The difference between “selling” and “marketing” is “measuring”.
Typically, a copywriter’s job is over once he has sold you, his client, on the work that is done. You as the client get to define the goals of the task and the conditions of success. It’s your responsibility to define the goals of your copywriter. It all starts with a well-chosen goal.
There is nothing wrong with asking for revisions, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask for unlimited revisions. The copywriter typically is not in control over all elements of your marketing so it may not be fair to ask them to be responsible for things that are not under their control.
Perhaps you would be better off requesting a few different versions upfront so that you can test differing value propositions? That would be a better approach in my opinion.
Great copywriting, when applied to a poorly conceived offer, poorly targeted audience, or a poorly executed sales process, isn’t likely to provide great results.
Getting one element of your marketing process right does not necessarily guarantee success. You need to think of your marketing as a process based on a system of continuous improvements. It is a dynamic system where each part has an influence on the whole system, and one bad part can throw the proverbial monkey wrench into the whole system. You need to isolate each element and test variants to find the best version.
Having said that, the most crucial element of your sales copy is the part we call the “Value Proposition”. You need to develop an excellent value proposition, and test at least a few different types of value propositions to see which type your audience finds most compelling, then work on refining that specific variant to get incremental improvements in performance.
Your value proposition typically contains a handful of essential elements:
- A Compelling Value-Centric Headline
- A Sub Headline and/or An Introductory Paragraph To Provide Clarity
- A Few Selling Points That Resonates With Your Targeted Audience
- A Clear Value-Centric Call-To-Action
If you get just that part right you are probably 90% of the way there for what is needed to convert well-targeted traffic.
Other elements like social proof, testimonials, credibility symbols, guarantees, and rebuttals to common objections can reduce anxiety and get you the rest of the way towards a high converting offer. But these anxiety reduction elements aren’t going to help you at all if you haven’t created a compelling value proposition. So keep your primary focus on the value proposition.
Focus 90 percent of your effort on getting the value proposition right and 80% of that should be focused on the headline, which is arguably the most important page elements for high converting offers.
Don’t think of copywriting as a once-and-done task, instead think of it as a continuous task of refining your message. And, if you want to practice “marketing”, not just “selling”, you should always create multiple variants, split test, analyze results for insights, apply insights, rinse and repeat in a continuous cycle of improvement.
