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Copychat Show: How to write better value propositions with Josh Garofalo
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Mar 18, 2020
Josh and I talk about UVPs for companies. We take a look at a few homepages while Josh evaluates their website value propositions. Josh Garofalo Website: https://swaycopy.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshgarofalo/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swaycopy/ Free ~9,000-word email series on choosing a niche/positioning: https://swaycopy.com/freelance-as-a-business/ Article I (Todd) like by Josh: 12 Things Freelance Copywriters Wish You Knew https://swaycopy.com/good-bad-copywriting-clients/ ================ https://www.copyflight.com/ #copywriting #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing Follow me on our other social media platforms: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/copyflight/
View Video Transcript
0:07
hey everyone welcome to the copy chat show my name is todd Jones on host in on
0:13
this show we discussed copywriting content marketing and digital marketing these are kind of the topics I like to
0:19
talk about and I'm fortunate to get some people to come on and talk about it with me and today I have Josh Gruffalo who is
0:27
a conversion copywriter for software as a service companies you may have heard of some of the companies he's worked
0:33
with but if you wouldn't mind that tell us a little bit about yourself yes so as you mentioned I work with software as a
0:40
service or SAS companies and some of those companies that people might have
0:45
heard of would be like HubSpot hot jar wave apps the accounting software the
0:51
lot of small business owners use just a bunch and a whole bunch that you haven't heard of yet and those are actually some of my favorite projects the small
0:58
self-funded companies that no one's heard of what they're doing amazing work so basically what I'm doing with
1:04
companies if I had to put it in a in a nutshell real quick would be first of
1:10
all I do a ton of customer competitor research make sure that they're positioned properly based on that
1:16
research and then I come up with a messaging strategy and when it's called for I actually execute the copy myself
1:22
depending on you know what they have internally and and whatnot but yeah typically go from research all the way
1:29
to execution with SAS companies I think that's one of the things that surprises
1:35
a lot of people that copywriting you tend to think about they're worse myths
1:41
but really copywriters are not wordsmith per se can you talk a little bit about that yeah for sure I mean when I do my
1:49
research really really well sometimes the end result is that the client says you know what our marketing team has it
1:54
from here and that's because the writing part is really not the hard part it's figuring out what to write what we need
2:01
to say you know what's what what is our unique value proposition our unique selling proposition how do we how do we
2:08
condense that and make it nice and concise so that people understand it now what stage of awareness or people at who
2:13
are they comparing us to what do they like us for these are the hard questions that I get paid to answer and then the
2:19
writing part that's that's the easy part and that's the reason why sometimes I don't even have
2:25
to do that part for clients it sounds like you're more of a copy strategist yeah yeah I mean it's been a
2:32
gradual progression to that point and I do still like getting my hands dirty and writing the copy don't get me wrong but
2:38
yeah that's where I feel like I add the most value and then when I'm actually doing the the execution it's always for
2:45
the like most important pages the most important web pages landing pages emails
2:50
the things where if we get this right even if we just improve it a little bit it's going to pay my fee and then some
2:56
so I'm not usually getting deep on like you know like a third tier page that only a few people are going to see and
3:02
that doesn't really need to convert that's not right where I get involved that's interesting one question before
3:09
we do the getting-to-know-you lightning round what would you think are the top
3:14
three most important pages on a website I mean it's gonna depend but when I'm thinking about a typical client for me
3:21
it's going to be the home page usually there'll be some sort of product
3:26
overview or a solutions overview page and the pricing page the pricing page is
3:31
often overlooked but it's it's so important and there's a lot of opportunities there that go beyond just
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listing like your is years of pricing and letting them make a decision it's a it's really I mean one thing that I
3:43
really like to do that I see a lot of success with with my clients is bringing in like contextual social proof so if
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you do enough research if you talk to enough customers you'll find some customers making mention about the actual value and that trade-off of like
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you know it's whatever bucks a month but now I'm you know seeing ROI of 10 10x on
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that investment if you can bring those types of pieces of contextual social proof onto a pricing page it's it's huge
4:08
so there's a lot of opportunity there to get involved on that page even though it's it's it's ignored by most it's an
4:15
afterthought on the pricing page excuse me is that more like a sales page I'm at I guess you're I know your
4:21
context is a software-as-a-service industry so is that would that be similar to a pricing page or a sales
4:27
page yeah I mean it's usually short if I look at like the typical pricing page
4:32
it's you know you're hardly even scrolling and just gonna be like here's the three tiers choose the tier that's best for
4:37
you and they kind of leave it at that and then there's like a you know a sign-up button but I think there's a lot of opportunity there too and I don't
4:45
want to go in too into the weeds here because I notice isn't when you want to talk about but a common pattern that I'll see when I'm looking at things like
4:51
recorded sessions his people will land on a website they'll see the headline he'd be like okay this is probably for
4:57
me and then they'll go immediately to the pricing page and because they want to see before I waste any more time on
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this is it even in like my budget and that's where you have to assume that people that are reaching your pricing
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page they haven't read all the other content and so you probably need to summarize some of the key things are
5:13
going to get some of the key things are going to be able to do and you want to hit them with some social proof that says yeah you know 100 bucks a month
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sounds expensive but this person is saving 20 hours a week because of us this person you know is making an extra
5:24
ten thousand dollars a month because of us so one hundred dollars is cheap it's really it's you have to get like a
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concise overview of what you're selling on that pricing page in the SAS context and shrink you got to shrink that change
5:38
shrink that that price as much as possible and that's what you do with like social proof and I'm showing
5:43
everything you get everything gonna be able to do that's interesting and I never would have thought about that but yeah I mean you're basing that on what
5:51
you're seeing people do in the sessions so okay I'm sorry for the sidetrack
5:56
there I got interested in something so I wanted to follow it but let me get into the getting no you lightning around and
6:02
like a change up some of the answer so I'm nervous for this one yeah you'll be alright
6:07
China I don't want to like put anybody on the spot or anything so okay favorite
6:13
dessert my mom's cheesecake okay the plain
6:18
cheesecake or you know she puts she usually puts cherries on it lately she switched to strawberries and like fresh
6:24
strawberries when they're in season sounds good lunchtime here so favorite
6:32
TV show all time oh my god that's a
6:40
tough one you hit me with a hard question already I'm scared for the rest of this interview there's so many if I if I just had to pick about a show that
6:46
I can throw on at any time and so enjoy it's probably Seinfeld maybe friends those two just that's it that's
6:52
our favorite holiday uh Christmas okay
6:59
definitely I can I can see that favorite author let's see I don't have like an author
7:06
where you know I have to read everything that they they come out with but I mean as a kid it was gary paulsen I love the
7:13
book hatchets like a Canadian author and then now I would say it's his name is
7:18
you've all her re I think it's how you say it he's the author of sapiens and I guess
7:24
Jared Diamond would be up there too someone kind of interesting to hear what people and I think so far but he is chosen fiction but I have a presentation
7:32
or those fiction books are no they're nonfiction okay I expected somebody you
7:39
know it's gonna be a make some people are going on because a lot of people lose themselves on a fiction book and I get that like we do movies or whatever
7:44
yep okay what were you seeing on karaoke night Oh God
7:50
the shortest song possible with the least amount of range in terms of little
7:56
sorry there we go twinkle twinkle little star yeah that'd be my song any famous distant relatives no I mean I only know
8:04
of one person who's relatively famous with my last name that's Janeane Garofalo and there's no relation you
8:13
have a personal motto uh I don't know
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nothing that comes to mind no I don't have a model that I live by if you live anywhere where would it be assuming my
8:27
family and friends come with me sure hmm unless you don't want him there
8:35
no probably uh somewhere on the west
8:41
coast definitely like bc o british columbia yeah yeah for sure where are
8:46
you now I'm an Ontario just outside Toronto okay I don't have the nice mountains or anything like that here the ocean so
8:52
okay okay two more questions what celebrity would you like to meet for a
8:58
cup of coffee interesting you know most people around
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the world wouldn't call him a celebrity but Steve Paikin who is like he's kind of like the anchor guy on our on
9:13
Ontario's publicly funded like educational Channel and the guy just
9:19
amazes me he knows a lot about a lot of things so I'd love to just sit down with him and and pick his brain what you
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would really like just a enter a trivia contest with him on your team right exactly you be he'd be absolutely
9:31
incredible so I wouldn't expect anyone except for people maybe in Ontario to know who that is but I would love to sit
9:37
down with that guy I guarantee you there's at least one person or montior listening to this show so yeah and it's
9:42
not you I'm talking about somebody else but anyway okay last one favorite subject in school
9:47
there's definitely science like biology physiology psychology yeah I did not
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like that stuff I thought I was gonna go
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to med school that was sort of the plan and then I heard about a master's program that was in like digital
10:05
entrepreneurship last second and I completely did a 180 on that did that we've talked about that on one of the
10:10
podcasts you were on yeah yeah probably when people ask you know how I got started it was yeah I was kind of headed
10:16
on that track and I always had entrepreneurship in the background like my dad always had me reading entrepreneurship books and business
10:22
books growing up and so it was always kind of there and then when I saw this opportunity in the local tech scene
10:27
heating up I decided to make a change last second yeah so there is health tech
10:33
you know that kind of stuff is you know and we actually in in the northwest corner of our state which is the same
10:39
area where Walmart is based out of there's a lot of biotech companies that
10:45
are starting up in that area and and so it's kind of an interesting scene as well and there's some yeah big change in
10:52
the health so you still could end up in that area some way sure I hope to land some more of those types of projects but
10:57
those aren't the ones coming right now so um yeah maybe one day yeah we can
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talk about tech startups all day I used to write articles about that so awesome I want to start with the one question
11:09
before we jump into looking at these websites that your audiences
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to let you talk about what is the difference between a unique selling
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position and a unique value proposition I mean for most people's purpose I think
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you can just kind of mix them together I think some people make a distinction where the unique value proposition is
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more of an internal type of thing and then the the USP or the unique selling proposition is actually the thing that
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your external customers are going to see but I mean for the for the purposes of anybody you can pretty much just just
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mash them together and it's really just about what do we need to say that will help people understand what we do who we
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do it for and why they should choose us their senior opinion they are pretty
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synonymous yeah I don't I don't think you gain much by separating them I'm pretty sure joana say they were the same
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thing and she kind of just says value prop or something like that forgets it's fine I mean at the end of the day we're
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trying to connect our product or service with an ideal customer and the uvp USP
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whatever you want to call it is just about you know building that bridge and making it nice and easy for them to
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cross so I asked that question and if you're watching this you're wondering
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what in the world is Todd doing here and why has he got this guy on here that's what I have him on here talk about value
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propositions and so I thought I would ask that question before we launched
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into our little discussion but Josh asked ahead of time his email list if
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they would be willing to have him talk about the value proposition on the website and several responded that
12:50
correct they did yeah I'm not going to be able to go through all of them I just kind of I kind of picked a selection of
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them and so what we're gonna do and this is first for copy chat show and maybe
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more and down the road but he's gonna share screen and he's gonna go through a
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handful of these websites and talk about quickly from value proposition
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standpoint all right are we running you can see it nice on your side I can okay
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awesome so before I do something like this I always like because a lot of people in my position they like to do
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these and they act as if they actually know all of the answers without having done the research themselves so I always like
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to put a little disclaimer saying I do not have the context I have not spoken to these peoples customers they might be
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doing what they're doing for a very important reason and if that's the case stick with it but really this is just me
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going through a page quite quickly looking for opportunities to make things a little bit better just based on
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experience we're doing with other companies so for that reason take everything I say with a grain of salt
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and also I won't be too mean because I'm not a hundred percent sure but what I'm saying that's fine what we want to do
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here is talk about how a value proposition looks on a website so that's
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just I think it's it's more than fine so go ahead yes so here we're dealing with
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our friend here Karine who was nice enough to submit her page so she does a lot of copywriting as well but this is
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for a product that she created which is a physical planner for b2b marketers which or yeah b2b marketing teams which
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you wouldn't necessarily know from above-the-fold I don't see anything about b2b there the other thing that
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struck me was that there's definitely a disconnection between the picture in the
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background and the headline so I would picture this image in the background of her looking kind of displeased to be
14:47
better suited for like a pass or a problem agitation solution type approach where the headline sub-headline would be
14:54
hitting a problem so that was one thing that stood out the other thing is that and I could be wrong this is one of
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those cases where I haven't done the research but my hunch is that people are not dying for a physical planner for b2b
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marketers they need to be shown that they actually need this thing and and for that reason I would actually
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consider you know that that past approach that I was talking about so what is the problem with digital planners as we know them and then why
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doesn't the typical run-of-the-mill physical planner fill that void and then talk about you know how P is for planner
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is the answer to these generic digital planners that aren't doing the trick and these generic physical planners that
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aren't doing the trick and then go really deep on those so I really think you got to build up the problem and then bring in the solution
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for a product like this assuming I'm correct and that people are not like you know fully aware of the fact that they
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need a physical planner specially created for b2b marketers so you can do that you think in a above-the-fold
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setting kind of build that problem up a little bit you can absolutely start with the problem it's something worth testing
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I know we were talking about Joanna she's had a lot of success with that as
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well and it's it's just one tool in the toolbox and when it's used at the right time it's it's super effective I think
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she used that for sweat block which is one of her famous case studies so yeah I
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think it's it's where it's worth a try anyways and at the very least if you're gonna keep this exactly as it is I mean
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I think you should look super happy to have peace for planner in your hand it's an awesome product something that people really need and yeah all right moving on
16:31
to my friend West Bush the founder of product lead so this is an example of a
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page that is doing a lot of things right in my opinion but I think there's some missed opportunities and that could be
16:45
because maybe this page was created before he really took off in his community really took off so I mean I
16:52
love the strong authority play here join the world's largest product led growth community you know exactly what it is
16:57
and you know that you're probably not going to find something better elsewhere it's a similar approach that I take as
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well as soon as I was able as soon as I landed some of those those logos that
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people would understand I jumped at the opportunity to sort of make that my calling card the sub headline there's a
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really good job of talking about you know the skills the benefits are gonna get from actually joining this community so I guess the small little things that
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I would consider adding here is just give me a glimpse at what's on the other side of signing up first of all it
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doesn't tell me it's a slack community even though it is so you could maybe say join the slack community not on top of that you know maybe if you can show
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screen shots of the types of questions that are being asked and answered how active is the community like can you
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show a thread where someone asked a question there's like 40 responses that's a good thing to know you know
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who's in there like specific people are there specific people in the product LED community that have joined
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yours and our answering questions if so like single a doubt say that you know person a B and C that you know is in
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there answering questions right now how many people in total would be another thing like join our slack community
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currently at however many people if that number is impressive so these are just some small improvements that make but
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overall like I think this is doing a really good job any touches on some of that here with with the logos but I think it's specific
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people that will be really interesting if that any time you want to stop me you know feel free that's good
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all right so cloud sponge let's see here I have some notes for them because
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there's was a little less clear so with them I think it's a case of the sorry do
18:40
you hear a phone ringing or is that no no okay perfect maybe it's just me okay
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so anyways cloud sponge is an interesting case in that I believe and
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this is a really common mistake that their headline is buried somewhere in their sub headline and throughout their
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other pages so one integration dozens of address books zero hassle unless people
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are coming here with a really good idea of what cloud sponge does and the problem they solve that's very generic to me I'm not
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actually quite sure what I'm going to get when I sign up for cloud sponge the below the or the the sub-headline though
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does a bit of a better job cloud sponge allows your users to share without ever needing to remember type or upload
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emails manually so I mean that is already I think an improvement on the current headline and then I guess the
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other thing that's missing is the the answer to so what like so what if you can do this and the answer to that is
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that referral programs tend to grow faster you get more invitations from
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your invitation forms importing contacts is a lot easier so these are all things that I would want to learn about quite
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quickly without having to click the video which is another common issue is that you know video is great but only a
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certain percentage of people are going to click the video and only a percentage of those people are actually gonna watch
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it all the way through so everything that's important that's in your video it's got to be in your page on writing as well I'm guessing you don't advocate
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a slider in that air yeah I don't love sliders no no so I
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mean I've I've watched a lot of recorded sessions for a lot of companies and it's almost always the case that people if
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it's an automatic slider they do not sit there and watch it and if it's one where
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you click through they don't tend to click through they just kind of scroll past it so if it's important enough to be on your page split it out don't be
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afraid of asking people to scroll they'll scroll if it's the right information and if it's interesting
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all right professional pen this one is actually interesting so content is
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worthless if it doesn't get you results I think everybody would agree with that
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and I don't think it says anything necessarily new or interesting especially since and the person behind
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this is Anthony sills especially since he actually has like some interesting companies that he's worked with like
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look at American Express eBay IBM Infusionsoft so what if what if this
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said something like you know the b2b content marketer for companies like IBM
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Infusionsoft American Express then it's like okay I know who this guy is there's
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a bunch of b2b marketers out there not everybody can make that type of claim to me that's a unique value proposition you
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have in in and you know in a short sentence elevated yourself to the company of just a few individuals so I
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would not bury that I would I would I would plaster these logos and these names everywhere you can because it's
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what makes you different and so Gerard
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is actually an example of someone doing it a really really good job so he's a teacher who does copywriting and
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marketing strategy for EdTech companies and so he makes that really obvious he
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says he's the real teacher he understands the ins and outs of business his logos here all part of the the value
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proposition all EdTech so if you're an ed tech company laying on this page how are you going to say no to Gerard and
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then yes to somebody who's just says like I do copywriting for businesses right it's it's going it's going to be a
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very hard thing for you to do if you make that decision it's going to be because of price in which case Gerard is
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probably not that interested because his customers are going to be willing to pay a premium to work with somebody who
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knows their space their target audience like nobody else who actually is their target audience as well as a teacher I
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think you've got a email lead right off the bat with a lesson yeah there you go
22:39
and I mean yeah and you could probably make this even better by saying that it's like specifically for a tech space
22:46
but maybe that's implied but I mean this is just an example I don't have really anything that you have to say here I think it's it's great and even if you go
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further down the page like the the testimonials we'll talk about how he understands the space and how they're
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from EdTech companies so Gerard gets a gold star for sure go star drug agency analytics this is a
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well-established company so I know that they've got a ton of data that they're sitting on I guess I like that it's it's
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clear for sure all in one reporting platform for agencies and then it talks about the the types of reports below but
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I think the the so what is missing like so what if all my dashboards are in one place and I think that's something that
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they do a good job of answering in the video but the reality is not everyone's going to watch that video yeah and so
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they need to talk about you know what does this do for the for the agency who uses agency analytics well when a client
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is asking you for this that and the other metric you're gonna have it all in one place when you share your dashboards
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with your client your clients not wondering whether or not they're getting ROI for their investment because they can see it for themselves at any one
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time and so obviously we can't put everything in the in the above the fold section but we can put some of it and he
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does get to some of this further down the page like when he talks about automated reports custom dashboards
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fully branded it's really about elevating your agency to being like a much more professional data-driven value
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driven entity so I think there's an opportunity to bring some of that in there my guess is that he probably came
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up with this this headline really early on when they were first getting started and really he just want to make it clear
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at that point and I think that's good but I think now they can go you know another step further not the space is a
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little bit more sure and I guess I think I have two more
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hair that will cover quickly Sharon man she's our friend and she
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would be another example of a gold star she makes it very clear but what it is
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that she does and what it is that makes her difference so there are english-speaking voice-over actresses
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there are french-speaking voice-over actresses there are copy writers who write copy
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for her videos she's all of those she's American born 100% fluent in French
25:09
actually visited her in Paris and so I can attest that she is a hundred percent fluent she lives in Paris and she's a
25:16
copy writer so she's able to go in there if you're like a French company for example that wants to reach the broader English market she can go in there do
25:24
the voice-over 100% know the audience that she's speaking to because she is that audience and she can write and edit
25:29
that script so I mean that's super unique right and she makes sure that you
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know that and I mean if you don't think she's worked with big brands I mean she does the voiceover for Nespresso
25:41
commercial with George Clooney so somewhere yeah yeah exactly so and yeah
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so Cartier Estee Lauder she's so yeah she does an excellent job and then the
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last one Sam Grover copywriter content strategy similar to the professional pen
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situation in that I write content that helps you you know turn leads into
26:06
paying customers sell more to existing customers improve customer loyalty that's just table stakes that is the job
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of content and the test I always like to give to people is call up some other
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content marketers as well put your page next to theirs why are they choosing you it's going to be luck it's going to
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because they already know you or they're a warm referral from someone you've worked with that's a very small market
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of people out of the broader picture versus anybody who needs content so if I
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were to put this next to another page it would be hard to choose Sam because it sounds just a lot like every other
26:46
content marketer out there and he goes further to say that he basically writes the content for every
26:51
type of deliverable and then the logos tell me that he writes logos for writes copy for just about any type of company
26:57
and so at that point it's just it's really hard to choose him as a stranger
27:03
looking for the best copywriter for my particular needs and so I always urge people obviously if things are going
27:10
great for Sam he's making the kind of money he want to make the kind of clients he wants don't don't change the thing but if that's not happening then I
27:17
always think it's worth taking a look at the companies that you really enjoyed working with that you did the best work for it look for a trend and then dig in
27:23
on that and make that your your unique value proposition that you do these
27:29
certain things like emails for these types of companies and if you think you're backing yourself into a corner
27:35
you're not because the world is a big place and when you specialize and when people see that you specialize they'll
27:40
come from all over the world to work with you like I don't know I like I I live in Canada I hardly ever work with Canadian company
27:46
I always work with like US European Australian and then the odd Canadian company and that's just because I'm
27:51
focused and so people are willing to work with the person who's focused on what they need regardless of where they
27:57
are so I always urge people to at least consider choosing a nation and really digging deep yeah so that would be a
28:05
question that would have and I think we brought it up a little bit early on about the niche and you know it it can
28:17
be hard you know some people say at least you know where were some of the same copywriting groups you'll hear
28:22
somebody say oh I don't have a niche I enjoy working with a lot of different companies it works really well for me
28:28
etc and I reckon that there's definitely a case of a lot of people would you say
28:33
you used the word specialization while I go how would you define a niche well how
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would you define the word niche is it about specialization of what you do is
28:46
it about industries about it can be both and I mean if you're able I think both
28:52
is even more powerful so I could be a SAS writer and that would be just
28:58
industry but then I might also write blog posts and things nature and I might also write you know third and fourth tier web pages I don't
29:05
see a lot of traffic and they don't they won't pay a lot of money for but I don't so I work with SAS companies
29:11
specifically even more specifically than that they need to be VC funded or a successful self-funded company so I'm
29:19
not working with people who are like in the idea stage and so that already narrows the field even more and then
29:24
beyond that if they don't believe in things like investing in customer research if if if they need someone
29:32
that's going to do like bulk work like I had a had an inquiry yesterday from someone who needed like a hundred and
29:37
forty pages done and I was like I'm not going to do 140 pages like you're not gonna after we get past you know your
29:43
10th most important page the ROI is not going to be there to pay my fee for the other you know other 130 pages and so
29:50
this is this won't work so if someone wants to work with me and they're not a SAS company that's VC funded or at least
29:57
successfully self-funded and they want to invest in customer research and they want someone who's going to work on the most important assets such as their main
30:04
pages main landing pages and their core emails I need to lead to like active customers and and and and paying
30:11
customers then we're not going to be a fit and you would say well that narrows the field quite a bit yeah that's kind
30:17
of scary but the reality is you know as one person there's I I can't do all the
30:23
work that's out there there's other people just like me trying to do this work too and they're doing fine as well so the other thing
30:30
that happens is when you when you specialize if you think about it and pretty much any aspect of your life when
30:35
you're dealing with someone who's specializes and you care about this thing you pay more for it you know what
30:41
does that what does a heart surgeon make versus your general practitioner a lot a lot more I think when you're getting
30:47
into this and Sophie not like I said Sophie and I kind of hung it we were buddies for a while and kind of getting
30:54
started and she has since ditched in the SAS and you know she's doing really well
30:59
and I think they've done a lot of emails now her and Nicky and you know and in we
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taught we both talked about oh you know what is our niche and what are we talking what we do and of course
31:14
part of it is paying the bills I think when you get started sometimes you don't really know you're trying to find your
31:21
way and you try a lot of different things before you figure out what you really like to do what you're pretty
31:27
good at doing right and then at the same time you've got to pay the bill so it's kind of a but but as it relates to a
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unique value proposition I mean I think Anisha is part of that formula for
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coming up with a value problem admit it is I mean as we saw when we went through
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those examples one of the main thing that was missing in the pages that I had some critiques for was that no I wasn't
31:53
sure I wasn't sure who exactly you work with and what exactly you do and don't
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do and so if I'm you know I'm not if I'm if I'm a client looking for someone to
32:04
work with I'm not a generic person I'm someone who's in EdTech with email
32:09
problem and so I don't want to work with the person who does everything I want to work with Gerard because he's an edge he
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works with EdTech companies he's he solved my problem and has proof that he solved my problem a bunch of times
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before and so it's it's hard it's hard to imagine a value proposition as a
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freelancer especially that isn't specific because you just you don't need
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a ton of work to do well and so you're I think you're shooting yourself in the foot when you just lump yourself in with
32:38
the masses who haven't thought of positioning themselves yeah I mean in Rob my friend from Toronto and I talk
32:44
all Tom he look he really likes to book inside advantage we don't like that one
32:50
yeah we talk about differentiation and and I tend to use that word before I do
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niche I think a lot of people use nation oh we gotta have a nation you know and then some people think it means oh it's
33:02
a it's a particular vertical that we work in like rightly or SAS or whatever
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and and you know I guess differentiation it's like what what's different about
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you you know and that's question I want to know when I work with somebody what is different about you than the other
33:20
person like you down there what makes you different and and I think it goes
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you know I've done a lot about page evaluations and that's that's a key part of that as well you know what
33:34
is your differentiation your what is it about your industry you don't like you
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know that kind of thing what are you trying to change and so it's just kind of an interesting thing to talk about so
33:50
we did actually get to neesh a little bit we talked about that all day so let
33:56
me ask you this we start to write this wrap this up do you have an advisor your average
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person average business b2b business out there to improve the value prop on their
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home page you have a couple tips that you think would a couple three tips that
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would help them as they look at their work their website and go how can I make my value prop and am I in the hero area
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on my home page better yes I have some thoughts on this for sure so my first piece of advice it's really unpopular is
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if you have no idea who you want to work with specifically and what you want to
34:37
do for them and what your what your best fit for I personally think you should get a job and learn on the job while
34:44
getting paid maybe having some benefits save up some money see see what you like
34:49
and don't like develop your skills under people who are vested in actually improving your skills because you're their employee and then when you're
34:55
ready take the leap at that point it will feel a lot less like a leap you could even build up some of that
35:01
momentum while you're working and that's that's like that's exactly what I did so I'm biased here I I worked at a SAS
35:07
company I liked the space of SAS I saw the promise I got to know the language inside and out and I started a blog on
35:14
the side and got a couple of clients through there and then I quit my job so I did not take this this big risk the
35:21
other reason I recommend that is you had mentioned how a lot of people are like you know I don't really know what I want to do so I'm just gonna work with a
35:28
bunch of different customers and and and see what I like and don't like you can certainly do that but it's a hard road
35:35
because the cream of the crop for all these different customers are there they're looking for a specialist so what
35:40
you're going to be dealing with are the people that are looking for people that will do the work for them cheap and sometimes I wonder if
35:48
you actually get a lot better by doing a lot of you know rushed work for for
35:54
subpar clients because if if you're you have to rush through it you got to pay your bills so if they're not paying well you got to get a lot of work out right
36:00
so my first advice would be if you don't know what you want to do and who you want to do it for see if you can find
36:06
some some paid work and figure that out while you're while you're getting a salary and then after that the stuff is
36:12
not it's not super tricky it's more it takes some courage and you've got to
36:19
wrap your head around the fact that by saying no to 99.9% of businesses out
36:24
there you're actually going to get more business because of that more than likely unless you choose some really
36:30
stupid niche like you know writing copy for video stores or something like that you're probably you're probably not
36:36
gonna do well as one as one human being
36:41
there's a really good chance that whoever it is you want to work with and whatever type of work you like to do
36:47
there's more than enough work out there for you to do that and a quick Google search for some related terms will
36:52
probably show like a few copywriters at least focusing on that area and if they've been in business for a little
36:58
while you know there's probably more to go around and then once once you've got that it really just comes down to
37:03
answering like a few simple questions what is it that you do who is it that you do it for and what makes you better
37:11
or different or more qualified to do this thing and then you can go a step further like I do on my page to you know
37:17
have a lot of people saying yes to those initial three questions that this is the person for me and then you can go know
37:22
below the fold like I have on my website and I disqualify some of those people as well but that's where we're talking
37:29
about how they've got to be either VC funded or successfully self funded they can't be just to start up with an idea I
37:35
can't add value there so yeah it's it's not not rocket science not that hard it
37:41
just takes a little bit of courage and a bit of a shift in mindset to realize that by targeting fewer people it's
37:47
gonna be you're gonna send out a big signal out there you're gonna get referrals from a lot of sources that you just can't if if you're a generic
37:54
generic copywriter free whatever space you're in yeah I get LinkedIn profile
38:01
whatever profounder things I go look at I'm like this is not gonna work so
38:07
anyway that's a that's another issue but I appreciate you taking the time to come on the copy chat show and lend their
38:16
expertise in the area of value props and an itching and so I do appreciate that
38:22
and you want to tell people where they can find you online yes my website is sway copy com
38:28
if you're a freelancer or consultant there is a and I think you're gonna share link in the in the notes but
38:33
there's a link to a approximately 9,000 word email series on this whole topic of
38:40
whether or not you should choose a niche and some of the advantages and how you can go about doing it that's completely free and as of right now like an idiot I
38:47
have absolutely no snow sale at the end of it it's really just a response to me answering the same
38:52
questions over and over again so I just put it in one place where where people can get it and of course when I send
38:57
emails out after that you'll you'll get those emails as well social media it's
39:03
at sway copy on Twitter and then just look up Josh go fallow on LinkedIn you'll find me there that's probably the
39:08
best place you're a thing I say garel fallow but Janeane Garofalo says a
39:14
Garofalo like I did so yeah maybe a service are right or wrong no appreciate
39:22
you coming on thanks for joining us on the copy chat show check out Josh online
39:29
check out is if you're if you're a freelancer I would highly encourage you to sign up for that email list and get
39:34
that niche series that he sends out and he is and if you're a copywriter and
39:40
you're some of the copywriter groups he's usually one of the ones giving out a lot of value and for free and him and
39:47
the other ball that it got from Canada they're usually pretty free with that so
39:52
appreciate their willingness to do that they're very very good about helping out
39:59
other copywriters getting started so anyway we will be back for another
40:04
episode here in the in a little while so thanks for joining a copy chat show
40:09
and have a great day
40:19
you
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