Conrad's expertise in crafting compelling copy is something that will really transform your ecommerce business in order to win market share and share a voice and, you know, convince enough prospects to buy your products in order to have a viable, scalable business, then copywriting is just, in my opinion, even more important, perhaps, prepare to transform your approach to online communication with your
customers on your store. Or people that don't have that sort of copywriting understanding, thinking that they can just put, you know, a one sentence or one paragraph prompt into chat GBT. And it can create a homepage. If you've got more idea of what great copy looks like, then you'll be able to get great copy out of AI makes it much more likely that you're able to kind of nudge them over the edge and do what we want to do as an E commerce brand which is essentially sell right.
Welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of dropship. Unlocked and with me is our Client Success Coach James Hadley. Now, when we're not recording the podcast episodes, we're running our own e commerce businesses and helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket drop shipping businesses, keen to build your own six or even seven figure business. My book the home turf advantage is your blueprint for launching a profitable online
store. Grab your copy at HTA books.com To date, and let's get you started. Now sit back, relax, and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked Podcast. Today we are joined by Conrad Sanders, the man behind the creative copywriter, a company that's reshaping how e commerce brands communicate. This conversation is packed with golden insights for you to consider when crafting your drop shipping business. Absolutely. Lewis Conrad isn't
just any copywriter. He is a strategist who understands ecommerce and how the right words from your business can dramatically boost online engagement and sales. So in this conversation that we're about to share with you, he's going to unpack the secret behind compelling copy that not only attracts, but converts. Yeah, and this is a really interesting conversation because it's not just about what to
write necessarily. I know in this interview, Conrad will also dive deep into how emerging AI technologies are influencing copywriting and how you can maintain that essential human touch in your business whilst harnessing AI so a really valuable insight. Prepare to transform your approach to online communication with your customers on your store. As we decode the art and science of copywriting with a real master of the craft. Let's get started.
Today we're excited to be joined by Conrad Sanders, who is a master of copywriting, and the CEO of the creative copywriter. So Conrad, it is fantastic to have you with us on the podcast. Today, we're going to dive deep into both the art and science of copywriting for E commerce. So Conrad, let's kick things off and demystify what is actually copywriting for our audience today. So in your own words,
what is copywriting? And why do you think it's so critical for E commerce businesses in today's digital marketplace? Great question to kick off with. Thanks for having me. First of all, for that warm introduction. So copywriting, what, what is
it? What what's it all about? In my own words, I'd say that copywriting is the, as you said, The Art and Science of crafting the right words for your business in order to essentially compel convincing convert your target audience, and at the creative copywriter, our agency, we talk about doing so at every
step of the customer journey. So it's not just about, you know, that brand messaging on your website, it would be you know, and it's not just about conversion at some parts of the journey, it's about attracting and engaging with that kind of entertaining and or value driven content, the top of the funnel, then it's about nurturing, then it's about convincing and converting, and then it's about maximizing customer lifetime value as well, which is huge.
Why is it important? Well, you've got your target audience out there, right. And in order for them to part with their hard earned cash, you know, they're not just going to throw their cash around willy nilly, in order to persuade them to buy your product. You need to first of all, build trust. You know,
you need to remove barriers. So removed perceived barriers, you need to build up the perceived value of your products, to a point that it's at least on par with the value of the money you're asking of them, if not more, and, you know, you need to convince them that your product or products are the exact fit for for their needs, you know that they are exactly what they need to solve whatever pain point problem they have, or to kind of marry up with the that, that desire that they have, you
know, as opposed to the plethora of other competitive products that are out there. So differentiation is a huge part
of copy. So in order to do all of those things I mentioned, you know, build trust, break down barriers, build up the perceived value, Convince Convert, you need words, right, essentially, you can't just do that with nice product, photos and imagery, nice design, good UX, on a on a website, those things are all important, of course, naturally, they will need to sort of work in harmony together and work
together. But arguably, and maybe I'm biased, I believe the most important thing to do all of that achieve all of the goals, or the things I just mentioned, is the words the way that you're talking about your value proposition and your products, you know, the way that you're the words you're using, and the tone that you're using to do so. So that's copywriting.
And why why is it important, and that's and to sort of speak specifically to the E commerce world, I'd say that, you know, we were talking even before COVID, we were talking about the death of the High Street, and the fact that more and more retail companies and brands were kind of having to, to focus on digital. And, and, and sell more your target audience's attention is, is finite. And your, your,
your budget is fine. Your marketing budget is finite, and, you know, in order to win market, share, and share a voice and, you know, convince enough prospects to buy your products in order to have a viable, scalable business, then copywriting is just in my opinion, even more important, perhaps, than, than before to differentiate you from the masses and, and do all of the things that I mentioned, where it, it's a key touch point for how our business interacts with our customers, as we say,
potentially the most important as well as the user design, the actual words that people are reading is key for them to feel like they are having their pains met by that company, and the products that they're purchasing. Now to go into, like, actually the practical where we use copywriting for E commerce, I guess the website is potentially that the front line of an E commerce business and the copywriting that we create.
So specifically thinking about a website now, and making sure that we're managing and talking to those pain points that you've discussed. What are some of the best practices for us to consider when writing the copy for our E commerce websites? Yeah, great question. There's so many, so many things, I could say so many answers I could give, but let me delve into some of the the main ones that say, and probably while we're talking about website copy here, because
that's the question. A lot of these will probably apply to other touch points as well. But let's start with kind of haps, the first lesson in the copywriting handbook, if there if there were such a thing is focusing on on benefits over features, we often say, you know, I mean, in my opinion, it should be benefits married to features, you shouldn't just write about benefits, you should, you should, you know,
write about features. So those, you know, specifications of your product, they're kind of important, but what does that mean? What does that specific feature mean? In terms of, you know, how's it going to improve the life of your target customer? So whenever you you know, list out the features of your product that you're selling, or products, just ask this question, you know, why should that why should they give a crap? You know, why is that
important to them? And that why question is a really nice way to lead you to that end benefit. And that's really what's going to motivate people, you have that benefit. So we'd like to say, you know, sell a good night's sleep, not the mattress and, and other similar examples. So benefits over features. That's an important one choppy copy. So I might be alluding to, as I give give you my answers today, James, I might be
alluding to lenses. And as you know, we have a framework at my agency, the critic copywriter, called the 13 lenses. I won't have time to talk about all of them, but in case I start mentioning the word lens, that's the reason why. So we've got one lens called the goldfish lens. And it's, it's all about essentially thinking about your prospects as though they have the attention span of a goldfish, because attention spans are dwindling, right?
They're online, especially people have 1020 tabs open at any one time, a million things on their to do list and their attention is kind of jumping about between various tasks, and things and websites. So there are certain things that companies can do to make the copy digestible in the first place. And certain things you can do to to do the opposite of that. So, you know, chunky paragraphs, for example, are just hard for the eye to follow and read, right, so it can put a
bit of strain on the eye. And that's a good reason for your target prospect just to go screw it. I can't be bothered to read that copy. And you might have the best amazing benefit lead copy in there. But a big chunky paragraph should be broken down. That's a simple trick. Long sentences are also just harder to digest. So chop them in half, put full stops in a full stop is
a copywriters best friend. It's very easy to when you have a long sentence just to think about, okay, whacking a full stop in there to make it choppy, easier to digest. Another tip again, which would be for, especially for your website, but really for pretty much all copy and at every touchpoint is to make it conversational. So again, back to this copywriters handbook, you know, that would be right up there, we've got one of our lenses is the real talk lens. And that's all about
conversational copy. And even if you look back at the old school copywriting newspaper ads of 100 years ago, the ones that did really well, they're extremely conversational. But by that, I mean, the way you write should be the way you speak. So a litmus test is, do you speak like that at home? Or do you speak like that down the pub? If not, it's probably not conversational enough. And just to be specific there to give some specific tips as to how to
make it more conversational. Use the words you and your right, rather than talking, the third person asked questions. Questions are great. So you can often look at some copy that doesn't include any questions and go, Oh, how can I turn that sentence into a question? Because it involves the reader,
right? And the more the reader feels like they're sitting down and having a conversation with one person, the more likely they are to, you know, be convinced and to convert essentially, have come in on that point there, Conrad, and it's a kid the conversation one is an interesting one, because it's not initially what I'd think I think the benefits over features, choppy copy makes sense. With the attention spans
dwindling. The conversation one's interesting, because I guess it it implies that we don't want to become this like authority. And sometimes we've got this feeling of like, we've got to speak up as like an authority large brand, and not a conversational person to person. But is it all because the goal of it is to make that customers reading feel involved and spoken
to? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's partly because as a brand, you I mean, for me, a big part of branding, which is, we obviously get heavily involved in as a copywriting agency is, is personification, right? If you think about some of the things that you achieve when going through a brand strategy process, it's identifying your values, identifying your personality traits, identifying your voice, right, those are all human qualities. And there's a
reason for it. Because you know, a bit of a cliche here, people buy from people in the end of the day, and we are social creatures naturally. So if we're reading something, and it feels like a conversation, and it feels like a human, in a sense, obviously a brand, but there's some kind of personality there, there's a voice and that's where we talk about tone of voice. We as social creatures are just much more likely to be engaged to kind of get hooked in the first place. Our brains are just
wired that way. And then, as you said, like to feel like we're having a conversation in our mind. So it's, it just creates a sense of closeness. It connects the two, you know that the prospects, the reader and the brand in a way that, again, just makes it much more likely that you're, you're able to kind of nudge them over the edge and do what we want to do as an E commerce brand, which is essentially sell right? Convert and sell and drive revenue and be successful and grow our business.
Exactly. That's why it's all about sometimes because we're not building personal brands and we're building ecommerce brands selling physical products, it's easy to detach yourself from that brand, or at least not make it personal, because you're seeing it as a separate entity. But there's an interesting perspective of thinking about the brand that you're creating as a kind of they have personal traits and how that that brand
would talk. And yeah, I think that would bring out a lot better copy in people if you started to assign a voice to the brand. And would you say that's like a foundational piece for copywriting is understanding what your voice is initially? Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, if you were to work with us, for example, you know, when we work with, with clients, one of the first things I do in our sort of discovery calls is to understand whether that that brand has gone through the process, you know, the brand strategy, we call it brand DNA process, and carved out a tone of voice as well as values and personality. Obviously, when we're working with bigger brands, like Adidas, for example, that's all been done,
right? And they have, you know, in house teams working on it, brand positioning agencies, etc. So we have a brand exploration sheet, that we would always ask them to fill out as a first port of call, when we're going through the onboarding process. And within that, we ask them questions about, you know, describe your tone of voice, give four or five adjectives,
here's a tone of voice axis. So from, you know, formal to casual, mark an X on it from sort of humorous to not humorous, like Mark and X on that on that axis. And they should have all that information. Whereas if you're a younger ecommerce brand, that say, then, yeah, we would always push our clients at least towards going through that process before writing their
copy. Because otherwise, you're sort of where you're at, I wouldn't say, you're not necessarily shooting in the dark, but you're missing a trick, you're missing a trick. And, you know, brand voice, a big part of it is about differentiation, as I said, which I think is key, and about their connection, and building trust and all the things that we
want to achieve. So it's a, I would say it's a core element, you can write just sort of conversion, copy and use all that our other lenses, for example, but one of our lenses about 13 is, is the brand lens, because we think it's sort of imperative that you have that sort of figured out and that when we're writing copy, or when you're writing copy, you're making sure that you know, every sentence, every paragraph, every page is in tune with that core brand identity and that tone of voice. Yeah,
it's a foundational piece. And it's, it's interesting to see then how we can put that voice into a website, to really bring that website to life and start speaking as your brand, and to your customers directly to address the pain points and give them the benefits that they're looking for. I'm interested, because you mentioned that it is
an art and a science. And part of the sides is of course, to convert people who were also before that stage on our website, tried to compel people to continue on the website and stay with you and consider adding to cart and going through that process. So going back to the website copy that we're creating, how does the copy differ on different pages? So like a homepage compared to a product page? How would you differ the the type of copy that you write?
Great question, I think that first of all, well, we want to focus on how it differs. I'd like to say first of all that you want to make sure there's consistency throughout those pages, and a flow. So while each page type kind of plays a role, and usually kind of a slightly
different role. The first thing to do, when sort of mapping out your website, like building an information architecture, we call it an IA kind of the thinking before the writing is to, you know, make sure that you're you're looking at that flow and thinking about how how a visitor would flow from page to page where you want to move them to and why. And back to tone of voice. There should be consistency in voice across those pages. But saying that, I guess we can dive into some
specific pages. So should we start with the homepage? Yeah, as if we're a customer, I guess. There you go. You're at your shop window. I'd say that the homepage is an interesting one and important, an important piece of the puzzle. First of all, it's usually the page that most traffic is driven to other than let's say specific landing pages for kind of PPC traffic. And we think we can go into
those in a moment. But as as your shop window and as that often that Often it's the first touch point, or maybe not the first but they've been driven by an ad or some kind of piece of content is perhaps the first touch point where you're there to kind of really sell yourself that say, the first thing to think about is the kind of real estate at the top, the screen above the fold, which is a bit of a, an old school term, but it's still important. It's that bit that the visitor will see
when they land on your site. And we'd like to say in copywriting that you've got around six seconds to grip, your visitor is kind of the make or break moment. And you can look at sort of stats, again, back to like, I've always seen, obviously, like the history of copywriting, an old school newspaper ad, it's very similar when looking at a headline of a new as an old newspaper kind of article.
That's the most important part that first, you know, essentially value proposition headline that you want to weave into your own page. And I say value proposition, I should add the word unique. Really, what we're trying to achieve there is to take your unique value proposition and express it in a few sentences, an instant clarity, headline. So clarity is
key, right? You don't want to get so creative that in sit in those six seconds, your your visitor doesn't know what it is you sell, what's the value, you can offer them why they're there, should they continue reading, and then usually like a sub header or a little paragraph there, which kind of reinforces some of those USPS and gives you a bit more copy to kind of to
reinforce that. So that's kind of a key ingredient in our homepage is making sure that you grip them in the first place with that with that insert clarity header and sub header, then a lot of the rest of your homepage here it is dedicated to often kind of teasing other areas of the site. Because naturally, they can go into more detail than other pages. So usually, it's it's, you know, sub headers, paragraphs that will, will tease the about page that will tease like, the
product pages. And what I'd say that's really important also for homepage, and I say, again, this is kind of this is very important for specific landing pages, is that your, your sub headers, should, they shouldn't just tease the paragraph underneath them, right? That's very common for for brands to kind of say, you know, why us or our products, and then there's a
paragraph there. The reason why you need to do more than that is because lots of people skim and scan, a very common way for people to sort of engage with a website is by skimming and scanning. And it's a very common mistake for marketers, and even copywriters to kind of assume that they're reading every single word because you've poured your heart into it, you've written all these words, it's surely they're going to be reading every word in the exact
order that you want them to. The reality is a dirt they kind of land on a website, as I said, they got 20 other tabs open, and they offer whipped through it. So a great tip is to make sure on your homepage, your sub headers, it within five seconds of skimming down that page, your sub headers kind of tell the story and express your USP, your unique selling points, just by themselves without them having to read that body copy within
each section. So again, you kind of homepage has to do so much, because you kind of want in 510 seconds, if someone just reading, you know, the main header and sub header, then whipping through the sub headers to get a feel to get a gist for what it is you can do for them why you're different? What's the unique value you can provide to them? And how can you kind of change their life for the
better, in a sense. And then, you know, beyond that, you want to kind of tease these other pages and try to nudge them to sort of navigate the site and go to go to the different areas where where you want them to go and where it would help to, you know, build that trust that we mentioned and build on it to a point whereby, you know, they're, they feel like, you've knocked down the barriers that they had those like objections, you've built up that value.
You've built that trust, you know, and it's kind of a no brainer for them to kind of park with that hard earned cash and, and buy your product or products. I love that idea of teasing the next step. And it's like you're not trying to sell the product at that point, or even tell your whole story. On the homepage. It's about getting people to engage more with your brand to start searching around. And I
love the idea of teasing. A quick point while we're on the subject of the homepage still is creating that unique value proposition. So to give you some context for the type of businesses that we run will enter a niche or an industry that we can tell, there are products that we want to enter
that are selling already. And when we're early stage in this building an E commerce business, we might not be 100% sure on what our unique value proposition is, or even what our value proposition is, as a business of a very early stage. So how would you go about kind of getting really clear, and condensing that right down to a sentence or a subheading? How can you really condense and understand what it is you can offer to your customers? You've given me good questions
today? Yeah, I'd say that, like when it comes to the value proposition or your UVP, unique value proposition, as you've sort of mentioned there, the first step is the the thinking, right, the strategy, the strategic side of things, prior to actually kind of bringing
that to life, with copy. And, and again, for me, that fits into the sort of brand strategy box, right that that stage, which for us, as I said, is like a robably, an essential ingredient, or an essential step prior to kind of bring it to life. And for us, you know, when it comes to value proposition propositions and unique value propositions, there's an element of of having to do competitor
analysis, right? Because the likelihood is that you have maybe a brilliant product or products, and maybe they are unique. And I'm sure there's something unique about them, but what is what is that? You know, how can you find find, figure that out? When when the likelihood is that there are probably lots of other competitors who are offering similar products, if not, you
know, very, very similar. So you need to do competitor analysis to kind of zig while the industries X to kind of help you understand where, what is unique about what you're offering, and and then create a value proposition statements as more of an sort of internal document. There are various formulas, we have one, I'm sure you guys have one, where it's you kind of breaking down, you know, who's your target audience? What it is you you're offering them? What
are your differentiators? What does that mean, for them, you know, something like that following a formula. And that might be a bit of a longer statement that's more sort of internal that you use for to drive all of your marketing efforts. And then will we ever do as copywriters kind of the hard task of distilling that down into even fewer words. And again, a, an instant clarity header, you know, on a homepage is one of the toughest kind of nuts to crack, so to speak.
Because much like taglines, right with sometimes brands come to us and just fake you know, they misunderstand how difficult it is to write a great tagline, when you've got three to five words really embody, you know, the essence of that brand. When you've got fewer words, it actually takes longer sometimes, because it's more difficult. And yet, how do we do it? I guess it's just drilling down into, like, as I said, the essence of that value proposition statement, like, what are the
things that jump out? What are those core elements, those core words, and, and, and also, we follow formulas as well. You know, when it comes to writing headlines, for a homepage, there's all kinds of formulas out there that are proven to work. So back to the art and the science, you know, naturally, we want to be creative. And by the same time, there are proven formulas and frameworks that
work. So we would usually, if we're writing copy for a client, for example, we usually give them a few options for different headlines that maybe take a slightly different approach, or all of which try to embody that value proposition into sort of one sentence, and then, and then a sub header or sort of a mini paragraph after that.
Fantastic. That's the key, isn't it, trying to distill something down into a punchy five or six word statement that differentiates you and immediately tells your customers, what they're going to get from working with you is, is the key to all of that I agree making something shorter, and all those less words takes longer than then being less concise. And so taking that then to the product page, how about a few best practices out for actually the copy that we'd put on the product page?
Product pages, I think, very commonly focus too much, as I said earlier on features, those specifications, and just that. I think there's often there's a missed opportunity to a inject those benefits in B to inject creativity and pay personality, even with some brands, some ecommerce brands, you'll find that that personality, that tone of voice is kind of there in the homepage in the about page. But then when it comes to the products that, oh, we don't need that, it's just show the
product. So there's an opportunity to kind of weave that consistent tone of voice into the product pages as well. Something that is very, very powerful. So if this, this might be my tip of the day, potentially, we call it voice of customer data. So voc data. So Voice of Customer language, this
is very powerful. But what let me explain what it is, first of all, by that I mean, the way that your customers are describing your product, and describing their pain points and describing their desires and describing how that product changed their life, etc. That is a brilliant thing to gather, and to weave into your product pages. So an easy way to do it when you're an E commerce brand. And we often do this for clients is go, you know, if you're selling via Amazon, etc. There's
loads of comments there. There's all that feedback. That's a brilliant, that's a that's a goldmine of Voice of Customer language that you can go through. And there are two things we usually look for. On the one hand is when a word or a phrase has been used, commonly,
right? Because then you know, there's something there, it's like, oh, okay, that's how they, that's the word they're using to describe the product or the pain point or the brand, you know, because if it's you 60% or 50% of people are kind of using that that word or similar word, then it would be a great idea to weave that into your product
page copy. Also, sometimes you just find a quote, that's been so emotive ly written and beautifully written that as a copywriter, you don't even want to touch it that can become your product page headline, it's like, wow, that came from the heart right we as copywriters are trying to express things in a way that will really resonate with the, the emotions of, of our target audience, and what could be better than if it's just come from the horse's mouth, so to speak, you know,
and occasionally, you'll just find this amazing emotive language, and you can weave it in. And in order to also create social proof, which is something that we definitely should talk about, you can create instant social proof by actually just putting it in quotation marks. So that's another little tip, you know, your product page should have a header as well.
Again, there's a missed opportunity, if you just write the product name, right have have something more exciting use those copywriting techniques that we're talking about today. And potentially, it could literally be a quote, that you've pulled out of a, you know, a customer review. And by putting in quotation marks, people instantly know that that's not come from you, it's not how you're describing your product, is how someone like them, another customer is
describing their product. And that's my third point for product pages, other than weaving in voice of customer language, and words and phrases, etc. Social proof is is absolutely crucial, not just for your product page, it should be, you know, weave into every page, but possibly more so on that product page where you're really trying to nudge them to purchase
a particular product. People back to trust, we talked about trust at the beginning of one of the first things we talked about, people are more likely to trust other customers, other people like them than they are the brand. Because naturally a brand is going to be saying that their products are great, and are the perfect fit for your needs. Right, that's what we're gonna be doing. We were as a sales and marketing team, that's kind of our job is to say how great our products are. And you
can do it in clever ways. But one of the smartest thing you can things you can do is is it is create that social proof by having you know, Customer Quotes, feedback, how many stars did it get in wherever? Google etc. And, yeah, just litter it with with with with with testimonials. Essentially. I like I said, it can even be woven into the copy itself. Brilliant. Yeah, just a few speech marks in there. Get the
customer's voice across. As you say, the customers understand that the brands have got a bit of a vested interest in saying that the products are amazing. So they're looking to see okay, but what I will just take your word for it. I'll take the word of it from customers and people that have already purchased it, it just reduces the risk for that customer to buy if they know what another customer has already experienced and said so. Yeah, I love that point that you
mentioned there. Something else I want to touch on with this episode is the hot topic at the moment and it's the AI influence and I wonder how AI has influenced how you work with your copywriting agency and and how you can actually do copywriting potentially with AI without losing that personal touch that we've talked about is so crucial for your brand identity. Yeah, I've got lots of things to say about
this, as you can imagine. The first thing to say is that, for us, as an agency, we've very much embraced the technology, we're very much embraced AI, you know, we kind of had our eye on the developments in in large language models, you know, years ago, because there were tools that were coming out prior to chat, GBT, which was free and kind of blew up the internet.
And naturally, as a, as a forward thinking agency wanting to future proof our agency, we've had to kind of kind of keep our finger on the pulse of, of, of, of those developments in in generative AI. When chat GPT came along, we kind of sped that process up in a sense. And we we thought it was important for us to a kind of carve out our perspective on it on the future
of copywriting. What does it mean, now that you can kind of probe to a chatbot to essentially create copy for you and B to go through a very thorough use case testing process, which we've been doing for over a year, you know, made sure we carved out hours for our writers and team to kind of use case test this technology and see what where are the strengths? Where are the limitations? And again, I don't know, I don't know how much
detail to go into. But we created a big spreadsheet, we basically broke down all the things we deliver for homepage, a blog post to a buyer interview to and everything in between and broke it broke it down into what are the steps to kind of deliver each of those, each of those assets. And then we scored them in a certain Scoring Matrix. And then we and that was the basis
for our use case testing. So all of that being said, the reason why I'm mentioning it is so that you understand, I think hopefully that when I talk about my my perspective on AI and copywriting, it comes from a place of of understanding and research. So that's the factual
question. We believe that the now and future of copywriting is collaborative, right humans and machines, we don't believe at least currently add for the foreseeable future, at least the next five years, let's say you can just front generative AI to great to create copy that is good enough for you. That is great, good, strong, you know, copy that ticks all the boxes
that we need to tick. And especially one thing that we're seeing is the mistake of non copywriters trying to just create copy, or people that don't have that sort of copywriting understanding, thinking that they can just put a, you know, a one sentence or one paragraph prompt insert catchy bitty, and it can create a homepage or a landing page or even look posts and the kind of
long form content. The problem with that is that and some will put this I thought quite well on on LinkedIn in a comment on one of my posts. They said the best way to write great copy with an AI is by being a great copywriter. I've always garbage in, garbage out. And the reason I say that is because again, it's a tool, right? And you have to have that understanding of what the output should look like. And generative AI the way it works is essentially a
predictive model, right? So it picks the next word in the sentence based on what's most likely to come next with some variability in there. So that it doesn't just, you know, it's not creating exactly duplicate duplicate content all the time. And the reason I say that is that it's round to kind of copywriting cliches is prone to creating cliches. And that's something we want to avoid. So back to the copywriting handbook, and, you know, all best practices for copywriting.
You want to avoid cliches, the kind of thing like, Oh, you found the right place. You know, that's the kind of thing you've seen on a million websites, because they overused right at some point, it was probably a good conversation or sentence it was good copyright, but then it gets used by so many brands across so many industries, that it becomes a copywriting cliche. And when the reader, you know, their eyes kind of glaze over, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't
give that differentiation. We're talking about their unique brand personality. So that was my warning. My warning is that, you know, you can't just prompt AI to create great copy. You might think I would say that but I genuinely believe it. If I didn't believe it. I'd probably be pivoting my agency right now if I thought you could, we would make some more innocent and bigger moves. However, it is Write is a great tool. It's a
brilliant tool. And we are, as I said, we've identified a lot of use cases where it's really helping us. The areas that it really helps are, first of all,
transcription. So, you know, we use fireflies, and there's multiple other tools out there, whereby one of the things we do as copywriters is talk to the customers of our clients, right, buyer interviews, I mentioned it before, it's a great way to get that voice of customer that we mentioned, and to really understand the pain points that we talked about and the desires that we talked about. When we talk to customers, we record those calls, and AI is brilliant
at transcribing. And then you can use it to kind of pick things out of using chat GPT, we've built a bot, a GPT. So we've built a number of bots that serve different functions within the agency. And one of them is doing kind of recaps. So you know, you can, you can essentially transcribe, and you can ask questions like, Oh, tell me the pain points, pull out the pain points, or tell me the
desires. And it can also do that for again, for surveys, if you do a survey and you get lots of results back or you do some social listening. Again, it can work a lot faster than humans can. So it can pull out those words and phrases that I mentioned are a very clever thing to weave into your product page, or product pages. It's brilliant for research as well.
So just, you know, if you want to get a better understanding, in our case of different industries, it can kind of summarize things well and just see, do you have knowledge and Intel and if you're, you know, working for your own, whether you're running your own, you know, e commerce, business, or you're in the marketing team. It's kind of good for stress
testing things as well. So asking it questions like, again, like what, what would be the pain points of this specific segment, you're going after this particular audience? What would be the desires, it's got a wealth of knowledge, rice, billions of data points, so it can kind of feed you things that you you don't know or you're unsure about. In terms of the creation part, I'd say so it's
great as a sparring partner. So our copywriters use it for and me personally, to be honest, like one thing I didn't mention a little extra tip for you. metaphors and analogies and similes are great, great copy is good copyright practices to weave those in. Because it's just a creative way to bring certain aspects and features alive. It's kind of like mini stories in a sentence. And sometimes, this is probably me
being too honest here. Sometimes because I'm not writing copy as much as I used to, you know, essentially I'm, you know, I'm the CEO. I do write LinkedIn posts, though. That's when I kind of have to get creative. And sometimes I kind of get stuck or I know I want to work a simile or metaphor into my, into my post, and my brain gets a bit stuck. So I use chat GBT as a sparring partner, drop it in there and say, you know, can you turn this point into a metaphor? Give me some options, give me
510 options. And our copywriters will maybe, you know, start with a headline, I get to chat GBT to kind of churn out various different headlines. And often like, some of them will be crappy, right? Maybe even most of them but you can pick some out that are good or is food for thought it will lead you in a certain direction. So I think it's great as a as a transcriber, as a as a research partner as a, as a sparring partner. And to sometimes stress
test your decisions as well. And potentially also as as a, as a planner of copying content as well. I talked before about information architecture, the thinking before the writing, you know, before you just write a homepage, what's the message hierarchy? What goes first, what goes next, before you write a blog post, you know, what's that kind of structure to the post AI can kind of really help there
too. But again, be warned that it's usually going to go for the most obvious thing, the most done thing, the most cliched thing, whether that's, you know, the topic or the actual copy itself. So that's why we think don't don't abuse it right. Use it don't abuse it don't isn't Don't, don't rely on it too
much. And back to my main point, which is I think it's a collaboration, human and machines and my main tip for AI is to have chat, be chatting with T open Don't stick your head in the sand, embrace the technology and play with it and test it for yourself because while we've got company wide processes, what one of the main conclusions we came to after doing this big use case testing project was that everyone uses
it in a different way. Each of our copywriters have their own individual ways of of writing a headline and and coming up with a structure for ancient writing that copy. And each of them use now use our bots that we've created our GPS in different ways. And I think the crucial thing is to have patience as well don't shut things down and go, Oh, I tried it and the output was rubbish. It is
rubbish. You have to have patience and learn how to prompt to learn how to read prompt and get it to where you want it to get to. And I think this is crucial beyond just copywriting. This is like, learning how to use search, right? My mum doesn't have to search for things on Google because she's rubbish, rubbish with technology. And she has to call me up because she's not been able to find a website, right?
She can't really email Hiva. It we could I I'm telling we're telling people, you know, everyone, really, you should get used to this technology because this is the future. And we you could end up like my mum, if you just kind of shove it aside and go now it's rubbish. It didn't work for me. Yeah. And you potentially push away the opportunities that it can bring.
So yeah, I like that the hybrid, the hybrid copywriter, if you will, sort of AI but the key with it being hybrid is that if you've got more idea of what great copy looks like, then you'll be able to get great copy out of AI. Whereas if you're going with a hybrid model, and you don't know what great copy looks like, then that equally, the balance is there then for the chat, GBT isn't going to be able to produce as great copy was a decent summary. Do you say? Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah, definitely.
And we're even seeing that. There are quite big brands, we work with a lot of global companies that are starting to come to us more, I feel like the demand for human copywriting has kind of is on the rise again. And having conversations with them is often because, you know, I've got several companies I've spoken to recently where they've dabbled in it, they've tried it. But the person within the company pushing content creation or copy creation with AI is not a copywriter, or even a
marketer. Sometimes they like a growth hacker. They're like, Oh, we can use this and, and the outputs been so bad that the marketing team have gone Oh, wow, we need to go back and find that creative copywriting team. And in my opinion, you know, it shouldn't be bad it should you need the right people using it, and have that right understanding of where you need
to get it too. And that's where we've really embraced it and believe that we're kind of practicing what we preach in terms of this hybrid approach to copywriting. Fascinating, brilliant. I'm really glad we touched on that, and that there's been so many top tips inside this podcast Kandra. Yeah, I mean, I've learned so much as listening to you. And I'm sure we can speak about this for hours. And I know we will go on to do another recording now for the for the members, as
well. So just to close out, it's something you've you've highlighted, I think will be of no interest of people listening today is the 13th lenses framework. I guess is that is that how you you view any copy that you create? And is there a way that people can access the 13 lenses framework? There is a way James so thanks
for the plug. Yeah, 13 lenses in a nutshell is kind of 13 different core ingredients that we've identified as you know the ingredients, you need to write copy and content that does what you want it to do compel convincing convert, I've touched on some of them the real talk lens, the goldfish lens, the brand lens, there's an SEO lens, creative spark lens, you know, 13, I don't have time to dive
into all of them now. But what it is for us as an agency is is not just something that we train our copywriters on and akin to every brief, we've actually turned it into basically a scoring matrix or a less fancy way of saying that is a checklist so that when we write a copy for our clients, you know, we have well copyright first wrong the first draft, it moves over to a QA copywriter that can essentially whip
through this checklist. We're aiming to get to 100% in terms of ticking every box or as close
to it as possible. So how can your listeners access to 30 lenses, we do have an E guide that delves into it and talks about each lens in detail and kind of the things that you should be thinking about whether you want to turn that into a scoring checklist that's up to you, but at least it's there for consideration right and whenever you're reviewing copy, analyzing and optimizing your copy and content wherever it may be.
These are the kinds of core areas that you should be reviewing and and getting the balance right balance is a very important word there because you don't want to write copy that's so SEO focused that you forgot about the humans that are reading it or that so kind of brand focus that you've forgotten about. The sales psychology and conversion copywriting technics because it's all storytelling. Right? So it's about getting balanced, right? So yes, we have an E
guide. And I believe you'll be dropping a link somewhere in the show notes. Yeah, that will be the link very high up in the show notes and this huge of people to get hold of that 30 lens of ego, because I think it is a fantastic starting position to put into practice everything we've talked about today. Absolutely. Fantastic. Well, thanks you very much, Conrad for joining us. I also know that you're starting a
podcast for yourself. So for people that have enjoyed this conversation, want to learn more about optimizing the copy as well, then you can check out Conrad's podcast, if you got the name sorted for that new podcast. We do. Yeah, thanks for the thanks for the other plug there. It's called funnel visionaries. Real talk on perfecting the customer journey.
So will very much be obviously looking at copy, but also delving into content strategy and how to map that out and the different areas of the funnel, obviously through a sort of content and copy lens. So yeah, the first recording is coming up this week, as I said, and hopefully we'll have that all up and open and ready for your ears and eyes very soon. But another great, great place to sort of connect with me and follow my my content. And the things I like to talk about is on LinkedIn.
I'm quite active on LinkedIn, and I, you know, give value value there. I hope copywriting tips, content, strategy, strategy tips, and also just talk about my story and agency journey, which hopefully you'll find interesting as well. 100%. Fantastic. Thanks again, Conrad for joining us. Definitely ought to be checking out that podcast as well as LinkedIn and already connected with you and would recommend for everyone else. So thank you, Conrad, for joining us on today's episode.
Thanks for having me. It's been fun. What a fantastic session that was with Conrad there, his insights into copywriting really shine a light on how critical it is for your success. Especially interesting was hearing about his 13th lenses framework, which I know is going to be incredibly valuable for you when you analyze and improve the text on
your website and elsewhere. It definitely will be a no Conrad's expertise in crafting compelling copy is something that will really transform your ecommerce business. If you apply the lessons from today's episode into your own store, drawing your customers in with better copy guiding them through the journey that eventually ends in conversions on your store. That's the name
of the game. His tips on finding your brand voice I thought were really helpful and best practices for every page of your site that can really make a real real difference. It's about speaking directly to your audience in a way that resonates with them. I particularly enjoyed Conrad's approach to using AI in copywriting not necessarily to replace humans. But just to better enhance how you can create more meaningful connections with your customers. Some really important insights
that Conrad made today. And if you are looking to elevate your brand, I know that applying Conrad's copywriting strategies is a must. His methods are not just about writing better. As we discussed, it's more about thinking deeper about your customers psychology and understanding why they would buy and why they want to buy particularly from you. So the conversation and also the following members training that we put together afterwards. It's all really laid out a roadmap
for immediate implementation. I think it's actually quite rare. I'd say Louis to get such a clear and actionable plan. Yeah, it's rare to find something that's so actionable that you can apply today and start earning more money in your business than you were yesterday. Now, if you're listening to this, and you're serious about stepping up your ecommerce business, taking a deep dive into the art and science of copywriting with Conrad's Insights is a great
start. And remember, great copywriting is just one piece of the puzzle for a holistic approach to e commerce success. My book the home turf advantage covers everything you need from how to select which products to sell, how to make consistent sales with paid ads profitably, and even how to leverage copy for maximum impact. Head over to HT a book.com. To pick up your copy today, implement Conrad's strategies, follow the framework in the book and watch your
business grow. It's time to turn those words into action and sales. Enjoying the podcast we'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review, and we might just feature it on an upcoming episode. Also, for detailed show notes and resources, head to dropship unlock.com forward slash podcast. If you found value from any episode of this podcast, please take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your podcast app of choice. It helps us more than you could imagine.
And who knows you might just hear your comments on the show. Thanks for being part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering a new episode every week. Now it's time to answer a question that we've had in from a listener of the past. To cast. So thank you for your question. And remember, if you have a question, and he wants it answered on the podcast, all you need to do is leave a comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode. And that's exactly what Ferhat has
done. And he has asked, I am just wondering if the suppliers sell you products one by one? Or would they want to buy in bulk? Also, how are you going to negotiate pricing? Thanks for your question. And yeah, it's really good. So we specifically target suppliers who are already comfortable with
the Drop Shipping model. So what this does is ensures that they're open to fulfilling orders one at a time, even before we talked to them, so we're not convincing them that they should move from a different model of dispatching orders in bulk, to now supplying us one by one product at a time. We know from our validation steps that we do in week two of our masterclass program that these suppliers are already doing this. So we're not asking them to reinvent their
processes. This alignment is crucial for the smooth operation of our business, because you wouldn't want to be buying in bulk. With this model. Sometimes you might approach a supplier who maybe isn't yet doing this.
And if there is any hesitation from suppliers about the whole one at a time ordering process, we just make sure that we really emphasize the benefits of that model to then, by freeing up that money that we don't then have to invest in huge amounts of fair stock means that we can invest more in advertising, which then leads to a quicker and potentially larger volume of sales for them, which is what they want. And then in turn that benefits both parties in the
long run us. And regarding your second part of the question about pricing negotiations, start negotiations by just asking suppliers for their price list, they'll usually have a price list of trade prices, which is what they sell the products to retailers such as yourself for, we would aim for a reasonable margin of around 30% for a starting margin, any lower than that, and it can become quite difficult. And margins can get squeezed when you start
paying for ads as well. If their initial offer doesn't meet our target, then we'll use their price list as a starting point for negotiations. Maybe we'll keep adspend low on that brand to ensure that we are profitable for the sales that we do make. And as we start to prove ourselves, we can negotiate better margins with suppliers, try and get them above that 30% profit margin mark, and really eventually aim to reach a mutually beneficial agreement
with us. Perfect. Thank you. Listen, thank you for your question. It's now time to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well. And a big thank you to Ian MacGillivray for the YouTube comment. And Ian is also very special to the podcast because he actually won the store that we built. And Lewis built in a recent YouTube series that we've released on YouTube, where Lewis did the step by step guide of building a brand new drop
shipping business. And Ian was the lucky winner of that competition. So Ian has left a YouTube comments. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. So Ian said, Honestly, I'm lacking the appropriate superlatives. This series of videos is truly exceptional. Thank you so much for your review in and again, congratulations on winning the store. Thanks for entering that competition well deserved. As we wrap up for today. One question I have for you is who do you know, that could benefit from
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