Author: RazvanRogoz

Here Are Five Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Write Your Next Sales Letter.

Hello,

Experience taught me that the worst thing to do when starting a copywriting project is to write. Two things can happen. You either have to rewrite everything because nothing is actually a market match or you end up not making sales, which will lead to you rewriting everything. It’s either wasted time or wasted time and wasted traffic.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that you should fall into a paralysis of analysis and delay writing as much as possible. No. It’s just that without getting clear on what you’re trying to transmit, the letter is likely to fail. The letter may fail even if you get clear on these things, that’s true, but you’ll have a far better chance of succeeding.

The first question is “should we be selling this?”.

This is not a joke. At least in 1 out of 3 cases, the answer is no. Many times the product solves a need that nobody has. Other times, the competition is offering something cheaper and better. Yet, other times, the idea is good but the execution is awful.

When you are the product creator, it is easy to lose perspective on the bigger picture. You are in love with your work. You know how much time you’ve invested in it. You believe it is the best thing in the world. Everyone around you is proud of you.

Yet, this doesn’t mean anything if your market is not interested. If you ask ten copywriters and all ten tell you “your product doesn’t solve a problem in the marketplace”, then you should go back to the drawing board.

If you are solving a problem but the mechanism is flawed, then keep the vision but change the approach. There are many ways to solve the same problem and in the end, you’re not selling the feature, you’re selling the benefit. When someone buys a drill, he’s not buying a piece of metal. He’s buying the hole that the metal is going to make. So discard the way you are making that hole and still sell the outcome.

A word of warning though – if your product is not something for which people would pay for (because the need isn’t there or there are far easier ways to accomplish it), then I suggest you give up on the idea and get back to product development.

The second question is “who is my buyer here?”.

This is a trick question. The buyer is generally the person that pays for the product. If you are selling a guide on how a student can ace his SAT exams, then your buyer persona is the student, right?

Well, not really. It is the parents, as they are paying for the course and they are making the buying decision. The student is the end user but he’s not going to Google online about courses and pay for it from his allowance money.

In the executive coaching field, many people think that the customer is the C-level executive that is receiving the service. No. The HR department usually employs executive coaches and they are the ones who need to be persuaded. It is very rare that you need to sell to the end-user but rather, to the purchasing middleman.

This is especially true in the B2B field where you have buyers, influencers, gatekeepers and users and you need to appeal to all of them. The buyer may be the CFO who cares first about the cost and the ROI. The influencers may be other CFOs who have bought similar products or the CEO. The influencer may not take the decision but he is very important in the buying process. The influencer may also be the end user. If the CFO goes to the manager who benefits from the product and asks for his opinion, then what he says will matter quite a lot towards the final buying decision. Finally, gatekeepers are those that guard access to the buyer, like secretaries who may delete your direct mail package.

Once you’ve determined the real buyer (hint: about 70% of all buying decision in the household are made by the woman, even when the products don’t benefit her directly), you must get clear on who is your buyer persona.

Your buyer persona is a fictional character that represents your marketplace. Think of a character in a movie or a book. The more you understand this character, the easier it will be for you to sell.

Yet, here’s where you are most likely to fail. Most people create complex buyer persona’s and they make sense but these personas are rarely anchored in reality. You see, your buyer persona is nothing more than a representation of your REAL prospect. It is someone to whom you’re writing that is as close as possible to your real marketplace. So if you build a market persona that is not accurate from the desires, beliefs, fears and behaviors perspectives, you’ll not make sales. It’s as easy as that.

My approach is to base my buyer’s persona on someone I know. I find someone that needs my product and is interested in my product and then I try to sell to her directly. If my product is a weight loss course, then I go to the gym and I find someone out of shape who is really struggling without making any effort. I observe this person. I try and talk with her. I try to really understand what’s going in her mind and soul. Many times, I befriend her in the most sincere way. This gives me a buyer persona as close to reality as possible. I sell to a real human being, not to an imaginary fictional character.

The third question is “why should anyone buy my product?”

This is what I call the “stress test”. I’m trying to see my product from a critical perspective and come up with every good reason someone would pay (or would not pay) money for it. The purpose is not to discourage myself but rather, to make a preliminary list of benefits and of objections.

The key goal here is to come up with the POD (point of differentiation) benefits. These are the ways your product is different from the competition, different in a manner that has value to your marketplace. Answering “because it is good” is not the right way to do this. Instead, you must really dive deep into the features and benefits of your product to come up with what makes it special. For example, did you know that a selling point for MacBooks is that the screen is perfectly balanced? This means you can raise it with one hand. It doesn’t seem a big deal but many people noticed this and praised this attention to detail in their reviews.

At the same time, you must come up with every reason why they wouldn’t buy it too. This can be because nobody knows you, the price, entrenched competition, slow delivery or whatever else you may come up with. You should do this in order to proactively solve these problems (or at least the most important ones).

My mindset here is simple. If you can sell to the most skeptical prospect, someone who doesn’t want to have to do with you, then selling to a normal, average one will be a walk in the park. Always prepare for the worst, even if in practice it will be a lot easier.

I won’t blame you if you skip this question. I do this sometimes too. I want my product to work. I want to believe in the best outcome. However, life showed me that what happens has little to do with what I expect to happen and it is better to stress test your ideas early, with a small investment, than late when you’ve put it all in.

The fourth question is “what is my hook?”

In all honesty, this is something you’ll spend a few hours on after you start writing your letter. Yet, you should think about your hook before starting because everything you write will aim to match it.

A hook is the central point of interest in your copy. It can be a story or an event. It is practically the story. In a movie, the hook is the reason why the movie is interesting. The difference between good and great copywriting is the quality of your hook. John Carlton is one of the best copywriters in the world but what makes him special is coming with some quite brilliant hooks. In one of his sales letter, he told the story of a one legged golf player. This hook brilliantly connected to a balancing technique golfers can use and the product that teaches this. In another he tells this story of a average looking guy working as a bodyguard for metal rock-bands. It was a promo about a self-defense video set and how this guy could take down people two times his size.

For investment products, the 2008 crisis was a good hook. The BitCoin bubble is again a good hook. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is because it is not a formula, but rather a concept. But no matter how you see it, your hook will be the central idea that will make someone want to read your promotion. To determine if you have a good hook, ask yourself this …

“If my story would be standalone, in other words, not selling a product, would it still be interesting and captivate my reader? Could I still entertain my reader with a good story even if I don’t connect it to a product?”

If this is the case, you have a good hook. If your hook is your product, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

The fifth question is “how am I’m going to test this?”

I’ve seen many people writing a sales letter and then not sending any traffic to it. Now while having a sales letter is better than no sales letter, you must remember that it works only with traffic. You can’t expect people to find your site by default. You must drive them there.

When you ask yourself this upfront, you must also come with some viable mediums. For example, let’s say that you are writing an advertorial in the investment field. If you research the websites that allows you to promote your advertorial, then you can understand the tone and the type of audience found there. This allows you to write your advertorial in a way that matches where it is placed.

This is generally an advanced strategy but the highest leverage in online marketing is matching your copy with your traffic type. Facebook leads reply better to some approaches while Google PPC responds to others. While you don’t need to worry too much at this moment, at least ask yourself what mediums you’re going to use.

Before ending, keep in mind that once you answer these questions, you should write. Don’t wait, don’t procrastinate. If the idea makes sense and if you get clear on what you’re selling to whom, don’t wait until inspiration strikes. Writing a sales letter has little to do with creativity and everything to do with your marketplace. Write your first draft. You don’t need to post it online, just get it done. Then write your second. Third. Show it to other people. Ask if they’d buy. Read it aloud. Make constant progress towards your goal.

Usually the first copy I write is not that good. There are many good ideas but nothing flows together. Only at draft 2 or even draft 3 my copy starts to make sense and to resemble a conversation.

Are you interested in discovering how I can help your business or how we can apply these concepts to your own venture? Then let’s have a talk. For a limited time, I’m giving away complementary 30 minute calls. In these sessions, we’ll discuss ways in which we can maximize your customer value, boost your conversion, achieve more sales and increase any other relevant metrics in your business.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

February 19, 2018
Qualify Your Marketplace Through The Content You’re Providing.

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

The information publishing field is not made equal. Right now, there are books in the self-improvement field for people who never read something like that before or are very skeptical. At the same time, there are books that contain complex frameworks which are hard to understand if you haven’t invested a lot of time and money in the past.

In the investment field, there are people who are just discovering how to read a chart. On the other hand, there are folks who are looking for complex strategies designed to give them an edge in the marketplace.

The complex content is not consumed by beginners and sophisticated prospects are not interested in reading basic content. Yet, while this is common sense, most marketers fail to understand this completely and write content that is designed to appeal to everyone and end up appealing to no one.

But before moving forward with this topic, let me give you another example. In the gaming industry there are hardcore gamers and casual gamers. Casual gamers play games on their phones and tablets and these games tend to be very simple. Hardcore gamers invest thousands of dollars into their computers and play games that look photorealistic and tend to be very complex.

It’s impossible to create something to appeal to both groups at the same time. One market is drawn by the desire to waste some time while waiting for the bus, the other market is drawn by system optimization and art in the form of gaming. A person that is playing a “tapping game” (it is a game where you tap the screen to get money, which you use to upgrade so you can get more money – sounds stupid but it earns hundreds of millions of dollars) is not interested in playing a complex strategy game like Civilization.

Even in the hardcore gamer field there are some who are more “hardcore” than others. Let’s take strategy games. A casual hardcore gamer would play something like Command And Conquer 3. A really hardcore gamer would play Europa Universalis, a grand strategy game that honestly feels more complicated than doing a full time job. So game companies cater to these specific audiences.

The buyer persona for a casual first person shooter may be age 16, living with parents, male. The buyer persona for a game like Stelaris, a 4X, grand strategy game about space civilizations may be 35 year old, with family, looks for stimulation above fun. So all the marketing materials, all the content and of course, the products are designed to fulfill that niche.

Now let’s get back to the topic of online marketing. If your product is a $9.97 eBook on how to get started, then write in simple terms, simple language about simple concepts. Don’t start writing about systems and processes when they don’t know what an URL is. Write to someone who never heard about online marketing before.

On the other hand, if you have a $997 course on advanced PPC technique, don’t write basic things. Don’t remind him of the basic concepts in your field because he knows this. Give something at his level, something advanced, something he can apply and he haven’t heard 100 times before.

It’s basic.

It’s no rocket science yet few are doing it.

Write for the market that you would like to actually attract. If I would write basic concepts about IM here, then I would attract beginners. Beginners generally can’t or aren’t willing to invest money in quality services. So I write to people who have heard enough basic advice before and instead are looking for a fresh perspective, something that can trigger an “a-ha moment”.

You must do a market match on every level you interact with your customer. Your emails must be at his level. Your content must be at his level. Your product, as you may have guessed, must be at his level.

This is a mistake I’ve done quite a lot. Many times I have wrote about things that interest me, but not my marketplace. A lot of posts on this site are more like reminders to myself as opposed to value filled marketing articles. There are articles here about fitness and about time management. Yet, I’m not a personal trainer and I don’t do time management coaching. So the only logical sense is to write about what I can monetize – copywriting and marketing and to write to people that I can work with – professionals who already achieved a decent level of success in their fields.

Like it or not, the key to successful marketing in 2018 is targeting.

Creating something good is not enough.

You must create something good, make it very appealing to a specific niche (while ignoring everyone else). Once you’ve done this, you must find a way to get your content seen by those people. Views, unique visitors, time spent on site do not matter. Nor does it matter if you get many likes and shares on Facebook. What matters are sales and 100 views from people who can pay for you are more valuable than 10.000 in front of those that will or can not.

The world is getting more and more segmented and fortunately for you and me, there are good ways to reach those segments.

Twenty years ago, it would have been impossible to target someone to the degree that we can do today. In theory, Facebook filters are so effective that you can target a single person out of 5.000.000 living in a big city. You can reach your ideal customer, whoever she may be, as long as you know how and you can pay for the traffic.

So your job as a marketer is simple – adopt the power of appealing to a specific niche, in everything you do, or become a jack of all trades that appeals to no one. The good choice is obvious.

Are you interested in discovering how I can help your business or how we can apply these concepts to your own venture? Then let’s have a talk. For a limited time, I’m giving away complementary 30 minute calls. In these sessions, we’ll discuss ways in which we can maximize your customer value, boost your conversion, achieve more sales and increase any other relevant metrics in your business.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

February 19, 2018
Proof Requirements In The Context Of Your Prospect’s Sophistication Level.

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

I’ve noticed an interesting trend. Online marketing follows the same approach as the movie industry. You see, there is a basic rule in movie making. The bigger your audience is, the more you will earn. So movies are made to have a mass appeal. This can be done by reducing violence (therefore having a lower rating) but generally, appealing to the lowest common dominator.

This is why you don’t see a lot of complex movies nowadays. The people who want complex, thought provoking movies are maybe 10% of the entire audience. The other 90% prefers pure emotion and to have fun, instead to ask questions. Plus, a ticket is a ticket and everyone pays the same. All things being equal, nine million people watching a movie filled with cliches and where you have to leave your brain at the door is nine times better than one million people watching a complex, philosophical movie.

Marketers are doing the same. If there are 100.000 people who want a basic concept and 10.000 who want an advanced concept, most marketers appeal to the bigger number. Yet, there is a problem. The 10.000 that are looking for something better are generally worth more from a dollar value than the other 100.000 combined. As opposed to music and movies, online marketing tools and educations are not commodities but rather specific tools to help specific problems. And if you go to a college graduate trying to sell him a book on how to do basic calculus … chances are he’s not going to be interested. On the other hand, if you go to a kid who needs to learn to do basic calculus, he may be interested but he can’t afford the book because he’s a kid.

So is with most online marketing. The largest pool of people need basic, introductory information but are not earning any profits nor do they have that much disposable income in order to invest. This is not a problem if you’re selling low ticket but let me ask you this – is it easy to sell a $997 course to someone who never earned a dime online? Or should you sell this $997 course to someone who makes this money in a day?

There is a close relationship between market sophistication, the amount they’re willing to invest and the size. And the same is true about proof in copywriting.

If you look at more sales letters nowadays in a critical manner, you’ll notice a massive lack of proof. This comes in contrast with what most copywriting books say about the topic. They put so much emphasis on proof that it feels like your copy must become an airtight legal case. Yet, most VSLs make no sense when analyzed carefully.

They are full of contradictions, suspension of disbelief and so on. There are a few copywriting gurus that even admitted to this and said that the sale is made on an emotional level, not a logical one.

And yes, I agree. The sale is made using emotions and when emotions are engaged, you can get away with a lot. Yet, what most copywriters fail to say is that this tends to be for mass product, unsophisticated products. It is the device that allows you to generate your own electricity or stuff like that – that plays on people’s frustrations and desires. BitCoin is another example. I’ve never seen as much unsubstantiated hype as with BC. It is similar to the tulip mania a long time ago.

But you know what? Those ads selling BC and BC tools and BC courses and opportunities are not directed at analysts working on Wall Street or lecturers in the topics of economics. They are directed to people who know almost nothing about trading, can’t read a chart, have no idea what a P&L statement is and don’t even know what compounded interest means.

They’re amateurs with zero experience. They believe the claims because honestly, they don’t have the knowledge to know otherwise. If you make the same claims to someone with twenty years of experience, you’d better show tons of proof that this is true. If you say that BC will always rise and it is not a bubble, you’d better talk in his language and show tangible, logical proof that this is true.

Now I’m not saying that all people buying BC have no idea what they’re doing. I know for a fact that there are many very sophisticated investors who know very well what they’re doing. Yet, 80% at least are amateurs who sensed a way to get rich fast and invested their money without any prior research. Ignorance is bliss sometimes. This made the asset grow in value which attracted more get rich quick seekers. This is how a bubble is made. Many people putting their money in without a real foundation to sustain that value.

Or let’s take an IT expert. If you sell a computer to my aunt, she knows nothing about computers. You can tell her anything you want and if you say it will be good, she’ll buy it. For her 4 GB of RAM or 64 GB of RAM is exactly the same thing. What if you try to sell this to a computer enthusiast who built computer his all life? Can you fool him with “this is the best processor ever, it can play any game in existence”?. No. You need charts and benchmarks and quotes from authority figures.

Let’s say you are selling an online marketing product. If you’re selling to a complete amateur you can say “yes, this is going to make you a million dollars”. Lacking any knowledge of the field or on judging this to be true or false (as a filter), he may as well accept it. If you sell to someone who has been doing this for ten years, then you need to build a complete logical case that proves that the million dollar claim is true.

The more experienced one is in one field, the more proof he needs to see attached to your claims in order to accept them and the less likely he is to take them for granted.

It took me a long time to understand this. My mistake was that I learned copywriting from the people that are very good at this. One example is Clayton Makepeace. He was amongst the first people I’ve studied. He wrote promotions for financial publishers, promotions that would cost million of dollars to mail. This means that these packages were overkill. They were refined to perfection and since the market was sophisticated, part time investors, entrepreneurs or career professionals, they were very heavy on proof.

So for a long time, I’ve thought that I must be heavy on proof on every letter I write. This proved false. The average Joe has not developed the type of critical thinking to warrant that type or proof. If anything, it puts him into an analytical mindset and pulls him out of the emotional one. Yes, when selling to an unsophisticated marketplace, having too much proof can actually unsell someone. It’s better to just “act a fool” and assume that everything you say is taken for granted than trying to answer questions that were never asked by your prospect.

Keep this in mind. The more your prospect knows about your field, the easier it is for him to debunk any claim you make. If this happens, you lose the sale. So use proof like an armor against his skepticism. However, if he is unlikely to be skeptical, then adding that armor will just draw unwanted attention. It’s a balancing act.

Are you interested in discovering how I can help your business or how we can apply these concepts to your own venture? Then let’s have a talk. For a limited time, I’m giving away complementary 30 minute calls. In these sessions, we’ll discuss ways in which we can maximize your customer value, boost your conversion, achieve more sales and increase any other relevant metrics in your business.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz

February 18, 2018
Applying Lean To Your Next Information Product

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

Lean methodology is something every entrepreneur should learn.

You shouldn’t be allowed to register a company (or worse, receive your first seed of funding) until you have read this book. While it is not applicable to every field and every type of project, knowing what it is will give you a major advantage in your entrepreneurial venture. Plus, it works quite well on online businesses too.

You see, most entrepreneurs have a “1.0” release in mind. This usually means a complete, market ready product. If this is a piece of software, it is a stable, bug free, feature rich package. If this is a course, you’re talking here about all the videos, the PDFs and the membership site behind it.

There is a problem though.

You rarely know if something sells until you sell it. You can create the best eBook in the world on your topic and not have a marketplace for it. You can spend six months and tens of thousands of dollars on your SaaS just to realize that you are solving a problem where nobody actually asked for a solution.

This is the concept of a product match.

This concept has been popularized by Eric Ries, the one who brought this mindset of lean into the mainstream marketplace (I don’t know if he invented it or not but most do know of it because of him). Your prospect doesn’t care about your product as you do. He doesn’t care about how technologically advanced is or how much time you’ve invested in making it happen. Your prospect will buy only if it can solve his problems in an effective manner and he cares enough about those troubles to seek solving them.

And most products, unfortunately, do not get product match. Most online marketers invest hundreds of hours of effort into developing something that nobody wants, no matter how brilliant it may look to them. Most sales letters do not target the exact desires, fears and beliefs of the buyer persona. Most PPC campaigns are not targeted towards the people who are ready to buy.

To give you an example here, last year, a friend of mine ran a PPC campaign for a copy I’ve developed for him. He came to me disappointed that he got no results whatsoever. I’ve started asking questions. The PPC ad was good enough and everything seemed fine. There was a problem though. He targeted non English speaking countries because they had the smallest bid score. He was trying to sell an info-product at $30 in places like Bangladesh and Sierra Leone, places where $30 can mean a week’s pay for a family.

It failed because it wasn’t a product match. As soon as he sent quality traffic, he got results. Of course, the quality traffic was multiples more expensive than the trash traffic but experience taught me that there’s nothing more expensive than investing into something that is proven to not work.

To get back to the point, imagine yourself in this situation. You are a marketer. Your passion is to raise peacocks in a farm. You want to create a course on this. You’ve made hundred of thousands of dollars per year from this business. You know it works. So you write for over a year your eBook. Then you record 15 hours of videos. You give them everything, including the spreadsheets you use to manage your business. Since you know this will get them at least $100.000, you price it at $1000 and wait for the million dollar cheque to come in.

The problem it doesn’t. Nobody ever asked for a $1000 course on how to raise peacocks. It may work or not but the prospect is not looking for it. This is like the ugly duckling that may be a great date and life partner but nobody is interested in dating her to begin with.

So what would make a lot more sense there?

Take 1% of that time invested and validate the idea. Instead of writing a 200 page course, write a 500 word blog post and see if there is any interest. Or ask ten people you know what they think about the idea. Or create a mock-up product where you pretend to sell it but when they want to check-out, they’ll get an error. Or run a PPC campaign to a landing page leading to a product launch and see how it converts.

You test with the minimum viable product. You don’t assume that something it will work but rather you take a scientific approach and try to approve or disapprove an hypothesis.

If you’ve got enough interest to be sure that people would buy (someone paying is the best proof), you move to stage two. Stage two is not mortgaging your house to pay for it just because someone said it is a good product. No. You scale your MVP to the next level. You take it from 0.1 to 0.2, not to 1.0. Then you test again. You see if there is more interest now. You try to gauge market reaction.

You do this several times until you are sure that your idea is not a dud. And if at any point your idea is proved as a dud, you have two options. You can cancel the project completely or you can pivot. Pivoting means keeping the same outcome but changing the approach. It’s a “if the door is locked, I’ll try the window” type of approach to life.

Now, I know what some of you may think. This is boring and it is not entrepreneurial and I don’t belong in this field if I tiptoe my way to a successful launch. Chances are that if you say something like this, you’ve never launched a product. When you invest all your savings and months or years of your life to bring a product to market, you don’t care about adventure. You care about being on the right path, that’s all. Most products fail and most people who start a business end up not even breaking up even.

It is sad because while most entrepreneurs are amazing and smart human beings, with a huge dose of maturity, a lot of them fall into the narcissistic side. While being a narcissist is sometimes a good thing, it’s kind of fatal in entrepreneurship. This is because you’d ignore critical data from the marketplace that tells you to go left or right. You’d put your instinct above market data and while some people succeed in doing this, some people win the lottery too.

For every rogue entrepreneur that comes with a brilliant, high risk, untested idea and makes millions out of it, there must be 10.000 that simply lose everything. Gambling is not a proper way of launching a business.

Lean methodology is complex. There are classes that look like an MBA just teaching this. In the corporate field, lean methodology can mean running tens of tests with hundreds of people at any time. Some projects are worth billions. But in the internet marketing field, you don’t need to know lean accounting and complex organizational and managerial charts. You just need to know a few basic rules.

Start every project as small as possible and look for buyer validation first. There are many ways to move ahead but the best one is when people are interested in paying you. This generally means a simple landing page where you sell a product that doesn’t exist. As long as you don’t charge credit cards, it is okay.

If you receive the buyer validation, scale, maybe to 0.25x of your vision and then try again. Maybe sell an inferior, smaller product. Maybe break down your product. I remember how an online marketer took an course, divided it into 12 months and sold it. What buyers did not knew was that only the first month was done. The payment model was subscription based and he was going to fund development of month two from the sales of month one. This is a good application of lean.

If at any point you have clear data that there is not interest, don’t hope. Hope won’t change a lot. Instead pivot. Ask yourself if you can accomplish your goal through different means. Maybe a new format or a new product. And then go through lean again. Validate your assumptions.

I know that it is slow. But the thing is that if you invest all your time and money upfront and it doesn’t work, that’s going to be infinitely slower. Plus, truth be told, I can find out if there is a real interest for a product in two hours. I can set up a dummy PPC campaign with real traffic, a real landing page and see how many people buy it. If 5 out of 500 buy it, then it’s safe to say 10 out of 1000 will buy it too. Then I can go further and scale this to some degree, knowing that I’ve received market validation.

Eric Ries wrote the book mostly for big business and highly funded start-ups. These are companies that spend $5.000.000 to develop an application for IOS and then hope that it doesn’t sink, as opposed to spending $5000 to create a prototype, give it to 500 people and see what they think about it. Yet, lean methodology works in everything, even in the way you live your life. It is about iterative improvement through market validation. It’s about keeping your investment as low as possible to find out if it is a good idea, test and then only if it works, go further.

So the next time when you write a sales letter or build a product, before you invest all your hard earned time and money, please take the time to validate your ideas first.

Are you interested in discovering how I can help your business or how we can apply these concepts to your own venture? Then let’s have a talk. For a limited time, I’m giving away complementary 30 minute calls. In these sessions, we’ll discuss ways in which we can maximize your customer value, boost your conversion, achieve more sales and increase any other relevant metrics in your business.

Please use the link below to get started:

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Business & Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz

February 18, 2018
How To Become A Great Copywriter Fast.

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

How are you? How’s your day?

Today I’d like to answer a question that I get a lot. This is “how do I learn to be a copywriter” or “how do I learn to write as persuasive as you do?”.

As you may or may not know, I’m also a copywriting coach. I haven’t had that many students but I’ve served a few in one on one coaching, long term. My job was to help them become top copywriters in a short period, either for writing copy for their own products or to do this as freelancers.

The truth is that I don’t have a system or method that works with every person. If anything, each person’s situation is very unique and what works for me will definitely not work for you.

Why?

Because copywriting is not so much about writing as it is about understanding human nature. Some people are really good in dealing with others while others are not. Some may have worked as sales people and kicked ass there while others may be very shy and timid.

Some people tend to be very direct and straightforward, straight shooters while others are afraid to even ask for the sale. Knowing all this, I can say that each one of my copywriting students took a very different path from A to B.

So is this the end of the article? No. While it is hard to say exactly what will work for you, it’s not hard to give you some tips and advice on how to improve this area of your business in general. These tips can be used for other forms of mastery too.

Tip #1 – Read, read, read. Readers are leaders and the more you learn, the more you earn. Leaving the cliches aside, copywriting is actually about reading. This is because in order to write in a very conversational manner, you need to change probably everything you know about writing.

What’s being taught to you in high-school about writing doesn’t really apply to sales writing. You need to write in short sentences, talk directly to a single person, keep your language simple and focus on creating a dialogue.

Good books do all of this. A book like The Martian by Andy Weir is a page turner because he talks about a fascinating topic but also because he writes in a way that is very easy to gain momentum. This is why I’ve finished the entire book in just two days.

Tip #2 – Study the masters. Generally, whatever you want to achieve in this life, there has been someone before who achieved it and most likely wrote a book about this. This is very true about copywriting too.

There are many copywriting masters ranging from 50 years ago to the new gurus of Internet Marketing. You can study Claude Hopkins, you can study John Carlton, you can study Dan Kennedy or you can study some new hotshot copywriting guru that nobody heard about two years ago.

Personally I like the older personalities of copywriting simply because they have a very interesting way of presenting their information but I’m also studying 3X by Jon Benson and I really like most of the things Eben Pagan has to say about online marketing and copywriting.

Tip #3 – Write copy by hand. This is similar to the habit of reading. When you write by hand, you form mental patterns of how copy should look like. You program yourself. You learn to write like the masters by teaching your subconscious mind how they write, through repetition.

This is not true only of copywriters but of writers in general. A rite of passage for any writer is to take a great work, something they’ve always admired and write it word by word until the very end. Some say that they want to feel the same way as the author when the work was first done while others simply want to understand the patterns. In any case, it works.

Tip #4 – Write a lot of copy. If you do nothing else but this single thing, you’re still going to become a great copywriter. If you spend one or two hours a day writing copy, for spec projects, for your projects, for products that don’t exist, for free, for pay, for whatever you want (as long as you read), you’re going to improve.

It is impossible not to improve plus you’ll get in about two months the same portfolio a writer generally gets in two years. At the minimum you should be writing a sales letter per week and early in my career, I was a machine for creating copy. Most of it wasn’t brilliant but the sheer number of versions I was getting out assured me that I was getting ahead. I should probably take my own advice and start doing this again, as between entrepreneurship and marketing consultancy, I’m writing a suprisingly small amount of copy.

Tip #5 – Get a coach. Just so you understand, a coach will not teach you how to write copy, at least not directly. You are better off simply reading good books on the topic. A coach is there to give you real time feedback. This means reading your copy and telling you what you’ve done right, what you’ve done wrong and what you can do better.

I’ve used a coach and most people I know have used one at some point in this. While you still need to do most of the hard work, having the luxury of having someone correct you and keep you of course, in copywriting and in any other field will long definitely a long way. Finally, having someone to keep you accountable is important in order to stay consistent with what you’re trying to do.

Tip #6 – Don’t expect results. This may sound as a weird thing to say but let me explain. Copywriting and marketing are one of those things in which one day, you’ll wake up in a completely new different world, getting amazing results for your efforts.

You can’t make the jump from 0% to 50% but rather, with each effort, you’re growing 0.5% and while the change is not noticeable from day to day or week to week, it compounds into something amazing over a longer period of time. Again, this can be said of any type of skill development but it is particularly true in copywriting. Now you suck at this and you can barely write a very poor sales letter. Six months later, after 180 days of practice, you wake up surrounded by the fact that you’re better than most people and that your skills is quite amazing.

This is how I’ve grew both as a copywriter and as a person. This is how I’m still growing. I can’t really tell you how better my life is today compared to yesterday, but I can guarantee you there is going to be a significant difference a week from now and a major difference a month from now. So just focus on what needs to be done and don’t obsess over the results.

Tip #7 – Take a look at what others are doing. I like reading sales letter, watching video sales letter, analyzing advertorials and so on. While it is hard to actually know which one is good and which one is not, generally, if the materials come from Boardroom or any other major publisher or if it is the number one product on ClickBank, then you have a lot to learn.

My favorite MO is to sit down and take notes while I’m watching a VSL. Sometimes you can get a brilliant idea from a competitor that you can use minutes later in your own marketing.

Tip #8 – Test. You can’t really know if your copy is working or not unless you test it. If you’re a freelancer, this means that it is the job of your client to test it. Unfortunately, this rarely happens for reasons that are outside of your control and you’ll be disappointed to not even know if your copy is good or not in at least 50%. However, the other 50% is free testing so stay in the loop and understand how it works.

If you’re doing this for yourself, then simply drive traffic to it. I know that traffic costs money but the purpose of copywriting is not to have a sales letter on your site but to transform traffic into sales. Your sales letter won’t help you much if it just sits there and is not seen by anyone.

Two #9 – Be good with yourself. Any progress you make is good progress. Nobody is expecting you to be like John Carlton after 20 hours invested in copywriting. If you get 10% right and 90% wrong, then focus on what you’ve done right.

Perfectionism kills more campaigns than any other cause combined. This is because people have unrealistic expectations of themselves and they actively discourage themselves, leading to procrastination, giving up and eventually, failure. Focus on what is right, focus on what you’ve learned. As far as you’re concerned, any action that you take in the right direction like reading a book, studying a copywriting manual, writing a sales letter, anything you do is good and it helps you.

You are a winner in every step you’re taking, no matter if it is all good or only a bit good. This is because I believe that success is built on success and being self-critical or putting yourself down has no value whatsoever. It is better to get flawed copy into the world than have perfect copy hidden in your mind.

Tip #10 – Have fun doing it. I’m not a “no pain, no gain person”. I actually believe that pain will lead to mental associations that whatever you’re doing is painful and this will lead to automatic procrastination. I believe that willpower is very limited and that if you do something that you don’t want to do, eventually you’ll give up.

I know because I have an extensive track record of giving up on things that are good for me.

Yes, copywriting is a serious thing. Yes, it can change your business. Yes, it can even change your life. However, you’re not doing brain surgery. You can make as many mistakes as you want and each one of them will act as progress and feedback.

It is impossible to fail in copywriting. It is impossible to fail in this field of online marketing in general. This is because if you do something and you don’t get the results you desire, you can tweak or try a different approach. There are no real consequences to any form of failure. The only thing that can sting is you feeling like you’ve failed but if you’re having fun, if you’re actually enjoying every moment you’re putting into this, sky is the limit.

I’ve done this mistake of taking everything way too seriously most of my life. I’ve acted as a drill sarge around my clients and coaching students. I’ve tried to create mental toughness through discipline and determination. Eventually, I’ve realized that I’ve grew to hate copywriting because of how I’m treating myself and how I’m treating others.

I write copy. I hope it sells. I certainly do. But if it doesn’t sell, this means nothing. It just means I can try again or try a different approach. I’m satisfied with a major victory of it selling or a minor victory of putting something out there and seeing how it works. No matter what, any form of action that I take towards my goal is a victory. It is impossible for me to fail because the only failure that I can define is giving up and I’m not a quitter.

Neither should you.

Sincerely yours,
Razvan Rogoz

PS: Are you interested in learning more about how to write copy? Drop me an email at razvan@razvanrogoz.com and let’s start a conversation.

November 24, 2017
The Reason Why Undercutting Your Prices Doesn’t Work

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

How are you? Are you kicking ass? Are you having great day? Mine surely is great. I’ve just finished my morning routine, during which I’ve got some great ideas (including a grid based goal setting approach) and some general life improvement ideas from Brian Tracy.

Today’s post is about copywriting but before this, let me cover something. All my life I had a very heated love / hate relationship with to-do lists. I always thought that a new piece of software can help me become more productive. I’ve tried GTD, I’ve tried Stephen Covey, I’ve spent hundreds of dollars in planners and software and more.

Eventually I’ve understood that the system that works is the one that follows basic simple principles. So I’ve downloaded Todoist (this is very recent). I like this piece of software because I’ve been using it before, as a premium member and then forgot about it.

Initially I’ve just made a list of tasks and went through them. But as I was reading “Eat That Frog” by Brian Tracy, I’ve got the idea to prioritize. So I’ve took the most important three tasks and I’ve prioritized them as very important. Then I’ve took the next three and I’ve prioritized them as important. I’ve done this for three sets of tasks – nine in total. And it makes perfect sense. Now I am focusing on the nine most important tasks.

However … here comes the kicker.

When I’ve done this the first time, I’ve just prioritized the old. It was good but it wasn’t great. In other words, I was doing more of the same. Then I’ve deleted everything and started thinking about what I can do to achieve my goal. This lead me to a dozen new tasks that quickly become top priorities, overcoming the importance of all the others.

So it isn’t just about prioritizing, it’s also about brainstorming what to prioritize.

I hope this little tip will help you in kicking it and winning your day too!

But as I’ve said … today we’re not talking about productivity. Instead, I’d like to talk with you about pricing – how to price your products or services, why people buy value and not pricing, how pricing is a heuristic for value in general and how you’re most likely way underpricing yourself.

Now, Adam Smith once said in the Wealth of Nations that in a capitalistic system, the more you charge, the less demand you’ll have. This is how the free market should work (btw, I’ve never read Wealth of Nations so I may just be wrong with the quote but it is also a basic principle of economics).

Offer and demand is directly influenced by the price. If you have 1000 people who want to buy your product but you have only 100 products available, then you should raise the price until the point of equilibrium, that is – 100 people in demand. It makes no sense to have a marketplace that you can’t satisfy in terms of supply and to leave money on the table.

Air-lines do this very well. The seats are sold dynamically based on supply and demand. If there are many seats available, the price is lowered to increase demand and this generally works. If there are many people who need a seat and these seats sell out fast, then the price increases. This is why it is far more expensive to stay in a hotel or book a ticket during holiday season than it is during the middle of April.

There are only a few industries that actually use dynamic pricing based on demand and supply because most industries are regulated and can’t pull a stunt like that. You won’t go tomorrow to buy a can of Coca Cola and see that the price doubled just because there is demand. The prices are fixed.

In any case, this is the old way of thinking – that the cheaper it is, the more people buy. This is true until it isn’t because price is also a heuristic.

What is a heuristic? It is a mental shortcut designed to take decisions. For example, a cheap product may automatically be considered poor quality while an expensive one may be considered premium and durable. An Apple MacBook Air is considered far better than your average ASUS laptop because it is twice the price even if objectively, it is not twice the quality (I had a few, I know).

Was this meal delicious because of the ingredients or because it costs more than what would you pay an entire week for food from a supermarket? It was good, but price made it feel special.

Heuristics are the tools our brain uses to not think too much. If we had to think about everything, we would be paralyzed. The world is just too complex. So we form shortcuts to reach decisions. If we see someone in a dark alley that looks like a thug, we automatically consider him a thug. He may be a philosophy professor but your mind doesn’t take into consideration alternative explanations but rather, the most convenient one.

If we see a piece of jewerely that is $10.000, we consider it automatically more valuable than the one that is just $1000, even if it may not be just like the food in a $500/dish restaurant is certainly not ten times better than the food in a $50 restaurant.

We have an internal mechanism in our subconscious mind that makes comparisons between what we know to be the average and any particular value and generally, in 99% of the cases, our brain always considers expensive to be good and cheap to be bad.

Heuristics control our life. Be it price or the halo effect (handsome / beautiful people are considered smarter, like there would be a correlation between physical beauty and intelligence), these automatic rules defy rational thinking but are as natural of you and I as it is our tendency to breathe or to close our eyes when we sneeze.

In practice, there are formulas to determine the value of any given item. These take into account the quantitative aspect (how much you get vs how much you pay), the quality, the reliability and a lot more. Needless to say, nobody uses them in day to day life.

So what does this have to do with you?

Well, let’s say you’re selling a service like web design. Everyone is asking $500 for a simple website. You’re asking only $250 because you have excess capacity. This means you have space to take more clients or you can make the website faster, creating two websites in the time it takes others to make one. In any case, you do your math and if you had a limitless supply of customers, selling it at $250 makes a lot more sense than at $500.

The problem is that when someone will hear that it is just $250, they won’t understand that you are talented and that you can earn more by having more customers than less. They’ll just think that it is of poor quality because you’re asking just $250. You’re doing him a favor, you’re doing yourself a favor and yet, it will actually work against you.

However, this could be turned around by rationally explaining why you’re charging just $250. You see, the “cheap is bad” heuristic is generally just an objection. Objections can be solved. If you explain why he’ll get the same quality as with $500 and explain in terms he can understand the entire thought process, the objection will be eliminated.

The problem is that it is just easier to charge $500 or $1000 and be done with it as there are very few cases in which it is worth justifying a low price, selling it as a viable option as opposed to simply increasing the price and letting heuristics work for you.

Let me give you an example from my life.

Some time ago, I’ve met this girl. She was beautiful and smart. Yet, I had no time for a relationship and I was in a stage of my life where work came first. I said no again and again. The more I said no, the more she wanted this. Eventually, we make out. Then the magic wears off. The fact that I positioned myself exclusively by not wanting her made her want me more. Rationally, I would need to play easy to get so we can enjoy beautiful moments together as soon as possible. But I’m not rational neither are you. What makes sense on paper rarely makes sense in human behavior.

So personally, I know that it is easier to get a customer at $1000 than at $250, for the same service. At $250 you are a beginner or an amateur. At $1000 you are someone who delivers something good. The strangest part? There are no objective standards. Clients don’t know what to expect at $250 vs $1000. If they knew what you’re doing, they’d not hire you but rather, just do it themselves or manage the project with low cost labor.

If someone comes and asks me how much is a sales copy, maybe he catches me in a special moment of my life. This means I’m either too sad or excited, I like this person and want to work with him or her no matter what, I like the project, I would have done it for free, etc. There are 1000 things that can go in my mind and that can make it a non price transaction.

But if I say $100, he’ll look at me and wonders why he wasted his time. I think it is worse to say $100 than $0. At least when it is free, he thinks that I have nothing better to do with my time. At $100, I just suck at my job. If I say $3000, he may afford it, he may not but he’ll surely treat my offer with respect. At $3000 I’m something he appreciates, at $100, I’m just a waste of time, even if the service is exactly the same.

So when I see someone charging $1 per 500 words, I form an image in my mind. I’m thinking of a person that barely speaks English, somewhere in a third world country, who is going to share everything I say with friends, who is never going to deliver on time and which work I can’t even use. Maybe he is the next Hemingway and he charges a symbolic price without even needing the money because he’s a trust fund kid and loves to write … but in my mind, I’ve drawn the conclusion. He must suck. The price is too low.

I know that this is unfair but the marketplace works just like dating. Price yourself too low and people will draw false conclusions about you. It’s not your fault or their fault, it’s just that we’ve evolved to use heuristics.

So what’s my advice to you?

The more you charge, the more valuable you’ll seem. Of course, you must also deliver but if you can deliver at $500, then you can also deliver at $1000. The truth is that when it comes to copy, I give it my best no matter if it is $500 or $4000. If anything, the difference is only in the prospect’s mind. He decides first how good the copy is based on the price he paid and then he reads it. Of course, copywriting is about results but I’ve seen an interesting trend – when the copy is cheap, the traffic is amazing and that’s why there are many sales. When the copy is expensive, the copy itself makes the sale.

I could go on with this but you do get the point. Price yourself above to what you’re pricing now. I’m not saying to increase it by ten times (you could though, depending on your market). I’m saying that a 50% – 100% shift is more about how you think about yourself and your skills and less about how good you actually are.

Does this mean that I overcharge my clients? No. But there is no set price for services. There isn’t a book that determines how much something should cost. When I was in London, I was paying about $15 for a Big Mac plus fries. If you go in some parts of the world, the price is $3.

When I was in Romania, I used to pay about $0.25 per kilometer for a taxi. In London I don’t remember exactly how much it was but I know that it was at least ten times more than that. If people buy, it is the right price. If nobody wants to buy and the objection you always get is the price, then yes, you’re probably out pricing yourself but for all intents and purposes, most people underprice and overdeliver than overprice and underdeliver.

So increase those prices, okay?

Sincerely yours & your friend,
Razvan

November 22, 2017
Why Your Customer’s “Journey Of Trust” Matters In The Buying Process

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

In my last post, I have made it clear that holding to customers is always a superior strategy to getting new customers, as lead generation comes with a cost. In this post, I am taking the post important concept from the article – progression of trust and I’m developing it.

Can you tell me what trust is? It is hard to define. It is an intangible, like happiness. Trust in my words can be defined as the willingness to accept that what another person is true. We rarely think about it in an analytical manner and yet, trust, the concept of trust is one of the things that makes the world go round.

Let’s use a dating analogy. Virtually everything in sales can be related to dating. You are a guy. You meet a girl. At first, she doesn’t know a lot about you. She doesn’t trust you. She doesn’t say yes easily to you. You get to know her. She gets to know you. You spend time together. A first kiss. A first night together. She trusts you more and more. She opens up more and more. She becomes vulnerable.

This teaches us something about selling. In marketing or sales, the idea of trust is how vulnerable an individual is willing to be in front of a vendor, how much an individual is willing to risk to receive a desired benefit. In the first stages of a business relationship, trust is low so only low ticket products are sold. The prospect is vulnerable to losing only small amounts of money. Each time he buys something and is satisfied with the result, more trust is created. In this manner, just like a couple can move from holding hands to spending the night together, a customer can move from buying a $20/book to spending $10.000 for a seminar.

Amateurs think that the $10.000 ticket is sold because his needs grew to that level. The truth is that his needs were at that level at all times because it is impossible to create a need in the marketplace through marketing alone. Marketing can only take an existing need and amplify it towards making a sale. He could have benefited from the $10.000 product in the first day. The reason he did not buy it wasn’t that the benefits weren’t there but because there was no enough trust to make this particular purchase.

Everything you’re selling at this moment, ranging from one hour of coaching for $50 to a three weeks platinum retreat for $19.997 can and will benefit the prospect. Most product chains are not designed to fulfill growing needs but rather, to fulfill a need at a different level of effectiveness. In other words, you have excellent solutions, you have good solutions, you have decent solutions for the same particular problem.

Traditional thinking say that price is what determines if the prospect will buy a premium, standard or sub-par solution. Price has a lot to do with it and yes, price does influence buying decisions, up to a point. What really matters though is the perception of value (what he is feeling that he’s getting for the money) and the level of trust he has in you as a vendor. The perception of value dictates that in order for a solution to feel appealing, it must be worth to him multiples of what he is paying and this is true no matter if it is a $10 or a $10.000 product. The entire idea of “it is a good deal” refers to perceived emotional value and not actual price, otherwise, there would be no market for anything above $500 and people would find it kind of hard to say “The room at <Insert Luxury Hotel Name Here> that had just cost me $1249 is a really good deal. It is a good deal because he feels he’s getting an experience worth $5000 or $10.000, not because of the base price.

Getting back to the idea of trust, how much people trust you will determine how much they’ll buy. Each time they’ll get the desired benefit from your product, they’ll buy more. Each time you disappoint them, they’ll buy less. Of course, there is a limit because even if someone trusts you completely but they live on a $60.000 yearly salary, they can’t spend $10.000 on your seminar but all things being equal, the progress of trust is what makes or breaks the profitability of a customer relationship.

This is one of the reasons why brands command premium prices. A brand is nothing more than established trust in the mind of the consumer. It is a symbol that other people picked this product and were satisfied with the results obtained. Branding is a boost to the progression of trust scale, putting the prospect in a position higher than if he would try the product for himself, the first time. You buy a luxury sedan because you know the name behind it. Without that name, you’d have to be persuaded more to purchase.

When I’ve bought my first MacBook, I’ve bought it based on the name of the brand alone. I’ve never tried or tested Macs before and yet, I’ve paid an obscene sum of money to Apple simply because I was familiar with their brand and this acted as a replacement of the progression of trust process.

My point here is very simple. Trust exists in all areas of life, not just business. To get people to do what you want them to do, there must be trust. Trust is built through delivery of the desired benefits, through a strong brand and through other factors. The more time you spend with a customer and the more positive experiences this given customer has, the more likely he is to answer a positive when you’re promoting a higher ticket product.

Think of it as a scale from 1 to 100. Selling a $10 product requires a trust level of 5. Selling a $500 one requires a trust level of 100. You need to bridge the gap between 5 and 100 with products that gradually build trust and buying compliance.

How do you do this? Let’s have a talk just about this topic. As a marketing consultant and direct response copywriter it is my job to help you build the systems, the materials, the mediums required to attract more customers, sell products of higher value to them and keep them on board as long as humanly possible.

I would like to invite you to a complimentary 30 minute call on Skype where we can discuss about your business. I’m going to do a diagnostic of your current circumstances and then determine what would be the best approach or course of action in order to accomplish your given goals.

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self-Improvement Copywriter

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

August 30, 2017
How Many Customers Do You Keep?

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

I’m currently waiting for customer support. I’m trying to get into contact with a leading financial provider, because they’ve shipped my debit card to a wrong address. I’ve been waiting for 30 minutes and I have 20 minutes remaining. The level of frustration I’m experiencing now made me want to share a very important lesson from my experience as a copywriter.

I’ve been in the position to work with amazing customers, businesses and people. In the first month, it was okay. In the second month, it was okay. Then, ironically, the better the relationship was, the less I was invested in it. If in the past I used to reply to emails within hours, I started replying in days or not replying at all. If deadlines were sacred for me, I’ve started missing them, not by days but by weeks.

This happened years ago, when in all matters and purposes, I was just a young adult. It happened at the beginning of my career as a copywriter. Yet, it is a lesson that I’ve learned very fast. People have expectations from you and if you want to keep those people paying you, you must satisfy them. In a way, it is similar to dating. In the beginning, he’s bringing her flowers. He’s taking her to dinner. He’s doing everything in her power to impress her. Maybe he even starts going to the gym.

After they get married, he stops doing all those things and watches TV all day. The same happens with most solopreneurs or self-employed. The more a client is invested, the more a client pays, the lower the quality of service that person gets.

And honestly, this is the worst thing you can possibly do. I was talking about this key concept a few days ago with a copywriting student of mine. I was explaining to him that the natural impulse is that when you finish a work, a project, is to go and find another person to work with. The rational and logical thing is that if someone paid you, that person is happy with your work, to find something else to do for the same person and to not spend 4 – 5 hours in lead generation and qualification when you can simply continue an existing relationships.

It is counter-intuitive but when it comes to customers, focus your efforts on keeping the ones you have and less on getting new customers. It is the most common sense thing in marketing yet so few people understand it. Your priority comes in the form of those that already pay you and are engaged in a relationship with you. They are putting the food on the table and your revenue comes as a consequence of having them. So serve them, keep them happy, find more ways to help them (while getting paid) and keep them on board as much as possible.

As a coach or trainer, it is not a big accomplishment to get 20 new customers in a month. If we were in the same place, I would show you how one day of cold calling can bring you 20 new customers. This is not an accomplishment because it is a game of numbers. The big accomplishment is developing a relationship of trust and mutual benefit with each of the people you work.

Why? Because a person that just entered the door may buy your $19.97 eBook but a person that has been with you for three years will invest in your $1997 workshop. How much someone is willing to pay with you is based on trust, not good marketing. Sales funnels are designed to sell products that start cheap and end expensive, not to promote the high ticket option at the beginning. Someone like Tony Robbins may sell a $3000 retreat directly to a cold lead because he is Tony Robbins and everyone knows him but most people have to gradually build a relationship based on increasingly higher products that build trust and value.

It is hard to sell the high option to someone from the start and each time you focus on bringing new customers, you are reseting that counter. It is like someone who got 40 kilometers into a 42 kilometer race and then goes back to the beginning.

Every business consultant knows that you don’t judge a business’s health by revenue because you can have $1.000.000 revenue on $1.200.000 costs. You don’t even judge it on profit because it is too general. You judge it on two things – ROI, what you’re getting out for what you’re putting in and how long your customers stayed with you. While your CPA is not going to put this in your financial statement, it is the best way to determine where a business is heading and how healthy it is. A high turn-over of clients in a consulting based business means that clients are not satisfied, are not treated right or that there are not enough products and services to satisfy their needs long term.

My focus as a marketer is to maximize customer lifetime value a lot more than getting new customers. There are some fields where new customers is everything, like in software or in online platforms. In my field, I would rather get five people now and work with them for 24 months than get two people per month, for the next two years.

There is yet another reason why this makes sense. There is a cost with every new customer. This cost is first in the form of marketing, getting him to become a lead. Second is the sales process. Third is getting to know this person, as you can’t quite help someone before becoming very familiar with their problems. In some businesses, this cost is higher than the front-end value of the transaction, leading to what is called “a loss leader”.

It is not virtue how many people you serve. It is how well you serve them. The focus on size is like an obsession in the business world, most define success by how big they are. In practice, size and success have little to do in common, you can have a 10.000 people company that is going under. ROI is what determines value and a ROI of 50% on a company of five people is far better than a ROI of 10% on a company of 100 people. A true achievement is to have 10 people that you’ve helped for five years in a row, selling higher and higher priced services and them coming back to you because no matter how much you charge, they know that what you’re doing works very well.

Saying that I’m working with 50 customers in a year is not praise. It means that I either don’t know how to sell to them, I can’t identify needs that I can help them with or I do something that makes them leave. Saying that I’m working with only five people means exactly the opposite. And yes, after I’ve ended my “young and dumb” period, I’ve realized that this is the solution and in all honesty, while I don’t know your specific business model and product line, I tend to think this is the solution for you too – maximizing customer value and serving a particular customer for as long as humanly possible, instead of replacing him with a new customer at the beginning of the trust scale.

When you’re using economy of scale (distributing fixed overhead over a large number of products), then size matters and customer acquisition may be more important. When your product doesn’t have a follow-up (like a writer selling a single book), then getting market share is more important. But as a coach, as a trainer, as someone who sells his or her time in exchange for money, the best thing you can do for yourself and for your market is serving a few people for a long time as opposed to many people for a short time.

This is a mistake I’ve done and I regret dearly and only by doing it, I know how important is to nurture commercial relationships instead of constantly seeking new ones.

Let’s see how you can do this in your own business? I’m giving you a complimentary 30 minute session in which we’ll discuss ways to maximize customer value and other means in which you can succeed, from a marketing and copywriting point of view, in your coaching or training business.

Please use the link below to get started.

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self-Improvement Copywriter

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August 29, 2017
The Best Sales Systems Get The Best Customers.

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

A few weeks ago, I’ve ran an analysis over my CRM. I was doing this in order to understand what business sectors are most people with whom I’ve made contact.

The results were predictable. Most are in digital publishing, some are software developers and some are coaches, trainers and speakers. A light-bulb went off then, lighting the entire room in which I was working.

Ding. This analysis is false. These people are not trainers, speakers or digital publishers. These are only the products they are selling, the value they create to the marketplace. Every single one of the people in my CRM list with a C-level position was in the same field – sales.

Now you may tell … “Uhm, sorry Razvan, that doesn’t sound right, unless all your contacts are salespeople”. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this but the truth is – every single person I know is selling. That’s his or her business. The CEO is selling ideas to investors and partners. The manager is selling the plan to his employees. The freelancer is selling his time to potential customers.

Every single person that is self-employed or is in the leadership position of an organization is doing the same thing 90% of the time – selling. Yes, some may sell ideas while others may sell products or services but the same is true, nothing ever happens until person A persuades person B to act on something.

I’m a direct response copywriter. What is my job? For people outside of this field it may be to write. For me, it is selling. 90% of everything I’m doing involves selling something to someone. I must sell to my customers on why they must hire me and pay me quite a lot of money. I must sell them my ideas as they can be rather unorthodox and unreasonable sometimes and not easily accepted. I must sell their products through the sales pages and sales funnels I’m writing. I must sell myself on the concept of working hard, through good and bad times, in order to deliver maximum value.

Everything I do is sales. Words are a medium but as opposed to a creative writer or to the profession of a writer by default, I’m a salesman. All people who own companies are. CEOs have more in common with a door to door salesman than they have with a sophisticated economists. This is because, be it at the lowest level or the highest floor, nothing ever happens until someone sells something. Without selling, there is no money, without money, there is no company and this is the end of story.

Why am I’m telling you this?

Because you’re not a coach. You’re not an author. You’re not a trainer. You’re a salesman. Your purpose is to get people to take some form of action in their best interest. When you’re giving a speech, you’re selling the idea behind that speech. When you’re writing a book, you’re selling a philosophy of living. When you’re coaching someone, you’re selling a usually highly skeptical person on doing things that are out of his or her comfort zone, for his or her own sake.

Any business in which ideas or human interaction are exchanged is based on sales. Your success in any field of this kind is based on your ability to get people to buy into your ideas, into your leadership, into your books, products, website, videos, Facebook posts and everything else. ROI is directly tied to your ability to get engagement from someone else be it a like on your Facebook post or a purchase of a $4997 coaching program.

Now I know that sales and persuasion are not the same thing but as you can see, I’m not saying that this is about convincing your children to clean up after themselves or going to sleep. I’m making it clear of how in most service based businesses, that are either sole operated, the ability to sell and get a desired action is the life-force that makes everything else happen.

The old adage of “build a better mouse-trap and they will come” is false. This saying becomes even more inaccurate the more options your prospect has. When there is only a single option available, then he is forced to do business with you. When there are 485 competitors on a 100 kilometers radius, then you would better have a good sales process in place, otherwise, you are left with the bread crumbs.

This leads me to my next point – sitting next to the table and picking the bread crumbs is not a viable competitive strategy or a strategy at all. I know many businesses that exist only because their competitors have run out of capacity to serve the marketplace, because they are too expensive or simply because they don’t want to work with that given niche. These businesses attract what other businesses do not want and have a very low profit margin, these customers tend to be high maintenance and overall, there are not many to begin with.

Let me give you an example. Before moving to Asia, I was living in London but before London, I was living in Romania. Romania is a beautiful country and there’s more to it than vampires. One problem in Romania are taxi drivers. Most hot spots have way too few taxis for the traffic there. This means that it is almost impossible to get a taxi in the city center of Bucharest at rush hour unless you order an Uber or a BlackCab (and these tend to be over-capacity too).

Yet, you will find some cabs, cabs that look the same but cost about 2.5X more than the normal fare. These cabs stay there to take advantage of people who are really in a rush and can not find any other alternative and which are willing to pay 250% the market price in order to get to their destination. The problem with them is that while I encourage the free market, nobody in his right mind will invest in one of these cabs as long as they can get a normal priced one, as they’re not superior in any manner whatsoever. This is the breadcrumbs strategy and while it works, you can clearly see the downsides it has.

And honestly, unless you invent a product that sell itself (which is quite a difficult feat) you either learn how to sell or you must satisfy yourself with the breadcrumbs. You are in sales, no matter if you want it or not. You’re either selling yourself or you have a sales team but the process of lead generation and lead conversion is true in virtually all service based businesses.

I’ve thought that for a long time, I need to get better at writing headlines and marketing bullets. This is a false assumption. The only thing I’m judged for is how many sales I make for my customer. I’m not a branding copywriter. I don’t build brands. Nor am I am Madison Avenue copywriter. I don’t write copy with the purpose of it being descriptive. I’m writing copy because I’m selling with my copy and I’m proud to know that when I write copy, I’m helping my customers, the people who pay me while at the same time, I’m helping countless thousands or tens of thousands of people who are going to buy, by persuading them to take a good decision, in their favor. A doctor feels proud when he convinces people to give up smoking or eat healthier and he has all the reasons to be. I’m proud when I’m selling products for you because I’m convincing people to invest in themselves and in their life.

Can I do the same thing for you? At this moment, there at least five ways in which I can help you sell more. I can identify these five ways usually within the first ten minutes of a conversation. So let’s have this conversation and I’m going to tell you, for FREE, five ways in which you can sell more.

How can we do this? Please use the link below to enjoy a complimentary 30 minute needs analysis session. This session is 100% obligation free and you can book a slot in an convenient time zone.

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self-Improvement Copywriter

August 28, 2017
Fix Your Marketing Bottlenecks

From the desk of Razvan Rogoz,

I have realized that the 80 – 20 distribution and the TOC (Theory of Constraints) are largely related. This means that in any I/O system, the 20% that generates 80% of the results comes in the form of eliminating the most important system-wide bottleneck.

Life is made out of I/O systems. It is what you put in (input), you get out (output). Everything in human existence can be abstracted to some form of I/O. It is true if you go to the gym – how much you exercise and how much benefit you get from that given exercise. It is true when watching TV, when reading a book, when dating, when running, when eating. Everything in human existence can be summarized to a simple formula “you put effort in and you expect some benefit out of it”.

The 20 – 80 distribution simply states that 20% of what you do creates 80% of the outcome. This is not always true and it can be 30 – 70 or 10 – 90 or even 5 – 95. The key principle is that there is an uneven distribution between cause and effect and a small part of what will do will be highly efficient in obtaining your desired outcome while a large part will be system waste.

The TOC is something not known by most people in the self-improvement field as it is an industrial management concept. It states that a system is always limited by a major bottleneck and that the output with which a system functions is always limited to that given bottleneck. TOC states that bottlenecks needs to be either removed or the systems reconstructed around them in order to achieve a high efficiency without waste.

So how does this combine together? Any system, be it a business, dating, self-improvement, spiritual growth, improving your body is bottlenecked by something. This means that at some point, the effort you put in is reduced to the amount of that bottleneck. Imagine that you have a freeway with cars on all three lanes. At some point, it all converges into a single lane. That’s a bottleneck. The number of cars that can go on that one lane is equal to 1 / 3 of the number of cars that could go before. The entire system is reduced to the bottleneck, therefore reducing efficiency by a factor of 2X or 66.7%.

At that moment, most people take the most lackluster approach, put more input. This means putting more cars. But putting more cars won’t reduce the bottleneck, because a bottleneck is never about input but rather, about how input is dramatically lost to output. Eliminating cars is not a good idea either because yes, if you eliminate 66.7% of the cars, the bottleneck is gone as input equals output but the efficiency is exactly the same as before. This is one of the facets of the TOC, rebuilding the entire system to fit the bottleneck in the case that the bottleneck can not be fixed, as eliminating input costs is just as good as increasing output profits.

The only solution towards improving results is eliminating the bottleneck. This means making that bottleneck a three lane road so I/O once again.

How does this apply to real life? Let’s take the example of a salesman. He calls 100 people a day but he makes only $500 in sales. His conversion rate is only 10% which means 10 out of 100 people buy what he’s selling. Now, an unsuccessful and not so smart sales manager would say “work harder, you don’t want it hard enough, hoooraaaaaahh” as most inspirational and rhetorical blah blah goes. A smart one would simply say “you’re putting enough effort but you’re bottlenecked by your ability to sell. Take a few days off, improving your pitch dramatically, come back and you will get better results”.

This is why I despise most self-improvement posts on Instagram nowadays. They lack any common sense. In a system, your output is not represented by what you put in, but simply by anything under your biggest bottleneck. You’re limited not by your effort, but by your global efficiency and putting 20 hours instead of 10 hours into an inefficient system will give you the same ROI as putting 10 hours. Yes, it will give you more results, because I’m using ROI (return on investment) as a metric and not revenue but the focus for a smart person must always be ROI, what you get in for what you put out.

Bottlenecks are the reason why you’re failing in your life right now. You’re failing because your entire system is limited, is struggling in one key point. Now, you have two solutions. If you can rebuild the system without that key point, then your bottleneck is gone. In some cases, you don’t need to fix the bottleneck, you simply need to eliminate it as a critical step from cause and effect. This means rebuilding the “production line” so the bottleneck is not a required part anymore.

In most cases though, the bottleneck is important and the 20% that will generate 80% of your return is always looking at and fixing that bottleneck. It is not doing more of what you’ve done by taking a hard, critical look at what is keeping you in place and then actually solving it.

So when it comes to setting life priorities, on a day to day level, ask yourself this simple question:

“What is my major bottleneck right now in me achieving goal X?”

“What can I do to either increase this bottleneck (increase I/O ratio through the bottleneck) or eliminate it altogether from the system while obtaining the same results?”

Keep asking yourself these questions day in and day out and you’ll achieve system wide optimization where 1 unit of energy = 1 unit ot desired output in no time.

Are you interested in discovering in finding your bottlenecks when it comes to marketing and conversion? Then let’s have a talk together. I’m offering you a complimentary 30 minute session in which I’ll ask you some key questions about you and your business. After this session is done, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty how I can help you and what you’ll get out of it. Please use the link below to get started.

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self-Improvement Copywriter
www.razvanrogoz.com

Click Here For Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call!

August 27, 2017