This week on Awkward Silences, Erin and JH chatted with Joel Klettke, who has 6+ years of experience writing killer conversion copy for clients like Hubspot, Scott's Cheap Flights, and WP Engine. His first piece of advice? 

All the best copy [is] words you've stolen from the customers themselves.

He also stressed the importance of meeting your customers where they are, involving copy from the start of any new project, and structuring your user research so it's easy to pull out the best insights. He walked us through how he used research to make changes at Hubspot that resulted in a 35% increase in demo requests and a 27% increase in inbound call volume. He also outlined how he used chatbot data to help an online divorce startup net an extra 165k in revenue by answering questions their users needed answers to.

Highlights

• [2:09] The best copy comes straight from the mouths of customers
• [3:46] You can't sell to an audience you don't understand.
• [6:02] Structuring your research is important, so you can better identify good copy when you see it.
• [6:24] Joel wants to hear about people's experience. Here's the specific questions he asks to learn about them.
• [8:31] Taking copy straight from customers mouths is more compelling and specific. It makes you stand out from what your competitors are saying.
• [10:07] Joel uses text analyzer to identify recurring phrases from his research.
• [10:52] Companies default to their own internal language, but you have to speak to customers in a language they understand
• [13:00] How Joel used this process at HubSpot to make meaningful copy changes that resulted in a 35% increase in demo requests and a 27% increase in inbound call volume.
• [16:28] Joel works on anchoring new ideas for copy in known concepts to make it easier to digest.
• [18:16] Get specific, but not so specific your audience can't relate
• [21:44] Copy is more agile than design. It takes just a few minutes to change, so the best test is to actually deploy it to market.
• [26:35] Copy can help establish the order of operations for users, and work with design from the start to create something better than adding on copy later.
• [34:32] How Joel approaches copy for startups that don't have any data or customers yet.
• [35:51] How Joel uses insights from churned customers to write better copy and understand where promises weren't kept.
• [37:02] Ask your sales team "what question do you wish you never got asked again?" to identify gaps in your copy.
• [37:34] How Joel used chat bot data to help an online divorce startup net an extra 165k in revenue by answering questions their users needed answers to.
• [45:22] Every job Joel's had since university was something he didn't know existed until he started doing it.