June 18, 2025 • 44 mins
Chris Silvestri (Founder & Conversion Copywriter, Conversion Alchemy), who shared some proven strategies on how B2B SaaS marketers can achieve strong message-market fit.Chris explained why effective conversion copywriting is more than just clever words - it’s about capturing insights from customer research, team alignment, and understanding buyer psychology.
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(00:00):
Every company in the B2B worldwants to make sure that traffic
they're driving to their websiteisn't squandered by confusing,
unclear or weak messaging. Theyalso want to see more people
sign up for demos, trials orpurchases. So what does it take
to ensure you're turning B2Bmessaging into gold? Welcome to
this episode of the B2BMarketers in the Mission
podcast, and I'm your host,Christian Klepp. Today, I'll be
(00:23):
talking to Chris Silvestri, whowill be answering this question.
He's the founder and conversioncopywriter at Conversion
Alchemy, who has been helpingB2B SaaS (Software as a Service)
companies find their messagemarket fit. Find out more about
what this B2B marketers missionis. All right, I'm gonna say.
(00:44):
Chris Silvestri, welcome to theshow.
Hey Christian. Pleasure to behere. Excited for this.
Really looking forward to thisconversation, Chris, because you
know, before I hit record, wewere having a lot of good
discussions about, well, theright and wrong things to do
when it comes to copywriting, solet's, let's dive right in and
get this started.
(01:05):
Yeah, totally.
Okay, fantastic. So Chris,you're on a mission to help B2B
SaaS companies make their valueimpossible to ignore and join
the conversation alreadyhappening in their customers
heads. So for this conversation,let's zero in on the topic of
how B2B SaaS marketers canachieve the right message market
(01:26):
fit. So I'd like to start theconversation off with two
questions, and I'm happy torepeat them. First one is, why
do you believe that highconverting copy goes far beyond
words? And the second questionis, where do you see a lot of
B2B SaaS copy falling flat.
Very good question. So to thefirst one. Why does copy go
(01:47):
beyond just words? That's alsokind of the premise of my own
Conversion Alchemy brand. Let'ssay so. I say the words are just
the base metal, and then youneed the alchemy of psychology,
UX, decision making to actuallymake those words convert. And
the way, the reason I say thisis because users don't just read
(02:11):
words, if you think about it,they need to do some work, some
unpacking work. When they readthose words, if you imagine one
of your customers reading yourcopy, they come to your whether
it's a landing page or an emailor an ad or even just a sales
stack, or during a presentation,they come to it with some kind
of past experience. Maybe theyhave been using a competitor.
(02:36):
Maybe they've tried similarproducts. So when it comes time
to actually read those words.They have a lot of work to do to
kind of deconstruct what you aresaying and see if it matches the
conversation that they alreadyhave in their minds, whether
it's expectations or perceivedvalue. So that's what I mean by
(02:58):
words are not enough. It's notjust about writing words, the
grammar, the clarity, yes, it isabout that, but then there's
much more going on in the in thebackground.
Absolutely, words are notenough. It sounds like a love
song like you you need to put inthe put in some action as well.
(03:18):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And tothe next question, where do you
see a lot of B2B SaaS companiesfalling flat with their copy.
One big problem that I see,which probably the most evident,
which actually tells you thatthere's issues throughout the
copy or through other messaging,is probably lack of a clear and
(03:40):
compelling value proposition.And by that, I mean mostly, if
you look at any homepage, theabove the fold copy that you see
on the homepage, that'sbasically the first thing that a
user sees, unless they land on alanding page. But in general,
when you land on a homepage,you're a prospect. You see the
main headline, the main subhead,and the call to action. That
(04:01):
section is what I see being theweakest, which is pretty
critical, because if you thinkabout it, that's the first step.
Then after that, users need toscroll, need to take the next
action. So that's probably thebiggest one. Companies struggle
to actually express theirpositioning and their messaging
strategy in that specific,concise piece of copy.
(04:24):
The second one is probably thebalance between features and
benefits. So there's a lot oftalk about you should use
benefits and not features,right? But in SaaS, it's a bit
more complex, and what I see isthat, yes, benefits have a lot
of value, especially if you're aSaaS or B2B company that's been
writing copy mostly centered onfeatures, you also need to
(04:47):
express that value, what's in itfor users. But it's also
important to match that valuewith the actual technicalities,
the features, the specs thatespecially more sophisticated,
advanced prospects might belooking for, especially if
they've been using a competitor,or if they are very
(05:08):
sophisticated and higher inawareness about the product that
they are looking for, theproblem that they're trying to
solve, they might be looking forspecific technical features,
technical names, so you want toemphasize those as well, and
it's all about visual hierarchy.
The probably the third one, it'sa lot of companies, especially
(05:30):
those that have a pretty complexand technical product. For
example, I worked with dataintegration and quality B2B SaaS
enterprise as well a couple ofmonths ago, and they had this
specific problem. They tried tosimplify their message rather
(05:51):
than being clear. The problemis, when you simplify message,
you remove the complexityentirely. When you are clear,
you actually make thatcomplexity understandable, which
is totally different, becausesome, some of your ICPs (Ideal
Customer Profile), yourpersonas, might need that
complexity in your copy. It'sjust a matter of understanding
(06:12):
how much of it in what places,and kind of balancing it out.
Absolutely, absolutely. Somefantastic points there. And to
your I'll start with the lastpoint. This is part of the
reason, because I do a bit ofcopywriting myself, but this is
part of the reason why I don'tbelieve in writing messaging,
where it's just like one wordlike, it's like a one word
(06:33):
sentence. So it's like, it'slike, rinse, repeat, redo, or
something like that, right? Youknow what I mean? Because it's,
oversimplifying something,especially in B2B, that you put
yourself in the customer'sshoes, or you wear the
customer's lens, as they say,it's very hard to actually
process, okay. What exactly areyou trying to tell me here?
(06:55):
Yeah, exactly. It goes back tothe to what I was saying
earlier, about having themunpack. The more concise, the
less context, context you givereaders, then the more work they
have to do to kind ofdeconstruct and impact what
you're saying. So I wouldprobably do something like that,
maybe if you are being funny, ifit's in your brand voice, or if
(07:17):
it's a phrase that you've seen alot of times come up in your
voice of customer data. So ifit's something that's common,
commonly said among yourprospects or users, I would
probably try, but yeah, it'spretty hard to convince them
when you are being clever likethat.
Absolutely, absolutely. I had acouple of follow up questions
(07:37):
for you, Chris, just based onwhat you've been saying in the
past couple of minutes, thefirst one, and this is something
I see again and again and again,the classic Call to Action above
the fold where it says, contactus, book a demo. So it's
immediately like asking theperson to jump straight into the
call. Right? Your thoughts onthat?
(08:00):
Yeah, I would say it doesn'thurt, but don't expect them that
being the first thing that theyclick on. So expect that you
actually are gonna have moreconvincing and more and more
argument building to have to dofurther down the page. So maybe
think of it at the beginning,especially for like a home page
(08:20):
where you still have tointroduce your product, what you
do, how you do it. Maybe thinkof it as kind of like a
secondary step that if peopleclick on it even better, in
which case you have to be readywith the next step. So where are
you reading them? Is that whatthey might expect after reading
only? Maybe the headline? So youneed to keep that into
(08:42):
consideration. And yeah, justexpect that you're gonna have to
build more of your argument downthe page. And that's probably
gonna be something that theymight or might not click on, but
it's not gonna be their finaldestination. Let's say.
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, sothat was the first question. The
second question is, and you, youdeal with us all the time, I'm
sure, day in, day out, but likeyou look at I'm not saying
(09:05):
everybody does this, but a lotof SaaS companies do this,
right? You go to the homepage,and you scroll and scroll and
scroll, and you're like, Okay,lot of features still not quite
clear on what they do, right?Then you go back to the top, and
you scroll again, and it's like,still not clear. So why do you
(09:25):
think that is like, why dothey... what about some of these
SaaS companies fall into thistrap of like, okay, they're just
talking about the productfeatures, but they don't
actually address what theproblem is that they're trying
to solve.
Yeah, it's probably going backto the conversation that they
have in their minds, right? Theproblem is, a lot of these
companies, and we were talkingabout this before we started
(09:46):
recording, all of thesecompanies, are so immersed in
their own product, in thefeatures, in the latest things
that they are building, thatthey kind of maybe don't think
about it, or think that whatmatters to their. Prospects is
just seeing what they're workingon and what the latest updates,
latest features, or thedifferentiated features are for
(10:08):
them. So that's what theyproject on the page. But it's
it's mostly about starting froma perspective of, okay, what is
the visitor expecting at thisspecific point in their journey,
and how can I present it to themin the best way possible? So
it's rare that to match thatconversation, you start with
(10:28):
features, you probably have tostart talking about your problem
or maybe the solution, dependingon how aware your visitors are.
So you have to hook them wherethey are at any point,
Exactly, exactly. Okay, I'mgoing to move us on to the next
question on what you believe arethe untapped opportunities for
B2B SaaS, regarding message andmarket fit.
(10:51):
Probably one like the one of thelowest hanging fruit that I see,
just because it's in theory, ifyou build a product out of need,
or you're scratching your ownitch, or if you saw that you
could do something better in themarket, there's you probably
have a strong point of view. SoI think one of the most untapped
(11:11):
opportunities is to strengthenyour point of view and how it
comes across in your copy. So touncover that with my clients, I
ask a lot of questions with thewith the team members, typically
marketing, sales, support,customer success, but especially
the founder. So I want to reallyunderstand, what do you think
the market is doing wrong, oryour customers are doing wrong,
(11:35):
or competitors are doing wrong?What drives you crazy about the
industry. What do you want tosee changed? And that kind of
gives me that strong point ofview, that that we can inject in
our messaging and weave itthroughout all the all the copy
that we write. So that reallygives you that differentiation.
And it doesn't take ages to findout. You just need to sit down
(11:59):
with your team members, get itout and try to get it on the page.
Maybe another one could be, as Imentioned, matching that
motivation on the above the foldpage. So I always remember Matt
Lerner, is a consultant growth abook called wrote a book called
Growth Levers, and he talksabout how to basically think of
(12:25):
your copy in the above the foldpage. And he has this very
simple formula. So imagineyou're completing the sentence.
I want to XYZ, right? So if youhave a product, project
management software, I don'tknow, you complete the sentence
with I want to double the speedat which you I complete my
projects. That could be yourhead like double the speed at
(12:49):
which you complete the projects,right? So that puts you already
in much more of a visitor, firstprospect, first mindset, that
allows you to write that copy ina way that matches that
motivation when they land on thepage. So rather than starting we
do this, or we offer thesefeatures, or we are better,
because blah, blah, you know.
(13:10):
So that's that's probably theother easy one, and, yeah,
probably the other one, otherone that comes to mind just
because I see a lot of companiesnot don't do it. It's create
kind of a system or a process toorganically start collecting
your research data and makesense of it, just because that's
(13:31):
the research is 70% of my work.But it's also like for marketing
is essential, right? So a lot ofcompanies run research on like
one off projects, maybe everycouple of months, randomly or
just because they have acampaign they need to run. What
if you instead create a systemthat allows you to consistently
(13:52):
collect research, organize it sothat you always have it
available, and informs all theactivities that you, that you
work on in your team, right? Sothis is probably the other opportunity.
Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. Ilove it. And we're going to talk
about market research later onin the conversation. But you
(14:13):
talked about this already alittle bit when it comes to
message and market fit, what aresome of the key pitfalls that
B2B SaaS marketers should avoid,and what should they be doing
instead?
One, one that I see quite oftenas well, because when I jump
into projects, I do a lot ofcompetitor research, right? So
(14:35):
often I get these documentsproduced internally by the team,
and a lot of them think ofcompetitor research in terms of
copying competitors, which Ithink the big mistake, just
because you don't know theirgoal, you don't know the
strategy and the their audiencemight also be quite different,
right? So what I recommend themdoing instead of copying their
(14:57):
website, messaging or the wordsthat they use. Using try to
deconstruct it and extract fromit the things that you can use.
So there's a very easy, simpleframework to do this, which is,
I typically divide a page intothree areas, actually four core
areas. The first one is, as Imentioned, the motivation,
(15:19):
right? What brings them to thepage, you can extract the kind
of language that they're usingthere the awareness, the level
of awareness that they areaddressing. So how much do their
Second layer is the value. Whatis the value that they this
(15:40):
company is presenting on theirwebsite, which is often about
the product, the features andthe benefits, the
prospects know about it, howsophisticated they are, and
differentiators. You can startnoting those down and try to
categorize and organize that value.
The third one is the anxiety. Sohow are they addressing the
anxiety for prospects. And byanxiety, I mean the objections
(16:03):
that they have, the kind ofinsecurities, the questions, and
that's all social proof can betestimonials, videos, reviews,
but also just an easy one isactually especially if you have
kind of a like a complexonboarding, or maybe you're
sending a mix of services if youexplain your process or what
(16:26):
happens after they click on thecall to action, how can you set
better expectations?
All of that is about theaddressing this anxiety, and the
final one is the call to action.So what types of call to actions
do they use? Where are theysending people? Do you see that
they are sending them to thepricing page? Maybe because they
(16:48):
think their prospects need tosee pricing, or maybe they have
complex plan tiers and all ofthat. So try to deconstruct your
competitors rather than copyingthem. If I'm speaking with
marketing, I would try to tellthem to sync a bit more often
with sales and try to be presentin those sales conversations,
(17:09):
especially if you have a salesled company, sales led product.
And if you have those salesconversations recorded, try to
watch as many of them, justbecause they're super helpful,
you can see those objection. Youcan actually start understanding
the language that prospects areusing, what kind of value they
(17:30):
find the most helpful orvaluable, and especially when it
comes to switching fromswitching from a competitor, so
sales, but also the other thing,which not a lot of people do, is
sync with the product team, andthat's because, in the end,
syncing with all teams, it'salways going to be helpful. But
that's based on the language ofwords that they use.
(17:50):
also, and I've been and I'veworked as a UX (User Experience)
lead, so I used to watch a lotof usability tests, usability
studies and research, and Ifound the value of actually
studying how people use theproduct, where they stumble on
how they react to kind of yourfeature. All of that is still
(18:10):
super helpful in informing notonly how you build the product,
but also how you market theproduct. So I would definitely,
yeah, try to convince bothmarketers, sales and product, to
kind of work together a bitmore. And that's probably,
that's probably another one, yeah.
Okay, okay, okay, some, somereally great points. And I came
(18:32):
up with a couple of follow upquestions, because, you know,
why not? Right? Like to thepoint about call to action and
CTAs, just from maybe your ownexperience. How many would you
recommend there be on a website?Because I've seen websites where
there's only one call to action,and I've seen one where there's,
I'm not exaggerating, there'slike, six or seven, and then
(18:55):
it's like, yeah. What's thegeneral rule of thumb? How many
should you have?
So as a rule, I would alwaysrecommend to have at least one
primary call to action and asecondary call to action. But
also it's important to make thatdifferentiation, because a lot
of companies, they have two callto action, but they visually,
they don't differentiate them.So it becomes hard for prospects
(19:17):
to understand where they need togo, how and so on. So typically,
primary secondary call toaction. So if you have a pricing
page, send them to the pricingpage or sign up, and then the
other call to action could be acontact, contact page or sign
up, or actually pricing, right?So primary secondary, but then
it depends on the page as well.So if you're if you're talking
(19:41):
about a home page, then I mightalso have a couple of other
secondary calls to action thatlead specific personas to the
next page they need to visit andbut those call to action, rather
than being bottom, maybe theycould be just text links so
they're even a bit lessnoticeable, but still access.
Table for users, and you cansend them, I don't know if you
(20:02):
have multiple personas ordifferent use cases, you can
send them to those internalpages where they can expand on
what they already what they justsaw on the on the homepage, and
go deeper and deeper into theirown awareness funnel and until
they actually persuade andconvinced.
Okay, fantastic, fantastic. Andhere comes the second question,
(20:26):
because you were talking abouthaving conversations with
marketing, having conversationswith sales and products, and I'm
sure you've come across thisbefore, because I know I have
what have you ended up findingthat each group or each
department has conflictingpoints of view or perspectives.
(20:46):
How do you how do you deal withthat, in terms of like,
developing the copy, if, ifmarketing is saying red and then
sales is saying white and thenproduct is saying no, it's
definitely green.
Yeah, my, my best advice isalways go back to your market.
So that's why, for everyproject, I always do my
research, even if my clienttells me, Oh yeah, we've already
(21:10):
done customer interviews or wehave this survey data for like,
from like three years ago, evenif it's recent, I always tell
them I have my process. This iswhat we need to do, and I always
trust the research first. Also,yeah, obviously I still want to
get that internal perspective,so I speak with everyone inside
(21:31):
the team, but at the same time,then I let my research speak.
And I find often that when youtell them this is what we found,
especially because they've neverdone that kind of research, they
tend to trust you and to leadthem, right? So that's also very
good way to bring them alltogether, and that's a very big
(21:51):
part of my job and work as well.It's not only writing creating
messaging strategy that writingthe copy, it's also bringing
these teams together andaligning them on things.
Absolutely, absolutely, youknow, I just realized when I
said, okay, they want red andthey want white and they want
green, I was like, hey, that'sthe Italian flag, isn't it?
(22:14):
Yes.
I wasn't planning on doing that.But, like,
Part intended.
Okay, you were talking a lotabout marketing and also about
conducting research. I'm gonnasay so in many cases, marketers
spend a lot of time conductingresearch, and often they end up
(22:35):
not really knowing what to dowith it. So just from your own
experience, how can B2B SaaSmarketers finally leverage and
make good use of this, whateveryou want to call it, scattered
or abandoned research.
Yeah. So the way that I see, Isee research has kind of imagine
an iceberg, right? So you havethe outside surface of the
(22:57):
iceberg. The first layer that'sthat, to me, is kind of the it's
kind of the layer that tells youwhat users say, the language,
and that basically includeseverything that you already have
inside the company, whichprobably includes sales,
conversation transcripts,customer support chats, or you
can access reviews, eithercompetitors or yours, or what
(23:20):
else looking at competitorsmessaging, or maybe you have
voice of customer for previousconversations. So all of that is
kind of research, the thesurface layer that tells you
what users say and how, whatkind of language, if you don't
have anything of as far asresearch, I would say, start
(23:40):
with that. So go on reviewwebsites, start collecting some
reviews, collect those salesconversations, or at least start
recording those so that you havesome of the language and you can
use it and mirror it in yourcopy.
The second layer, which isalready under the water of the
iceberg. In the iceberg, it'sthe structural layer, and that's
(24:03):
more of the UX user experiencelayer. And maybe this comes from
my user experience past as well,but I love to match and cross
reference the insights that Iget for messaging against the
the actions that users actuallytake on websites. I see their
(24:25):
experience on a website isactually like a journey. They
are on the website. They yes,they need to understand the
words, but they also need toconsume them in a way that's
frictionless. So it's a lotabout creating a clear flow of
the copy they write of thepages. So from one call to
action to the other, clearvisual hierarchy of the
(24:45):
different sections. So all ofthat, and to collect that data,
I typically look at heat maps,user interaction, data
analytics. I might run usabilitytesting on a website. Yeah,
those are probably the biggestways and easy ways. So if you
don't have anything, starttracking those user interaction
(25:06):
data with something like Hotjar,for example, and your analytics,
so understanding bounce rate,time on page and all of those.
The final layer, which isprobably the most important,
even though it's kind of thehardest to extract and to reach.
It's the deep layer, which istells you why users or prospects
act. Why do they make thosedecisions? And this goes back
(25:33):
to, as I was saying,understanding their decision
making process. So this is allthe qualitative data that you
get from customer interviews orcustomer survey, qualitative
serving, I mean quantitativehere. So qualitative surveys,
extracting positioning andmessaging strategy from your
(25:53):
competitors website. So the nextstep, after you've kind of
extracted the language, all ofthat tells you why they act,
right? So when you understandand have deconstructed their
decision making process, thenyou match it with their action
on the website and the wordsthat they use, then you bring
everything together, and thatgives you copy that converts.
(26:15):
Sounds so simple, right?
Yeah, it's two, three months ofwork when you say it sounds a
bit simple.
Absolutely no, no. I mean, thatwas really a great way to unpack
that. And I, you know, I've seenthat time and time again, how
some marketing teams are almostresearching, yeah, you can say
aimlessly, but it's also becausethey don't quite understand,
(26:37):
like, well, what is this for?Right? And perhaps it's also
because they haven't had thatconversation with the customers
directly, so they don't quiteunderstand what the challenges
are, right?
Yeah, and it's crazy to see whenwe do customer interviews. So
Yeah, especially if you alreadyhave customers that are, you
for example, for the bestexample, one of the latest
projects, we did customerinterviews, and the interviews
(26:57):
that we do are jobs to be doneinterviews so we understand the
progress, the before, during andafter, making the buying
decision, if you think aboutabout it, those interviews
actually match almost perfectlythe structure of a great
testimonial. So what the after?After looking at a couple of
those interviews, our clientstold us, Hey, guys, could you
(27:19):
actually record some of thoseinterviews in video that so that
we can use them as testimonials.And that tells you a lot about
like, they've never done those,and it's such a like, low
hanging fruit, but, yeah, supervaluable, both for the insights
that you get and the social proof.
know, they're happy with whatyou do, or they're, they're
(27:42):
happy with the product, andthey've, they've, they've
renewed the contract. And sothat nature, right?
Yeah, and it doesn't take, likepeople, maybe they avoid doing
that, or are a bit resistant indoing that, because they think,
Oh, we have to interview, speakto customer, customers, when
actually, in theory, you need atleast five, ideally seven to 10
interviews, and you already getlike 80% of the insights that
(28:05):
you need, so
Exactly. Okay, so, Chris, in ourprevious conversation, you told
me you had this secretsuperpower now to read your
customers minds. But jokesaside, what do you think
marketers can do to betterunderstand their customers? So
(28:25):
in terms of things that youalready talked about, like, you
know, your their behaviors,their their motivations, their
preferences and theirobjections? What can they do?
Yeah, if we had to kind ofsummarize it into like an
actions plan or of like, clearsteps, I would say first align
(28:46):
your teams inside the company,because that's the first step.
If you're not aligned thateverybody is going to say
different things, and you can'tmake that research work for you
unless you're all aligned on asingle goal and are clear on
what you're doing.
The other one is to run thosejobs to be done interviews, so
(29:07):
understand that before, duringand after the buying process for
customers, which means askingthem questions on what were they
doing, or what was going on intheir life when they started
looking for a solution, or whatalternatives were they
considering at the time, whenthey when they were considering
(29:28):
you as well? Did they try othersolutions, alternatives? And
also, can you find out whetheror not it wasn't only about
direct competitors, but alsoother ways of doing things,
maybe the status quo. It's anentirely different thing that
you had no idea about, right? Sothat's important to find out,
and when it came time toactually picking you, why did
(29:51):
they pick you? What made themchoose you? Or other alternative
solutions now they're thatthey're using you. What are they
able to do that they weren'table to do before, right? Is
there anything surprising,anything unexpected, that they
found value using you and andhow would they describe you if
(30:12):
they were to recommend you? Thattells you a lot about the kind
of the their perception of whatyou do, who you are. Another
good question that I like toask, it's, what big problem does
this company solve for you? Andthat typically gives you a lot
of language that you can use forthat value proposition on the
above the fold of the page.
(30:33):
Once you've done thoseinterviews, I would try to
understand that switching, thoseswitching costs, right? Because
we need to address them in theanxiety section. So how can we
make their switching costs,especially if you're talking
about B2B, where they areprobably already using a
solution, and try to understandthat that conversation that
(30:56):
they're already having insidetheir head when they land on the
page, maybe they're usinganother solution. So a couple of
easy ways that you can use andand Joanna Wiebe at Copyhackers
talks a lot about these. You canrun thank you page survey. So
after they buy, for example, runa quick survey where you ask
them, okay, what? What do youplan on doing now that you are
(31:18):
sign up or something like that,or if you want to understand the
before state, you can ask themwas what was going on that make
you that made you choose oursolution, right? So you can map
that before and after and bridgethe gap. Or you can another
quick one. If you have thetraffic, you can run those
website surveys or polls. So thelittle box that appears on a
(31:41):
page, especially if it's eithera home page, if you want to
understand their level ofawareness. So asking questions
super easy, bulleted questionslike What brings you to the page
today or what best describesyou, so you start understanding
the personas and how much theyknow. What do they know about
(32:01):
your solution or the market? Oralso, you can run those on a
pricing page, so if maybe, aftera couple seconds, 6,10 seconds,
you can ask them, Are there anyquestions that have not been
answered on the page for you?And maybe at least a couple
ones, and see if you're about tofind out what's missing, so that
(32:24):
you can add it to the page. Soaligning teams, running jobs to
be done, kind of research andtry to trying to find out that
what the conversation that theyhave inside their minds when
they land on the page throughthese different surveys and
strategies as well.
Fantastic tips, and I reallyhope that the listeners are
(32:46):
going to be taking notes like Iam doing right now, because this
is going to be really useful tothem. So thanks again for that,
Chris. Okay, so here comes thesoapbox question, a status quo
in your area of expertise, and Ithink you have a lot, but I'm
just asking for one, a statusquo in your area of expertise
(33:08):
that you passionately disagreewith. And why let the Italian
and you come out now.
Totally. So I will be a bitcurrent as well, so I'll go with
something that's on the minds ofa lot of people, including me,
and even at the for the risk ofmaking it look like it's gonna
(33:30):
make my job fail. I'm sayingthat the status quo, it's that
AI can't write good copy, and Iactually say that it's possible,
because I've been doing it, notbasically to replace myself, but
as a kind of like, like a tool,for the past year and a half or
two. So it all depends,obviously, on your either if you
(33:56):
say that you can't write copy,you're either using it
incorrectly or you didn't do theresearch and the strategy that
goes before actually writing thecopy, because without those, no
AI can really help you, right?AI has knowledge of the entire
Internet. So if you ask it towrite, write me a landing page,
or even if you use a mega promptwithout research, actually real
(34:18):
research and your own strategy,then AI is just going to write
you like a generic jargon copythat doesn't really work. So
learn to use it and use it alot, I would say. So I think
Ethan Mollick is a researcher onAI, and he talks all about,
(34:41):
well, I remember, like there's acertain amount of hours I don't
know that, or even, like the10,000 hours of expertise, like
putting those 10,000 hours withAI and then tell me that it can
write, cannot write, copyrightfor that, and also put the
foundations in place so theresearch and your own strategy
and. Then you'll see that withthe actual right frameworks and
(35:03):
systems, I can actually writecopy for you, or at least, like
a very good first draft. Thenyou jump in and edit.
Whew, controversial man. Hot,hot, hot, fresh out of the oven.
No, but, you know, you youmentioned a lot of things where,
(35:25):
where I would tend to agree withthat, right? Like, because I've
spoken to a lot of people. Imean, I myself, like I said, I'm
also doing copywriting. I'vespoken to a lot of people that
are also copywriters, likeyourself, and they're all
generally saying that they are,they are embracing the use of AI
in some shape or form, to yourpoint, right? It's, it's not,
it's not that you completelylike, like, rejected. There are
(35:47):
so many aspects of AI which Iwould tend to agree, it actually
helps speed up the work. Ithelps expedite the work, right?
Because I think one of thethings that I'm sure this is,
this is the same challengeyou're having. It's, it's the
challenge of just the amount,the volume of content that you
need to produce, right?
(36:08):
A volume of content and also thevolume of research that you need
to analyze, right? Luckily, Icould say, I started in an era
where AI wasn't a thing. So Idid all the manual process. I
did everything myself, and thatprobably builds some kind of
muscle or intuition that's stillhelping me, but I will probably
never go back like it's so mucheasier, especially if you
(36:30):
already have your own process,and your use of AI is grounded
in your own process, then Ithink it's 10 times better.
Correct, correct. It's notdirectly related. But Chris, can
you imagine, what were we doingbefore there was a transcription
software for like...
Yeah, what I was doing? I hireda VA that used to transcribe.
(36:53):
The question is, how long didthat take? That took at least...
Yeah, exactly, yeah, days. Andyou also had to pay as well.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, sohere comes the bonus question.
And for the audience that'slistening to this in the audio,
I'm gonna apologize in advance,but I'm just gonna say that
Chris is a fan of like, I'mgonna say body ink. So I think
(37:18):
the bonus question is, if youwere gonna get your next tattoo,
where would it be, and whatwould it be of and why? Because
I think for people that havetattoos, each each tattoo, each
visual, has some kind of likemeaning that's directly
connected to something in theirlife.
Yeah, so I already know theanswer to this, because I've
(37:39):
been thinking about it for thepast year, okay, I've just been
a bit of a like, like, a pausefor from tattooing. But I wanted
to do here. I still have thisblank spot, you know.
Okay, so, so he said he showedme his left arm, right?
Yeah. So I wanted to do theDodge Challenger logo, because I
own a Dodge Challenger in ck,which is a nightmare, but
(38:03):
another time, but it's my mydream car. Always wanted it, and
it also signifies the, I don'tknow, the challenge in general,
which is always like, I like toembrace challenges, whether it's
through fitness or work, throughunderstanding and learning about
new technologies as well. I'dlike the challenge. So, yeah,
(38:23):
it's probably going to be mynext, next tatoo.
Fantastic, fantastic. And justfor the benefit of the audience,
what's the color of your car?
It's a black challenger.
Black, okay, good color. Goodcolor. Chris, this has been a
great conversation. I mean, somany useful insights, so many
actionable tips. Thanks againfor coming on the show and
(38:46):
sharing your experience andexpertise with the listeners.
Please, quick introduction toyourself and how people can get
in touch with you, especially ifthey're struggling with their
copy.
Yeah. My name is Chris. I runConversion Alchemy, which is how
I define it now, because it'schanged, it's a messaging and
conversion experienceoptimization agency, and that
(39:08):
goes into all that we talkedabout right today, like
experience, copy, messaging. Iwork with B2B SaaS companies.
I'm a recovering softwareengineer turned copywriter. I'm
into drums, I'm into meditation,into muscle cars, and you can
find me on my website,https://conversionalchemy.net/
or on LinkedIn. Mostly I'm onLinkedIn, nerding out about this
(39:32):
stuff and sharing things.
Fantastic, and we're going todrop those links in the show
notes so that they can reach outto you directly. So...
Awesome. Thank you so much,Christian.
Yeah, thanks and take care, staysafe and talk to you soon.
You too.
Thank you. Bye.
Every company in the B2B worldwants to make sure that traffic
they're driving to their websiteisn't squandered by confusing,
unclear or weak messaging. Theyalso want to see more people
sign up for demos, trials orpurchases. So what does it take
to ensure you're turning B2Bmessaging into gold? Welcome to
this episode of the B2BMarketers in the Mission
podcast, and I'm your host,Christian Klepp. Today, I'll be
(00:23):
talking to Chris Silvestri, whowill be answering this question.
He's the founder and conversioncopywriter at Conversion
Alchemy, who has been helpingB2B SaaS (Software as a Service)
companies find their messagemarket fit. Find out more about
what this B2B marketers missionis. All right, I'm gonna say.
(00:44):
Chris Silvestri, welcome to theshow.
Hey Christian. Pleasure to behere. Excited for this.
Really looking forward to thisconversation, Chris, because you
know, before I hit record, wewere having a lot of good
discussions about, well, theright and wrong things to do
when it comes to copywriting, solet's, let's dive right in and
get this started.
(01:05):
Yeah, totally.
Okay, fantastic. So Chris,you're on a mission to help B2B
SaaS companies make their valueimpossible to ignore and join
the conversation alreadyhappening in their customers
heads. So for this conversation,let's zero in on the topic of
how B2B SaaS marketers canachieve the right message market
(01:26):
fit. So I'd like to start theconversation off with two
questions, and I'm happy torepeat them. First one is, why
do you believe that highconverting copy goes far beyond
words? And the second questionis, where do you see a lot of
B2B SaaS copy falling flat.
Very good question. So to thefirst one. Why does copy go
(01:47):
beyond just words? That's alsokind of the premise of my own
Conversion Alchemy brand. Let'ssay so. I say the words are just
the base metal, and then youneed the alchemy of psychology,
UX, decision making to actuallymake those words convert. And
the way, the reason I say thisis because users don't just read
(02:11):
words, if you think about it,they need to do some work, some
unpacking work. When they readthose words, if you imagine one
of your customers reading yourcopy, they come to your whether
it's a landing page or an emailor an ad or even just a sales
stack, or during a presentation,they come to it with some kind
of past experience. Maybe theyhave been using a competitor.
(02:36):
Maybe they've tried similarproducts. So when it comes time
to actually read those words.They have a lot of work to do to
kind of deconstruct what you aresaying and see if it matches the
conversation that they alreadyhave in their minds, whether
it's expectations or perceivedvalue. So that's what I mean by
(02:58):
words are not enough. It's notjust about writing words, the
grammar, the clarity, yes, it isabout that, but then there's
much more going on in the in thebackground.
Absolutely, words are notenough. It sounds like a love
song like you you need to put inthe put in some action as well.
(03:18):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And tothe next question, where do you
see a lot of B2B SaaS companiesfalling flat with their copy.
One big problem that I see,which probably the most evident,
which actually tells you thatthere's issues throughout the
copy or through other messaging,is probably lack of a clear and
(03:40):
compelling value proposition.And by that, I mean mostly, if
you look at any homepage, theabove the fold copy that you see
on the homepage, that'sbasically the first thing that a
user sees, unless they land on alanding page. But in general,
when you land on a homepage,you're a prospect. You see the
main headline, the main subhead,and the call to action. That
(04:01):
section is what I see being theweakest, which is pretty
critical, because if you thinkabout it, that's the first step.
Then after that, users need toscroll, need to take the next
action. So that's probably thebiggest one. Companies struggle
to actually express theirpositioning and their messaging
strategy in that specific,concise piece of copy.
(04:24):
The second one is probably thebalance between features and
benefits. So there's a lot oftalk about you should use
benefits and not features,right? But in SaaS, it's a bit
more complex, and what I see isthat, yes, benefits have a lot
of value, especially if you're aSaaS or B2B company that's been
writing copy mostly centered onfeatures, you also need to
(04:47):
express that value, what's in itfor users. But it's also
important to match that valuewith the actual technicalities,
the features, the specs thatespecially more sophisticated,
advanced prospects might belooking for, especially if
they've been using a competitor,or if they are very
(05:08):
sophisticated and higher inawareness about the product that
they are looking for, theproblem that they're trying to
solve, they might be looking forspecific technical features,
technical names, so you want toemphasize those as well, and
it's all about visual hierarchy.
The probably the third one, it'sa lot of companies, especially
(05:30):
those that have a pretty complexand technical product. For
example, I worked with dataintegration and quality B2B SaaS
enterprise as well a couple ofmonths ago, and they had this
specific problem. They tried tosimplify their message rather
(05:51):
than being clear. The problemis, when you simplify message,
you remove the complexityentirely. When you are clear,
you actually make thatcomplexity understandable, which
is totally different, becausesome, some of your ICPs (Ideal
Customer Profile), yourpersonas, might need that
complexity in your copy. It'sjust a matter of understanding
(06:12):
how much of it in what places,and kind of balancing it out.
Absolutely, absolutely. Somefantastic points there. And to
your I'll start with the lastpoint. This is part of the
reason, because I do a bit ofcopywriting myself, but this is
part of the reason why I don'tbelieve in writing messaging,
where it's just like one wordlike, it's like a one word
(06:33):
sentence. So it's like, it'slike, rinse, repeat, redo, or
something like that, right? Youknow what I mean? Because it's,
oversimplifying something,especially in B2B, that you put
yourself in the customer'sshoes, or you wear the
customer's lens, as they say,it's very hard to actually
process, okay. What exactly areyou trying to tell me here?
(06:55):
Yeah, exactly. It goes back tothe to what I was saying
earlier, about having themunpack. The more concise, the
less context, context you givereaders, then the more work they
have to do to kind ofdeconstruct and impact what
you're saying. So I wouldprobably do something like that,
maybe if you are being funny, ifit's in your brand voice, or if
(07:17):
it's a phrase that you've seen alot of times come up in your
voice of customer data. So ifit's something that's common,
commonly said among yourprospects or users, I would
probably try, but yeah, it'spretty hard to convince them
when you are being clever likethat.
Absolutely, absolutely. I had acouple of follow up questions
(07:37):
for you, Chris, just based onwhat you've been saying in the
past couple of minutes, thefirst one, and this is something
I see again and again and again,the classic Call to Action above
the fold where it says, contactus, book a demo. So it's
immediately like asking theperson to jump straight into the
call. Right? Your thoughts onthat?
(08:00):
Yeah, I would say it doesn'thurt, but don't expect them that
being the first thing that theyclick on. So expect that you
actually are gonna have moreconvincing and more and more
argument building to have to dofurther down the page. So maybe
think of it at the beginning,especially for like a home page
(08:20):
where you still have tointroduce your product, what you
do, how you do it. Maybe thinkof it as kind of like a
secondary step that if peopleclick on it even better, in
which case you have to be readywith the next step. So where are
you reading them? Is that whatthey might expect after reading
only? Maybe the headline? So youneed to keep that into
(08:42):
consideration. And yeah, justexpect that you're gonna have to
build more of your argument downthe page. And that's probably
gonna be something that theymight or might not click on, but
it's not gonna be their finaldestination. Let's say.
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, sothat was the first question. The
second question is, and you, youdeal with us all the time, I'm
sure, day in, day out, but likeyou look at I'm not saying
(09:05):
everybody does this, but a lotof SaaS companies do this,
right? You go to the homepage,and you scroll and scroll and
scroll, and you're like, Okay,lot of features still not quite
clear on what they do, right?Then you go back to the top, and
you scroll again, and it's like,still not clear. So why do you
(09:25):
think that is like, why dothey... what about some of these
SaaS companies fall into thistrap of like, okay, they're just
talking about the productfeatures, but they don't
actually address what theproblem is that they're trying
to solve.
Yeah, it's probably going backto the conversation that they
have in their minds, right? Theproblem is, a lot of these
companies, and we were talkingabout this before we started
(09:46):
recording, all of thesecompanies, are so immersed in
their own product, in thefeatures, in the latest things
that they are building, thatthey kind of maybe don't think
about it, or think that whatmatters to their. Prospects is
just seeing what they're workingon and what the latest updates,
latest features, or thedifferentiated features are for
(10:08):
them. So that's what theyproject on the page. But it's
it's mostly about starting froma perspective of, okay, what is
the visitor expecting at thisspecific point in their journey,
and how can I present it to themin the best way possible? So
it's rare that to match thatconversation, you start with
(10:28):
features, you probably have tostart talking about your problem
or maybe the solution, dependingon how aware your visitors are.
So you have to hook them wherethey are at any point,
Exactly, exactly. Okay, I'mgoing to move us on to the next
question on what you believe arethe untapped opportunities for
B2B SaaS, regarding message andmarket fit.
(10:51):
Probably one like the one of thelowest hanging fruit that I see,
just because it's in theory, ifyou build a product out of need,
or you're scratching your ownitch, or if you saw that you
could do something better in themarket, there's you probably
have a strong point of view. SoI think one of the most untapped
(11:11):
opportunities is to strengthenyour point of view and how it
comes across in your copy. So touncover that with my clients, I
ask a lot of questions with thewith the team members, typically
marketing, sales, support,customer success, but especially
the founder. So I want to reallyunderstand, what do you think
the market is doing wrong, oryour customers are doing wrong,
(11:35):
or competitors are doing wrong?What drives you crazy about the
industry. What do you want tosee changed? And that kind of
gives me that strong point ofview, that that we can inject in
our messaging and weave itthroughout all the all the copy
that we write. So that reallygives you that differentiation.
And it doesn't take ages to findout. You just need to sit down
(11:59):
with your team members, get itout and try to get it on the page.
Maybe another one could be, as Imentioned, matching that
motivation on the above the foldpage. So I always remember Matt
Lerner, is a consultant growth abook called wrote a book called
Growth Levers, and he talksabout how to basically think of
(12:25):
your copy in the above the foldpage. And he has this very
simple formula. So imagineyou're completing the sentence.
I want to XYZ, right? So if youhave a product, project
management software, I don'tknow, you complete the sentence
with I want to double the speedat which you I complete my
projects. That could be yourhead like double the speed at
(12:49):
which you complete the projects,right? So that puts you already
in much more of a visitor, firstprospect, first mindset, that
allows you to write that copy ina way that matches that
motivation when they land on thepage. So rather than starting we
do this, or we offer thesefeatures, or we are better,
because blah, blah, you know.
(13:10):
So that's that's probably theother easy one, and, yeah,
probably the other one, otherone that comes to mind just
because I see a lot of companiesnot don't do it. It's create
kind of a system or a process toorganically start collecting
your research data and makesense of it, just because that's
(13:31):
the research is 70% of my work.But it's also like for marketing
is essential, right? So a lot ofcompanies run research on like
one off projects, maybe everycouple of months, randomly or
just because they have acampaign they need to run. What
if you instead create a systemthat allows you to consistently
(13:52):
collect research, organize it sothat you always have it
available, and informs all theactivities that you, that you
work on in your team, right? Sothis is probably the other opportunity.
Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. Ilove it. And we're going to talk
about market research later onin the conversation. But you
(14:13):
talked about this already alittle bit when it comes to
message and market fit, what aresome of the key pitfalls that
B2B SaaS marketers should avoid,and what should they be doing
instead?
One, one that I see quite oftenas well, because when I jump
into projects, I do a lot ofcompetitor research, right? So
(14:35):
often I get these documentsproduced internally by the team,
and a lot of them think ofcompetitor research in terms of
copying competitors, which Ithink the big mistake, just
because you don't know theirgoal, you don't know the
strategy and the their audiencemight also be quite different,
right? So what I recommend themdoing instead of copying their
(14:57):
website, messaging or the wordsthat they use. Using try to
deconstruct it and extract fromit the things that you can use.
So there's a very easy, simpleframework to do this, which is,
I typically divide a page intothree areas, actually four core
areas. The first one is, as Imentioned, the motivation,
(15:19):
right? What brings them to thepage, you can extract the kind
of language that they're usingthere the awareness, the level
of awareness that they areaddressing. So how much do their
Second layer is the value. Whatis the value that they this
(15:40):
company is presenting on theirwebsite, which is often about
the product, the features andthe benefits, the
prospects know about it, howsophisticated they are, and
differentiators. You can startnoting those down and try to
categorize and organize that value.
The third one is the anxiety. Sohow are they addressing the
anxiety for prospects. And byanxiety, I mean the objections
(16:03):
that they have, the kind ofinsecurities, the questions, and
that's all social proof can betestimonials, videos, reviews,
but also just an easy one isactually especially if you have
kind of a like a complexonboarding, or maybe you're
sending a mix of services if youexplain your process or what
(16:26):
happens after they click on thecall to action, how can you set
better expectations?
All of that is about theaddressing this anxiety, and the
final one is the call to action.So what types of call to actions
do they use? Where are theysending people? Do you see that
they are sending them to thepricing page? Maybe because they
(16:48):
think their prospects need tosee pricing, or maybe they have
complex plan tiers and all ofthat. So try to deconstruct your
competitors rather than copyingthem. If I'm speaking with
marketing, I would try to tellthem to sync a bit more often
with sales and try to be presentin those sales conversations,
(17:09):
especially if you have a salesled company, sales led product.
And if you have those salesconversations recorded, try to
watch as many of them, justbecause they're super helpful,
you can see those objection. Youcan actually start understanding
the language that prospects areusing, what kind of value they
(17:30):
find the most helpful orvaluable, and especially when it
comes to switching fromswitching from a competitor, so
sales, but also the other thing,which not a lot of people do, is
sync with the product team, andthat's because, in the end,
syncing with all teams, it'salways going to be helpful. But
that's based on the language ofwords that they use.
(17:50):
also, and I've been and I'veworked as a UX (User Experience)
lead, so I used to watch a lotof usability tests, usability
studies and research, and Ifound the value of actually
studying how people use theproduct, where they stumble on
how they react to kind of yourfeature. All of that is still
(18:10):
super helpful in informing notonly how you build the product,
but also how you market theproduct. So I would definitely,
yeah, try to convince bothmarketers, sales and product, to
kind of work together a bitmore. And that's probably,
that's probably another one, yeah.
Okay, okay, okay, some, somereally great points. And I came
(18:32):
up with a couple of follow upquestions, because, you know,
why not? Right? Like to thepoint about call to action and
CTAs, just from maybe your ownexperience. How many would you
recommend there be on a website?Because I've seen websites where
there's only one call to action,and I've seen one where there's,
I'm not exaggerating, there'slike, six or seven, and then
(18:55):
it's like, yeah. What's thegeneral rule of thumb? How many
should you have?
So as a rule, I would alwaysrecommend to have at least one
primary call to action and asecondary call to action. But
also it's important to make thatdifferentiation, because a lot
of companies, they have two callto action, but they visually,
they don't differentiate them.So it becomes hard for prospects
(19:17):
to understand where they need togo, how and so on. So typically,
primary secondary call toaction. So if you have a pricing
page, send them to the pricingpage or sign up, and then the
other call to action could be acontact, contact page or sign
up, or actually pricing, right?So primary secondary, but then
it depends on the page as well.So if you're if you're talking
(19:41):
about a home page, then I mightalso have a couple of other
secondary calls to action thatlead specific personas to the
next page they need to visit andbut those call to action, rather
than being bottom, maybe theycould be just text links so
they're even a bit lessnoticeable, but still access.
Table for users, and you cansend them, I don't know if you
(20:02):
have multiple personas ordifferent use cases, you can
send them to those internalpages where they can expand on
what they already what they justsaw on the on the homepage, and
go deeper and deeper into theirown awareness funnel and until
they actually persuade andconvinced.
Okay, fantastic, fantastic. Andhere comes the second question,
(20:26):
because you were talking abouthaving conversations with
marketing, having conversationswith sales and products, and I'm
sure you've come across thisbefore, because I know I have
what have you ended up findingthat each group or each
department has conflictingpoints of view or perspectives.
(20:46):
How do you how do you deal withthat, in terms of like,
developing the copy, if, ifmarketing is saying red and then
sales is saying white and thenproduct is saying no, it's
definitely green.
Yeah, my, my best advice isalways go back to your market.
So that's why, for everyproject, I always do my
research, even if my clienttells me, Oh yeah, we've already
(21:10):
done customer interviews or wehave this survey data for like,
from like three years ago, evenif it's recent, I always tell
them I have my process. This iswhat we need to do, and I always
trust the research first. Also,yeah, obviously I still want to
get that internal perspective,so I speak with everyone inside
(21:31):
the team, but at the same time,then I let my research speak.
And I find often that when youtell them this is what we found,
especially because they've neverdone that kind of research, they
tend to trust you and to leadthem, right? So that's also very
good way to bring them alltogether, and that's a very big
(21:51):
part of my job and work as well.It's not only writing creating
messaging strategy that writingthe copy, it's also bringing
these teams together andaligning them on things.
Absolutely, absolutely, youknow, I just realized when I
said, okay, they want red andthey want white and they want
green, I was like, hey, that'sthe Italian flag, isn't it?
(22:14):
Yes.
I wasn't planning on doing that.But, like,
Part intended.
Okay, you were talking a lotabout marketing and also about
conducting research. I'm gonnasay so in many cases, marketers
spend a lot of time conductingresearch, and often they end up
(22:35):
not really knowing what to dowith it. So just from your own
experience, how can B2B SaaSmarketers finally leverage and
make good use of this, whateveryou want to call it, scattered
or abandoned research.
Yeah. So the way that I see, Isee research has kind of imagine
an iceberg, right? So you havethe outside surface of the
(22:57):
iceberg. The first layer that'sthat, to me, is kind of the it's
kind of the layer that tells youwhat users say, the language,
and that basically includeseverything that you already have
inside the company, whichprobably includes sales,
conversation transcripts,customer support chats, or you
can access reviews, eithercompetitors or yours, or what
(23:20):
else looking at competitorsmessaging, or maybe you have
voice of customer for previousconversations. So all of that is
kind of research, the thesurface layer that tells you
what users say and how, whatkind of language, if you don't
have anything of as far asresearch, I would say, start
(23:40):
with that. So go on reviewwebsites, start collecting some
reviews, collect those salesconversations, or at least start
recording those so that you havesome of the language and you can
use it and mirror it in yourcopy.
The second layer, which isalready under the water of the
iceberg. In the iceberg, it'sthe structural layer, and that's
(24:03):
more of the UX user experiencelayer. And maybe this comes from
my user experience past as well,but I love to match and cross
reference the insights that Iget for messaging against the
the actions that users actuallytake on websites. I see their
(24:25):
experience on a website isactually like a journey. They
are on the website. They yes,they need to understand the
words, but they also need toconsume them in a way that's
frictionless. So it's a lotabout creating a clear flow of
the copy they write of thepages. So from one call to
action to the other, clearvisual hierarchy of the
(24:45):
different sections. So all ofthat, and to collect that data,
I typically look at heat maps,user interaction, data
analytics. I might run usabilitytesting on a website. Yeah,
those are probably the biggestways and easy ways. So if you
don't have anything, starttracking those user interaction
(25:06):
data with something like Hotjar,for example, and your analytics,
so understanding bounce rate,time on page and all of those.
The final layer, which isprobably the most important,
even though it's kind of thehardest to extract and to reach.
It's the deep layer, which istells you why users or prospects
act. Why do they make thosedecisions? And this goes back
(25:33):
to, as I was saying,understanding their decision
making process. So this is allthe qualitative data that you
get from customer interviews orcustomer survey, qualitative
serving, I mean quantitativehere. So qualitative surveys,
extracting positioning andmessaging strategy from your
(25:53):
competitors website. So the nextstep, after you've kind of
extracted the language, all ofthat tells you why they act,
right? So when you understandand have deconstructed their
decision making process, thenyou match it with their action
on the website and the wordsthat they use, then you bring
everything together, and thatgives you copy that converts.
(26:15):
Sounds so simple, right?
Yeah, it's two, three months ofwork when you say it sounds a
bit simple.
Absolutely no, no. I mean, thatwas really a great way to unpack
that. And I, you know, I've seenthat time and time again, how
some marketing teams are almostresearching, yeah, you can say
aimlessly, but it's also becausethey don't quite understand,
(26:37):
like, well, what is this for?Right? And perhaps it's also
because they haven't had thatconversation with the customers
directly, so they don't quiteunderstand what the challenges
are, right?
Yeah, and it's crazy to see whenwe do customer interviews. So
Yeah, especially if you alreadyhave customers that are, you
for example, for the bestexample, one of the latest
projects, we did customerinterviews, and the interviews
(26:57):
that we do are jobs to be doneinterviews so we understand the
progress, the before, during andafter, making the buying
decision, if you think aboutabout it, those interviews
actually match almost perfectlythe structure of a great
testimonial. So what the after?After looking at a couple of
those interviews, our clientstold us, Hey, guys, could you
(27:19):
actually record some of thoseinterviews in video that so that
we can use them as testimonials.And that tells you a lot about
like, they've never done those,and it's such a like, low
hanging fruit, but, yeah, supervaluable, both for the insights
that you get and the social proof.
know, they're happy with whatyou do, or they're, they're
(27:42):
happy with the product, andthey've, they've, they've
renewed the contract. And sothat nature, right?
Yeah, and it doesn't take, likepeople, maybe they avoid doing
that, or are a bit resistant indoing that, because they think,
Oh, we have to interview, speakto customer, customers, when
actually, in theory, you need atleast five, ideally seven to 10
interviews, and you already getlike 80% of the insights that
(28:05):
you need, so
Exactly. Okay, so, Chris, in ourprevious conversation, you told
me you had this secretsuperpower now to read your
customers minds. But jokesaside, what do you think
marketers can do to betterunderstand their customers? So
(28:25):
in terms of things that youalready talked about, like, you
know, your their behaviors,their their motivations, their
preferences and theirobjections? What can they do?
Yeah, if we had to kind ofsummarize it into like an
actions plan or of like, clearsteps, I would say first align
(28:46):
your teams inside the company,because that's the first step.
If you're not aligned thateverybody is going to say
different things, and you can'tmake that research work for you
unless you're all aligned on asingle goal and are clear on
what you're doing.
The other one is to run thosejobs to be done interviews, so
(29:07):
understand that before, duringand after the buying process for
customers, which means askingthem questions on what were they
doing, or what was going on intheir life when they started
looking for a solution, or whatalternatives were they
considering at the time, whenthey when they were considering
(29:28):
you as well? Did they try othersolutions, alternatives? And
also, can you find out whetheror not it wasn't only about
direct competitors, but alsoother ways of doing things,
maybe the status quo. It's anentirely different thing that
you had no idea about, right? Sothat's important to find out,
and when it came time toactually picking you, why did
(29:51):
they pick you? What made themchoose you? Or other alternative
solutions now they're thatthey're using you. What are they
able to do that they weren'table to do before, right? Is
there anything surprising,anything unexpected, that they
found value using you and andhow would they describe you if
(30:12):
they were to recommend you? Thattells you a lot about the kind
of the their perception of whatyou do, who you are. Another
good question that I like toask, it's, what big problem does
this company solve for you? Andthat typically gives you a lot
of language that you can use forthat value proposition on the
above the fold of the page.
(30:33):
Once you've done thoseinterviews, I would try to
understand that switching, thoseswitching costs, right? Because
we need to address them in theanxiety section. So how can we
make their switching costs,especially if you're talking
about B2B, where they areprobably already using a
solution, and try to understandthat that conversation that
(30:56):
they're already having insidetheir head when they land on the
page, maybe they're usinganother solution. So a couple of
easy ways that you can use andand Joanna Wiebe at Copyhackers
talks a lot about these. You canrun thank you page survey. So
after they buy, for example, runa quick survey where you ask
them, okay, what? What do youplan on doing now that you are
(31:18):
sign up or something like that,or if you want to understand the
before state, you can ask themwas what was going on that make
you that made you choose oursolution, right? So you can map
that before and after and bridgethe gap. Or you can another
quick one. If you have thetraffic, you can run those
website surveys or polls. So thelittle box that appears on a
(31:41):
page, especially if it's eithera home page, if you want to
understand their level ofawareness. So asking questions
super easy, bulleted questionslike What brings you to the page
today or what best describesyou, so you start understanding
the personas and how much theyknow. What do they know about
(32:01):
your solution or the market? Oralso, you can run those on a
pricing page, so if maybe, aftera couple seconds, 6,10 seconds,
you can ask them, Are there anyquestions that have not been
answered on the page for you?And maybe at least a couple
ones, and see if you're about tofind out what's missing, so that
(32:24):
you can add it to the page. Soaligning teams, running jobs to
be done, kind of research andtry to trying to find out that
what the conversation that theyhave inside their minds when
they land on the page throughthese different surveys and
strategies as well.
Fantastic tips, and I reallyhope that the listeners are
(32:46):
going to be taking notes like Iam doing right now, because this
is going to be really useful tothem. So thanks again for that,
Chris. Okay, so here comes thesoapbox question, a status quo
in your area of expertise, and Ithink you have a lot, but I'm
just asking for one, a statusquo in your area of expertise
(33:08):
that you passionately disagreewith. And why let the Italian
and you come out now.
Totally. So I will be a bitcurrent as well, so I'll go with
something that's on the minds ofa lot of people, including me,
and even at the for the risk ofmaking it look like it's gonna
(33:30):
make my job fail. I'm sayingthat the status quo, it's that
AI can't write good copy, and Iactually say that it's possible,
because I've been doing it, notbasically to replace myself, but
as a kind of like, like a tool,for the past year and a half or
two. So it all depends,obviously, on your either if you
(33:56):
say that you can't write copy,you're either using it
incorrectly or you didn't do theresearch and the strategy that
goes before actually writing thecopy, because without those, no
AI can really help you, right?AI has knowledge of the entire
Internet. So if you ask it towrite, write me a landing page,
or even if you use a mega promptwithout research, actually real
(34:18):
research and your own strategy,then AI is just going to write
you like a generic jargon copythat doesn't really work. So
learn to use it and use it alot, I would say. So I think
Ethan Mollick is a researcher onAI, and he talks all about,
(34:41):
well, I remember, like there's acertain amount of hours I don't
know that, or even, like the10,000 hours of expertise, like
putting those 10,000 hours withAI and then tell me that it can
write, cannot write, copyrightfor that, and also put the
foundations in place so theresearch and your own strategy
and. Then you'll see that withthe actual right frameworks and
(35:03):
systems, I can actually writecopy for you, or at least, like
a very good first draft. Thenyou jump in and edit.
Whew, controversial man. Hot,hot, hot, fresh out of the oven.
No, but, you know, you youmentioned a lot of things where,
(35:25):
where I would tend to agree withthat, right? Like, because I've
spoken to a lot of people. Imean, I myself, like I said, I'm
also doing copywriting. I'vespoken to a lot of people that
are also copywriters, likeyourself, and they're all
generally saying that they are,they are embracing the use of AI
in some shape or form, to yourpoint, right? It's, it's not,
it's not that you completelylike, like, rejected. There are
(35:47):
so many aspects of AI which Iwould tend to agree, it actually
helps speed up the work. Ithelps expedite the work, right?
Because I think one of thethings that I'm sure this is,
this is the same challengeyou're having. It's, it's the
challenge of just the amount,the volume of content that you
need to produce, right?
(36:08):
A volume of content and also thevolume of research that you need
to analyze, right? Luckily, Icould say, I started in an era
where AI wasn't a thing. So Idid all the manual process. I
did everything myself, and thatprobably builds some kind of
muscle or intuition that's stillhelping me, but I will probably
never go back like it's so mucheasier, especially if you
(36:30):
already have your own process,and your use of AI is grounded
in your own process, then Ithink it's 10 times better.
Correct, correct. It's notdirectly related. But Chris, can
you imagine, what were we doingbefore there was a transcription
software for like...
Yeah, what I was doing? I hireda VA that used to transcribe.
(36:53):
The question is, how long didthat take? That took at least...
Yeah, exactly, yeah, days. Andyou also had to pay as well.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, sohere comes the bonus question.
And for the audience that'slistening to this in the audio,
I'm gonna apologize in advance,but I'm just gonna say that
Chris is a fan of like, I'mgonna say body ink. So I think
(37:18):
the bonus question is, if youwere gonna get your next tattoo,
where would it be, and whatwould it be of and why? Because
I think for people that havetattoos, each each tattoo, each
visual, has some kind of likemeaning that's directly
connected to something in theirlife.
Yeah, so I already know theanswer to this, because I've
(37:39):
been thinking about it for thepast year, okay, I've just been
a bit of a like, like, a pausefor from tattooing. But I wanted
to do here. I still have thisblank spot, you know.
Okay, so, so he said he showedme his left arm, right?
Yeah. So I wanted to do theDodge Challenger logo, because I
own a Dodge Challenger in ck,which is a nightmare, but
(38:03):
another time, but it's my mydream car. Always wanted it, and
it also signifies the, I don'tknow, the challenge in general,
which is always like, I like toembrace challenges, whether it's
through fitness or work, throughunderstanding and learning about
new technologies as well. I'dlike the challenge. So, yeah,
(38:23):
it's probably going to be mynext, next tatoo.
Fantastic, fantastic. And justfor the benefit of the audience,
what's the color of your car?
It's a black challenger.
Black, okay, good color. Goodcolor. Chris, this has been a
great conversation. I mean, somany useful insights, so many
actionable tips. Thanks againfor coming on the show and
(38:46):
sharing your experience andexpertise with the listeners.
Please, quick introduction toyourself and how people can get
in touch with you, especially ifthey're struggling with their
copy.
Yeah. My name is Chris. I runConversion Alchemy, which is how
I define it now, because it'schanged, it's a messaging and
conversion experienceoptimization agency, and that
(39:08):
goes into all that we talkedabout right today, like
experience, copy, messaging. Iwork with B2B SaaS companies.
I'm a recovering softwareengineer turned copywriter. I'm
into drums, I'm into meditation,into muscle cars, and you can
find me on my website,https://conversionalchemy.net/
or on LinkedIn. Mostly I'm onLinkedIn, nerding out about this
(39:32):
stuff and sharing things.
Fantastic, and we're going todrop those links in the show
notes so that they can reach outto you directly. So...
Awesome. Thank you so much,Christian.
Yeah, thanks and take care, staysafe and talk to you soon.
You too.
Thank you. Bye.
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