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I’ve always believed that writing good copy is one of the most profitable skills you can have as a marketer. And even if you don’t want to write copy yourself, understanding the process that your team should go through to create great copy is super important.
Recently I spoke at Nick Shackelford’s Geek out in San Diego and I met Brandon Ham there. Brandon used to work for Agora Publishing, the multi-billion direct marketing behemoth that was built on great copy.
Whether you want to write better email subject lines, create more engaging video ads, craft display ads that drive conversions, or improve your landing page conversion rates, this approach can really help.
Here’s what we cover:
- Brandon’s 3-step research process for powerful copy.
- How to spy on competitors and see what’s working and what’s not.
- The biggest mistakes to avoid when watching competitors.
- How to “tell your story better”.
- You sell with your ears, not with your mouth and what that means for copy.
- How to speak your customer’s language.
- Plus more!
Mentioned in This Episode:
Brandon Ham
“My Life in Advertising” & “Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry and I am so excited about today's topic. We're talking about how to write better copy. And what we're going to dive into today, I believe could transform, could impact the way you write email copy, the way you write your display ads and Facebook ads, the way you write your YouTube scripts. It applies to all of it. And I can't wait to dive in.
Brett:
So, my guest today is the co-founder of 021.inc. And those are all numbers, 021.inc, Brandon Ham. And Brandon is partners with James Van Elswyk and Nick Shackelford, two of my buddies and two people that I highly respect in the industry. And so I got to hear Brandon speak, he and I were both speaking at a recent Geek Out event in San Diego. And I took a ton of notes because everything Brandon was saying was like totally jiving with me. And really resonates with my background in direct response copy. As soon as he was done talking, I was like, "Man, I got to get Brandon on the show." And so with that quick intro, Brandon, welcome to the show and how you doing, man?
Brandon:
Great. Glad to catch back up, dude. It's been a bit. But great over here and excited to catch back up .
Brett:
Absolutely. So not only is Brandon wicked smart when it comes to marketing and all things copy and direct response, he's got a killer beard. So if you're not watching this video, I mean, it is a legendary beard. How long ... just for those that are interested, how long have you been growing that beard, Brandon?
Brandon:
Since lockdown. I used to rock a stash. I started with a beard, then there was a wedding, so I had to like trim up. My family wanted me to wear a goatee. I look very aggressive with the shaved head and a goatee. So did not feel good about that.
Brett:
Not everybody could do the goatee. Some people look friendly, most people just look angry with the goatee.
Brandon:
Yeah, no, I couldn't rock that anymore. I was like, I look too angry. So had to like change it up and I was like, "I'm not going back to like clean shaven." So I rocked the stash for a long time. And then lock down, it's like what?
Brett:
The stash can be friendly. The stash can also be creepy. Not everybody can do the stash either. I look super weird and untrustworthy, I think you could pull off the stash.
Brandon:
It's a decent stash. It's not as good as like some of the other guys, but it was decent. But then I was like, "Okay, lock down. Don't see anybody. It's time to grow it back." And then-
Brett:
Sweet.
Brandon:
Kind of just kept it going.
Brett:
We're looking at like two and a half years of growth to whatever. So it's awesome. All right, man. So give us your background really quickly because you've done some stuff for Agora and of course you've got amazing partners with James and Nick. But give us kind of the 90 second background and we're going to dive into your approach to writing effective copy.
Brandon:
Yep. So I am a media buyer by trade. I still love media buying, geek out about it all the time. So actually that was my job at Agora. I was a media buyer for one of the divisions. And while there, I actually worked-
Brett:
And for those who don't know, I think a lot of people listening do know and a lot of people listening are like, "Whoa, you work for Agora." There are other people that are like, "What's Agora?" So, give the 30 second pitch. It's impressive to me because I've been following Agora for years and years. But give us the low down.
Brandon:
Agora is a billion dollar publishing company, they publish financial newsletters, health newsletters. And everything they do is based on copy. They spend a ton of money on traffic, which is why I wanted to go there and like learn as much as I could. Which I did. And then, it's just very different than like eCommerce or whatever, but the learnings are very applicable-
Brett:
Very applicable.
Brandon:
To all businesses.
Brett:
Yeah, it's a legendary space for direct response marketing and copy and long form copy. Like my buddy, Justin Brook was there and Perry Belcher's got some ties there. And I took a copywriting course that Michael Masterson put together. Anyway, just Agora is an impressive place, for sure. Okay, awesome. So continue on the background.
Brandon:
So while there, got to work with a bunch of amazing people. One of the groups, people I worked with was James Van Elswyk. So while as a media buyer, I was like, "Who do I want to network with?" So I picked out like the big media buying gurus on the network site, like Native. I really wanted to... Native, so I hired James Van Elswyk to run as an agency for us. Me and him hit it off, he made a ton of money with us. Me and him worked very well.
Brandon:
So when it came time that I was like, "Hey, I've done my learning growing, I'm leaving Agora." I hit him up. And he was like, "Hey, why don't you come help build our copy team for the Native side? Like you helped bridge that gap between Agora's copywriters and us as a media buyers. Why don't you do something similar and just like home grow some copywriters?"
Brandon:
So then I took over the copy side for James's Native agency. Because on Native traffic, you have to write a lot of advertorials, it's very cold traffics. The copy needs to be great and you need out of system for that. So we built that. And then over the last year we were like, "Hey, what if we built a copy agency, specifically focused on advertorials? Because that's what we really have an expertise in." And that's where we've even systemized our process more, which will cover today, like our research and stuff.
Brett:
That's awesome. Love that background. And what's so interesting about what we'll talk about today, is most of the work when it comes to writing copy or a lot of the work, it comes in the research phase and comes in the prep stage. And so that's mainly what we're going to break down here is your approach to researching copy so that you can write amazing copy. And you're right, if you're running Native ads or you're creating advertorials, nothing is more copy intensive. And the margin of error is really slim there, you've got to be spot on. But these principles and these lessons can apply to e-com and anywhere really. So that's why I'm thrilled to dive in.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Brett:
Sweet. So let's talk about this. So your approach is called, All You Need, emphasis on A-L-L, it's an acronym.
Brandon:
Yes.
Brett:
And so we're going to dive into these and easy to remember. Love acronyms. We all love acronyms. And so we're going to dive in. So the first one is ask. And one of the things you talked about and my buddy, Justin Brooke talks about this too, when you're looking at, "Okay, what's the angle we're going to take here?" So again, display ad, email copy, YouTube video, Facebook ad, whatever. Are we going to go pleasure or are we going to go pain? So are we going to be encouraging someone to pursue pleasure? Or are we going to be encouraging someone to avoid pain?
Brett:
You talked about it like, are we trying to get people to heaven or get them to avoid hell? That's kind of the way to frame it. So talk about that a little bit and how does that influence the ask part of your approach?
Brandon:
Yeah. So when we say ask, what we're trying to do is we're trying to get all the information out of the product owner. If you're an info based business, the guru. What we're trying to do is extract and ask all these important questions to get the information out. Specifically from the product side. So right now we're focused on the product.
Brandon:
So what we do is we'll ask, "How does this keep customers ... how does it get them towards their goal? How does it keep them from falling behind?" So, pleasure versus pain. Because it's better than just listing like, "Hey, what's great about your product?" Because usually what you'll get is a list of benefits, which people then just slap on their product page which does not-
Brett:
Or features, which are even less compelling often.
Brandon:
Yeah. A little less useful. So, what we do is we have a ton of different questions that we just run through with a product owner or with a guru to just extract all this. Pleasure versus pain, basically how they would describe how they can get people towards pleasure or away from pain. That gives us like two little things. There's other questions, so for example, we'll ask them about ... first, we'll get all the benefits and features. We'll just go through a list. So, okay, give us all of this. And like, we have a ton of questions that their sole goal is just get all of the information on one page. And after we've done this for like 30, 40 minutes with someone, you really start digging deep. And like to get something new, they really have to think. And that's where a lot of our other questions come into it.
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. So you gave an example, which I loved and again, I've got a marketing background, I've read a lot of the greats. Actually, I'm creating some TikTok videos now, so depending when this episode comes out, follow me on TikTok @TheBrettCurry, I'm just giving it a shot. We'll see what happens.
Brett:
But talking about some of the marketing greats, like David Ogilvy and John Caples. And then who we're going to talk about right now, Claude Hopkins. Claude Hopkins wrote my life in advertising and scientific advertising, really old books. And Jay Abraham, who some of you will know and many of you won't. He said he read, My Life In Advertising and Scientific Advertising like a dozen times. And he said each time he read it, he felt like it made him a million bucks. This is like super, super powerful book. It's old, but a lot of it still applies today.
Brett:
So tell the story about Claude Hopkins and Schlitz Beer. Because I think it underscores what can come out in this process.
Brandon:
Yeah. So Claude Hopkins was hired by Schlitz Beer to help them come up with the campaign to make more money. I think at the time there were like 12th on the list out of the beers. They weren't very popular, to say the least. So in the process, he's asking all these questions, going through his research and at one point he's like, "Hey, can I walk through your manufacturing plant and see what's going on there?" So he goes through, he sees they filter their beer so many times, they steam the bottles so many times. Like they have this whole huge complex purification and quality control process.
Brett:
There's like a 5,000 foot artisan wells that are dug to pull this water out of and just crazy.
Brandon:
Yeah, like it's insane. And he's like, "Hey, why don't you talk about this?" And so context real quick, at this time, all of the beer companies, like the thing people cared about was the purity, the quality. So everyone was saying, "Hey, my beer is the purest." "No, my beer's pure." "My better quality." Like that's what people cared about.
Brett:
Yeah. So now it's like, calories or just image, so beer is sold differently today. Then like purity and quality was a big deal. Because this was in the twenties, thirties, something like that.
Brandon:
Yeah. I want to say around there.
Brett:
Yeah, we'll call it that. Close enough.
Brandon:
Long time ago.
Brandon:
So everyone was saying, hey ... it was just a, mine's better, mine's bigger, mine's pure, whatever. That was the claims. And so when he went through this whole process, he like, "Why aren't you talking about your process here? This is amazing." And they're like because this is the same process every beer goes through, everyone does this. And he is like, "Yes, but no one's talking about it." So after that trip, he wrote up a campaign for them, which skyrocketed them up ... I don't know if they're first. But they're in the top, probably three. Like they were winning at that time because they talked about something which was common to every beer, but no one was talking about it. It wasn't common knowledge to the average person, so the average person was blown away.
Brett:
Yeah. So Claude Hopkins did two things. One, he understood what people wanted and he keyed in on that. So, that's the first thing. Two, he understood there's a story here and you are missing it, Schlitz Beer, because you're too in this, you're too close to the product to see it from an outside perspective.
Brett:
And here's what I believe about products. I believe most products are not crazy unique. There are a few ... take a purple mattress, as an example, where maybe they're the only mattress that passes the raw egg test, maybe they're not. But that's where in the ads, they drop the big sheet of glass onto the raw eggs that are on top of the mattress and the mattress cradles it. So like, that's a unique thing, nobody else maybe can say that and certainly no one else is saying that. But there's a lot more products where, okay, a lot of the processes are the same, then you just have to say it better. And if you're the first one to bring something to light and make it clear and compelling. Then it's pretty hard for your competitors to come back and say, "Oh, we do that, too." Then it loses it's power.
Brett:
And so yeah, digging into the product, asking questions, understanding what's important to the customer. How do we bring that to life? And also that pain versus pleasure is really important. Anything else you would dive into on the ask portion of your all process?
Brandon:
I would say, just go as deep as you can. Especially if you own a brand, like agencies can only go so deep because they have to do this for everybody. As a brand owner, you should have a folder that's just chalked full of everything about your product. Just a list of its features, its benefits, how it's manufactured, quality control. Because once you have all this information, as well as the stuff we will cover, you can basically pass it to your internal people when it comes time to write or create new assets. Or if you work with an agency, you can give this to an agency or a creative agency.
Brandon:
And with the amount of information, you can blow your competition out of the water. Because normally what happens is ... like you're saying, there's so many products that are unique. What's the difference between one pen and another pen? Now if all of a sudden you talk about, "Hey, in the manufacturing process, we pressurize the ink cartridge. So it results in a constant steady flow of whatever." Think about when you normally work with an agency and they're like, "Hey, send us over everything you can." Are you going to send them, "Oh yeah, our cartridges are pressure controlled, whatever." If it's obviously not something already on your webpage. You might not have picked up like, "Hey, this is big. We can use this." But if you just everything, compile on a folder paper, and that way you can pass to people, like it's huge.
Brett:
Yeah. And so, what we're trying to find here is stuff that you as a brand owner may think is boring or may think is just obvious or old hat. But it's going to be new and exciting to customers. What are some of the specific questions you ask? Because I know one that I took a note on was, what's something about your product that would surprise me? And that may take a little digging and thinking again, because most brand owners are too close to our product. But I love that question. What's something about your product that would surprise me? What other questions are you asking?
Brandon:
Yeah. So some of the other questions like ... hey, quick on note on that one, that one we usually ask at the end. Just because at the end they've been so primed, they've literally told us everything they can think of. And then it's like, "Okay, you've told me who knows how much for the last hour. What's something that's going to surprise me? What's something you haven't told me?" It really makes them dig deep or like refine what they've previously said.
Brandon:
But some other questions, like other things we try to collect is basically any rewards, information about the product owner. So is there a backstory to the company? People bond with like founder stories. So, is there anything about your company? Is it all woman company? Did it start from a garage? Like just little things like that.
Brandon:
Other things is like proof points. So do you have any video proof of, let's say it's a teeth widening, do you have a time lapse of the teeth getting whiter? Did you have a study done? There's all these different proof points that we just try to collect. Have you been featured in anything?
Brandon:
Like, even if ... this is something I thought about the other day, we don't ask this. But the best proof is, for example, like think of a product, let's say you have a ... let's just say a book or whatever. That's not the ideal one, but you have a book. And all of a sudden you see a celebrity doing like a podcast or they're streaming something. And in the background, you see your book on their shelf, like the book you wrote. Like that could be huge proof that if you don't keep that, record it and put in something, then it won't ever pop up later. So like just having a process for any proof point that your team you comes across of, even if like you didn't originate, like, "Hey look, this celebrity's wearing our shirt." You just need to put it in a folder for later because one day someone will find an amazing way to use it.
Brett:
I love that. I love that. Anything ... and really, as you train yourself, as you go through this process, start looking for stuff. Anything that you think you may be able to possibly use one day, save it, put it a folder and drive or whatever and keep that. So awesome. Okay. So, that's the A part of the All Process. So the next is look, so this mainly keys in on spying on competitors, which I'm a big fan of. I think there's a lot of misconceptions here, too, and a lot of mistakes that could be made as you're spying on competitors. We'll talk about that in a minute. But what is your advice? How do we spy on competitors? And what do you recommend? We'll dig into some tools in a minute.
Brandon:
Yeah. So spying should be a standard practice of your team. Generally it should be, A, at least do it monthly. Monthly, go into the spy tools, download everything that's applicable, A, to your brand, but also cross niche. Like some of the biggest takeaways can be taken from like you may see a financial offer and it may have one section which all of a sudden you can take over to your physical product and it can make a huge difference. So for example, on a financial avatar I was reading, it talked about, "Hey, here's proof that everything we're saying is true. Here's the guy's tax return. Here's his tax return that shows he actually made this much money." You're like, "Wow, this is amazing." Well, how can you do that for eCommerce? How can you bring that level of proof?
Brandon:
And when you see this in other niches, all of a sudden you can be like, "Okay, how can I do this for eCommerce?" So it's like, if it's a review story, maybe you put a picture in of the receipt or if it's a study, all of a sudden you bring a journal, it's been featured in ... it's one thing to say it's been featured in Times Magazine. It's another thing to actually take a picture of it on your phone and include that on the page. Like, how can you prove what you're saying? And so just looking in your niche for like trends and what the market is currently seeing, but across everything. If a direct response eCommerce like any offer is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, millions of dollars a month. If it's one of the top offers, I don't care what niche it is, I want to see it because there's something I can learn from it.
Brett:
Absolutely. Yep. If someone is spending hundreds of thousands dollars on it, you know it's creating a return. And so if it's creating a return, you want to know why. And you want to be able to break that down and really look at it. So let's talk about what are some of the ad spying tools that you like and that your team uses regularly?
Brandon:
Yeah. So my favorite personally is Adbeat. So Adbeat, it's best used for spying on like GDN traffic, so Google display network and like high tier Native. So like Outbrain and Taboola. It does feature smaller Native networks, that's not normally how I use it. I love that tool just the way it works. You can clearly see how well things are performing. When I get, I always do the mid tier or higher, I've had different tiers of it. But the mid tier gives you 90 days history, I think, or more. You at least want that much amount of history. So you can see how long something's ran.
Brett:
Yeah. So something is ran ... what's your cutoff? Are you looking for something that's run for at least 60 days, 90 days? What are you typically looking at?
Brandon:
60 to 90 is like a good ... like most people aren't going to lose for super ... over 90 is the ideal. Just because you look at what agencies pitch. And agencies, when they come to you they're like, "Hey, we're going to do a three month contract. We're going to work together for three months. Month one, we're going to test a lot of stuff. Month two, we're going to break even profit. Month three, scale, whatever. That's like the normal pitch.
Brandon:
So it's like during that three months, technically an ad that still could be losing could be like inching it's way along. Now if it's spent a ton of money, that's the other metric. If it has a ton of views, if it's a YouTube ad, if it has a ton of money spent behind it, according to the spy tools. You can get away with it being live less time. But if you're not sure on the actual performance of the ad, the longer is the better, because no one's going to leave an ad longer than three months, even two months is like, eh, that's like losing. It just doesn't happen.
Brett:
Right. Right. Makes sense. Yeah, Adbeat, what else are you looking at?
Brandon:
Adbeat for Facebook specific Adspy. Adspy is good. Then you can get actual-
Brett:
Are you using a combo of Adspy plus the Facebook ad library kind of using ...
Brandon:
So, I-
Brett:
Facebook ad library, that's a tool that a lot of people don't know about. You have to look at a specific advertiser, but it's free. And it's Facebook hosted, so you can dig in and see anyone's ads.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Brett:
Do you use those two together?
Brandon:
I use them slightly differently. I used to not need Adspy or a Spy Tool because the Facebook ads library, if you right click to video, you could get a video URL, you could actually get the exact post ID. So then you could go read all the comments on it, that doesn't work anymore. So the downside of ads libraries, you cannot see the comments, you can't see the interaction, the likes, the proof, how many video views, like you don't see that anymore. So you're still guessing, unless you're looking at time. And then is it retargeting ad? It could just be like ...
Brett:
Right.
Brandon:
Where Adspy by it will link you to the actual post IDs. So you can see the comments, you can see how many millions of views are on it. So that's the one benefit over. Ads library can be good just to a quick refresh and a quick look, because Spy Tools can be a little more complicated, it takes a little more time. Or if you're not in the spot where you can spend money, A, I always think spending money on Spy Tools is worth it, always.
Brett:
Totally.
Brandon:
But if you can't justify it right now, ads library will get you 80% of the way. So those are the main two, there's obviously like Vidtao for YouTube, if you're doing YouTube.
Brett:
Yeah, we use Vidtao for YouTube, it's great. And again, it's going to-
Brandon:
And it's free.
Brett:
Show you top spenders on YouTube. Yeah.
Brandon:
Yeah, Vidtao is free, so it's a great tool if you're not already using it. And Anstrax, that's more of a lower tier Native. So this is really relevant for like affiliates, drop shippers. Like it's a lot more aggressive stuff. Not always the best learnings. I prefer Adbeat, but Anstrax does show stuff. You can get Anstrax for push notifications, if you're doing push traffic, stuff like that.
Brett:
Cool. Cool. We love Semrush, if you want to look at search ad copy and display and things like that, or Google shopping, some spying intelligence tools there. So Semrush is great for that.
Brandon:
Semrush also gives you some display ads. I haven't used it in the past three years, but it used to be my go to. Because I needed the keyword research as well as some display. And it does have some display. So if you already have Semrush, you can probably not need Adbeat for a while, you'll be close enough.
Brett:
That's great. That's great. So I love the idea and I heard about the swipe file idea from way back in the days when I took my first copywriting courses and stuff like that. So spying and seeing what competitors are doing and seeing what unrelated companies are doing and learning from that, super valuable. But there's some temptations here, there's some mistakes that could be made as you're spying on competitors. So what are the mistakes to avoid in this process?
Brandon:
The big mistakes are people copy or rip. Like, again, we're not looking to copy or rip people off, like we're not trying to recreate their ads. What we're looking for is trends and learnings. Which is why looking across niches can be super helpful, it gets rid of that temptation.
Brandon:
But inner niche, like let's say if you sell baby blankets or whatever. Let's say you spy on all your competitors and what you can do is look for trends. So trends in images. So maybe there's pictures of a baby holding a blanket. And so you collect all those images and that's like image type one, that's a trend. Then you see, "Oh, Hey, there's product only, but it's all nice and folded next to like a pacifier or baby bottle or whatever." So, that's like an type two image. Then there's type three where it's like, "Oh, Hey, the mom's out and about, or maybe there's a crying baby, maybe that's image type four." What you can do is look for trends and then recreate those.
Brandon:
Because after having so many different types and organizing them visually like visual aspects, you can then tell your team to be like, "Okay, there's a ton of people with working ads that show this type of image. Now let's go recreate that type of image ourselves." So like that is the easiest example. Like with copy, people get tempted, they're like, "Oh, let me take this part or whatever." But with images, obviously you can't advertise someone's product. So like that's the best example. Like you're looking for trends which then you can recreate and apply to your business.
Brett:
Yeah. Love that. We're looking for inspiration, we're looking for ideas, we're looking for trends. We're not looking to plagiarize. That's not a way to find success.
Brandon:
Yes. So, that's mistake one. Mistake two, we kind of touched on earlier is like studying ads that don't work. So you need to look for ads that have been around a long time or you have proof that they're working. If you ever hear from like friends or you talk to people and they're like, "Oh yeah, we're spending this much money." And they're a believable friend or you've seen their ad account, add it to your swipe file. You know how well they're doing, why not study it? They're a different niche, it doesn't matter. You can learn something to benefit your business, to benefit your market.
Brett:
Yeah, you could look at a spy tool and be like, "Oh, look at that ad. I like that ad, let's copy that or let's be inspired by that." You don't know if it's a winning ad or not if you don't dig a little deeper and see how long it's been running and how many views it has, how many comments it has, things like that.
Brandon:
And that's a big mistake with people that just screenshot their Facebook ad, like going down their feed or the ad library, even occasionally. Is they all of a sudden are looking for inspirational ads that don't work. Where if you dig deep on the spy tools, you can get certain the ads work or if your friend tells you, "Hey, we're crushing on this or whatever."
Brandon:
The other mistake is not doing cross channel spying. Like if you only run YouTube, like YouTube ads are displayed in a certain way. YouTube ads generally appear differently than Facebook ads. But you can take learnings cross channel, but they will not be exact. So it's kind of a toss up on ... some things work very well on one channel, they don't work well on another channel. So it's not always a guarantee, but it's still important to see. Because like people interact in different ways and the core message or core angle still could be passed over to a different channel in a different way. So spy cross channel. Just because you only run Facebook ads or YouTube ads, don't think that's the only way to do it. There are other places to look, but that does not mean it will work when you take it from a different channel.
Brett:
Exactly. But I still love the learning process there. So as an agency, we run YouTube and Google traffic, we don't run Facebook traffic. But I love looking at Facebook ads. Because what we've found and when you really get to know your channel, you know what elements of other channels translate and what elements don't. So as an example, if we find an ad that's really crushing on Facebook, a video ad, often we can uncover some elements of, "Hey, that probably makes for a good hook." That opening of that Facebook video could be a good hook on YouTube. It's not going to be likely all we can see on YouTube, but it might be a great hook.
Brett:
Or another example is, you see something in Instagram, that's very product demo heavy. Or we see this sometimes on sponsor brand video on Amazon. Although most of those are bad, honestly. But we see like a really great product demo video. And we think, "Okay, that could be used in a YouTube ad for the product demo portion." Which is not usually at the very beginning of an ad. So, cross channel learning is great.
Brandon:
So real quick, I didn't even mention this when I originally talked about it, but something I've been thinking about more recently too, is just looking ... yes, looking at your competitor's ads, whatever. But also looking at what the market looks at. So again, like you brought up like Amazon, whatever. But there are things like documentaries, what do people just consume in that market that's relevant to your niche? If you sell vegan protein, go watch those vegan documentaries that went viral on Netflix. Like there is something you can learn because after those-
Brett:
Like there's clues there and what that market is interested in.
Brandon:
After those went viral, like everybody was like, "Hey, maybe I want to be vegan now." Or this or that. Documentaries are a great source, viral blog posts. Like there's always something that like ... or even just like organic Facebook videos. I use that a lot of times for image inspiration. Or even YouTube ads ... not YouTube ads, YouTube videos, just straight YouTube videos. The thumbnails, the intros, the hooks. Like studying just organic stuff. Like spying is easy because you can see the spy tools. There's other stuff for organic, is it BuzzSumo? There's other ones that like rank blog posts, rank whatever. But also if you know, Hey, this is a top documentary in my niche, this is this. You can learn something from it. Which then you can translate to your ads, as well.
Brett:
What's the language that they're using? What are the specific words they're using? What are the things they're really keying in on? Yeah, really great points. So much to learn from documentaries and blog posts and other things, rather than just spy tools. Yeah. Awesome.
Brett:
All right. So, we got ask, we got look, last L is, listen. And I love that you said this you believe is the most important, if I wrote that note down right anyway. And you also said, and I love this, you sell more with your ears than you do with your mouth. And I know we're talking about digital marketing and stuff, but anyway, I love that quote though. So, explain the listening portion of your process.
Brandon:
Yeah. So on ask, we looked at our product and our product owner. On listen, we're looking at the market, what our competitors are doing, like in a broad sense. The listen, we actually look for feedback from the market itself. So we're looking for what are customers objections? What are their feedbacks about us and our competitors? What are their personal experiences in the market and industry in general?
Brandon:
So basically we kind of divided out into a couple main channels. Like there's a lot of different ones you can look at. But for example, with Facebook, we'll look at Facebook comments to see people's questions, concerns, their objections. Like what are Facebook comments that are useful? Like looking at them. It's a complaint about, "Hey, this didn't work for me." Or whatever. Which if you can find those on your competitor's ads or your own, you can improve. But also it's questions like, "Does this work for this? Does this work for this?" And all of a sudden you were hearing from your market on what you can do to improve. And nobody look ... okay, very few people look at Facebook comments because media buyers, they have enough on their plate that they're not going to look at Facebook comments, they don't manage it. Normally what happens is you have a ... what are those? I'm drawing a huge blank.
Brett:
Like just the-
Brandon:
Customer service team. You have a customer service team or a social person manage it. That information almost never makes it back to copywriters or media buyers, or they blow it off. And like, "Hey, people don't like this ad." And you're like, "Well, yeah, but it's working. So we're going to keep doing it." That's the normal response. So if you dig into comments and look for trends again, where it's like, how many people are complaining about this issue? How many questions are popping up about this? And you just manually pull, have someone go through and just pull comments from your ads, as well as your competitors. You can see like, hey, in this market ... let's say you're doing a polish for a car. All of a sudden you see people asking like, "Hey, how long does the polish last?" All of a sudden, can I use it for examples-
Brett:
Can I use it on multiple surfaces? Can I use it on glass and on the paint? Can I use it on the tires?
Brandon:
Exactly.
Brett:
Things like that. Yes, so you're understanding, what are the questions? What are the hurdles? What are the objections? We're uncovering these because customers are telling you, so you're uncovering those and then you're able to address those in your ads.
Brandon:
So yeah, then you can address those in your ad, your pages, whatever. So that is one. Another source we look at is Amazon. So the product reviews of our products, our competitors' products. So you can go in and you kind of see the feedback and stories of success. Or kind of how it failed. Like, I personally don't like one star reviews, they're usually garbage.
Brett:
Usually those are people that...
Brandon:
Two star reviews-
Brett:
Usually those are just people that are angry with life.
Brandon:
Yeah, exactly. There's not much information. But two star reviews, you usually get like an actual thing. Like someone says, "Hey, this pain cream, it burnt me. It scarred me." All of a sudden you start seeing trends like that. Or it made my skin more sensitive. You can bring that up like, "Hey, our cream doesn't make your skin sensitive like other brands." Or this or we know your pain. Like that, as well as the success stories. So looking at five and four stars, you get an eye of what's like real. But you can start seeing trends and you can run these through like a word cloud. But run them through and like, what are people saying? How are they describing their success?
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. And you talked about looking ... you gave one example about snow teeth whitening on Facebook. And one recurring comment was, "Can I drink wine? Can I drink coffee when I'm going through this process?"
Brandon:
Yeah.
Brett:
Maybe like, "Oh, well, like of course." I wouldn't even thought that we need to address that. But that's what everybody's wondering. So you need to address that.
Brandon:
Yeah. And they did, and it took off. I saw those ads everywhere, people were asking for a long time in the comments. And then when they addressed that, it went crazy.
Brett:
Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting that sometimes being creative really just means spotting things. Not creating things from scratch, but spotting things. Spotting that, "Oh, this is what they want and this is the thing keeping them from buying now that I see that." Okay, now I'm going to bring that to the forefront and address it in ads and things like that.
Brandon:
Yeah.
Brett:
Yeah, awesome. You also talk about the language that people use because that's important. You don't want to use the totally ... you don't want to use graduate level language when people are using slang that are your customers. Like you want to speak their language and in any examples there? And I think you also ... there was one women's product that you gave an example of.
Brandon:
Yeah, so while we do the spying, while we look for feedback from customers. What we're doing is we're pulling out their language. So like, how did they describe their problem? How did they describe their desired result? What did they describe as their desired action?
Brandon:
So for example, in ads for an anti wrinkle product, it was using like word saggy jowls, Turkey neck, stuff like that. The desired action was to like eliminate or erase or tighten, snap back. All of a sudden you can get all these different ways to describe it. And then like the desired result, like if you look through Reddit, there's a lot of forums on how these women want dewy skin. So it's like bright, plump. I haven't looked at that in a while. But dewy-
Brett:
Dewy, pretty interesting.
Brandon:
That is a key word for them. Yeah, so all of a sudden you can use that in ads, you're speaking their language, you're getting unique words that they resonate with, that then you can implement in your marketing. So all of a sudden, let's say you have a winning headline and it's like, "Hey, you erase your crows feet or whatever." You can change erase to what if it's tightened, disappear, lift? You can change crows feet, maybe there's other things. And all of a sudden you can play with the different language. Same thing for e-comm physical products. There's ways they describe the joy they felt, how it fixed the problem. There's no more like whatever, my kid doesn't cry all night. They might describe it some way else that you can then implement.
Brett:
Yeah. Love that. Love that. And I think there's also some tips you gave or some suggestions where sometimes ... and like we were at Geek Out, dominated by dudes. I don't know why. But it's like dudes that are media buyers and stuff like that. And sometimes there's a lot of dude copywriters. But we're selling a product to women, like we need their input and what are the actual words they're using? And so, you want to bring in some diversity as you're doing your research and want to make sure you're getting feedback from the right people. And anything to speak to there?
Brandon:
Yeah. And that actually plays into like the final step of this research is like, when we use our research, when we write, we like to have three copywriters, at least. Three to four, maybe five in a room. All with different backgrounds, all with different experienced levels. Because when they brainstorm together, it's a different dynamic. They have like a hive mind where they're able to comb through everything, bounce ideas off each other and come to new conclusions. Which results in better promos.
Brandon:
So like for us, that was the core reason we wanted to build bigger copy teams, is we noticed the more copywriters we have on a project, the better it works. And that's where like, okay, as a brand owner, it may not make sense to have three copywriters all specialize in this one field. But let's say you have an email copywriter, as well as a ad and product page copywriter, they can interact. You throw in a third person, maybe you, the media buyer or the product owner or whatever. At least at a minimum, having three people within the company. Could even be customer service or something. But like three people discussing all of the research, going through it and bouncing new ideas off each other is where you'll come up with new breakthroughs.
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. And really, if we look at what drives success on ad platforms, whether it's Facebook or Native or GDN or YouTube or TikTok. It really comes down to the copy and the script first. Obviously then how those things are executed, if it's video, who your spokesperson is, who's actually delivering it if it's video or an image, that's important. But it all starts with a script.
Brett:
Just like your favorite movies, the best movies have great scripts. The best shows have great scripts. And so you got to have good copy. And really it all begins here. And this process is less about being creative and more about asking, looking, and listening. And then delivering exactly what your customers want in a fresh way based on trends. And so I love this process, man. It's super awesome. This has been very, very valuable. I can keep talking about this stuff because I geek out about it. But as people are listening and they think, "All right, I got to dig in more. I either got to learn more from Brandon or I got to connect with Brandon and James and Nick's company." How can they learn more from you? Do you have any resources, any guides, anything like that?
Brandon:
Right at the moment, no. But I'm always willing to chat. And if they just want to hit me up on Twitter, just search. IamBrandonHam on Twitter. That's my, whatever we call it.
Brett:
Twitter handle.
Brandon:
Handle, yeah.
Brett:
Exactly.
Brandon:
So hit me there. You can DM me. I don't really care. Always down to chat. You can check out our website, 012.inc, but I don't think you'll get as much value. Add me on Twitter and you can hit me up whenever.
Brett:
Awesome. Love that. And that's 021, all numeric .inc.
Brandon:
Yep.
Brett:
Brandon Ham, ladies and gentlemen. Brandon, this was awesome, man. Thank you so much.
Brandon:
All right. Thanks, Brett.
Brett:
All right. Awesome.
Brett:
Thanks again. We really appreciate you. And Hey, as a listener we want to hear from you, what would you like to hear more of on this show? Also, we got a new podcast, Spicy Curry, check that out, as well. We'd love your feedback. We'd love that review on iTunes. And until next time, thank you for listening.
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