Turn More Website Visitors Into Paying Customers: Copywriting Secrets | Trevor Levine

Every website click is a chance to win a new customer — but are you actually converting those visitors into paying clients?

In this episode, we sit down with Trevor Levine, founder of Marketing Experts and a direct response copywriting powerhouse since 1998. Trevor has spent decades helping businesses transform lukewarm website traffic into loyal buyers — without spending a dime more on ads.

Trevor breaks down the biggest conversion killers and reveals what really drives people to say “yes” to your offer. He shares why action-driven verbs beat fluffy adjectives every time, how to craft offers that build instant trust and urgency, and the secrets behind "better than risk-free" guarantees that boost conversions while protecting your bottom line.

You’ll learn:
 ✅ How to build sales pages that guide browsers smoothly toward the “buy” button
 ✅ The right time to reveal your price (hint: it’s later than you think)
 ✅ How conditional guarantees and decoy pricing lead prospects to choose your premium options
 ✅ Strategies to slash cart abandonment with smart checkout page copy
 ✅ Why testimonials with real names and tangible results outperform generic praise
 ✅ Why AI can help you draft — but only your human insight can make it truly persuasive

From his own journey building and selling a six-figure monthly business to helping countless others, Trevor’s no-nonsense, psychology-driven approach will inspire you to rethink your website, your offers, and your entire sales strategy.

Ready to turn your website into a non-stop sales machine? Visit marketingexperts.com to claim your free 30-minute sales copy critique — no strings attached.

🎧 Tune in and learn how to convert more visitors into happy, paying customers — without spending more on ads.

Trevor Levine: Founder & CEO of Marketing Experts

Website: https://marketingexperts.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrtrevorlevine/

#BusinessGrowth #WebsiteConversions #SalesCopy #DirectResponseMarketing #HighConverting #SmallBusinessMarketing #CopywritingTips #DigitalMarketing #IncreaseSales #TurnClicksIntoCustomers #TrevorLevine #MarketingExperts #BusinessStrategy #BusinessSuccess #EntrepreneurTips #GrowYourBusiness #SmallBusinessPivots #BOSS #BOSSBusiness #BusinessOwnershipSimplified #MichaelMorrison #BusinessCoach #OklahomaCity

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Trevor Levine, Conversion Expert
• 9:04 Building & Selling a Six-Figure Business
• 19:17 Common Conversion Rate Mistakes
• 27:57 Creating Compelling Offers & Guarantees
• 37:17 Checkout Optimization & Design Strategy
• 40:37 AI in Copywriting: Benefits & Limitations

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another special Small Business Pivots podcast. Today we have another special guest from around the world and if you've listened to our podcast before, you know that the only person that can say their name and their business is the business owner. So I'll let you have the floor to introduce yourself, your business, where you're from and just a little bit about you.

Speaker 2: 0:24

you have the floor to introduce yourself your business, where you're from and just a little bit about you. Sure, hi everyone. I'm Trevor Levine with the Marketing Experts Our website's marketingexpertscom. I live in Oakland, california. I work with people all over the world. And a little bit about myself. So I started writing direct response copy in 1998. And in 2009, I started my own company, which I scaled to six figure months and sold in 2017. At which point I went back to my original profession of helping people improve their conversion rates on sales pages.

Speaker 1: 1:02

Fantastic rates on sales pages Fantastic. So with our small business owner listening group, how do you think we're going to best serve them?

Speaker 2: 1:13

today. What do you think they'll take away from this? So I'm betting your listeners spend a lot of time, effort or money driving traffic to a page. It may be their website, it may be a funnel, it may be an opt-in page. Once you get people to that page, you want to convert as many as possible, right yeah? So that's what I help with and, once they hit that page, maximizing the percentage of people that become paying customers or clients.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Fantastic. Well, I encourage everybody to buckle up because I'm sure we're going to learn a lot today. We'll introduce the show real quick and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, founder and CEO of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. We talk with business owners who have scaled businesses, and you brought it up before the show introduction, so let's talk about that real quick. Share how you did it, what happened, the good, the bad, the ugly.

Speaker 2: 2:39

So let's start back in around what was the year? Maybe the year 2000, 2001. Besides being obviously having a profession as a direct response copywriter, I had a passion let's say a labor of love and I wanted to support people on a vegan diet. So I built a website called veganrecipescom, got indexed in the top 10 when people searched for vegan recipes and over the next eight years, I think about 30,000 people found the site organically and joined my email list to get vegan recipes.

Speaker 2: 3:17

So in 2009, I said you know, I really want to do something with this, and at that time, membership sites were starting to become more common, more popular, and so I decided to offer a one-year program, which I called the Vegan Mastery Program.

Speaker 2: 3:36

Also, I had one for vegetarians called the Vegetarian Mastery Program, and so I did a Jeff Walker-style launch. He was one of my mentors and I think we got about 400 students in the first week. Wow, from there built it to thousands of students and, um, by the time, I sold the company in 2017. Of course, along the way, I had to build a team right, had to have people taking care of customer service and bookkeeping and affiliate management and you know all the things web design. And in 2017, I got to a point where I, due to real estate investments that did really well, I didn't really need the income from that anymore and didn't want the stress anymore. Didn't really need the income from that anymore and didn't want the stress anymore. So I decided to sell the company and return to offering my services as a direct response, copywriter and conversion expert.

Speaker 1: 4:34

What kind of stress? And then we'll move into the conversion. What kind of stress did you experience? Because I know a lot of business owners ask us from time to time as business coaches. They'll say am I the messiest business you've ever seen? And I'm like absolutely not. So what kind of challenges stress did you go through? Just so people know, it doesn't matter what size of business, how long you've had the business, we all go through something.

Speaker 2: 4:59

Let me let me share a couple of successes first, if that's okay, and then I'll share some of the stresses.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Yeah Well, one of the now I am not a doctor or a dietician, okay, so I acted more like a publisher, where I contracted doctors and registered dieticians and people like that to provide content, and one of my other strengths is obviously creating pages that sell. Strengths is obviously creating pages that sell, and so, where they had the expertise, my expertise was on getting converting visitors into customers and, as one example, we made a video sales letter that helped to sell a $1.2 million of this course that I talked to you about. Wow, and because we're going straight from free subscriber to a course that was about $200, $200 to $500, depending on which tier. I worked with Ryan Dice for a little while. He's also one of my mentors and he said you know what you're missing, trevor, is a tripwire. You need to have something for like seven or ten dollars to offer the subscribers right away so you can over deliver and convince them that they that they can trust you Right. So so we offer. We made a video sales letter to offer one of the lessons in our course, but without the requirement to pay a couple hundred dollars or get on a monthly subscription, and that video sales letter converted 9.1% of new opt-in subscribers into paying customers. So those are a couple of examples of things that we did.

Speaker 2: 6:41

Well, yeah, incredible Stressors. You know when you're, when you have a team, you're relying on other people, some of who might have the same judgment as you, some might have better judgment and some might have different judgment. That's a good way to put it Different. Yeah, so there was one time when we were doing we were getting ready for a big launch and my programmer had to put our cart in test mode to make sure some things were working. He forgot to take it off test mode on the day of the launch. So I don't know the first, I don't even remember the number, but there were a lot of new customers who made the purchase, got access to the membership content, and yet we didn't get any money.

Speaker 1: 7:23

I cannot even imagine a golden opportunity that turns sour, you know, because we're not making anything. So well, let's talk about what you do today. So what is it that Marketing Experts actually does On your website? It says turn more of your visitors into customers and clients without spending more on ads. So let's talk. Let's start there first, and then I think we have a set of questions that's been given to us to visit.

Speaker 2: 7:50

So you may be using paid ads, or you may be driving traffic with affiliates, or you may be using organic methods. Regardless of how you're getting people to your page. Once they get there, my job is to maximize your conversion rate, not only on your sales page or it could be a sales video but also on your checkout page. There are a lot of mistakes that people make when creating the copy for sales pages. Would you like me to share a few of those right now? Absolutely so. One of them is over relying on adjectives instead of verbs, for example, you might say this is the most innovative, groundbreaking method since sliced bread, and this just comes across as bragging and hyperbole. It's not really that effective in increasing your conversion rate. What's better is to focus on verbs, because verbs are benefits. For example, stop wasting time on technical minutia. Automate 70% of your workload. Spend more quality time with your family. You see how every one of those starts with a verb.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Listeners you've already got some takeaways here, and we haven't really even got started to the meat and potatoes of the show, so let's keep going. So, when visitors come to a website, what makes them put off their buying decisions?

Speaker 2: 9:15

So a lot of companies or small businesses make the mistake of just describing their product or program or service and assuming that's enough. A description of what you sell is not an offer. So one of the ways that I help people is to develop an offer that's compelling and creates urgency. For example, I'll give you an example. I just mentioned that we pulled out this one lesson from our course and offered it for $7. The offer was hey, normally you would have to pay a couple hundred dollars to have access to this lesson or get on a monthly subscription, but for a limited time we're letting you buy it without that bigger commitment. That was the offer. An offer can also be only the next, so many customers will get a bonus or a discount. Obviously, it can be a 14 or 30 day trial. We had that as well a $1 14 day trial. It can be a trade in offer. If you sell something physical, like Apple or Verizon may offer that trade in your old phone. Right, switch to Verizon and you'll get this. You'll get a discount or a special offer.

Speaker 2: 10:28

Another thing I just helped a client with a couple months ago they've been doing an annual summit for 14 years and so they've done a lot of split testing and really gotten their sales page to as good as they thought it could be, and one of the ways that it helped them this year was to increase the gap between free and paid, and this again, this falls under the umbrella of offer development. What is the offer? Why should people pay the $67 for recordings when they're already able to watch them or listen to them for free? You're familiar with these kinds of summits, right? Yeah? So of course, you know everyone says, well, you'll get the recordings, you can listen forever. But, yeah, sure, but that's not so competitive. That's what everyone offers. So what can we do that's different, better and more valuable.

Speaker 2: 11:20

So one thing I suggested was, instead of just letting people be part of a community forum with all the free registrants for eight days, which is the length of the summit, why don't we have a special private forum where they can get support for 60 days? That's just for the people that pay for the recordings and create more of a private community. So they added that we did a couple of other things as well. Oh, I know what it was. They mentioned to me that they've done a lot of video interviews and pulled only 20% of the content to create the episodes of the summit. But they weren't making a big point about the fact that when you pay $67, now you'll get the other 80% of the content. You'll get the complete interviews instead of just excerpts or highlights. So, again, we improve the offer by harping on the fact that you'll get the other 80% of the content and you'll get support in this private community for 60 days. So that's another way to improve an offer we hear a lot about guarantees, but apparently guarantees don't increase sales.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Can you explain maybe why or how to fix that?

Speaker 2: 12:36

Yeah, sure, so hopefully, at the very minimum, you're offering money back if someone's not satisfied. But again, that's really not competitive because that's the baseline, that's what's expected. If what you want to do is increase conversion rates, then you need to reverse the risk better than just you can get your money back. And there's a few ways you can do that. And first of all, let me say that a big problem with the guarantee is a lot of times it's buried at the bottom of the sales page. Don't bury it. Feature it. Make a big point of the fact that people have to be happy and get the results you're promising, or they don't pay. What makes that even better is to have a promise, a time frame and the risk reversal. So an example of that would be return to your natural body weight in 60 days, where everything you've downloaded is yours free. Let's say you've got a video course and some downloadable PDFs. So what you're promising is that if, in 60 days, they haven't returned to their natural body weight, you may shut off the videos if they ask for a refund, but you can let them keep the PDFs. And so what you're doing is you're promising them a guaranteed gain, no matter what they decide. That's reversing the risk.

Speaker 2: 13:55

Another thing I advise the company that sells plant fertilizer is to let customers know that if their plants don't grow bigger and faster than ever before, they can send back the empty container and a photo of the plant that they fertilized right?

Speaker 2: 14:13

This is what's called a conditional guarantee. So you're protecting yourself by making a little bit harder for people to get the refund. You know, obviously they still can and you can still promise in your headline and in your ads your plants will grow bigger and faster than ever before, or you don't pay because you are offering that, but they have to do a little bit of work of sending back the empty container and showing you a photo. Let's say you have a coaching program with eight sessions. You can offer a better than risk-free guarantee. Like you know, if you get to the end of this and don't get the results I've promised, you can get a refund. But the condition is you have to submit homework by midnight every Monday for eight consecutive weeks, and the homework might be a worksheet that you provide that takes some time and effort to fill out. So this allows you in your offer and in your ads to say you'll get this result in eight weeks or you don't pay and there's a condition to protect you.

Speaker 1: 15:17

You may or may not know the answer to this, and that's okay, because it is off the cuff. And that is how many people, or what percentage, do you think actually asks for the guarantee? Do you know what that is? If not, it's okay. In other words, how many people actually? I didn't get anything and do this. I wouldn't think it would be very many, because most people forget they had a guarantee.

Speaker 2: 15:42

Well, it depends on the price. You know, if you're selling a $17 book, no one's going to bother, especially if it's conditional. You know you might say your book has five chapters and every chapter has some homework at the end. So you say, just show us the homework that you did and we'll give you double your money back. So how many people are going to when they already didn't do the homework? They're going to go to all that trouble just to get 17 plus another 17 back. So how many people are going to when they already didn't do the homework? They're going to go to all that trouble just to get 17 plus another 17 back. No, it's important to deliver a product that really can provide the results you're promising. Okay, you don't want to be fooling people when your product or service can't do that and it's fair to expect them to do the necessary steps to make it happen, right? So if you've got a coaching program, they have to do some work, right? It might be that they fill out the homework and send it every.

Speaker 1: 16:35

Monday. So about decoy pricing? What is it? How can it increase your customer value?

Speaker 2: 16:42

Great question. So we use this with the Vegetarian Health Institute, the company I founded. And so this is where typically you have three price points and you have two where the prices are very close to each other but the more expensive one offers so much more that it makes that one seem like a better value or even like a deal. Because if you just have one price point, people don't know what to compare it to. They're not sure is this a good value. But if you have two price points at least, like basic and deluxe, then they can compare them to each other and see which one feels like a better value overall. Right, if you're saying for $87, you get the basic and for 97, you get the deluxe, which has a million more features, it's pretty obvious to buy the deluxe, right In our case.

Speaker 2: 17:37

So we had a 1997 a month program, $49.97 and $59.97. And the $49.97 was the decoy. So the $49.97 offered some more than you would get for $19.97 a month, but not nearly as much as the $59.97 program. With the most expensive program you would actually be able to earn a certificate by taking an open book exam after each of 50 lessons and if you passed all the exams, or when you passed all the exams you get a certificate and for a lot of people that's a big deal to be able to say I got a certificate. So for them, you know, to spend an extra $10 a month, you know, versus $49.97, really was a no-brainer and hardly anybody bought the intermediate price point because the value was so much greater for a small increase.

Speaker 1: 18:35

We've talked about specific questions. What are some of the common mistakes? You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is produced by my company, Boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest. We've talked about specific questions. What are some of the common mistakes that hurt conversion?

Speaker 2: 19:20

sales Okay. So one of them is let's say, on your sales page you got a headline, you got a couple of opening paragraphs and then you put a link to your checkout page. That's a headline. You got a couple of opening paragraphs and then you put a link to your checkout page. That's a mistake.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Well, it depends on the price of your product.

Speaker 2: 19:32

If it's $17, it might be okay, but if it's $97, if it's a few hundred dollars, if it's a few thousand dollars, it's critical that you establish the value of what you're selling and overcome objections before you let people know what the price is.

Speaker 2: 19:49

That's why video sales letters have been really popular in some markets. One of the main benefits of video sales letters is that there's no way somebody can see the price until they've watched a certain amount of the video. It might be 20, 25 minutes, and that's on purpose. That's to make sure that they don't go and look at the price and say, oh, that's too expensive and then just abandon your page is to make sure that they really get all of the reasons why this is different and better than any other solution and they really feel agitation around the costs, the pains and problems that they're going to keep living with if they don't solve their problem or if they choose the wrong solution, and that you overcome their objections. All that has to be done before you reveal the price. Now, it's okay to have a regular sales page instead of a video, but if you do, make sure that you wait until you've shown you've really established all these things and mentioned your guarantee and shown testimonials with with success stories, before you let people go to your checkout page.

Speaker 1: 20:58

You mentioned testimonials. Why aren't those working like they used to?

Speaker 2: 21:03

Oh, I don't think it's. I don't think it's a difference of now and before. I think it's just a difference of lame testimonials versus compelling testimonials. That's always been a problem, yeah yeah, yeah, we.

Speaker 1: 21:17

I know of a influencer on LinkedIn and you can scroll for about 10 minutes on his landing page and nine and a half minutes is testimonials. It's the weirdest thing. It goes forever on testimonials. So can you? Can you talk about the testimonials being lame or not and how to get those better?

Speaker 2: 21:41

Absolutely yes. So let's say, you gave me a testimonial and it said Trevor is a really great conversion expert and he met our deadline. That's not very compelling. Right now I'm working on a sales page for a company that sells air filters and they have a lot of testimonials. One of the ones I looked at said something like we live in Los Angeles and there's a lot of wildfire smoke here and when we run your air filter we sleep easier at night, knowing that it's protecting our air.

Speaker 2: 22:16

But again, for me that's not a great testimonial because it does not describe a result that the person got, a result that the person got going from in this case, going from having ailments or symptoms to having relief from those ailments or symptoms.

Speaker 2: 22:33

Or, in my case, you know, if you were to come to marketingexpertscom, all the testimonials talk about results. Trevor increased our conversion rate by this percent or that percent or tripled our response, whatever it might be, those are the kinds of testimonials that you want, ones that show the results. Also, it's important that testimonials be believable. If you only have a first name or first name and last initial, that's not as believable as having a full name, and a full name is not as believable as having a full name with a city and state. Or if you're selling to entrepreneurs, it might be better to have a full name with their title and their company name. Now you've got a more believable testimonial, because people sometimes imagine that your testimonials might be fabricated, and the more you can do to make it believable, the better. Might be fabricated, and the more you can do to make it believable, the better. The most believable are video testimonials or screenshots of reviews that you got on independent sites like Yelp, trustpilot or your Facebook page.

Speaker 1: 23:38

I know a lot of people go on websites and one of the common challenges I hear from especially e-commerce sites is people go to the checkout and then they abandon their cart. Anything you can help us with on that part?

Speaker 2: 23:52

Yeah, sure. So, as I mentioned before, make sure you don't link people to the checkout page too soon. But in addition, you want to don't assume that just because people went to the checkout page now they're convinced and they're going to make a purchase when they get there. They're still waffling and it's a real help if you can show again the testimonials with the headshots. Show again an image of the deliverables that they're going to receive. Other things you want to put on there restate your risk reversal. Remind them that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. For example, in the example I gave earlier, return to your natural body weight in 60 days or you pay nothing and everything you've downloaded is yours free. Make sure that all that stuff is on the checkout page so if they're still waffling on the checkout page, so if they're still waffling, they are reassured of all the reasons they originally clicked through to your checkout page.

Speaker 1: 24:53

So do you work or do you have, the marketing company that builds the websites, or do you work with website companies? I mean, how does this work together? Do you provide copy for the websites or how does the process work? Yeah, good question.

Speaker 2: 25:10

I provide the copy and suggested formatting in Google Doc, and I've got a couple of web designers I work with that I recommend, of course, if you have your own, you know, so much the better. But these designers are great and they've done stuff for me and for my other clients so I trust them Because it really is about.

Speaker 1: 25:32

As I browse through your website, you've got different color text, you've got some bold, you've got some italic, and it really is about the placement right, the features, what people's eyes are drawn to, I guess as much as the actual words, like the verbs you were talking about earlier. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 2: 25:56

I wouldn't say that design is my expertise, so you might get better answers from a web designer. It's kind of like I know it when I see it. Most of the times the page design for desktop looks okay, but what I find more common is the problem is the mobile version, where whatever software the person's using whether it's WordPress or high level or Shopify or something else when it's on mobile the images obviously get rearranged in how they appear relative to the copy, and sometimes there's too much white space between sections. Sometimes the images get shrunk in a way that doesn't look good. So part of what I do is, once the designer has made the desktop and mobile versions, I look it over and give the client suggestions on what I think could make it better.

Speaker 1: 26:57

Do you do the copy for different mediums, so in other words direct mail, business cards, videos, I mean, what all can you provide the copy for?

Speaker 2: 27:05

Well, you wouldn't need me for business cards. I'm overqualified for that. You should only hire me if your goal is to have people buy something after they read what I write. So that's probably not a business card. Mostly I do sales pages and video sales letters. Also I help with checkout pages. I've done email campaigns. For example, a Weber who you may know hired me to improve their follow-up email sequence. In the past I've also done back in the day. You know I started in 1998. I did a lot of direct mail. I did magalogs, but most of my clients today are doing online stuff. So that's my orientation now.

Speaker 1: 27:46

How does the process work? So, if someone does have a web designer or agency that they're using, is it the copy first or is it the design first? I mean, how does that work together? I mean, or is it a combination?

Speaker 2: 28:01

That's an excellent question. I don't think I've been asked that. Well, if you already have a website and a logo, then hopefully you already have colors that represent your brand and maybe a font right, there's certain look and feel things on your site. I would recommend that when you make a landing page and by a font right, there's certain look and feel things on your site I would recommend that when you make a landing page and, by the way, one thing I didn't mention earlier is anytime you're driving people to a page where you want them to buy something, there should be no internal navigation, there should be no way for them to go, click around and see other pages on your website. So this is one of the things that makes a landing page or a sales page different than a regular website page. You don't want them to go and get lost in your website, right? You want them to just have one thing to do, which is read your offer and make a decision.

Speaker 2: 28:51

Okay, so going back to your question. Okay so, going back to your question. So let's say your colors are blue and gold and your font is Helvetica I don't know, I'm just making that up. So yeah, on the landing page or sales page, which you might do in funnel software like ClickFunnels or GoHighLevel, or it could be in WordPress. You'd want to have the same colors, the same font, the same look and feel, but I don't see any way you can really design that page until I give you the copy, because that'll define where there's going to be a table, where there's going to be columns, where there's going to be subheads, where the guarantee goes in a big box, and you know, at that point you take that to your designer or one of the designers I work with, and have them show them your existing site, your existing colors, your logo, and have them create a sales page that is aligned with your current brand.

Speaker 1: 29:49

You said that was a question you've never been asked and I feel a little guilty asking that because I have a little bit of experience in the marketing world. One of my companies previous companies I exited in 2019, one of the services that we offered was printing, and we printed a lot of direct mail and we always had it was kind of one of those the chicken or the egg and because we would have a postcard that somebody wanted to send out, an oversized postcard, you know, five by eight or seven whatever.

Speaker 1: 30:20

And the content writer were like you can't write a letter to grandma, like they would give us this long copy, and we're like we're only dealing with this, so much space. And and then they're like well, you know, it was never a matter, it was always a problem if you had two different agencies competing, for you know the sales side and the actual design side. So AI is a big deal right now and I know a lot of people are using it for copy and content. Can you, in your space, kind of share what weaknesses, challenges, strengths that AI can bring to the table and what?

Speaker 2: 31:07

are some things that people are using it for that is hurting them more, even though they think it's helping. Okay, good questions. So one thing that AI can help you with is let's say that you help with weight loss. What is the way that you help with that? Because there's a lot of ways. There's diet shakes, there's aerobics classes or videos, there's meal plans.

Speaker 2: 31:29

Let's say that you sell meal plans as your solution. You can go into AI and say what are the advantages of losing weight with meal plans instead of diet shakes or pills or aerobics classes or videos, and it'll give you some pretty good differences that you can use in your copy. But now the question is why is your meal plan different and better than all the other meal plans? Ai cannot answer that, because only you know the answer to that question. It can't search the web or its database and get answers about your meal plan, because you're the one who created it, and so this goes to your unique selling proposition.

Speaker 2: 32:17

It's really essential that you make it really clear what are the advantages the unique advantages to your solution in this case, a meal plan versus all the other meal plans, not just all the other lose weight solutions, and so that's one area that I work with clients on is developing if they're not clear on it yet the unique selling proposition, developing the offer, developing the guarantee. The offer and guarantee are other places where AI can make suggestions, but it can't make decisions for you. If you just offer a normal money back guarantee and you say to AI, what should I do to improve my guarantee, it can give you a bunch of ideas, but ultimately you have to make that decision. Give you a bunch of ideas, but ultimately you have to make that decision. So I guide clients on choosing, making the best decision based on what's helped my past clients the most.

Speaker 1: 33:04

Do you feel taking AI a step further? Do you feel it's hurting or helping people that? Let's say, because I see all these promises of prompts on social media, like we had for $9.99, you can buy all these prompts. I've seen some of them that say write me as a marketing director, write me a compelling offer for blah blah, blah, blah blah, and it spits out what you're talking about. But do you know the difference between authentic, which is you, versus AI? Is that helping or hurting people using that type of software?

Speaker 2: 33:41

Well, the prompts are really important, and I think it's fine to buy prompts from somebody, because the prompts ask you questions and you're the one who's going to answer the questions. So that's in your voice, right? It's your style, it's your values it's about. It's your style, it's your values, it's your brand, and so it'll take the answers you provide and turn it into something. Um, what I found is that a lot of what it turns it into sounds kind of cliche. Um, it sounds like what you would read on everybody else's website or brochure, and so at at that point, you've still got to go in there and massage it or revise it, and sometimes the language that it comes up with.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Let me put it this way However many words you have on the sales page, you want to get the most bang for your word, right. You don't want to waste any words or sentences just saying something like we're sure that you'll be very happy with this decision. That doesn't add anything, but AI would write that into your copy. So you get the point right. You want to comb out all the fluff and all the stuff that sounds the same as what competitors would say and make sure that the copy that's in your sales page. Every sentence is something that really compels the person to want to read further, to want to solve their problem, to feel that they can trust you and that they're not taking a risk. And you know, by itself, what AI turns out will not, you know, will not achieve that goal. It does need human interaction.

Speaker 1: 35:26

I agree, and there's still a lot of business owners that are new to AI, and for those that are at the time and I say this for a reason at the time of this recording AI is currently all it's doing is intertwining, pulling together all the information. Whatever you ask it to do, or for it's pulling information in, it doesn't really have a brain, and I know a lot of business owners don't. They don't know what, where it gets that information. They just think it's smart and I'm just saying this as an educational for our listeners. If you're not, you know, ai savvy. It's getting, it's pulling information that's already out there and turning it into something that you're asking for, and, and so I want to kind of share that, because that kind of goes along with what you're saying of it still needs that human element.

Speaker 1: 36:21

It can't answer questions for you. It can pull an answer together, but it doesn't have a brain like a human does. So very cool. Well, I guarantee that you've piqued the interest of a lot of listeners. How is the best way to follow you for more information? Do you have anything they can go get? I see on your website you have a free critique button to click on. Can you share a little bit about some of those things.

Speaker 2: 36:49

Yeah, sure, If you're interested in finding out how your copy could be improved, you can run with these ideas that I've shared today. You can also come to marketingexpertscom and when you fill out the form, we'll give you a free 30-minute critique there's no obligation, there's no cost and just show you areas on your sales copy that have room for improvement and make some suggestions as to what you can do instead. At that point you know you can take the critique and you can run with it yourself. But it's also a way for us to get to know each other and see if we would be a good fit working together.

Speaker 1: 37:24

Speaking of good fit, what types of businesses is a good fit for you? Size-wise, industry-wise? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:32

I would say about half of my clients sell information. So membership sites, courses, conferences, things like that. I've also worked with an insurance agent to sell a lot more policies. I've worked with a REMAX agent who was teaching other real estate agents how to sell more homes. So he did a weekend conference and the Magalog I created for him sold out his conference in like two days. $250,000 in revenue in two days Wow yeah. And the insurance agent made like $450,000 on his first mailing of the letter. So those are some examples.

Speaker 2: 38:14

Currently writing copy for air filters, for water filters. I've done summits, I've done hypnotherapy, I've done sexual arousal cream, I've done nutritional supplements. So there's a big gambit there. So I like working with smaller businesses. You know, two to 12 employees, maybe 15. It's not really the number of employees that matters to me, it's being able to work directly with the owner or president or somebody that really understands the product or service or program and can answer the questions that I'm going to need to ask in order to do the best job to ask in order to do the best job, is this something that people work with you ongoing, or do they usually send you a project and then you fulfill it?

Speaker 1: 39:02

How does that work? I'm trying to get a sense of affordability for businesses. You don't have to give me a number of how much it costs, but just so someone has an idea of yeah, I could invest in that. I've got enough revenue for that, because not everybody's a fit.

Speaker 2: 39:18

Of course, sure. So it really depends on how much traffic you already have coming to your site or how big your email list is or your following. So it depends on you know. Do you have the ability to send a lot of traffic there? Are you already getting a lot of traffic, or do you already have a big email list or some other avenue? Perhaps it's affiliates? Some of the people I work with have a huge network of affiliates, so when they do a launch, they're getting tens or hundreds of thousands of new email subscribers. But you could start with a free critique and we can see where we go from there.

Speaker 1: 39:59

Is there a social channel that you're on A?

Speaker 2: 40:01

social channel, mainly LinkedIn. Yeah, it's Mr Trevor Levine. Mr Trevor Levine.

Speaker 1: 40:07

Fantastic. Well, I usually ask is there anything that I didn't ask today, that you're like? I really need to mention this also? I don't think so. You covered a lot of bases, covered it All right. Well, then I have one final question, and that is if you were in front of a group of business owners different sizes, different seasons of business what's one thing that could be applicable to all of them? It could be a tip, a quote, a book, anything that can help them move their business forward.

Speaker 2: 40:38

I found growing my company that it was really important to delegate. Actually, even before that I was already. I had an office assistant to do my bookkeeping and other admin work. I had a cleaning lady.

Speaker 2: 40:52

So and I still do and the thing of it is, there's two types of tasks that I think it's important to delegate.

Speaker 2: 41:01

One is work that you can sub out for 25 bucks an hour or something around there, right, If your time is worth 100 an hour, 250 an hour, something higher, whatever it might be, there's no reason for you to be doing $25 an hour work that you could have been delegating.

Speaker 2: 41:19

So, free up your time so you can either do more billable hours or you can do the kind of work that's going to create more revenue and grow your company. The other kinds of tasks are if there's something that requires expertise you don't have. So if I want to create a contract, like when I was selling my company, obviously I had a contract with the buyer I didn't try to make the contract myself. I hired a lawyer, and I hope that if you have an important contract, that you will also hire a lawyer and not do it yourself. Just the same, if when it comes to improving conversion rates on sales pages. Unless you're a trained direct response advertising copywriter, then you should be delegating that as well, because, just like with hiring a lawyer, this is an expertise that you don't currently have.

Speaker 1: 42:13

Well said. I encourage and preach and coach that all the time. If you're not an expert in that area of your business, delegate it. Go find somebody that can do it, because the time it takes you to do it or figure out how to do it, you're going to do it wrong anyways or not, as well as a professional. So delegate those tasks. So thank you so much. Well, you've been a wealth of information, a blessing to many. I wish you continued success and thank you again for being on Small Business Pivots and produced by my company, boss. Our business is growing yours. Boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours. At businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.