So it surprised the hell out of me when we went to look at some copy on one of his sites.  He said something to the effect of, “Dude, the copy’s not working.”

Okay, easy enough to fix.  Let’s look at your metrics.  ”My what?”

What’s your conversion rate?

“Not quite 3%!”

With short copy, that’s pretty good.  Okay, let’s look at your traffic sources.  Where do your prospects come from?

“I don’t know.”

Uh… well, how many unique visitors are you getting per day?

“I don’t know.”

What is your customer acquisition cost?

“Can’t you just go and look at my web logs and Google stuff and tell me?”

Sure, if you want to hire me for analytics, reporting, and testing.  At this point, I had no choice but to give him some tough love:

If you don’t know your numbers, you’re not in business.  You have no idea what is working and what is not, nor can you prove it.  Chances are, you are not maximizing your advertising, because you don’t know where it’s effective, and where you are just throwing it out the window.  Nor can you prove that the copy is great, it sucks, or it’s barely adequate, unless you split-test and measure the results.

And those are just the basics.

Haven’t heard from him since.  Too bad.  I hate to see wasted opportunity.

Wanna hear something even more scary?  I discussed this with a few copywriters, and was astonished at the conversation.  There are some copywriters who don’t even know that “something like metrics” even exist.  All they want to do is write copy.  They’ve never even heard of anything like a “customer acquisition cost,” let alone show their clients how to slash it to a level where they’ll kill their competition.

They wouldn’t know junk traffic from revenue generating traffic – nor have they ever heard of taguchi or multivariate testing.

Even Al Capone kept track of his numbers.  He used them to grow one of the biggest enterprises of the day in his field.   And sure enough, what was it that brought him down?

Not reporting.

-Kevin Dawson

I thank the Lord daily for how busy I’ve been…

…but that doesn’t mean I’ve been untouched by these tough times.

Product launches, my second specialty, are down in revenues.  Marketers are having to work a lot harder for less in the way of results.  For the first time, I’ve had to write 40 emails in a launch, just to get the same response I’d normally get with 15.

But another problem (one I should have seen, in retrospect) is that of client and customer rip-offs.

Now, client rip-offs are mostly the fault of the copywriter.  And it comes from not getting the entire fee up-front. Here’s and example:

I wrote a sales letter, squeeze page, and autoresponders for a Forex clown who claimed to be a Christian, and a man of God.   So I let him “owe me” a few hundred on a sales letter, because he said he was tapped, and was dead broke until he launched.

Never heard from him.  Then I saw him launch through an affiliate program, and he ignored my emails.  Then I sent him one saying my network was far superior to the smaller one he signed up with…

THAT got his attention.  He wrote back immediately, promising 30% to anyone I could get to sign on.

Sure.  30% wouldn’t get my dog’s interest…

…but it shows you his greed, and lack of sophistication.

Plus, I never promised to hook him up with my network…. I just told him he would have done better going with it.  He mistook it for an offer, which explains why he finally responded.  (With a laughable affiliate offer, at that.)

And he refused to pay the balance on the sales letter.

Another copywriter I know blogged about a client who, instead of paying him his balance owing, had the court serve him a bankruptcy notice.  I’ve heard it’s pretty easy to claim bankruptcy on a business entity after you’ve drained all the profits from it… I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know for sure.  But it sounds like a dirty trick to me.

I also hear from clients that returns are through the roof.  One huge marketer (not a client) recently revealed after a mega-launch, the returns were 30 freakin’ percent!  (I’m beginning to think that 30% is a bad number…)

So keep an eye out for these things and others during these hard times.  Forge alliances.  Make friends with those whom you trust in business.  Create or join a mastermind goup.  Realize you may have to work harder for the same – or even less – money.

And know that this, too, shall pass.

-Kevin Dawson

Just now, I get an email from a well-known Internet Marketer.  Skim it and decide his message is interesting enough for me to find out about more about his offer…

I get to the long copy sales page and start reading the headline, but in less than 10 seconds – the screen darkens and a box slides down from the top telling me to give him my first name and primary email address & he’ll send me an “oh so special” eBook absolutely free.

What’s going on?  He was talking to me about something completely different!

Does this IM master not realize that he just blasted me with a commercial inside a commercial?

He has just asked me to decide which pitch to allow.

Do I want to invest in continuing to read his sales copy knowing that it may or may not be worth my time, but I will definitely be asked to hand over cash in the end – or should I just give him my name and email addy and get my hands on this eBook.  Try a free sample of what he offers to see if what he hands out is even worth my time, let alone my $.

Not to mention the fact that he barely gave me enough time to get sucked in by the first headline and he switches channels on me – who cares if he does own both stations?

I was so bothered, I just closed out of everything and went back to reading emails.

For anyone who doesn’t have a clear understanding of what I mean, think about this…

Your sales page is the Internet’s equivalent of your face-to-face close.  It has to cover all the elements a good in-person close will cover (and then some).

Now imagine you’re pitching in person and, just after you open, a stranger drops down from the sky, puts their hand over your mouth and starts selling your prospects on something completely different.

That is exactly what happens when you try to sell one person on two different outcomes.  Sure, you’ll still have conversions, but certainly less that you would if you closed them without distractions and multiple goals.  And I’m not talking about upsells or add-ons.

So, to that Internet Marketer, I say, “Stop it! Stop trying to make a sale and build a list all at once.  If your sales page and product are great quality, you’ll capture people’s names when they buy.

Set-up a separate funnel for list building or that other product.  Just be grateful you have my attention to listen to one!

OK, and now we return to our regularly scheduled program!

This person was afraid of offending their list and was afraid to try to “sell” to them.   So why bother to have a list?  Running a non-profit agency, are we?

So I’m going to be cool and show this client how to sell.  (Again, to a list that had never been sold to before.)  True to form, the first email that went out got one response that resented how a sales message was being pushed … and the recipient asked to be taken off the list.

My client recoiled in horror.

Well, what did they expect?  If you have a list you never sell to, then you’ve trained them that way.  Now all of a sudden you try to sell to them, you’re likely to get some of them p. o’d.

But what’s the point of having a list if not to sell to them?  And why would you want someone on your list if they are going to resent you for selling to them?  Or are you running a popularity contest, and want to be liked?

To me, one of the best ways  to be liked is to have people give me money.

Now get this … another client actually phoned her.  Sorry, I love the people on my list, but I don’t usually take calls from them.  Anyways, they asked if my client was angry at the affiliate that my client was promoting?   Instead of my client responding with a good-natured chuckle and explaining the letter, the client instead went ballistic.

Yes, my client was so shocked that they immediately stopped all copy from proceeding.   I was fired on the spot.

Good thing.  My client beat me to the punch.

Any marketer with any savvy knows that a list will respond to however you choose to train it.  Train it to ignore or delete your emails because they are boring, or offer no value, and that’s what your list will do.  Offer your people value, and they’ll open and read what you send them.

Entertain, inform, and offer them a good value.  That’s the million dollar formula that I’ve used with great success.

But having a list and NOT selling to it is about the most namby-pamby, wussy thing you can do … and it will severely limit your business growth.  See, you’ve trained them to suck in information free from you, and that’s the basis of your relationship.  Try and change that, and yes, it’ll rock the boat.

Like, try to change the basis of your relationship with your spouse and see what happens.

So, I wasted a lot of hours, trying to educate this client.  I also did not receive a cent from them. I wanted the copy to prove to them its value, since they were shocked at having to actually spend money.  I was going to show them how the copy will pay for itself by taking the risk upfront, not charging until it produced results.  Yep, I was the Boy Scout, out to do my good deed, and not take a cent until clearly earned.

True to form, no good deed goes unpunished.

In the end, they offered to pay me, maybe just to get rid of me.  I refused to accept any money from the client.  The failure was theirs for not having a clue as to what they were getting into, and getting freaked out over one or two negative responses.

If I accept pay from them, it’s almost like I’m complicit in their stupidity.  Hell, I’ve got enough of my own to deal with.

So what I WILL do is accept the responsibility for being just as big of an idiot in my own way … for trying to cure someone’s stupidity.

And no, I don’t mean ignorance.  I mean stupidity.

Someone who is ignorant to the ways of direct response, but asks for it anyway, then drops it like a hot potato at the first sign of someone not liking them, is far beyond ignorant.

But then I knew ahead of time that trying to write for a client and educate them at the same time is a losing proposition.  It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing: it wastes your time, and annoys the pig.

Sure hope I don’t make that mistake again.

-Kevin Dawson

But you can’t cure stupid.

I have painfully discovered this for the third time in my career.  A prospective client asks me, “What’s the cost of writing some sales copy for my website?”

That immediately raised a flag.  It’s the classic amateur question from someone who’s probably never used a copywriter before.  I asked back, “What’s your experience with direct marketing?”

“None, really.  I just got your name from someone else.”

Since the potential client seemed very nice, and the source of the referral was a regular, I decided I take on the job, despite my misgivings.

The first sample I sent got a response, “Oh, I could never send something like that to my list.  It doesn’t reflect my personality.”

“Well, of course not.  You tell me you don’t understand direct response, so how could you possibly send out a direct response piece in ‘your personality?’ ”

“Oh, yes.  I see.  Well, I never wanted to do anything tacky like these emails that I see that just try to sell.”

Okay, another red flag.  So to show the client the value of a professionally written email, I asked, “What’s your present open stats and your click-through stats?”

“I don’t track them, because then the links would not look so pretty.”

That should have told me all I needed to know to fire them, right then and there.  But nooooooo, I had to be Mr. Nice Guy, (read: idiot)  and try and help.

Check back tomorrow to find out how no good deed goes unpunished.

Kevin Dawson