don't need to think about this fancy copy or come up with this thing. You just need the research to tell you the answers. It's it's just, you know, it's that easy. And I think people skip it, because they think it's going to be more work, but it's actually more work to do it without the research.

Todd Chambers
Yeah, I can't imagine sitting down to try to write a landing page zero research, and trying to think about like, "what the hell am I going to write". It would be so, so difficult!

So, on that note, then now we've kind of touched on, the most common mistakes and setting the stage. And we've spoken about the importance of doing research. Maybe you can explain for people that aren't deep on this, you know, what is qualitative research? And why is it so important?

Annie Maguire
Sure, sure. I mean, I use lots of qualitative research in my business and for my my clients. But basically qualitative research is, you know, more of the subjective opinion based, you know, it's open to interpretation, that sort of thing. So it's when you're asking people an open-ended question. You're asking them for their opinion, their thoughts, their feeling, their beliefs, about whatever it is you're asking,,versus quantitative, which is, you know, it's pretty finite, there's a closed-ended question you're asking them, maybe it's multiple choice, or it's a rating scale, or it's NPS or it's Google Analytics, it's a number or it's a group of numbers. So you know, that's how they differ, basically.

But in terms of qualitative, you know, techniques that I use, typically, for my business, in my businesses, are things like customer interviews, and stakeholder interviews, you know, those are always great to start. Surveys, and polls, if you're asking open ended questions, chat logs, those are great. If you have them, you know, if you've got like Intercom or something set up on your site, that can be a really juicy place to get some voice of customer data. Same with review mining, that's another helpful one, too, if you are, you know, if you've got a product out there, and you've got a ton of reviews, or you're building a product, and you want to look for, you know, through your competitors reviews, that's a great place to to grab some qualitative data. And then there's also kind of more of that observational set, like competitive analysis and audits, you know, where you're actually going through something and evaluating it and pulling in your own interpretation and evaluation of something. And there's also observing behaviour, like heat map analysis, or visitor recordings, and usability tests, which are kind of like a hybrid between something like a customer interview and a visitor recording. So usually, you know, depending on the goal and the audience and all that you can kind of pick from that list and come up with a nice, juicy data set that will give you everything you need to move forward on your project with confidence.

Todd Chambers
Yeah, for sure! And there is a huge cross over here with CRO. And for all the people that maybe aren't familiar with CRO, they aren't familiar with qualitative research, this gives you the answer of why a lot of marketers, they'll tell you what is happening, where it's happening, when and kind of who. They can say, you know, "my demo conversion rate is really, really bad", or, you know, "performance in this country is great", whatever it is, but they really really struggle to tell you why. And the good news is, for those people, you just rattled off so many different ways that you can uncover the why behind the performance, right?

And another way of thinking about it is just getting as close to the human behind the numbers as you possibly can, because behind those numbers are real humans at the other end. So it's just getting as close to them as taking as many insights as you can. Would you say that interviewing is, like, the holy grail of qualitative research? Like a video like this, where we just have a conversation, is that, in your opinion, the vessels?

Annie Maguire
It really depends on the goals of the project and the methodology that you're using. So if you're trying to test something like usability, a customer interview is not going to be the ideal choice for something like that. But if you are looking for, you know, a way to better understand your users and to help shape something like your website, or your landing page, or your email sequence, or your affiliate programme or your voice of customer data, absolutely! Interviews are amazing for that, because you can get so much from such a small set of data set. Like say you do, let's say, 7 or 10 interviews, you've got more than enough to come up with a great structure for your site or to fill it out with really great voice of customer data, or even just to understand your users on a different level or a deeper level.

You know, I think that in terms of the holy grail, that the only thing about customer interviews is that they're time consuming. And sometimes they can be expensive if you're not doing them yourself. So I think that, you know, with customer interviews and anything where you've got a smaller data set, you need to combine that with another kind of data set that gives you more of a large sample size. So, if you are going to do customer interviews, that's great. You absolutely should. But combine that with maybe website poll data, or NPS scores or Google Analytics, to make sure that you're seeing the full picture versus just what this group of eight customers told me over the phone.

Todd Chambers
Yeah, that's really really good advice. And you make a really, really good point as well; If you're doing usability testing, because you want to understand how somebody is using your product, that's kind of a different type of qualitative research. I guess in this context, what I'm talking about more is on the acquisition side and trying to help people build better landing pages.

So just going to customer interviews, because this is kind of, you can almost do a whole podcast episode about customer interviews and the whole science behind that. But what are your one, two, three pillars of advice you would give when, you know, approaching customer interviews?

Annie Maguire
Great question! Well, I think that, you know, the questions are always going to be important. You need to make sure that whatever questions you're coming up with are aligned with the goals that you're trying to achieve or aligned with whatever it is that you're trying to evaluate. So making sure the questions are really high quality, making sure the questions are written in a way where they're not leading or closed-ended. So you're looking for things that, you know, prompt the user to elaborate and explain and to be open about their response, you know, you want them to feel like they, you know, have the freedom to say how they feel. So, a lot of times, in the beginning of an interview, I'll have I have a script that I use, and I'll let them know, you know, the I'm going to ask you some simple open-ended questions. There's no right or wrong answers. You can be honest and transparent, you know, setting the expectation, I think is another kind of important component.

And then also the follow-up questions, you know, making sure that when you ask a question, you listen to the response. And don't leave that question until you have complete clarity on what that person said, or you ask them enough questions, so that your walk away with the full understanding, because sometimes you'll ask a question, and someone doesn't interpret it the way that you want them to. So they say something different. So you might need to ask a follow up question. Or they might respond with something that is a little vague. And you need to probe a little bit further to understand what it is that they mean, but without saying, you know, giving them suggestions for "oh, did you mean X, Y, or Z?". It's more like, "can you tell me more about what you meant? When you said that?". You know, it's like, about structuring the way you follow up and also ask the questions as well.

Todd Chambers
Maybe another good question I'm thinking about is like, what are you actually trying to extract when you do a customer interview? And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I've been doing interviews recently has been, I'm really trying to undercover the motivations. Like, a good one, on the acquisition side, for example, if I was looking to find out by their users, I would speak to someone that recently converted, because it's kind of fresh in their mind. And then I would ask them those types of questions. And what I'm looking for is the motivations, like, what was the main driver of them, you know, signing up for a solution like this? What were the pain points? So the pain points is also a motivation. Why it was so painful, it motivated me to look for something, what value do they get out of the product? What is the perceived value? What are the actual words that they're using? What were the potential anxieties they would have, you know, before signing up? "Well, I thought maybe it was too expensive. I didn't know how the, you know, how long the demo was going to take. So I didn't do it". Like, all of those types of things.

But is that how you should be thinking about it? Like, the motivations, anxieties, values? Is there anything else that I've missed there or that you want to expand on?

Annie Maguire
Yeah, I think that you definitely have what I would call the core basics down. Definitely, I would say all of those points, absolutely.

I think, for me, when I'm doing an interview - again, it depends on what the goal is the audience and what I'm evaluating - but, in general, you're trying to uncover the customer's goals, like, what is it that they want to achieve? That's a big one. You said pain points and challenges, of course, huge.

A must-ask? Current solutions. You want to find out what they've used in the past or what they're currently using. And also why those solutions don't work for them. Why are they incomplete? Or just plain wrong beliefs, like preconceived notions about the kind of product you're selling, or the kind of product they've purchased. Or just even like their past experiences, and general regrets and failures, that sort of thing. Common questions, you know, what sort of questions does this person have about the product. That's a big one. I think you said this, the value, but also like, the outcomes, the results, the success stories, the stats. Like, how did this thing impact them in their life or their work life, and along with that, product benefits. You know, how does this product benefit this person, you know, in their work life or their daily life?

Use cases is another big one you want to know and understand, how are people using your product? What moments prompt them to use it? Are those use cases aligned with how you're pitching their product? Or are there any surprising sort of interesting ones that you haven't thought of? I think you said motivators and drivers, that's a big one, you know, what motivated them to sign up or to explore or to subscribe, whatever. And then the doubts, the barriers, the concerns, objections, fears, anxieties, all of those things, super important, of course, competitive, you know, if they're, if you mentioned brands that they like, or they use or have looked at before, you know, those are all things that you want to think about.

In general, product feedback is something that always comes up with interviews, you know, they want to, whether you ask them there or not, often times they're like, "I just want to mention blah, blah, blah", you know. So that's something that tends to come up and then, you know, like you said, voice of customer data, like those sticky words and phrases that you can use in your copy or you know, to shape something about your product in some way.

Todd Chambers
Is there, like, a sweet spot in terms of how long you should keep someone on the phone? Like, how many questions you should ask before, you know, they start to get a bit of fatigue?

Annie Maguire
Absolutely. So I always tell my people, or the participants, as I call them, that the interviews are going to take 20 to 30 minutes. And the length of time depends on how long and how much the person talks. So, sometimes an interview will be 15 minutes, and sometimes it will be over 60 minutes, it totally depends on the interviewee. But generally speaking, 20 to 30 minutes on average. And in terms of the number of questions I would say 10 to 12 is, like, a good on average number, up to 15. But beyond that, you're going to fatigue the participant and probably not get to all the questions.

Todd Chambers
And like you said, if you're doing 20 to 30 minute interviews, and you're doing 50, that's quite a lot of time. So maybe we can just talk about some of those other ways that you can collect qualitative. So you said, for example, email surveys. Would that maybe be next in the arsenal? Would you ask the same questions as you would in the interviews? Or are they like structured in different way, because they're over email?

Annie Maguire
Again, it depends entirely on the goals of the project, right? So, if I'm doing a customer interview, because I want to revamp my website, in terms of structure and copy, then yeah, I'd probably use a email survey that asked similar questions to the customer interviews, like, maybe truncated a little bit just to keep it a little bit tighter and shorter, throw in some closed ended questions, so we can get some cool quantitative data as well. And then I'd probably combine that with Google Analytics data with some usability testing data. And then you can also do an on site poll, like, which is, you know, basically a survey, but you're surveying visitors who are coming to your site versus people who are already on your list or who have already purchased from you. So, I think gathering different perspectives is also important. You know, regardless of what questions you're asking each group, you want to make sure, "okay, I'm talking to existing customers, potential customers, even churn customers", in some cases they can be helpful. So, you know, it's about asking questions across the different methodologies. And then also, you know, thinking about the different kind of audiences levels of intent and context and all that.

Todd Chambers
Another one we find really useful as well - I'm not sure if you feel the same - is interviewing sales and support teams. Those guys that are on the front lines, you get much gold from those guys.

Annie Maguire
Absolutely. Yeah, stakeholder interviews are important. I usually start all my projects with what I call a strategy workshop. I bring in the stakeholders, which typically are the founder or, you know, the core team, which can involve sales or CRM or support or you know, marketing. So, those people will all be in the room. And sometimes you can split those up and do individual interviews, you know, it really just depends on the scope and the budget and everything. But I think that the stakeholder interviews are so important, because, you know, those people have a really great perspective on the customers and the business that you're not going to get from doing customer interviews or surveys. So it's great to kind of combine all those different data points to really get the full picture.

Todd Chambers
One of the things that I find with doing these types of projects is that you can be a little bit overwhelmed almost by insights. If you speak to sales, you speak to support, you do 15 customer interviews, you have, like, 80 email responses, you've got chat logs, you're doing demos, you're also combining it with the quantitative side as well. You're, like, trying to bring everything together.

How do you bring insights and structure to everything once you've collected everything? Is it like a pivot table? Excel isn't just intuition, like, how do you do that?

Annie Maguire
Yes, great question. And you're right, it is the most, you know, crazy part of the process, because it's it's very time consuming. And it can be a little like eyeball frying slash brain frying to just be, like, spending all day in data sheets or, you know, reviewing transcripts. When I'm done with what I call my insights report - and I'll tell you about that in a second - I'm like, "oh, it's over! I am done with this". You know, it's definitely it takes a lot out of you. So I can respect that.

You know, is it a challenging thing to to combine all this stuff and make sense of it? Absolutely. So what I use is my insights report template, where I've got a chart that kind of summarises all the findings from a high level standpoint. So we all are on the same page about what we know about the target audience. And then, depending on what was within the scope of the project, there'll be different sections within the world report that focus on a different methodology. For example, if I did customer interviews, there might be a whole section that's like a highlight chart for each conversation, to pull out those quotes and things that I want the client to see, but also for me to return back to later when I'm writing the copy. And, you know, maybe I did a Google Analytics analysis, and I want to include some metrics on that. So, I sort of have this huge, big template that I kind of pull pieces from and then create a fresh report for the client, depending on the particular scope and what made sense. But the template is so key, because without it, you know, I'm just like, floundering like, I don't know where I should put this. And by so I definitely understand that challenge for sure.

Todd Chambers
Yeah, it's really tough.

So, me being a bit of a nerd, I I try to do it in Excel. So I think I have... The way I do it is; I'll basically have a column which is, what are the customers say, and then try and categorise it, whether it's like a motivation, anxiety, or a pain point. And then, like, break those up into different topics. I just use a simple pivot table, and once I've got, like, 100 150, 200 insights, I can quickly see that the number one motivators are X, Y and Z and that literally gives me my information hierarchy. And I'd be happy to share that in the show notes as well.

Annie Maguire
Yes, I'd love to see it!

Todd Chambers
Yeah, for sure! What about, like, because you're a copywriter, and you spoke about that analytics background, do you get the luxury, when you're working with different clients, that they bring those kind of quantitative insights? Or are you looking into analytics yourself? Because I guess when we're doing a CRM project, we have the fortune that we have that kind of deep quantitative knowledge and understanding of the client, but then we combine it with the qualitative. But do you get that same level of insight with the clients that you work with?

Annie Maguire
Oh, yeah, that's a great question. And I think it depends on the client, you know, some are much more data savvy, and have all that stuff kind of ready to go, like, I'm working with a client right now, and they offer a user research tool. And so they are, you know, much more up on this stuff, and have it all kind of figured out. And so it does make my job a little bit easier, because some of that work has done for me, or at least, you know, I'm coming in with a clearer picture without having to kind of dig for it.

But I also work with a lot of small businesses that, you know, have never looked at their Google Analytics before, so sometimes it is on me to go in there and kind of find the stuff and figure it out. I mean, I don't, you know, I'm not like some statistical like, master, so I'm not, or a math whiz or an Excel person. But I definitely have become familiar enough with things like Google Analytics and NPS and like, you know, just getting quantity in terms of volume, I think is important, you know, versus just like straight numbers. But it is always helpful, you know, when there is a CRM agency involved, or there's an analytics person on the team that can really partner with me and collaborate, because it is nice to have that from from getting started point.

Todd Chambers
Yeah, and sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot! I guess the way I'm seeing it is from is more of a CRO type project, whereas copy, I guess, if you're writing a new landing page from scratch, or website, that's kind of a project in of itself. But the type of clients that come to us, they want to run experiments. And from the quantitative side, you can kind of zoom out and see where the biggest opportunities are, right? Like the customer journey is almost like a bucket. And where the biggest drop offs like that that's where you should focus. But if you're just writing, you know, a new landing page, or you're writing website copy, then sometimes that that isn't really necessary.

Just a random question that comes to my mind; is there like one or two questions in your customer interviews that are your favourites, that bring the most gold?

Annie Maguire
Yes! So, I know I'm beating a dead horse, because I'm like, it depends on the project and the goals. So, there is not one question I always ask. But I did pull a couple of like, general questions that I tend to use quite a bit, you know, frequently.

So there's the question of, the before, where you want to kind of learn about what motivated them to sign up for the product in the first place. So what I say is, "let's take a step back to the days before blank name a product, what motivated you to look for a solution?". So that's a core one I tend to use quite a bit. And there's also the question about alternatives. So something like, "had you ever used a name a product before or that type of product before? If yes, can you tell me about that experience? How did it compare to name a product they're using now another one did you search during your search process? Did you consider any other options?". If yes, how do they compare to blank, I want to know where your starting point is. And then, I also want to get a gauge of how your past meets with the current, you know, what's the comparison there? So that's a common one purchase trigger questions. "Why did you sign up for blank? What stood out to you about it? What drew you to it?". I think also the question about barriers. Did you have any doubts or concerns that could have stopped you from buying, subscribing, signing up working with this person, whatever. And then, of course, you know, life after purchasing. "So what is the most valuable part of using name or product? Or what kind of results have you experienced since using name of product?". And finally, "how has your life changed since you started using this product?". So those are sort of some general ones that I tend to come up, you know, regardless of the goals of the project.

Todd Chambers
Alright, so we now have all of our qualitative research done, we have all of our insights, we like we have a pretty good understanding lay of the land, you know, we understand our customers. Well, now we want to start you putting pen to paper, what is the process? I'm going to beat you to it and say it depends, of course. Maybe you can explain, like, what are the next steps?

Annie Maguire
Sure, sure, yeah, so actually, the process is pretty much the same, regardless of the project, which is great. So, the first is putting all the insights into the insight report, or the thing I use, so I can, you know, send that off to the client, make sure they agree with everything they're seeing in there, and everything is nothing's missing. And maybe they don't want me to focus on this part for some reason. So get rid of that, you know, just getting clear on everything. And then using the insights report to then create the information architecture for the website, or the landing page. Or maybe if it's not a website, it's an email sequence, or it's, you know, something else, right.

So you're creating some kind of structure around, you know, what you've discovered within the research. And then once that's approved, you're writing the copy. So you're taking that wireframe or that structure, and you're filling it in with the voice of customer data, or you're using the voice of customer data to kind of inspire, you know, the kind of copy they or the language or the content that you're populating the each section with and then after that, you know, once that's all done, and depending on the project, there might be an analysis phase or a testing phase where testing different types of pages, or we're, we're testing like a location specific page, for example. And then we want to get some learnings and apply that to 10, more location specific pages, you know, it totally just depends on the project.

Todd Chambers
So for people that maybe aren't familiar, maybe you can just explain what's a wireframe. And what's the advantage of using a wireframe?

Annie Maguire
Yeah, sure. So for me, I call it information architecture. And what it looks like to me is like a blueprint of your site or your page. So it's when you look at it, it's like you've got your navigation up top with each individual content section for each page below it. So you can see your entire site from a bird's eye view, and you can get a sense of how it all works together, both, you know, collectively and also on an individual level. So, I think it's really helpful for myself, of course, but also for the client to just get a sense of directionally, you know, how this is going to come together and work. And then you know, from there, depending if I'm working directly with a designer, at that point, that person would put it into a wireframe, you know, something a little bit more beautifully designed, versus what I'm going to create, which is, you know, more like just content blocks. So that person will kind of start translating it into that wireframe, which is basically like a skeleton version of the page. From a design and a copy standpoint, it's black and white, there's no imagery, it's just the copy and sort of the the empty elements on the page, you know, icons that are not fully fleshed out or placeholder imagery, but it's allowing you to see how the copy and the design could potentially come to life. And it's also a great opportunity for you to make tweaks and also work with that designer to, you know, shape the page with their expertise and insights and making sure that everything's coming together both from a visual perspective and a content perspective. And then usually after the wireframe, it goes into an actual design, where it's got beautiful colours and lovely icons, and, you know, illustrations or photography, or whatever, you know, is aligned with the brand.

Todd Chambers
I think one of the hardest things I find is just knowing what are the most important messages, which is why I like to do it in Excel, just so I know from the voice of customer what are those most important messages.

But how do you think about that? How do you even create the information hierarchy? Is there some fancy formula or technique for that? Is it just intuition per project?

Annie Maguire
I think that for me, personally, it is more intuition, meaning more experience, like I've been doing this for so long that now it comes very naturally to me, but I definitely let the research direct me. I don't make any assumptions about the information architecture until that insights report is complete. Because I can think, "oh", you know, "I think this needs to go here and there" but until I see someone say something, or see multiple people say something, then I'm not going to say it, because it doesn't matter what I think is going to work for the customer.

So, once I have the data, I use that to really drive how the page comes together in terms of hierarchy, content and language. But yeah, of course, there are formulas that you can use. Sometimes I'll use PAS (problem, agitation, solution), but I really don't focus on frameworks or formulas too much, I just think,"okay, I know what those components of the frameworks and the formulas are. Now I'm just going to use that plus conversion best practices in my experience, combined with the data to help me guide the structure of the page, the content and the language".

Todd Chambers
That makes complete sense. And I, a question I always hear a lot from customers and people ask me about landing pages is like, how long should my landing page be? Some people are in the school of thought of, well, it should be, you know, super succinct and super clear and to the point. Others say it should be long, but there is some kind of common sense approach to how you should think about this, maybe you can share your insights on that.

Annie Maguire
So, when it comes to landing pages, specifically, it really comes down to where the person is in the sales funnel. Because if you're talking to someone who's at the top of the sales funnel, you're offering them something different, you're educating them, or you're giving them a kind of content than someone who's at the bottom of the sales funnel. So it comes back to how is this person getting to the page, right. If you're running ads on Facebook to a cold audience, the content on the page, you know, you've got to think, "okay, if this is the first touch point with this user, there might need to be some education", or maybe it's more about, you know, sending them to an article and capturing their email address. So, I can begin having a more of a relationship with them after that first touch point, versus someone who is coming to the page from your email list, because you're launching a new product and it's half off, that person knows you, they have a different level of intent and context. So, you're going to want probably a shorter page that's more focused on you know, that special offer and what what kind of value you could offer them if they buy today, you know.

You just need to think about who is the audience, what is the level of intent and context about my business and product? And, you know, "what do I want that person to do, and then shape the page accordingly", both in terms of content, but also links too.

Todd Chambers
You spoke there about copywriting frameworks, and you said PAS is one. Do you use those interchangeably? Or do you use them, like, regularly?

Annie Maguire
I do I use them regularly, when it makes sense. You know, I think that when you've got a product that is newer, PAS and PS tend to work really well, because you need to do a little bit more explaining, right, like, there's a little bit of an education that needs to happen. So I think, sometimes, you know, you can pick and choose the framework depending on, again, where that person is in terms of the sales funnel.

So, and that's not to say that PAS and PS can't work for a more mature audience, they absolutely can. But a lot of times with a more mature audience, you just you don't need to, like remind them of their problem, because they already know about their problem. They're just looking for solutions at this point. So, you're going to be focusing less on telling them about their problem and focusing more on how this product can either solve their problem or why it's different from other solutions that they're considering. So, you really just want to pick the the formula or the framework or the content that matches again, the mindset of the person that you're trying to convert or get them to take whatever desirable action you want them to take.

Todd Chambers
Really solid advice! All right, maybe we can speak about what you think are the most impactful changes you can make from from a copywriting perspective. And maybe, if it's okay, I'll share my two cents on this.

So, yeah, having done several CRO projects now, the thing that really, really stands out, is that we already know user attentions like really, really small, right, but the drop off rate on your homepage, you know, you'll get 50% of the way down the page, I'm just kind of taking making averages here. But you know, 50% of users can drop off your homepage, you know, they'll get halfway down the homepage, you know, drop. It's super common, you come even be further down, it's a 60, 70, 80% drop off.

So, for me, the most important thing you can change is the hero section, it's the value proposition. It's the first thing users see when they hit your site. Like, you need to open strong and I always love this - maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong - It's, like, the job of a copywriters' first line is to get the user to read the second line. And I kind of feel like that's really what the value proposition is. You need to nail that. And I've seen amazing results with poorly performing web sites, we change the value proposition, you make it super clear, you have a nice call to action, and that can sometimes be enough. But I'd be interested to get your take on what are like the most impactful changes you can make in copy.

Annie Maguire
Yes, absolutely. I completely agree, the hero spot is so important. And I think people know that I think they know it's important. They try to make it as good as possible. But you know, if you don't know what you're doing, or you don't have the experience, it can be challenging to get it right. So I do feel for people going through that, that that pain point, but agree 100% - the hero needs to be right. It's the first thing that people see. Typically, you know, obviously, they're coming to the homepage, which is usually the most high trafficked page. And it's that one chance, right, you're making the first impression. And you want to grab that person's attention and you want to you know, sell your product in the most persuasive way. So, above the fold, and that hero spot, incredibly important.

But, also, two things that people tend to neglect along with that are the primary navigation and your sub navigation. And the reason those are so important, at least from my perspective, is that even if you have a great hero message, if the rest of your site is poorly organised, and someone can't interact with it in a way that's easy, you know, intuitive, they're not gonna stick around. Regardless, they're gonna be like, "I can't find this, this is annoying, I'm frustrated, I'm leaving". So people really need to focus on that primary navigation to make sure that it's organised properly in a way that people can find the thing they're looking for in a really easy and intuitive way. But also not putting too much stuff in it, you know, taking out the things that are maybe less important prioritising the stuff that is most important and maybe putting less important stuff somewhere else, or maybe in the footer or something like that. And then, along with that, also, there's the foot that what I call the sub navigation, or the footer navigation. So that thing at the bottom of the site that people often go to, when they can't find what they're looking for in the primary nav, or even on the site in general, that needs to be organised very well, it needs to be clear, with clear titles, the right pages need to be grouped together and called the right things, just making it so that people can find the stuff they're looking for. Because that's what they're there to do, you know.

so yeah, those are my three things; the hero, the primary and the sub nav.

Todd Chambers
Value proposition for me, I find so interesting, because you're basically trying to explain the whole business in the most compelling way, like, what it is, who it's for, what you want the user to do next, and to show you're credible in like bang, like instantly.

Do you have any advice around value proposition? And how people should approach that? I'm sure it depends, but yeah, is there like some standard advice you would use?

Annie Maguire
Yeah, so I think that there's the typical hero and sub headline, but you don't always have to use that. You can use a really powerful headline, and then use bullets in place of a sub, you know, because you have to assume that 90% of people are only reading the headlines. So, as long as your headlines are good, and you've got really strong bullets, you can still have a sub, because 10% of people are going to read it, but just making sure the copy is really scannable. A lot of times I'll go with that, like, show clients, "okay, here's your headline, your sub and here's a couple of bullets".

I think you should lead with, you know, bumping up that social proof above the fold, whether it's including Trustpilot stars, you know, five stars from Google, or a testimonial. I think showing that proof is so important. It could even be a stat, it could be anything that just kind of hooks people and demonstrates proof in a way that grabs their attention and gets them to want to continue scrolling.

Todd Chambers
Yeah, I love that advice! You were just saying about proof... I mean, I think it was Andrew Yedlin that said "a bold claim proves nothing". And it's so true, right? If you can tie in social proof with a bold claim, you can prove it straight afterwards. I think that was like some some really, really killer advice.

And something else you just said there as well, really, really good copywriting advice; just make it skimmable. And 90% of people will just read the titles... If you think people are going to diligently read the second paragraph in your sub headline, if you've ever looked at like Hotjar recordings, you know, people just go "bang", right? "Do I believe this company? No - go". You really have to make it short and punchy.

Annie Maguire
Short and sweet, y'know? Well, not even necessarily short, but just effective. You know, like, even if it's long, it doesn't matter. Just make it good. Make it really strong and persuasive.

Todd Chambers
I always thought I was not an amazing writer, like, "I can write I'm okay". But actually, one of the things that I enjoy now is trying to say exactly the same thing in the least amount of words. So, I'll write something, like a value proposition, and I'm like, "how can I take out 25% of this text and still say the same thing?". Like, I think that's just good copywriting advice, right?

Annie Maguire
Yes, it can be if it's done in a way that it works. Because sometimes I think when you remove a lot of words it could become really like generic and easy to gloss over. But I think that in general, especially with SaaS, you know, people are really scared of long headlines, but they shouldn't be, you know? It's good to use words and get people to keep reading. And even if it is long, you don't have to say, "okay, I need to get this into five words, because no one's gonna read it". As long as it's interesting, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, 20 words or 5 words. It just needs to be interesting and attention grabbing.

Todd Chambers
Which is why you need to understand your customers first, so you can speak to their emotions and their real needs. Absolutely. Cool!

Well thank you, Annie. What are you working on for yourself right now? Just before we started recording you were talking about maybe pursuing your own creative endeavours, what does the future look like for you?

Annie Maguire
So, I'm actually launching a course in 2 weeks, on April 20th. It's a comprehensive course about conducting analysing and applying customer research to your business. So, if you want to learn more about methodologies, and how to combine them and how to actually execute them on your own, and how to find insights that you can use to shape your own And your product, definitely check that out. I'm actually having like a 50% off sale until May! So there's a great chance to get an awesome discount!

Todd Chambers
This will be released before May, and I'll be sure to link to it in the, in the show notes as well!

Annie Maguire
Oh, of course, of course. I appreciate that! Thank you so much. But yeah, people can learn more about it there. And other than that, I'm I'm hoping to eventually launch some more products around copywriting and information architecture at some point as well. But I want to get this one launch, first, get some feedback, you know, evolve it a little bit more, and then eventually, you know, take a little bit of time off of consulting. That would be nice to focus on some other things that are important. But, you know, that's kind of the big thing right now is that course.

Awesome. well, thank you so much for your time and hopefully speak soon!

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Todd Chambers
Thanks for listening to the podcast, guys. for links to any other resources, head over to https://uprawmedia.com/blog. And, super important, please let us know how we're doing! Check the links in the description where you can leave some feedback or you can just email me todd@uprawmedia.com. 'Till next time, adios!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai