Ep 5: Ethical Copywriting Tricks That Make People Buy (Interview with User Conversion expert Karl Gilis)

In this episode I share with you an interview with Karl Gilis, co-founder of AG Consult.

I first met Karl when we both spoke at the Call to Action Conference in Vancouver back in 2015.

Karl’s talk was titled: “Don’t Do Anything On Your Landing Page You Wouldn’t Do on a First Date.” At the speaker’s dinner the night before the conference, I happened to be sitting next to Karl. He was telling me about his talk and we got onto the subject of dating, and online dating. I shared with him that I once discovered halfway through a first date that my evening’s companion had form for armed robbery.

Karl then shared this on stage during his talk to 700+ people.

In fairness he didn’t mention my name but by my blushing it wouldn’t have been too difficult to figure out. 🙂

Since then we’ve bumped into each other at many conversion events and I always enjoy hearing him speak. He’s straight-talking, no bullshit, and bases his decisions and opinions on data which is refreshing.

Listen in to hear:

• Why you shouldn’t panic if people don’t listen to you the first time
• Why people don’t follow instructions
• What you should check first if you have an offer that isn’t converting
• How to use simple surveys to reveal headline-worthy ideas
• Why conversion techniques should be about creating happy customers, not one-time sales

About Karl Gilis: 

AG Consult was founded by Karl and his partner Els Aerts. Based in Belgium they have a great headline:

We Make Your Website Better Through Fact-Based Research 

Their focus is user research, and using their findings to improve conversions for businesses. They also offer a free ebook called 10 Conversion Tips That Work on any Website.

If you get the chance to see Karl speak, do make the effort to go, but in the meantime you can hear him chatting sense with me…

Show Transcript:

Amy:

Hello and welcome to another edition of Write with Influence where I share my persuasive writing and messaging techniques to help you make more sales in your business.

Today I’m sharing a short interview I did last year with Karl Gilis who is a conversion rate optimisation expert and co-founder of AG Consult, a conversion optimisation agency based in Belgium. Now, in this interview Karl shares some simple user research tricks that you can use to write copy that can have a dramatic effect on the results that you get.

Sometimes we can get too attached to our own idea of our product that the copy we write ends up completely missing the mark with customers and this can be frustrating. Let’s say that you’ve worked hard writing copy for a new landing page, you send an email out to your audience with a specially crafted offer, but instead of hearing a cacophony of ka-chings as you make sales, it’s more like Simon and Garfunkel popped round on a bleak Sunday afternoon and all you’re hearing is the sound of silence.

When you put out an offer and you get no response it can be heart-breaking and unfortunately it can be very common, but what’s also common are some false beliefs that we can have when something like this happens. Beliefs such as: no one wants what I have/ my offer isn’t very good/ my product isn’t very good/ I need new marketing tools and a different email delivery system or a new landing page design. Or: these people are idiots! More often than not, it’s not actually any one of these reasons. If you put out an offer that gets no response, it doesn’t mean it’s not good enough, it could just be that you have not found the right message for your audience about that product. Fortunately today, Karl’s going to give you some tips to help with that. The other thing that you need to remember is that people are very bad at following instructions; we can’t just tell them what we want them to do, we need to persuade and we need to appeal to the emotional part of our customer’s brains that make a buying decision – this is what copywriting is all about.

A quick illustration for you and a little therapy for me . . . I don’t know if this is just something that happens when you’re the youngest in the family, but quite often it doesn’t matter what I say or how rationally I present an argument, it’s like my family just can’t hear me!

[Open Scene]

Amy: Hiya Dad! You alright? You look a bit flustered and your flat cap is skewed.

Dad: Oh, it’s this blasted computer.

Amy: Oh, Whoa, Whoa . . . where’s all this language coming from?

Dad: Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just that . . .gosh, everything’s so bloomin’ slow on this thing.

Amy: Let me have a look.

{Typing}

Amy: Hang on a minute, it says here that you’ve 247 updates pending? Have you been stalling updates?

Dad: Oh no, you won’t catch me out with any of that nonsense.

Amy: What? When was the last time that you installed an update on this?

Dad: I don’t click on anything that isn’t in the Google. I’m not going to be victim of one of those angling frauds.

Amy: Angling?

Dad: What do they call it . . .line catching? Bottom trawling?

Amy: Fishing, I think you mean fishing. Look, it’s good that you’ve been vigilant, but trust me, it’s not only safe, it’s actually important that you keep your computer updated – it keeps it more secure.

Dad: Well, I mean, I don’t know why we need to? We only bought it five years ago . . .what could have possibly changed since then?

Amy: Quite a bit, Dad, it’s technology.

Dad: Well, I’ve got a Casio calculator from 1976, I’ve never had to install updates on I and it still adds up perfectly fine.

Amy: Yeah, but this isn’t a Casio calculator.

Dad: Well, do you do updates on your computer?

Amy: Yes Dad, and that’s why I’ve never had a problem.

Dad: Hmm, maybe I’ll check with your brother.

{Sound of door opening}

Dad: Oh, look, here he is now!

Brother: All right Dad?

Dad: Hello first born, fruit of my loins, the old chip off the old block! Now then, can you just have a quick look at my computer? It’s, it’s a bit slow. Your youngest sibling had some funny ideas about updates, but it sounded like blah blah blah to me. You know what she’s like!

Amy: I’m still here Dad.

Brother: Sure, let me have a look. . . it says here you’ve got 247 updates, that’ll definitely be slowing things down – just click here to install them . . .

Dad: Thank you! Finally, we’re getting somewhere.

[End]

So yes, sometimes people don’t take any notice of you, but it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. It doesn’t mean that you can’t get them to listen and to take action.

Now in this interview, Karl’s going to share with you a couple of things that you should check for if people aren’t taking you up on your offer and also some techniques that you can then try. I’m eager to take notes and find out how I could possibly use them on my Dad! Enjoy.

[Interview]

Amy: Karl, you will be speaking later this afternoon, I’m really looking forward to hearing you as always, but for those who may not be familiar with you, who are you and what do you do?

Karl: That’s a deep question, Amy. Well . . . my childhood . . . no, I’m joking!

What do I do?

Well, since 2010 I have been the co-founder of AG consult and we are a company who specialise in usability and user research – that’s still at the core of what we do. User research is now sometimes called conversion optimisation, growth marketing, some people call it growth hacking but I don’t like the word ‘hacking’. The core of what we do is user research and helping companies to improve their communication and the way they sell stuff to people based on what the audience really wants.

Amy: Very noble. Now, with customers, when we put out an offer, in an ideal world, we would say, “This is our product,” and they would buy it. Now, customers don’t always do what we say!

Karl: Not at all!

Amy: Now, does that make them stupid?

Karl: No. No, not at all and it’s funny because when we do user testing and sometimes people can’t find what they’re looking for on a website or they’re like, “What is this? I don’t understand it,” the first reaction of our clients when they see their clients is, “Where have you found this guy/girl? He/she’s stupid!” And the second or the third time they see the reaction they begin saying, “Hmm, this is the average customer.” So, it’s not the customer that should be blamed, it’s the company. I always say, when there’s something wrong with your website, it’s your fault, you did something wrong.

Amy: I love that. I love that owning of the responsibility, but it’s really interesting that the natural assumption could be, “There is something wrong with this customer because our stuff is fine!”

Karl: Yes, of course sometimes there are strange people, but when it comes to selling to the average person and seeing these results. . .it’s something that a lot of people, they know it, but they don’t know how to deal with it. It’s like when we’re on the web and also in real life . . . 85-95% of our decisions are made, not rationally, but just on autopilot. So the subconscious . . .

Amy: Which would make sense of why direct instructions don’t always work because we are not rational beings!

Karl: Yes! Because we see other people doing stuff and we are like, “I want to do it too!” This is how people work and if you master the art, it’s not easy, but it makes it easier to persuade people to buy from you.

Amy: And that’s what we want!

Karl: Without being tricky.

Amy: Absolutely.

Karl: One of the things that more people in our business should be aware of is the ethics side of business because it’s very easy to trick people into buying something . . .and then you have the one time sales etc. What I think is the goal of what we do with persuasive copywriting and conversion and growth hacking or growth marketing is that you build a relationship with a client and that you have a client for life and not just a one-time deal. The one-time deal is very easy to do, but then you will trick customers into buying stuff and after five minutes they will be saying, “Why did I buy it?” And that’s not a happy customer. So, I think the goal of our job is to create happy customers.

Amy: I love that. And that’s something that my approach to copywriting is centred around also, it’s about matching the perfect person to the product. There’s a guy called Zig Ziglar who I like and he’s talked in the past about sales people and he says, “You know, someone who tells you that they can sell anything to anyone is not a salesperson, they are a con man.” And I really like the approach that selling has to lead to a happy customer.

Karl: Yes, it’s very important. I could be a con man too!

Amy: I don’t doubt it!

Karl: That’s a danger of our job. I know the tricks of the trade, but it’s not about the tricks of the trade, it’s about your client and then his clients and how to make a perfect match between them.

Amy: So, say for example you were putting out an offer (and this is going to be quite general I’m sure), but say you have an offer that hasn’t been taken up or there’s a website that’s getting traffic but very few conversions, what would you say are your go-to things to check first?

Karl: First thing is usability – does it work? Do we understand how it works? Because sometimes that’s a problem. But nowadays, most of the time, one of the biggest problems has to do with content and then copy and sometimes the third problem is, is the right audience that’s coming to the website? What we see is that a lot of companies spend a lot of money on advertising and Google AdWords and they think, “OK, let’s go broad,” and then they have a lots of visitors on their website, but it’s not the right kind of visitor. And once again, the aim should be to find the perfect match between the visitor and what is on offer.

One of the first things we normally do on a website is a survey, “What are you looking for? Have you found what you’re looking for? What’s holding you back from buying stuff from us?” Just very open questions that result in facts because that’s a fact, “What are you looking for? What is the main reason that you didn’t buy this product? Did you find all the information you were looking for?” And sometimes that will make it very clear that there’s a big gap between what the company is trying to sell and what their visitor wants to buy.

Amy: I like that and the thing I like about surveys is that it’s really important to have those open ended questions because a lot of people sometimes are afraid to ask their customers and to reach out, which goes against the idea of building this bridge to your products, right?

Karl: Yes, it depends of course on what you’re selling but what we often see is that people really ask very detailed questions – they are happy to see a survey and sometimes it’s more like a support question but that’s OK. But open-ended questions are very important – don’t ask stupid questions like, “Do you like our website – yes or no?” or “On the scale of 1-10 . . .” that’s bullshit. It doesn’t deliver real insights or real information. If you have a normal survey and you have 10 or 20 answers, you will start collecting and seeing something that’s real and it will help you to adapt your website and sometimes bring you back down to earth because if you’re the owner of the company or the product owner and you’re always busy with your product and you’re writing copy for your product, sometimes you don’t see what people are looking for anymore.  I have an example that I use in my talks about a company who were trying to sell car ports, their copy involved technical details like, “special treatment of the aluminium so they can give a 10 year guarantee,” and then there was a “special treatment of the epoxy gloss” and blah blah blah!

Amy: People didn’t want that?!

Karl: And then we just asked, “Why are you looking for a car port?” Then people say, “Yeah, I just hate having to scrape the ice from my windshield in winter and I hate getting into a boiling hot car in summer.” Then we just adapted the copy, we used it to say, “Are you tired of this and this and this?” Then sales went up because people recognised their situation because they are looking for a solution and your copy should be about them and not about you and what you’re selling – not in the first instance.

Amy: Yeah, people can get very attached to their idea of the product, but ultimately you’re in your business to match those perfect people with your product to make those sales and if your audience (who could be your perfect customer), if they’re telling you something different, that’s a good sign that you should listen.

Karl: Yes! One of the first clients we had was an air conditioning construction company and their website was full of technical details and the product selector was really difficult! So, we then went to their clients and said, “OK, why did you buy from this company?” And they said, “Because you don’t see it and you don’t hear it.”

Amy: That’s great copy.

Karl: Done! And that’s what companies sometimes forget, it’s like . . .

Amy: Yes, you can over complicate it – sometimes it is as simple as that.

Karl: And then they were talking about the ‘titanium air filters’ and we said, “Yes, maybe that’s reason you don’t hear it but just say that you don’t hear it!”

Amy: And it may be relevant in product classification and when they want to say, “Hey, we can deliver this because of this,” etc.

Karl: To come back to your basic question, for example, if people go onto a website and then they leave straight away, something is wrong – the first impression should be easy, it should be a direct correlation like, “Yes, this is what I’m looking for, this is the solution, this page will help me.” Because people are googling and they are looking at pages one, two, three, four, five and so on. They are opening them, switching between the tabs and it needs to be a case of, “Yes, this one is different, this one has a solution for me.” Copy is so important, it used to be different – when we started it was mostly design problems, but nowadays I think in 75% of our cases, the changes we see that generate the big uplifts have to do with copywriting/ persuasive psychology principles.

Amy: Yes – making that meaningful connection and making it quickly.

So just to finish up, what will you be talking about today? Just an outline . . .

Karl: It’s a beautiful title: Why you fail at digital marketing and what to do about it. It’s about the gut feeling. I start with asking questions, showing A/B cases and 90% of the audience will have it wrong, but that’s what they do in real life, they trust their gut feeling and I want to cure them of making decisions based on gut feelings – it should be about data and user research.

Amy: Brilliant. I’ll be writing up about that.

Karl: Cool.

Amy: Thank you very much. I will put details about where people can find you as well.

Karl: Very good. Thank you.

Amy: Thank you.

So, there you go. Karl had some great practical tips about how to listen to your customer and then turn that feedback into effective copy. I cannot wait to try them.

Don’t forget, if you have a copy question you want answering, drop me a line at hello@writewithinfluence.com or leave a comment on the podcast page over at www.writewithinfluence.com

Until next time, keep believing.