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Mark Evans: In football, there's pain when a team moves the ball to the one yard line but can't punch it in for a touchdown. A lot of work and effort doesn't lead to success. It's frustrating and disappointing. In the b to b SaaS world, marketing is disappointing when it attracts and engages prospects but can't get them to convert into customers. And there are many reasons why this happens.
Maybe the product fails to live up to expectations. Maybe the positioning and messaging aren't as compelling as the competition. And maybe marketing and sales copy isn't enticing, interesting, or effective. Well, to learn more about how to create copy that converts, I'm talking to Sam Howard, a conversion copywriter and strategist for b to b SaaS startups. Sam uses a research driven approach to create conversion copy without getting in the way of a company's marketing and initiatives.
Welcome to Marketing Spark.
Sam Howard: Thank you.
Mark Evans: How did I do in describing what you do?
Sam Howard: As long as research driven is in there, it's all good.
Mark Evans: Let's start by talking about whether copy gets the respect that it deserves. In many ways, I think of copy sort of being the roddy roddy danger field of comedy. You can't get no respect. Now as wordsmiths, we understand the value of words that make an impact. Is copy underappreciated in a world dominated by videos, photos, and GIFs?
Sam Howard: This may be just because I live in my little happy conversion copy bubble, but I think it does actually. Okay. And the reason is that one does not simply convert a prospect with a GIF. There has to be some copy around it. So in my experience, when prospects come to me, they realize they need help with copy, and they are quite ready to give it the respect it so richly deserves.
Mark Evans: I'm very happy to hear that because often I think that words and copy are tremendously undervalued and underappreciated. For people who don't appreciate the value of copy, how do you get them to change their attitudes? In your experience, what's the approach or the best approach to make people understand why copy matters?
Sam Howard: Well, once they start measuring what's going on with their email copy and their website copy and their ad funnels, then there's no work to be done on my end. Because in my experience, the moment startup folks realize that something is broken, they want to fix it. And in many cases, they realize that what's broken is copy. Now whether or not that leads us to the actual research driven conversion copy process, that's a different question.
Mark Evans: I'll get into that, but one question I did wanna ask you is when you're working with clients and even if they recognize the value of copy, is there an moment when they realize that copy is powerful and copy is doing what it needs to do to drive their business forward?
Sam Howard: I would say that, like, perhaps the the biggest moment I see is going from we're brainstorming our copy internally, and this is what we think we should put on our website to this is voice of customer driven copy. This is what your existing customers and prospects say about you, and this is how we explain what your product does in their words. And in many cases, it's this shift from, we were trying to say this, but we didn't know how to. Well, finally, now it's there on the page.
Mark Evans: They see the correlation between the words and success, and that's all the proof they need to embrace the power of copy.
Sam Howard: Yeah. I mean, we get to validation and conversion and all of that, but in many cases, the first comes when I present the copy, and it's this final realization that this is exactly what we wanted to say. We just didn't know how.
Mark Evans: Right. Right. I love it when that happens and the light bulbs go on and they do the happy dance when it come to anything related to marketing. Wanted to talk about research driven copy. Now a lot of people, including myself, are guilty of writing copy based on educated guesses.
We've done this before. We've written a lot of copy, and we think we have the insight and expertise to write copy that converts. And often what happens is the copy doesn't resonate because we're missing something. And I, obviously, in your case, you believe that is research. So walk me through the research driven approach to copy.
What's involved? What do you have to do? How much time does it take? And how do you know you've got enough insight to write copy that's gonna make an impact? A lot of questions there, but I'm it's a fascinating topic.
Sam Howard: Yes. It really is. And full disclosure, copy hackers fan, copy school grads. So my approach is based on what copy hackers teach. I think that the most important thing is that you mentioned assumptions.
And to me, like, the whole point of the research is to minimize the amount of assumptions we're making in the copy. I tend to be slightly research obsessed, so I tend to do too much. And sometimes it doesn't need to be super heavy. Right? But the first step definitely should be documenting the assumptions and documenting the things that don't work.
If you're starting from scratch, not much you can do there. But if you already have a website, then knowing what's broken helps figure out the next steps and the gaps that exist.
Mark Evans: K. So that makes sense, but provide some tactical insight. So I haven't done any research yet. I'm starting my copy journey. What you're suggesting is I look at my website, and am I looking at pages that sort of convert and pages that don't convert, and that's where I start to draw my assumptions?
Or is it more than that?
Sam Howard: Assume assuming that you even have conversions set up Okay. Which is not always the case.
Mark Evans: Okay.
Sam Howard: It yes. So start with Google Analytics and Hotjar. For example, you might be assuming that everybody is reading through your sales page or your product description page. But are they really? And if they're not, what's happening instead?
You might think that lots of people end up going to your demo sign up form, but are they really? And if not, what's preventing them from filling out the form? So there may be things that you expect, and there may be things that you didn't even realize were happening, like UX issues, and those are quick wins. So if you can fix that, just do it right now. Then you may realize that there are things that are broken, but you don't know why.
And then the next step is trying to figure out the why.
Mark Evans: Okay. You've done for the first step. You've you've made your assumptions, and this these are educated guesses. You've got some biases, obviously. Then what happens?
What do you do next?
Sam Howard: I talk to product sales and customer success teams who will have their own biases, which is extra fun because then I get to kind of have this map of things that teams believe separately and things that everybody believes about their customers. And then I can go out and try and validate those assumptions and see how it all comes together in terms of website updates.
Mark Evans: So let's take a step back because that's Okay. You're skipping over a really important step. What are the questions that you're asking product sales and marketing? What kind of insight are you looking for? And what are the signs that either they're aligned or more troubling, they're misaligned when it comes to how they view the product and the value that it delivers?
Sam Howard: So many answers.
Mark Evans: So many questions.
Sam Howard: Let's let's so many questions. So many answers.
Mark Evans: Let's let's let's start with the questions that you'll ask, the basic questions that you might ask across the board from marketing sales and and product and for customer success for that matter.
Sam Howard: So I think that the most interesting one is the kind of overlap of sales and customer success because sales talks to prospects. Customer success supports folks who convert. So if they have totally different answers to who the best prospects and customers are, this is a big well, it's not a really big problem. It's manageable, but it's a red flag for me. It means that something is broken along the way.
And the same goes for, for example, for sales team's assumptions about, who will stay, who's the best prospect when they realize that they have a problem and what's the problem they're trying to solve. Because as a rule, they don't follow-up on that. And then customer success can tell me about this end piece and, especially importantly, who churns out and who stays.
Mark Evans: When you've got that insight and then, as you mentioned, you wanna validate it, what do you do? Do you go talk to customers directly? Do you do external research using social media? What are what is next steps in this journey?
Sam Howard: Well, one of the things that I want to do before I talk to the customers is understand the competitive landscape.
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Sam Howard: Because I I cannot think of a case when a product did not have any competitors direct or indirect. So I need to understand the differences and, like, why them in the first place. And after that, there are different ways to go about this. My preference, of course, is to talk to the customers mostly because it helps me ask follow-up questions. Customers are humans.
Humans are not always direct and or truthful, or sometimes they just need a little more prompting to get to the answer. So it's nice to be able to ask those questions.
Mark Evans: Let's take a step back. In terms of doing competitive audit, like, I do it when I do positioning and messaging work, and I I wanna see how other companies talk about themselves. Can you walk me through how what you do to identify what the competitors are saying and the copy that they're using? So is it on their websites? Are you looking at their blog posts, their ebooks, their videos?
Like, how deep do you go into the into a competitor's ecosystem to truly understand their approach to copy?
Sam Howard: No. I do not dig into their content unless we're optimizing for that stage of awareness. What I tend to look at is high level messaging. What is their homepage saying? Like, if I only look at hero section homepage homepage hero section, what am I going to find out about them, and how different is it?
And I would say at least seven times out of 10 websites can be shockingly similar. So knowing that everybody is using the same words to describe their product and the solution and the problem is helpful, it means those words go on the please do not use that list.
Mark Evans: Great. Excellent insight. Before we get into copy in the wild, wanted to talk a little bit more about conversions. Many startups, and for that matter, companies want to hack their way into conversions. They are looking for shortcuts.
We live in an instant gratification world, and they want things to happen, like, right away. And for us marketers, sometimes, it's very painful because marketing often takes time to resonate. Here's a loaded question. What are some of the best practices regarding conversions and the creative ways to drive them from your work with clients?
Sam Howard: I tend to get strong feelings around hacks. So let's talk about best practices instead.
Mark Evans: Okay.
Sam Howard: Best practices are great. Frameworks are great. The problem is that when folks are looking for best practices, in many cases, they're actually looking for hacks. They just want somebody to tell them to have, like, a red button instead of a green button or something like that, which to me is a hack or, like, rely on the fear of missing out to make your prospects convert. And, yes, it could work, but, again, totally outside of context, it's it's a hack that can backfire.
Best practices will not backfire, but they are not again, they're not 100% going to work because it will depend on your audience. It will depend on your product.
Mark Evans: So what are best practices? Give me your top three best practices when it comes to copy that converts.
Sam Howard: One is actually, most of them are related to user experience, strangely enough. Like, do not force your visitors to do things unless you have a very good reason to do so, and it doesn't feel like you are taking away their autonomy. It goes beyond friction. Right? Yes.
Demo forms and the friction of too many fields is a problem. If some of them are list does not require, that already makes me feel better because I don't feel like I'm forced to give you all of this information. Another one is being very mindful of the layout, which technically not copy, but it's very relevant because we need to be mindful of how information is presented from not having blocks of text that are just unscannable to having visuals that contribute to the page instead of just taking up space. And the last one would be more again, more on the design side, not creating false bottoms. It's my favorite thing to hate on websites.
Mark Evans: What are false bottoms?
Sam Howard: It's like there is the section that looks like it's it's the start of the footer. So if your CTA is be below that section, nobody is going to even see it. Right. Because everybody will assume that the page is complete.
Mark Evans: Let's turn our attention to copy in the wild and discuss some best practices and mistakes made by startups and larger companies. And, obviously, copy plays a huge role on websites. What are the biggest mistakes made by companies when it comes to website copy? Loaded question again, but maybe you can put the spotlight on some of the biggest mistakes that they make.
Sam Howard: I think the fluffy copy is the worst. Like, especially hero sections with the fancy but meaningless two word headlines. And I think it's easier for larger companies to get away with this because, let's be real, probably everybody knows what Mailchimp does. They don't need to explain it. But then, startups go to the best examples of b to b SaaS hero sections, swipe file.
They realize that almost everybody has those tiny little headlines. They copy them, and then the bounce rate goes up immediately. So that's my favorite thing to rant about.
Mark Evans: Okay. K. One of the things that I did wanna ask you about is how do companies approach words on a page, the things that we like to create versus the business decisions that go into a website? Because, obviously, at the end of the day, you can have a beautifully designed website. You can have wonderfully written copy.
But if it doesn't drive the business forward, then it's all irrelevant. So what's the balancing act, and how should companies think about how to emphasize words and and making the business move forward?
Sam Howard: I mean, it's hard. That's just how it is. And, mostly, it's hard because the business changes. The goals may not change, but the way you try to reach them may change. And so when this happens, very often, there's this gap of several months between the change in strategy and the, oh, the website is not working anymore.
Mark Evans: Right.
Sam Howard: So the only thing that I can think of is being very deliberate about building in feedback loops and staying on top of website updates. It would be nice to think that your website can be this once done, done forever marketing task, But embracing the changes, the only way that I can think of that helps keep the web copy and the business strategy aligned.
Mark Evans: I mean, both are fluid. Both are dynamic. They they're constantly evolving, and they're written in sand, you know, not etched in stone. So I think that's really great advice. Obviously, lot of prospects and customers begin their digital journey with a company on the home page.
What's your advice when it comes to home page structure? It's troubling, puzzling to see so many homepages that have no logic behind them on how their homepages are structured and designed. It strikes me this is probably an area that you spend a lot of time scratching your head about given that it's so important just in terms of making homepages convert or websites convert for that matter.
Sam Howard: I think I sort of understand why this happens, and it mostly happens because homepages are hard to get right when you don't know enough about your ICPs and their stage of awareness.
Mark Evans: Mhmm.
Sam Howard: So if you're starting with, we just need to put something on the home page, then, yes, it will be a mess, and it will make no sense at all. The way to work around this is either relying on frameworks to guide you through the layout. And after that, you still need to figure out what to put in those sections, of course, or start with the research that will tell you what belongs on the home page, which is my preferred way.
Mark Evans: One of the problems with home pages, at least in my opinion, is that companies cram in benefits, features, and use cases. It's like going on a first date and telling the person across the table everything about you. Know, your life story in one shot, it's a little overwhelming. How do companies put the spotlight on benefits, features, and use cases without overwhelming people? What's your advice in terms of making that journey and that presentation elegant and user friendly?
Sam Howard: I would especially for the home page, I would suggest figuring out the commonalities between the use cases or the ICPs. What is this one thing that they all need, and how can you show that your product is relevant for them? After that, you can give them some choices. If they need to find out more about a specific use case, great. They can do that at a specific use case page.
But on the home page, it it doesn't need to be busy. You need to provide the necessary amount of information to help them continue working their way through the website to find the information they need.
Mark Evans: So in a sense, it's I I I don't wanna call the homepage a tease, but it does give them a taste of what's possible and the kind of content that they can engage in. And then the copy can can do its work on subsequent pages. So, essentially, what you're saying is it's a good place to start your journey, but don't try to tell people too much too soon.
Sam Howard: Like, a lot of that is it depends on the traffic, the ICPs, the jobs to be done. But, essentially, yes, this is like a map, and it's up to the prospects to decide where they want to go next.
Mark Evans: Without inciting a words versus design battle and as wordsmiths, you know, you know, we're very biased. What's your take on the value of website design, and what's the flow between copy design and conversions?
Sam Howard: I do not recommend doing design first.
Mark Evans: Okay. Alright. Line in the sand right there. You know? Or No.
Why not? Because
Sam Howard: design first will make it look good, but it will end up at being extra work for the design team and for everybody involved in the process unless the design team nails the copywriting argument from the get go, which would be a very unreasonable expectation, I think. So when I work on projects, I start with wireframes, and I hand them over to the design team because it makes everyone's life easier. I know that the copy layout corresponds to what the prospects need to see, and the design team does not need to go through weird Word documents and try to figure out what I mean.
Mark Evans: I like that approach. And in terms of wireframes, what does that consist of? Like, how much detail are you providing in a wireframe? Is it generalized blocks of images here, content here, or is it a little more detailed than that?
Sam Howard: So for the copy, it has the visual hierarchy. So h one, h two, h three. Buttons are definitely there. And ideal case scenario, which what which is what I tried to do, is to have a page that looks like a page minus images, which are placeholders. So it's very it doesn't look finished.
It's not supposed to look finished, but it shows what the copy needs to look like. And then the design team can play with all the beautiful visual elements that they have at their disposal.
Mark Evans: Sounds like a great approach. Let's do a mini rapid fire round. I'm gonna ask you some short questions, and you can answer for as long or as short as you want. CTAs, how do you make them appealing and drive curiosity rather than asking a simple question like, get a demo?
Sam Howard: No. No questions, please.
Mark Evans: Okay.
Sam Howard: Yeah. I don't think that CTA should ever be a demo, and ready to find out more is definitely not a CTA section headline I would ever recommend. With curiosity, though, it can be appropriate for top of funnel content or even maybe pages, but I would try to be snappier and basically get out of the prospect's way once they we are approaching a conversion.
Mark Evans: What's a better CTA than get a demo?
Sam Howard: It's not about the button copy. It's well, it can be about the button copy, but it can also be about everything that surrounds the button copy. Are you addressing the objections that your prospects have? Are you explaining what's going to happen next? When are you going to get back to them?
Are they going to be able to schedule a demo, or do they need to sit and wait for an email from your team? Right? So all of that is more important than in my opinion, all of that is more important than getting the button copy text just right.
Mark Evans: Demo forms. How do you make them more interesting and compelling? And who's the demo form for? Sales or customers?
Sam Howard: You would think it's for customers, but very often, it is determined by the, what the sales team needs to know. In the cases when it is absolutely impossible to reduce the number of form of form fields, then, yes, I would argue then trying to make the demo form more fun could work. Mostly, I think of fun and form when I think about quizzes. That could also be a good use case, especially if you can hide some of the fields and break them up. That said, I strongly suggest finding different ways to qualify your prospects that do not involve lengthy form required fields and generally making it hard to convert.
Mark Evans: About pages, do you think that most companies are they an overlooked opportunity for companies to connect and tell their company story?
Sam Howard: Yes. Most importantly, connect the company's story to what the prospects care about.
Mark Evans: Thank you for putting the spotlight on copy and conversions. Last question. Where can people learn more about you and what you do?
Sam Howard: I am on LinkedIn. Probably way too much.
Mark Evans: Yeah. Like like everybody in our world. And
Sam Howard: I also have a website at ekaterinahoward.com.
Mark Evans: Thanks for appearing on the podcast, and thanks for everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, and, of course, share via social media. To learn more about how I help b to b SaaS companies as fractional CMO, strategic advisor, and positioning wizard, email mark@markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.
