Neil Patel and Eric Siu share their strategies on how to write sales copy at Marketing School Live. In this video we explore Neil Patel's sales strategies and copywriting techniques that can be applied to your business. Learn how to build brand authority and write great emails with these copywriting strategies.
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Full Transcript of The Video
Speaker 1: Or Yale.
Eric Siu: How much of your own copy do you write percentage wise? Be honest.
Neil Patel: That's a good question. Blog posts or sales copy?
Eric Siu: Everything.
Neil Patel: Sales copy, zero. Okay. I have arguments with my team 'cause they'll write my sales copy for my webinars, and they want me to go and record and they'll make me say stuff that I don't want, so I won't say it. And they just get mad. And I'm like, "Screw you." I'm like, "I'd rather not have the sales rather than me saying something that'll convert people and just ..." I just can't say stuff that I ... "You are gonna do well, you are gonna get so much more traffic." Like, it's not me, I don't like making promises.
For blog posts I have a guy named David Zane who comes up with the topic ideas, and then I also chime in on the topic ideas. I will then, if I'm on a plane or if I'm out and about, I will either voice transcript all the stuff that I want in the article, or I'll just type it out. I can write roughly 2000 word blog posts in 30 to 45 minutes. The sentences will all be messed up, the structure will be broken, the grammar sucks. And then I have an editor named Laura who goes in and fixes it, she even schedules it. David then goes in and facts checks it, again. [Double 00:01:15], who's in the audience, makes sure that we're linking out to all the sources that we cited, the images are all there, they're not stolen. Don't want to get sued. And then it gets published, and then it goes to a promotion team who focus on promoting the content. Actually all they do is just schedule it on LinkedIn, Twitter and all that, 'cause we already have followers. But, yeah.
Eric Siu: Question. When are coupons too much? For example, using them too much on e-commerce, and does it cheapen your brand? I don't like doing coupons personally. I mean, anytime I've helped an e-commerce site in the past. I mean, I've used them really sparingly. I do think they cheapen the brand, but also they're helpful in joining up sales. I mean, I should probably call up Omar here from Ties.com, since he has a e-commerce site with a great domain name. He can probably speak more to it. Neil, what do you think?
Neil Patel: Let's look at coupon and discounts together 'cause they're pretty much essentially the same thing, right? Sales, coupons and discounts. And I'm talking about mass discounts, not like five percent. You're talking about 15, 20%. You know all the way up to like 30, 40% for bundles and all this stuff. I've seen a lot of data from this. I've worked with companies like the Amazons, the Overstocks of the world, the Ebays, and a lot of other smaller e-commerce, as well as people who are providing the e-commerce platforms and other people on 'em. And all the data we've analyzed, we've run a ton of AB tests on this, when you run coupons and discounts, you have a lot of people who look forward to 'em on a monthly basis, 'cause they know you're gonna run 'em so they don't buy as much, right? And they wait for those times. But total revenue is typically higher when you run 'em versus not having 'em at all.
So, yes. You lose some people, but in total your revenue is gonna be higher when you have all the discounts, coupons and stuff. But it does cheapen the brand to some extent. If you just care for revenue, it will go up. Not as profit, that varies based on how much of a discount you're offering, and your business and your margins.
Eric Siu: Final question before we open it up to the entire audience. So, this is for you Neil. What was your process for getting good at sales copywriting? How do you practice that skill initially before you're able to craft high converting webinars, sales pages etc?
Neil Patel: So, I'm terrible at writing. I did extremely well in Math, Physics, Chemistry etc in school. I did terrible in English. I don't read books that often, I read a lot of online copy, but I don't read books as often as I should. I suck at writing. But I've learned one thing about sales, and I learned this from a guy named Frank Kern, who's amazing at selling. He's like, "Neil, you don't have to be smooth, you don't have to be the best writer. You just have to answer people's objections." See, when you don't buy, you don't buy for a reason. "Oh, it's too expensive" or "it doesn't solve this problem," or "I don't need this yet." Whatever it is, people have a reason and why they're not buying.
You go compile a list of all the main reasons people in your space aren't buying, you can go survey 'em from survey monkey or whatever it is. You go ask people what they're looking for, what issues they have when they're buying any product or service in this space, and you go write copy that just answers the objections. By answering 'em, people have less doubts, you get more sales. It really is that simple. It's not about having the best copy, it's about answering the objections.
And secondly, creating a funnel for all the people who don't convert. For example, someone doesn't read it all, they may leave. Okay. What am I gonna email 'em as a follow up, based on if they were on the site for, or on your webinar for 30 minutes 'cause they watched a good portion? Okay. Someone was there for one minute and they left. That means they didn't hear anything, so I should send 'em a email saying, "Hey John, why did you leave? Is something wrong? Well, there's a new webinar that's coming up in the next week. Click here to register for it." Right? You have to figure out the sequences and the reasons people aren't buying, or why they left, come up with the logic for it, and just answer 'em all in your copy or your email sequence, and your sales will go through the roof. That's the key to selling online.
Eric Siu: And from a tactical perspective ... I mean, I was ... Last week I was at a conference. [inaudible 00:05:11] I mean, they're doing 10 million dollars a year or close to it, and they're ... I mean they just have a massive email list, we're talking over a million people now. And I talked to the guy that wrote the initial emails, his name's Neville Medhora. So he's really good at copywriting. And you know, we actually did a short interview, like a video interview on copywriting. And you know, tactically ... I mean, if you're looking to get better at copywriting, there's a book that he recommends that's really good. It's called "The Boron Letters" it's from Gary Halbert. So Gary Halbert was a really good copywriter, great marketer, that wrote that book from jail from prison because he got in trouble for marketing too aggressively, right? So he was writing all these notes to like his kid about like, you know lessons and life and all of that, but the way it's formatted, everything you need to know about copywriting, it's a great example. You can go to amazon.com, pick it up, and yeah, learn to get some more sales.
Eric Siu: How much of your own copy do you write percentage wise? Be honest.
Neil Patel: That's a good question. Blog posts or sales copy?
Eric Siu: Everything.
Neil Patel: Sales copy, zero. Okay. I have arguments with my team 'cause they'll write my sales copy for my webinars, and they want me to go and record and they'll make me say stuff that I don't want, so I won't say it. And they just get mad. And I'm like, "Screw you." I'm like, "I'd rather not have the sales rather than me saying something that'll convert people and just ..." I just can't say stuff that I ... "You are gonna do well, you are gonna get so much more traffic." Like, it's not me, I don't like making promises.
For blog posts I have a guy named David Zane who comes up with the topic ideas, and then I also chime in on the topic ideas. I will then, if I'm on a plane or if I'm out and about, I will either voice transcript all the stuff that I want in the article, or I'll just type it out. I can write roughly 2000 word blog posts in 30 to 45 minutes. The sentences will all be messed up, the structure will be broken, the grammar sucks. And then I have an editor named Laura who goes in and fixes it, she even schedules it. David then goes in and facts checks it, again. [Double 00:01:15], who's in the audience, makes sure that we're linking out to all the sources that we cited, the images are all there, they're not stolen. Don't want to get sued. And then it gets published, and then it goes to a promotion team who focus on promoting the content. Actually all they do is just schedule it on LinkedIn, Twitter and all that, 'cause we already have followers. But, yeah.
Eric Siu: Question. When are coupons too much? For example, using them too much on e-commerce, and does it cheapen your brand? I don't like doing coupons personally. I mean, anytime I've helped an e-commerce site in the past. I mean, I've used them really sparingly. I do think they cheapen the brand, but also they're helpful in joining up sales. I mean, I should probably call up Omar here from Ties.com, since he has a e-commerce site with a great domain name. He can probably speak more to it. Neil, what do you think?
Neil Patel: Let's look at coupon and discounts together 'cause they're pretty much essentially the same thing, right? Sales, coupons and discounts. And I'm talking about mass discounts, not like five percent. You're talking about 15, 20%. You know all the way up to like 30, 40% for bundles and all this stuff. I've seen a lot of data from this. I've worked with companies like the Amazons, the Overstocks of the world, the Ebays, and a lot of other smaller e-commerce, as well as people who are providing the e-commerce platforms and other people on 'em. And all the data we've analyzed, we've run a ton of AB tests on this, when you run coupons and discounts, you have a lot of people who look forward to 'em on a monthly basis, 'cause they know you're gonna run 'em so they don't buy as much, right? And they wait for those times. But total revenue is typically higher when you run 'em versus not having 'em at all.
So, yes. You lose some people, but in total your revenue is gonna be higher when you have all the discounts, coupons and stuff. But it does cheapen the brand to some extent. If you just care for revenue, it will go up. Not as profit, that varies based on how much of a discount you're offering, and your business and your margins.
Eric Siu: Final question before we open it up to the entire audience. So, this is for you Neil. What was your process for getting good at sales copywriting? How do you practice that skill initially before you're able to craft high converting webinars, sales pages etc?
Neil Patel: So, I'm terrible at writing. I did extremely well in Math, Physics, Chemistry etc in school. I did terrible in English. I don't read books that often, I read a lot of online copy, but I don't read books as often as I should. I suck at writing. But I've learned one thing about sales, and I learned this from a guy named Frank Kern, who's amazing at selling. He's like, "Neil, you don't have to be smooth, you don't have to be the best writer. You just have to answer people's objections." See, when you don't buy, you don't buy for a reason. "Oh, it's too expensive" or "it doesn't solve this problem," or "I don't need this yet." Whatever it is, people have a reason and why they're not buying.
You go compile a list of all the main reasons people in your space aren't buying, you can go survey 'em from survey monkey or whatever it is. You go ask people what they're looking for, what issues they have when they're buying any product or service in this space, and you go write copy that just answers the objections. By answering 'em, people have less doubts, you get more sales. It really is that simple. It's not about having the best copy, it's about answering the objections.
And secondly, creating a funnel for all the people who don't convert. For example, someone doesn't read it all, they may leave. Okay. What am I gonna email 'em as a follow up, based on if they were on the site for, or on your webinar for 30 minutes 'cause they watched a good portion? Okay. Someone was there for one minute and they left. That means they didn't hear anything, so I should send 'em a email saying, "Hey John, why did you leave? Is something wrong? Well, there's a new webinar that's coming up in the next week. Click here to register for it." Right? You have to figure out the sequences and the reasons people aren't buying, or why they left, come up with the logic for it, and just answer 'em all in your copy or your email sequence, and your sales will go through the roof. That's the key to selling online.
Eric Siu: And from a tactical perspective ... I mean, I was ... Last week I was at a conference. [inaudible 00:05:11] I mean, they're doing 10 million dollars a year or close to it, and they're ... I mean they just have a massive email list, we're talking over a million people now. And I talked to the guy that wrote the initial emails, his name's Neville Medhora. So he's really good at copywriting. And you know, we actually did a short interview, like a video interview on copywriting. And you know, tactically ... I mean, if you're looking to get better at copywriting, there's a book that he recommends that's really good. It's called "The Boron Letters" it's from Gary Halbert. So Gary Halbert was a really good copywriter, great marketer, that wrote that book from jail from prison because he got in trouble for marketing too aggressively, right? So he was writing all these notes to like his kid about like, you know lessons and life and all of that, but the way it's formatted, everything you need to know about copywriting, it's a great example. You can go to amazon.com, pick it up, and yeah, learn to get some more sales.
