Episode 552 Research In Copywriting With Chris Silvestri

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns has a conversation with Chris Silvestri, a copywriter and founder of Conversion Alchemy, who specializes in B2B SaaS companies. The discussion focuses on the crucial role of research in copywriting, with Silvestri explaining his three-layer research process and how he incorporates AI tools at various stages, from analysis to generating initial copy drafts. They also touch on the challenges of working with certain clients, the typical scope of their projects (often involving website redesigns for growth-stage companies), and the importance of differentiation in copywriting.

Show Notes

Rob Cairns: Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here and today I have my guest Chris Silvestri and we’re going to talk all about research and copyrighting. How are you Chris?

Chris Silvestri: Hey Rob, I’m great. Thanks so much for having me.

Rob Cairns: Oh, such a pleasure and thank you. You’re coming to us from the UK. Are you not if I recall?

Chris Silvestri: Yes. Yes. I’m originally from Italy but moved to the UK in 2018. So established here for a while enjoying the bad weather and the bad food.

Rob Cairns: Yeah, the the two two reasons to go to the UK, right? Rainy weather and and food. And by the way, Canada…

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, Canada is pretty similar. But apart from that, like the south of England where I’m at, it’s not that bad. So, I would say it’s fair.

Rob Cairns: So, let’s kind of jump in and find out how did you um start doing copywriting and even more research in copyrighting. How did that story come about?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, so it’s a bit of a whirlwind of things coming together. I started uh I did soft I was a software engineer for 10 years um in industrial automation. So programming automatic assembly machines those that you see in factories that basically replace uh manual labor. And um in that work there was a lot of uh putting yourself in other people’s shoes uh because I had to also program the the the displays, the devices the operators use to control those machines. So it was a lot of empathy putting yourself in other people’s shoes. Then at the same time I’m I’m also a drummer, been playing for 25 years now and at the time I was pretty heavily involved with my band. We used to go and tour Europe. We did Russia a couple of times but it was always a hassle because I had to ask for time off like three months in advance. I’m a full-time hobby was a it was a nightmare. And so I wanted something more flexible. So what did I do? I went online and started searching for how to make money online. And I stumbled on a couple of things. I stumbled on I tried an Amazon FBA business selling yoga straps from China. I tried SEO blogging. I tried a lot of different things online back in 2014. And nothing really stuck. Nothing really worked until I stumbled on copywriting and I was instantly hooked by the psychology behind it, the the understanding of the decision- making process that you need to have, the persuasion aspect. And so I started studying on the side, uh, weekends at the same time when when I had my full-time job, did that for a couple of years. And then I when I saw that I was making like a,000 bucks on the side a month, I said to myself, maybe it’s time that I take the plunge and try this full-time. So at the same time, I moved from Italy to the UK. as well launched my freelance business and then I did a couple of years as a UX designer at a startup turned uh an agency turned usability testing startup learned a lot of things about UX research after a couple years of that then I went back on my own with conversion alchemy which is my current business in 2021 and so far I’ve been trying to combine all the things that I’ve learned as a software engineer as a UX designer but then merging them with copyrightiting messaging for mostly B2B SAS companies.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. And what I’ll say is B2B SAS companies as a rule do not do a really good job of copyrightiting and especially enterprise companies. You might have seen the classic jargon jargony copy on most of those websites.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. They they really don’t know how to do it. I It’s an ongoing issue.

Rob Cairns: And so I thought we’d um dive into we were talking couple weeks ago about the research and copyrightiting. Why is that so important and and yeah even more so how much is AI a part of that today?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. So what I always tell my clients is that research is 70% of my work. So when when we start working together I always tell them expect at least depending on the total scope of the project but at least a month month and a half is going to be research because then the copyrights itself and um the way that I see research I have a very structured process kind of a system that I always hope my clients take into consideration and and kind of try to install into their businesses because I know that once that’s set up then it’s always easier to constantly improve iterate on what I produce so they’re not always They’re not left on their own devices once we we are done. And the way that I see research, which also makes it easy to use and combined with AI, which we can talk about later, it’s think of research as kind of um an iceberg, right? You have the the the part outside of the water, which is kind of the surface layer, and that’s what users say. So that’s all the stuff that’s already available to most companies like maybe they have sales recordings already done so they can go in look at the transcripts or maybe they have um reviews from review websites for SAS. There’s a couple like uh Capera G2 reviews for competitors even if they don’t have their own. So all of that stuff is really good to collect and that’s what users say. The second layer which kind of is already the submerged layer is the structural layer which I see as the experience. So what users do on their website because of uh something that a lot of uh marketers even copywriters miss I think it’s that it’s considering the user experience of copy. So how do people consume the copy that you write? And that’s why I put a big focus on wireframing my copy laying it out in a way that’s clear what flow you need to follow to to consume the copy the right way so that you get to the final call to action. And for to understand that side of things, this the UX structural layer side of things. There’s things like looking at heat maps, user recording. So all the user interaction data that you can have installed or tracked on your website. All of that is super helpful. And uh or you can run usability testing. So in B2B it might be a bit harder, but it’s still you can do it with a couple of B2B the messaging testing platform or you can do it with AI. We can dive into that after the the final layer. It’s the deeper layer. It’s kind of the why users act. Why do they take those actions? So to understand that we focus a lot on qualitative data. So really interviewing customers, running qualitative surveys uh but also looking deeper into competitor messaging to understand okay what level of awareness sophistication our competitors addressing so that we can also try to mirror and take the good things that they’re doing but differentiate ourselves. Um so all of that data really understanding the decision making process when I interview customers it’s not really to ask them about uh what did you like about the product or what would you like to see done better it’s more for understanding the before during and after their decision making process. It’s like mapping out how they make decisions and why they act at the end. So yeah, I have this kind of a three layer approach that then becomes once that’s set up, it always becomes easier to collect new data, refeed it into your system or AI and then optimize based on it.

Rob Cairns: Oh, that’s really cool. Does um is part of your research also looking at the competitor to that company? You mentioned competitors. Do you actually go in and look and say, “Okay, what’s your competitor doing? What’s she saying?” So, you can attack that as well, so to speak.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. So, I always tell my clients, look at competitors, but don’t copy them. So, the that’s a big point because a lot a lot of them just go on websites and say and see their value position headline and okay, let’s steal it, ethically steal it. And uh the way that I like to look at competitors, so there’s a this super simple framework that I use to understand other websites or in general websites copy. So looking at any page if you divide it into these three four areas you can understand basically any narrative or any any flow of the copy that you’re looking at. So basically the first one it’s motivation. So what is uh that’s bringing people to this page and how is this company matching that motivation? What are their desired outcomes or the strugg goals or the trigger points. The second part which is usually the below the fold is the value. How is the company presenting what they do, who they do it for and how uniquely better differently and which is all about the features, differentiators but also ways of doing things, approaches maybe support can also be another one. And the the last part of kind of the core of the page is the anxiety section which is addressing all objections that people might have or how do they use social proof to address those objection, what kind of personas they use in their social proof that can tell you who they’re speaking to. So all of those little things and then finally the final final section is typically the call to action. But it’s very helpful I found to understand and dissect any piece of copy by motivation, value, and anxiety. It’s super simple. Anyone can do it and it can really help you give you the sites that you need to actually write your own copy rather than stealing it.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. And and to be fair, steal stealing it doesn’t really help you because it ju doesn’t differentiate you from your competitors. It just makes you the same. So if every website’s the same, every piece of copy’s the same.

Chris Silvestri: Exactly. Who does the customer go to? Like not you.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. Totally. And Yeah.

Chris Silvestri: And um you’re totally right. Like differentiating is also it’s not only about the copy you write but it’s also about your unique point of view your unique insight that you offer like what’s your view on the industry the market that tells your customers that you’ve thought about this that you are unique because you approach it from a different angle maybe so all of those things you can’t really copy them from competitors so you have to inject your own.

Rob Cairns: yep yeah and this is why I like the book the inside advantage so much um by Robert Bloom. It talks about exactly this is making finding the things that make your business unique and different and stand out and stop fighting all these wars on price which we all know since companies just love to do. They fight the price battle and the price battle is in my books is a losing proposition 101 right it’s

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. Yeah. totally especially especially now with AI where basically everything’s having commoditized because everyone has got AI in their own platform.

Rob Cairns: So yeah, so so let’s go there. So I I agree with you, but I don’t agree with you. So the I agree it’s become commoditized, but if it was so easy, every business owner would do it all with AI and they wouldn’t use people like you and I to do stuff for them. So I would humbly disagree that the average business owner doesn’t know how to use AI and really it’s not their job.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I I it’s it’s commoditized in the sense that everyone can use it, but doesn’t mean that everyone can produce good work with it. And uh and at the end of the day, like I think our job as like marketers, copywriters, it’s more and more going to be that of kind of architects, orchestrators, and editors because we have that kind of intuitive sense, but also the the higher level vision of the Y behind it and uh and that’s what probably businesses who use AI don’t really have and that’s maybe why they end up producing lower quality work because they don’t have that kind of sense and uh than the high level do.

Rob Cairns: Yeah, I I agree with that. It’s one of the reasons I don’t call my business an agency anymore. I call it a digital concierge. And the reason I do is because I kind of put all the pieces together and AI is one of those pieces. So yeah, and that and that’s what I do. So I I changed I changed the framing of that about eight months ago and it’s actually gone over really well because because of that. Um let’s jump in AI a little bit more because it’s hard to have this conversation and not mention those two letters. It really is in this day and age. Um how much are you using AI as part of your process and which AI tools do you like and why?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, I use it pretty much everywhere, every stage. So for research, what I do, it’s typically I conduct my own like human research with real customers like interviewing uh my c my clients customers, looking at competitors and collecting information, um running writing surveys. I I can use AI for setting up and helping me write some of those surveys or like the questions that I ask in interviews. based on the personas that I have to speak to just to give me more ideas just because I have my own frameworks and processes. But it’s always good to get the that different perspective especially when you’re someone like us that’s constantly changing a niche, constantly looking at different clients. So you might want to get more of a fresh perspective. And then for analysis uh strategy I use obviously AI to synthesize some of the documents all the same all the um call transcripts, analyze them, categorize them by themes, all the reviews. Uh it’s very helpful. It’s still not I still don’t trust it. I don’t know if you found a a solution, but for example, for giving you like specific numbers out of a lot of data, like if you have a huge spreadsheet with I don’t know thousands of elements, I still don’t trust it. It typically hallucinates and doesn’t really give you like the exact numbers. So for that, I try to do it manually but for extracting I don’t know the top themes the the priorities all of those like to give you a a sense of the total of the thing the context is very good.

Rob Cairns: and I found um not to stop you but I found with numbers and data I tend to use Excel and uh yes when I’m doing data and I find if you’re going to do data extraction co-pilot is the way to go and because copilot is micro soft AI product and so you use it inside um inside Excel for example

Chris Silvestri: you you can use it inside Excel and Copilot is actually built into uh Microsoft 365 formerly Office 365 so it’s already built in now hence why Microsoft just increased the price of the product yeah I I’m waiting for something for Google Workspace because I’m mostly Google Workspace

Rob Cairns: they just added Gemini all over the place But still, I don’t not sure. Yeah,

Chris Silvestri: I don’t think Gemini does as good a job for numbers. And I use I was saying to earlier, I use Gemini probably 90% of the time, but for some stuff, it’s still not the best to breed, so to speak. So,

Rob Cairns: yeah, but for

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. Yeah. totally. Uh, every day there’s something new. So, for So, for the research strategy, I typically start as well with Gemini just because it’s got the biggest context window. So I really like having like a huge amount of data that I can share with it especially at the beginning where it’s still not crystallized into a specific strategy. So I share all the interview transcript even the proposal from with my client just to have it understand the context of what we are trying to achieve um and all the research. So I basically create like a kind of like a marketing assistant chat that can help me throughout the process at the beginning. Then when I transition into the strategy, so I work with the client on the strategy, I do the workshops, we crystallize our for example positioning, messaging strategy into specific documents. That’s when I use AI to to help me write some of those for example value proposition or the messaging framework that I have um in place. But then at the same time in those cases and that’s when I use cloud just because it’s better at writing and I find once you start narrowing down the problem to more specific um specific things that you’re looking at for example we got the positioning I shared the positioning you got the messaging I shared the messaging then with those two frameworks claude even though it doesn’t really have a lot of memory you can really think well with that stuff that you already basically filtered down to it can help you write very good messaging and copy so I use that but At the same time, it’s very very like back and forth. Um, I have it write something, I edit it myself, I tell it, okay, this is how I wanted to write. This is the voice that I want to keep. And and then slowly it starts learning what I want. Once I see that I have a good result, then I basically can start scaling that. And that’s when we get to the final the copy stage. That’s when I share. I typically use this other tool that’s uh called team GPT. which is um a collaboration AI tool where you use the it’s connected to the APIs for entropic or open AI and you can have a shared chat with your team. So I have it shared with my junior copywriter and we collaborate on copy but using the same exact voice tone uh messaging strategy because everything is shared in the client project inside that uh LLM that we use. So we basically can collaborate on the same exact consistency, style, and everything. And yeah, again, that’s kind of a very iterative process. We have it write something, we add it, and uh we typically find that once we’ve done the whole website, that chat is basically ready to replicate our work almost to a tea very efficiently. Uh I I still have to get to the point where I deliver the client the actual chat as a product that they can use, but there could be some maybe in the future or like an additional service that I could offer. We’ll see.

Rob Cairns: Um that that’s really interesting. And the point is there’s no one sizefits-all in the AI world. Like you’re using multiple tools as we’re talking about to do your thing. And you know, we’re talking copyrightiting, but even more so if you get in images and stuff, then there’s all kinds of tools. So it’s like it’s like choose, right?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. There there’s even like a few other ones. There’s per lexity I’ve been using it for some research specifically for to research on Reddit or social media or academic papers or there’s notebook lm that’s pretty handy when you want to limit your search to only um specific documents that you have because you can select the sources that it goes and looks at and it also doesn’t add its own intelligence to it. It’s basically just retrieves the information that you share with it. So it’s different use

Rob Cairns: No, I love Notebook LM. I have to tell you, I use it almost every day. Did Did you try the the new mind maps that they have? It’s crazy.

Chris Silvestri: No, but I’m about to because I am a mind map junkie. So, that is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Cairns: That’s on my list of things to do. Yeah.

Chris Silvestri: It’s it’s just amazing like these tools. And I think you’re better off standardizing with three or four tools because one of the cool things with AI tools is they tend to adjust themselves for you. Like they they start to learn what you’re asking and what you’re looking for. So I find the more you use certain tools, the better they get. And I find that a lot with Gemini now. I’ve been using it so long that when I throw something at Gemini, it knows exactly what I’m looking for.

Rob Cairns: And do you use the uh Gemini 2 flash now?

Chris Silvestri: I I do very much so. I’ll tell you a cool experiment I did last Friday. I was out with my partner and uh I said to her, “Let’s try something. Let’s throw your name into AI and see what comes up.” Now, she is not on the web. She’s um an admin assistant for a major insurance broker. So, I’ll tell you that. But she has been mentioned in a couple of my podcasts and she’s generally my podcast is dedicated to her and she’s been mentioned. Do you know Gemini actually went into the podcast and pulled the information?

Rob Cairns: Oh, wow. Can you actually search? I didn’t know that it can search.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, it can. Yeah. Yeah. So, and and she’s like, “Really?” And it said exactly what I thought thought about and u and it was quite interesting. I mean, it wasn’t a lot of information, but it was like a five line summary. Yeah. Wow. And it was just And she and she almost fell off her chair, I have to tell you.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. The world we live in, Chris. The world we live in. Yeah,

Chris Silvestri: let’s jump into let’s jump into business a little bit. We’ll talk a little bit about process. What does it typically take you when you do an analysis? You said the research takes about a month. What’s what’s the typical process for for an average client? Is it a couple months? Is it six months? What is it?

Rob Cairns: Yeah, the whole all projects which uh I mean the like the full scope typically are positioning strategy uh I mean research positioning strategy, messaging strategy, and then the copywriting for typically the website or emails or sales collaterals. Those are typically what we do. Typically can be two or three months like a full scope project and but that’s all our projects are typically also involved redesigning the website because the client typically our clients need to reposition their product company because of market shifts or maybe just just launched something new or they got acquired and so they need to to change things. So yeah, typically two three months and um start from research understanding the three areas that I always like to dive deep into as I mentioned those layers but for each layer I also look at uh internal research so understanding the team’s perspective my client perspective and the product then the external which means uh prospects and customers so that we can understand that transformation that needs to happen before they buy and after they buy and then the market competitors. So I always try to get as a comprehensive pictures as possible on those three three kind of areas.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. So and and what’s the typical size of a company that you’ll deal with in terms of either size or revenue? One or the other. Yeah. Like this. Yeah. So typically series A to B companies doing I don’t know 5 to 10 million a year. And uh I also work maybe with some startups but typically already have product market fit. So uh or maybe yeah so they they already they’re kind of like in growth mode. Those are typically my clients.

Rob Cairns: Startups are startups are hard. I mean Bronos I don’t know if you know has a large startup community very much so. A lot of startups I think they’re coming out of Ukraine. Some not I don’t know as much the war going on but you know traditionally and a lot of folk come out of is Israel which is really interesting.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. Israel is a big startup.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the Silicon Valley one of the Silicon Valley brothers here in the in in the other side of the pond.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. There’s a really cool book I don’t know if you’ve ever read up read it called Startup Nation and it talks about Israel’s startup community. It’s just a interesting read if everybody anybody’s into that. As you can tell, I’m a major reader in my spare time that I don’t that I don’t have.

Rob Cairns: Exactly. Same. I have like a hundred of books in my list. Yeah. Yeah. Those ones I’ve read actually. So, you know, it’s just it’s just fascinating. Um, so that talks do you have a do you have a um you know, it’s interesting when I get into projects like this. Do you ever have a a project that you taken on and you kind of look and say why did I take that on and maybe I I shouldn’t have or or maybe I knew I shouldn’t have but I did anyway and you regret it. Have you ever gone through that process?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, I got a couple in the past currently maybe because I optimized my processes and I can um I learned how to better filter from the get-go. But in the past some of those projects were when the client like we started working together and the client after I delivered the first couple of things the client didn’t really first doesn’t really value the research work. So even if we we show them okay this is all the research that we’ve done they basically want to decide like on their own on their own with their own perspective their own choices basically they they don’t even look at it and or when it comes to the actual copy they start micromanaging everything and just oh god wanting to change every single word without backing it up with actual why or with the proof or without even looking at the research that we’ve done. So those are probably some nightmare projects, but lately I have to say it’s been happening very rarely. So I’m pretty happy with the clients that have gotten so far.

Rob Cairns: I I think we get I think we get better about filtering out bad clients as we go around, right? We’ve all we’ve all been there. I’ve I’ve had nightmares. Clients clients get burned by agencies and we get burned by clients as well.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, it give and take. Yeah. Um, does scope creep ever become a big issue in your business where you where you put together all this and then the client comes to you and say I really want more or is that not as much?

Rob Cairns: No, not really. Um, because in our case it’s very it’s very gradual because the research tell us tells us like dictates the strategy. The strategy dictates the website and typically at the start I try to budget a bit more. more than what I think would be needed. Like even for the website pages, if we have to write I know that we have to rewrite the website, I try if I if I know that the core pages are maybe 10 15, I try to budget for 20 25 just in case we can uh we need to write more or we need to have more rounds of revisions. So

Chris Silvestri: I’ve been most are most of the websites WordPress based or other seamless

Rob Cairns: uh WordPress, a couple of Web Flows, Web Flow.

Chris Silvestri: Okay. For now, especially for kind of like newer companies, but yeah, WordPress, I don’t I don’t really like touch the the the back end of websites, but maybe I interact with the designers once it’s time to actually implement the wireframes that we do. So, I might might have that back and forth, that collaboration.

Rob Cairns: Yeah. Yeah, that’s really interesting. Um, been a great chat. I I think uh people get a great idea of what your process is, how you do it. Um it’s certainly an eyeopener for a lot of people.