AIPIS 141 - Sales Copy with REI Focus with Aaron Hoos

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Welcome to the AIPIS show for accredited income property investment specialists and those who desire to be. This is your host, Jason Hartman where we're we talk about increasing your income, your productivity and just generally having a better life while serving your clients better with America's most historically proven asset class income property. We have a great interview for you today and we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds.

Hey, it's my pleasure to welcome Aaron Hust to the show. He is a copywriter and a funnel design expert. He does sales funnels. Boy, this term is almost overused nowadays. If anyone talks about a funnel again, I think I'm going to go crazy just hearing this all the time. But it is a really valuable marketing tactic when you put the right copy into it. So if you are in any business and you want to attract more business, this is for you. But especially he has a specialty he focuses on real estate investors. Corporate course. Real estate investing is one of my lifelong loves, or at least adult lifelong loves. And and so we'll dive into this topic. Aaron, welcome. How are you?

Thanks very much, Jason. I'm good. How are you doing?

Good. It's good to have you. So if you'll pardon the pun, I want you to lead us down this funnel.

And let's first talk about copywriting. You know, it seems like every time I am listening to a marketer of any type in any vertical, they all say that copywriting is such a critical element. Many of them got their start in the business in the world of copywriting. Why is that so important? And how do you distinguish the good, the bad and the ugly? I mean, how do you become a good copywriter?

Wow, those are great questions, Jason. I think good copy versus bad copy, it just comes down to dollars. Who of your audience, your listeners or your readers, is going to take out their wallet and pay for whatever it is you're selling? And I think that really is the ultimate distinguishing factor between good and bad copy.

Okay, so that's the way we keep score. That's the Way we know if the copy is good or bad. How do we write good copy? Like, take us through. How did you learn to do this? You know, teach us something about it?

Sure. I have been marketing for years. I've been writing for about 20 years. And I started out as a newspaper journalist and then ended up in the marketing side and then ended up in copy. And what I loved about copy was that it was so focused on direct response. So it's not just informational, although that's a portion of it, but it's more focused on getting your reader to take out their wallet. And what kind of got me interested in it was that I was working in real estate, in finance, and then moving into real estate. And I just wanted to not only raise awareness for the work that I was doing, but I wanted to get people to take action, you know, And I think that's really the value of what copy is all about, is driving people to take action.

So tell us how you learned it. I mean, did you take a class? Did you read a book? Which book did you read? Which class did you take? We want to know. You know, the listeners want to know specifically how to do this a little bit.

Most of it was just done trial and error. Like, my early stuff was. You know, you put it out there, you see what works. You go back and you tweak it, and you put it out again. And I think for anyone who's learning copywriting, whether they're just starting out or even continuing on as an advanced copywriter, one of the best strategies you can do is to learn to test something and then modify it and repeat and just keep doing that over and over. The work of a copywriter is never done because you should always be testing. So some of the resources that I use to study copywriting, it wasn't just trial and error. I did read as many, and I still do read as much as I can about copywriting all the time. So I'm a big fan of Dan Kennedy. I think if readers are only gonna have time to follow one copywriter, follow Dan Kennedy. He's really good. I love John Carlton. I studied under him. Not face to face, but some of his work. He has a course, and so I took his course. Gary Halbert. I read a lot of stuff that Gary Halbert does.

A lot of people mention Gary.

Yeah, yeah. And then I even went back to, like, some of the early copywriters, like John Caples, who wrote a very famous sales letter about sitting down to the piano. Everyone laughed when I sat down to the piano. But when I started to play was such a great sales letter from 1926, so I went back and studied the classics. And so just through study and trial and error.

Okay, good. What are some of the key overriding themes or techniques that some of these greats use? Probably going to say have a great headline. That's the first thing. But what makes a great headline and where do you go from there?

Well, yeah, you're right, a headline, A headline is pretty important. But yeah, it's just one component. Although I know most copywriters, I think most good copywriters spend a majority of their time on headlines. And I do too. I spend as much time as I do on the headline as they possibly can. And in today's world, where tweets are 140 characters, your tweet is a headline or your subject line and your email is your headline. So it pays to spend a lot of time in your headlines. So to answer your question about what components make up good copywriting, think a story, a good story really helps your copywriting. And that's what makes John Caple's original sales letter about the piano so compelling because it just drops you right into the middle of a story if your headline has a story. Wow, that's so powerful. Another technique that, or a strategy that works really well for copywriting is you need to know who your target market is. Don't write for a general audience, but know them down to the detail, who they are. So whenever I'm writing my copy, I have a little sheet in front of me and it's got, I even put a picture on it, you know, like a little bit about their age, what they do, even what they do when they're not thinking about the copy that I'm writing. And I try to write just to that person alone.

Right.

Make a big, big difference.

Okay, okay, good, good. In terms of writing to them, knowing your target, obviously all of that's important. What are some of the other techniques that they use? You know, the formatting, the subheads, the length of the copy, whether you should be asking a lot of questions in the copy, what should your tone be? Should it be serious, should it be funny? Should it be self effacing? I mean, there's so many layers to this. It's really just human communication, isn't it?

Yeah, you're right, it really is. And psychology, I feel I've got a bit of a background in the humanities before I got into real estate and my psychology studies, which I barely paid attention to at the Time have paid off over and over again just to understand what motivates people, what doesn't motivate them, and just understanding people, it's so important. But to answer your question, yeah, formulas, those are huge. So if you can just even get a couple formulas that work in your copy, that formula will run all the way through. So Dan Kennedy has one formula that I absolutely love. He uses it in many of his sales funnels. And again, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Find what someone does well and use it. And a formula he used is problem, agitate, resolve.

So in other words, point out the problem. Maybe, maybe the reader's not aware of the problem and then make it a little more painful. Get them to agitate it.

Right.

Get them to feel the pain a little and then solve it.

Absolutely. And you know, too often I do this too sometimes and I have to go back to the formula. But too often you just quickly mention the problem in a sentence or two and then you try to resolve it right away. But the real secret in using this formula is to just keep hammering home on the pain. When someone feels the pain, that's when they'll buy and see. So that's the power of that formula.

Okay. The reason people probably gloss over that is because they think that their reader already gets it about that. Right. But that's not necessarily true that you gotta make em feel that pain. They're, you know, for example, if it's, you know, financial, they're not already feeling the pinch, they're not already feeling like they need to do something about their money problems or their money situation.

I think people do feel they might feel the problem, the pain of the problem, but I don't think they realize always the extent of the problem. And so when we're thinking about a problem, we want to delay or so often procrastinating about the solution. But the more that the copywriter can pile on the pain, show that it's real, show that it's imminent, then the audience will take action.

Okay. Okay, good. What else can you share before we dive into the funnel subject here? You know, in terms of some of those other things I mentioned or maybe something I didn't mention about copywriting, you know, what tone do you take? How long should it be? All of that kind of stuff.

Good. Yeah, those are good questions. As far as the tone to take, that really depends on a few factors, such as who you're writing to, what do they need to hear? Some people need to have it just told straight up. Just be Blunt. Other people need to have more of a caring concern. So it's slightly informed by who you're writing to. But there are different characters that you kind of adopt a Persona when you write based on who you think your audience would be most responsive to. Sometimes it's going to come down to testing to decide who they're going to respond to the best. But it could be a straight talking person. It could be more of a professorial type who has all the answers and is now pulling back the curtain and revealing them to everyone else. I think one very popular way is just to be someone who's angry and wants to reveal to the world the truth that they discovered that's being hidden from everyone else. So there's different sort of Personas, and that really is going to drive your tone. And it's hard to say in general which one to use. There's lots of different ones and you just need to kind of figure that out from who you're writing for. And then to answer your question about the length. So some copy, I mean, you look at a tweet and that can be copy. And so you're looking at 140 characters, but a longer sales letter. I write them for clients and they're usually 2 to 5 to 15 pages. And I've seen them even longer. And people say the long sales letter is dead, but it's not. It still sells.

Yeah, interesting. When you talk about the classics, you talk about Carlton, who's sort of the oldest copyright writer teacher out there. Don't go back to Scripture or something and say, well, you know, King Solomon and Ecclesiastes. I mean, I think that's brilliantly written. Okay, but let's not do that. Okay. Although I would agree with it in many ways. Who's like the founder of this world that you know of? Is it Carlton? And you didn't mention Bob Bly, by the way. I thought that was.

No, I know. You're right. Actually, I have a couple of his books. I didn't mention him. He's a. He's a good guy. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're going back to even those long form. I mentioned John Caples, 1926. His was a long form sales letter. It took up the whole page of a magazine. It was. And it was all text with a little black and white picture of a guy at the piano with some, you know, his friends standing around. And that was 90 years ago. So.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So 1926, you think is about the oldest. Right. Because here's my follow on question, isn't it fair to ask what's changed since then? When you talk about long form copy, I just can't imagine. I mean nowadays people are so distracted, the attention span has become so short. It's amazing to me that even like the Dan Kennedy era still works that well. I mean, isn't it fair to ask, hasn't this changed?

Some of it has and there are a couple things happening right now that have changed and we can talk about those. But people are still reading long form sales letters because people scan because they different things will will click for different people. So you've got your headlines, you got your sub headlines, you get your bullets, your testimonials, all of those things fit. And the more you have, the more you're gonna have to scan stuff into your sales letter. It's going to make it really long. But not everyone's going to read one from top to bottom. They're going to look for the stuff that stands out to them. So in some ways that part hasn't changed. The parts that have changed are the technology we can use. And so Jeff Walker product launch sort of famously turned the sales letter on its side or something like that. Basically he will do a sales letter, a long form sales letter, but sends it out in email, for example, or in some other form over a series of days. And then also we're seeing so much now the power of video. That video makes that long form sales better, but compresses it obviously in just a video. And you can make those as long as you want because you've got the multi sensory aspect engaging your audience. So there are some new technologies that work, but it's still the long form sales letter ultimately.

Yeah. Okay, so long form, even in today's world of declining attention. Spanish. Okay, so what is a sales funnel? Why don't you just define that for the listeners?

Well, I define it as the step by step process to attract more of the right people to your business, build a relationship with them and then sell more to them.

Tell us what that looks like online. You know this, this funnel, the example of an online sales funnel. What does it include?

Some people will just talk about the sales funnel being sort of as soon as someone lands on your website, your landing page. I think of the funnel much earlier than that. I think your funnel is as soon as you start marketing to people, you're starting to attract them, starting to let them know about the pain or the problem they have. You're starting to reach out to your audience. So you are Starting your funnel probably a little bit higher than most people think of it, you're using all kinds of different marketing. We don't need to get into the details of that now, but you're basically using different kinds of marketing to attract, to capture attention. Then from there, people will want to learn more. So they'll somehow join your. Maybe join your mailing list or maybe follow you on Facebook. There's lots of different ways, but then they'll become leads. They'll become connected to you and listen to you in some way. And then once they're leads, then you can build a relationship with them. So maybe that means emailing them regularly, sending out tweets regularly that connect them, maybe doing something for your Facebook followers. You're building relationship, you're building trust, building credibility. And then finally, at the very bottom of your funnel, the narrowest point is where you make your offer and some people will act, some people will buy from you, and then actually the funnel continues on after that as you continue to build a relationship with them. That's really the very basic funnel is capturing attention, generating leads, building relationship, and then selling.

Okay, that's a good outline of how a funnel works and what it is, but what actually goes on each webpage or tell us about the user experience of that. So we did some advertising. Say, for example, it's on Facebook. Someone responds, then what? We try to just get their email address and then go from there in nurturing the relationship.

That's a good question. So part of it will depend on what you're planning to sell or what you're planning to do with them. So it might be their email address. You might need to get something else, like their phone number or their regular address. But let's just start with that. So let's say you have an ad on Facebook. It promises them something. They go to a website. On the website, you might have, I think something really popular right now is to have video which you're talking about, some benefits, some strategies that they can learn, some ideas that they want to know more about. You're hitting some pain points, kind of getting them all excited about what they could know once they learn more through you. And then you prompt them to leave their email address. And they're usually their name and email address. But I have seen it work really well with other pieces of information, too. Then they leave those pieces of information, and then you start dripping them in an email campaign. So that's very effective. Very commonly used sales funnel. Once they're in that email campaign, you can send Them information like through. Through PDFs or just in information straight up in the email and make offers through the email as you're building a relationship with them. And those offers will drive to, say, another webpage that might have a little bit more of a sales letter and then a buy now button at the bottom.

Okay.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah. So we need to craft a bunch of offers, right? It's really a funnel is a series of offers. Would that be correct?

Yeah, that's right. Some businesses try to start with just one. And if you're starting a business and you only have one, I say start a business, don't hold back. But yes, ultimately you don't want to sell to someone once. You want to sell them to them over and over again. So absolutely craft a bunch of offers. That's why you want their email addresses, because you're going to continue building that relationship with them.

Okay. Okay, good. What else do you want people to know? Maybe just in wrapping up here, a question that I haven't asked you. Anything you want to share with the listeners about either copywriting or funnel building?

One strategy that I absolutely love, and I hope your listeners can use this strategy no matter what fun funnel they're building, no matter what they're selling. And that is to think about the objections that your target market will have. Often it's, oh, it's too expensive or, you know, I need it in blue or whatever your audience's objections are. Think about those, make a list, collect as many objections as you can, and then proactively embed your responses and rebuttals to those objections earlier in your sales funnel. So we're getting kind of a crossover here between copywriting and sales funnels. But to help cut down on the number of objections that your audience has, because by the time they get to the point where they typically make objections during the sale, you've already covered them early on.

Good, good. You address those objections in advance. Yeah. Excellent. Good stuff. Give out your website. Tell people where they can find out more about you.

I'm a real estate investing copywriter, which means I mainly work with real estate investors. So people can find me at realestate investing copywriter.com Talk there about sales funnels for real estate investors. And I talk about marketing and other strategies that investors can use for their business as well.

Excellent. Aaron Huse, thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Jason. It was great being here today.

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