The Writers Room

By Nate LagosBusiness Education How To Marketing Careers

The Writers Room episodes

October 08 Welcome To The Writers Room
This new show is all about how to write better copy in a way that makes you more money.
5 min
September 30 The Last Episode Ever
After 130+ episodes, Tactical & Practical is coming to an end
If you listened to 100+ episodes or just to a few of them, I hope one main theme came through loud and clear:
You should be spending the majority of your time, energy, focus, and budget on improving the fundamentals of your marketing efforts.
In an ecom marketing landscape ripe with shiny objects and distractions, it's never been more important to improve how good you are at:
- Reaching & capturing the attention of your target audience
- Channeling that audience's desires & aspirations in a way that makes them visit your website
- And then messaging to those audience's desired outcomes to persuade those website visitors to buy and to buy more from you
Spend all your time at getting better at those things, and the numbers will largley take care of themselves.
If you haven't heard, since april, I quit my CMO job and have been paying the bills by taking on a few freelance clients at a time, where I fully execute website copywriting tests in order to make my clients' brands more money.
And the next chapter of my content, will be entirely focused on how I write better copy in a way that shows up on your P&L.
Thank you to @Intelligems for sponsoring every single episode of Tactical & Practical, and being a great parter and a great tool where I still test all my clients copy on there everyday.
Shoutout to Tactical & Practical's Most Valuable Guest: @couuor - I think you get to keep that trophy forever now.
Thank you to everyone who's listened to Tactical & Practical...
I'll see you in The Writer's Room
9 min
August 28 How Gruns Built Their Website (Mike De Lia From Gruns)
Follow Mike De Lia On Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-de-lia-047576178/

Tactical & Practical is brought to you buy Intelligems & Waste Not.

We talk about Intelligems a ton on this episode, because it was SO INSTRUMENTAL in how Mike tested & built this website. Go to Intelligems.io to start increasing website performance NOW!

Waste not makes sure every cent of every dollar spent on Meta isn't WASTED! See how they helped me decrease CAC here: https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel
24 min
August 20 Write Better Yapper Ads w/ Harry Delmage
Harry Delmage is the king of YAPPER ads: long form, video ads that dominate ad accounts he runs as part of his agency, Roly Poly Digital.

He drops some GEMS in this episode about how to write better ads that scale businesses profitably.

This episode is brought to you by Intelligems.io & https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel
24 min
August 04 Million Dollar Headlines
Usually, I write headlines with only ONE customer persona in mind.
But that strategy kinda breaks down when I need to write headlines on your homepage, collection pages, or PDPs where a diverse mix of people are visiting those pages all the time.
And I've only found one way to do that, but it's now worked across 16 brands I've tested it at.
Here's the difference:
If I'm writing to a gift-giver during Q4, I want the messaging to speak specifically to them. I want them thinking that they're not just buying a *thing*, they're buying a symbol of their love, their appreciation, and something that satisfies their desire to NUTURE the person they're buying a gift for.
It'll sound something like,
"Show your [husband, wife, son, daughter, boyfriend] they're [worth it, earned it, appreciated enough] with a gift that's as [positive adjective] as they are."
"Show your man he's worth it with a gift that's as showstopping as he is."
"Let her know you see & appreciate everything she does by giving her a gift that's as uniquely beautiful as she is."
See what I mean?
But, most pages on your website ARE NOT persona-specific. Your homepage, collection pages, and PDPs get a diverse group of traffic. Some gift givers, some people buying from themselves, some ppl who are super problem-product aware, some who are less educated, some are confident, some are insecure, etc...
So, you need a headline format that can work well for all of them.
There's only one headline format that I've ever seen work well in those cases, and I break it down in this episode of tactical & practical, brought to you by Intelligems.io & Waste Not (https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel)
12 min
July 16 6 Steps To Fix Your Meta Ad Performance, with Cody Wittick
Cody Wittick makes his Tactical & Practical debut by outlining the 6 steps he takes when Meta performance drops, rather than panic pulling levers. His full breakdown can be found in this tweet:
https://x.com/Cody_Wittick/status/2059355220358955458?s=20
This episode is brought to you by Intelligems.io, which is my favorite tool to use to increase meta performance. Test headlines, copy, images, offers, prices, and everything else you can think of on your shopify store!
If you're struggling to get meta to reach new people, you need to be using WasteNot.io | I've used it at two brands now and seen an immediate reduction in CAC that resulted from us getting better at excluding past customers. Click here to sign up today: https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel

34 min
July 01 Gifting Messaging Without The Discount
Did you know you can start running gifting messaging on your site & in your ad account BEFORE you launch a sale, like Father's Day or BFCM?
Early in the month of May, I tested Father's Day Gifting Messaging across websites of 4 different brands that all sell products that make good father's day gifts.
Even before the sale or the offer is launched, this messaging outperformed evergreen site content, increasing CVR & RPS.
Then, and maybe most importantly, once the sale does launch, we already know which messaging is best to roll out across the site and ad account, and can squeeze every single drop we can out of the promo period.
One client, YoY father's day comps are nuts:
They spent 30% LESS money on ads, and did 34% MORE revenue.
You 1000% need a plan to test gifting messaging in OCTOBER this year, weeks before you launch any kind of holiday sale, so that when you launch the sale, you're launching it already having your messaging dialed in.
Tactical & Practical is brought to you by Intelligems.io - they're the software solution that allows me to test all this messaging on site and shows me where we're increasing Conversion Rate, Revenue Per Session, and a lot more!

Tactical & Practical is also sponsored by Waste Not! A software that fortifies your Meta ad spend to cut waste, reduce audience overlap, and decrease cost to reach new audiences! Check out what they've done for me here: https://www.wastenot.io/case-studies/large-dtc-watch-brand?ref=nathaniel
11 min
June 24 Linear TV Outpaces Meta At Better ROAS
Proof Wallets is spending as many ad dollars on Linear TV as they are on Meta, and performance is better on TV...
If I was consulting for @DanaPeters0321 at the time they launched TV campaigns, I probably would've told him not to do it.
I would've argued that it's a distraction this early in the business, and that there was still a lot of room for them to grow & optimize Meta.
Good thing Dana and I didn't meet till a few months later, because now there's one ad that has spent multiple millions of dollars and isn't slowing down.
This episode of Tactical & Practical is SUPER tactical, we cover the logistics of Tatari advertising (this episode is not sponsored by them btw), how performance has been, and their trajectory for this channel.
This episode is brought to you by Intelligems.io. Optimize every piece of your shopify store by split testing prices, offers, content, new landing pages and more. It can even split test by traffic source which is necessary if you're going to be testing new channels like we talk about in this episode!

If you're struggling to get meta to reach new people, you need to be using WasteNot.io | I've used it at two brands now and seen an immediate reduction in CAC that resulted from us getting better at excluding past customers. Click here to sign up today: https://app.wastenot.io/users/register/?ref=nathaniel
25 min
June 17 To Iterate? Or Not To Iterate?
When should you iterate? And when should you test net new creative concepts?
The simple answer for me, is when you hit a point of diminishing returns with iterations, shake the etch a sketch, and start over with net new concepts
The first round of headline testing increased CVR by 27%
The next round, we iterated on the winners, and increased CVR by 11%
The next round, we iterated again and only increased CVR by 2%
It’s time to start the cycle over
This episode is sponsored by intelligems.io - the best way I know how to run tests like I show in this episode.
11 min
June 05 Fashion Meets Marketing
Great conversation with @heyitsalexP around perceived value, marketing in the world of fashion, upsells, bundles, and more.
Tactical & Practical is sponsored by Intelligems.io - my go to testing tool to help find new ways to increase the percieved value of our products. Check them out!
Follow Alex on twitter and subscribe to her newsletter here:
https://x.com/heyitsalexP
https://t.co/kIyKSdSSQ1
33 min