Presented live on Tuesday, December 1, 2020
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As a freelance copywriter, you want to be known for RESULTS…
‘Cos clients like results.
But what data do you need?
What numbers do you need to ask your clients for?
Getting performance data will require you to ask your clients for stuff.
But here’s the thing:
If you ask the right questions and deliver the right numbers, your clients will be happier.
Collecting your client’s data will help you:
- Attract better clients
- Retain happier clients
- Increase your cashflow
Jo’s going to show you the real data you need to ask your clients for.
Transcript
Introduction [00:00]
Joanna Wiebe: Today we are talking about data you need to get from your clients to prove your value. So you can actually say something about what you’ve done to contribute to growth.
We talk in Copy School about being the most profitable person in the room, and that’s 100% something you can be as a copywriter, if you’re actually measuring things. Otherwise, no matter how well you do on something, if it’s not documented your client will forget.
They’ll remember how they felt and that’s good, but they’ll forget about the numbers, they’ll forget that you help bring in these great leads for them. And they’ll start assigning you to like, Oh yeah, you did great with that landing page. But can we actually, do you guys write blog posts? And you’ll be like, how has my life come to this?
So we need to make sure nothing wrong with blog post, writing, but if you’ve done it before, it will wear you down. Whereas getting results with your copy, I have found, does not wear you down. It gets more exciting all the time because you’re always learning, learning new things and applying new things. Super Awesome.
What to Expect in This Tutorial [01:12]
So we’re going to talk about that data you need. And this is something we have office hours for anybody who’s in the 10X Freelance Copywriter. We host weekly office hours and a lot of the questions that come up are actually really good for sharing with other people. So this was driven by a question that comes up a fair amount, but I answered it again really recently.
So I wanted to share the answer with you. Let’s talk about this. Okay, so this is data to get on day one. And day one could look like any number of things, where you might be the day you actually have that kickoff call with a brand new client you’ve signed.
It might alternatively be right when you start talking to a lead you get through that 15 minute call where you say, like, okay, yeah, we could work together and then you ask them for data. That is the step before the longer 60 minute consult like call, which is where you actually close the client. Which is all of course covered in 10x Freelance Copywriter, which is reopening with cool things in January.
All right. Um, so yeah, these. So day one could happen at any time, but take note here. We’re not talking about a lot of data to pull in. No matter who you come across, they will always have more thoughts on like, well, what about this metric? What about that? And all I want to do is focus on the core things that you need to think about like the real data you need to ask your clients for.
Why You Should Ask Your Clients for Data [03:01]
And asking is not actually hard; your clients want to hear this from you. So your leads are looking for signs that you’re a pro That they’re about to hire someone, hopefully. Who can actually do this work and isn’t just sitting around thinking, how do I make it sound good?
So they’re looking for signs you’re pro when you ask for data in this way, then you look like one. It’s just a good signal. And then, of course, when you ask the existing clients for this stuff, you’re validating that they were right to choose you, because you’re asking for the right things. They’re hiring you to grow their business. They’re thinking about all of the things we’re about to walk through. So it behooves you to actually know this stuff and use this stuff.
What Data do You Need [03:45]
Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) Data
CAC: Customer acquisition cost
CTR: Click-thru rate (ads)
CR (free): Conversion rate
Okay, here’s what you need really straightforward. I’ve got the short form abbreviation acronym depending on what school of thought you subscribe to. So this is top of funnel stuff.
CAC: customer acquisition costs
If you’re working in anything top of funnel, you’re working in Facebook funnels. Maybe you’re up at the top.
Maybe you’re a landing page, or writing a landing page for Facebook ads to come, maybe it’s personalized experience. I don’t know what it is. Anything that is “top of funnel,” you’re going to want to talk through these three points, at least, but start here.
Let your client guide you through any other metrics that they might care about. And if there is something unique to what you do. Maybe your in some specialization that I know nothing about.
Then you might have something else to add to this list, or you might take something away from this list.
But this is typically what you want to think about when you’re optimizing top of funnel. What does it cost to acquire these customers? The challenge is that that’s one where your fees are actually going to be baked into that future customer acquisition costs so it’s a little tricky to report on growth in that.
But nonetheless, you want to know the starting point. Where are they at for that customer acquisition cost? And we’ll talk about year over year and month over month.
CTR: Click-thru rates
So the CTR, I have again, the abbreviation. When you write it out, when you write it as an abbreviation in an email, let’s say, where you’re like, cool. I’m going to send you at the end of a 15 minute call. You’re like, Aright, I’ll send you an email with the things that I need from you if you can add it to this Google Drive or just reply with it, or whatever.
When you speak about this stuff, it’s good to say the whole word. So when you’re talking to your client, you’d say customer acquisition cost or click through rate. When you’re writing it though, write CAC, write CTR, write CR. And that is again, that signal that you know what you’re talking about.
Because that person on the other end writes and thinks that way too. So click through rate is primarily for ads. It doesn’t mean it’s only for ads, but primarily for ads, when it’s top of funnel.
CR (free): Conversion rate
And then your conversion rate every step in the funnel has its own conversion rate. Typically top of funnel conversion rate means something free. What was the conversion rate on that ad? Converting a visitor to someone paying and that’s also your click-thru rate.
But what was that conversion rate for leads on your landing page or whatever it might be? But what’s that free conversion rate: CR when you’re writing it, conversion rate when you’re talking about it.
Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) Data [06:28]
OR: Open rate
CTR: Click-thru rate
CR (demo): Conversion rate
Then we move into middle of funnel, where we have open rate because we’re usually talking about emails when we’re in the middle of the funnel. Not always, not exclusively, but that’s what we’re typically doing here. You can also have retargeting ads or more ads that are like deeper in the funnel. So that’s coming up here too.
Open rate your or when you’re writing about it, for emails primarily click through rate. Again, also for emails and ads can be the same as well. And then your conversion rate here if it’s still middle of funnel and there’s a conversion rate it’s converting to something that is probably not yet a paid conversion, because that happens typically at bottom of funnel.
So it might be a conversion rate, convert to demo, convert to webinar lead, convert to something that’s middle funnel – not bottom of funnel. So think about your funnel and how it works.
And if you’re not familiar, but you just signed up for Copy School, take 10x Funnels, pronto. You will learn a crap tonne in there. And if you are already in Copy School, you already have 10x Funnels, so go in and do that. If you’re unfamiliar with this stuff, those are the three for middle of funnel.
Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) Data [07:38]
CR (paid): Conversion rate
AOV: Average order value
Churn: Churn rate (cancels)
And then we have bottom of funnel. Conversion rate is basically the most important one here, in most cases, everybody’s looking for this paid conversion rate increase – we want that lift. That’s what matters.
Then, come. Other things like average order value. So that’s for ecommerce, primarily, if you work in ecommerce, AOV is what you’ll write, average order value is what you’ll say. If you work in SAAS, you might be talking at bottom of funnel and beyond bottom of funnel about what’s called ARPU.
I Know it’s an amazing word to say, it’s one of the few acronyms that you actually do say and you keep a straight face and everyone loves it. ARPU: average revenue per user. It’s a great one. If you can increase ARPU, everyone’s happy for so many reasons. Because you increased it and you have to say the word.
So you have that, which I’m not showing here because we because I chose between showing the SAAS or showing the ecommerce primary data metric to think about. And instead, you know, ARPU is what you would sub in and then churn is for SAAS. So primarily for SAAS, churn is really cancellation. So when a SAAS marketer is thinking about growing their business, they’re thinking about retaining people.
Where the opposite of retention is churn. How many people are churning out every month from a cohort, they’ll talk about cohort analysis. Don’t worry, you don’t get into that right now, just go with the flow when they talk about this stuff. But yeah, this is really what we’re talking about here.
These nine metrics are a way of talking, ways of slicing the data and then talking about it. Or what you want to think about, where conversion rate appears at every single point. So be sure when you’re talking to a client about conversion rate, you’re being clear on which conversion rate you’re talking about.
They might jump really quickly to their paid conversion rate. Whereas, you’re thinking, oh, I’m just trying to generate more leads, so I’m thinking of the free conversion rates. And you might just have to bring them back and make sure they’re measuring you based on the right thing for where you are optimizing or writing in the funnel.
Okay, if you haven’t already and you’re unfamiliar with these, take a screenshot and then we’re going to move on. But this is really the core of it.
LTV: Lifetime value / CLTV: Customer lifetime value
And we can talk more about that now lifetime value or customer lifetime value. So LTV or CLTV will also come up as well. But lifetime value is another one that businesses think about a lot, and that’s really across the whole funnel.
What are you doing to acquire customers? That’s where it works with cost of acquisition, along with what is that customer worth to us in their lifetime? So we talk about customer lifetime value as well. Get familiar with that because you’re going to want to be able to at least participate in conversations where that term is used.
All we’re really saying is what is a customer worth to us? If you know that you’re working with a SAAS company and that the average lifetime of a customer or user for them is 14 months. Then they do 14, there are complex ways of calculating this, but they want to figure out how much they’re making off that person off that customer over the course of that 14 month period.
So there’s an average that will happen there. And then also the overhead all the cost to actually supply life to that customer support, the product, posting things, etc. So look into that, we’re not going to get into lifetime value right now, but look into it. Especially if you are talking about cost of acquisition, then you want to be able to understand lifetime value.
But do know that when you ask your client what their lifetime value is for their customer, you should also get comfy with the person at your clients company that figures that out. And then ask them, how was this figured out? So that you know exactly what was going into their lifetime value.
You have take your clients LTV with a GoS. You know what GoS is? Grain of salt. I made it up just for this presentation. You’re welcome.
Data Tracking Spreadsheet [12:13]
And to help you track this stuff, we made a little spreadsheet for you. So, Ange is going to check that out, if she hasn’t already. I can’t see chat.
So go there, you’ll make a copy of it. Let me show you what it looks like. Among my many, many tabs. This is the original, the one you make will begin copy of and you can just rename it or whatever. But what you want to do is track this. So when you’re having that meeting with your client, that 60 minute lead call or the kickoff call, whatever it is.
You want to understand first where the work is that you’re doing. So you don’t need to ask your client, all of these things, unless you’re working across the funnel or unless you anticipate that you’re in retainer situation. So you’ve got that, you can ask them what it was last year. What was your customer acquisition cost last year at this time? So that’ll be your year over year, or YoY when written, but year over year when spoken.
Cost of acquisition, then what was it last month, month over month MoM. And then from there, you start tracking month by month, that growth. This is important if you’re like, Oh, I wish I had data, but we don’t do any A/B testing.
Don’t worry a lot of businesses do not do A/B testing, and even when they do, they take it with a GoS, haha grain of salt. I’m going to keep doing that. Because there’s politics. There’s things that happen.
And A/B testing, as beautiful as it can be, is also flawed in many ways, so don’t worry if you can’t do A/B testing. Just make sure that you are documenting the data. And then make a copy of this for every client that you have. Keep going across the board like this can turn into when you’re in 10x FC, you’ll hear about the cheat sheet of awesomeness.
And that’s like, what data do I have on how awesome I am? And that’s what this can be. And sometimes numbers will go down. You’ll see like oh crap, the changes that we made have resulted in a drop in click through rate or customer acquisition cost has gone up but click-thru rate has also gone up. So that’s good. And you can have those discussions with your client but optimizing from there.
But when you can start to see changes and trends over time, and how your copy is performing, it puts you in a better position to talk about your skills. To understand where you can grow, what you can learn because these won’t always be flattering numbers. Sometimes you’ll be like, shit, I don’t know what I’m doing with this client, clearly, because none of the things that I’m trying are working.
We need to go back to the drawing board and go through and figure out a new plan of attack because it’s just not working. And that’s cool, that can work perfectly fine. As long as you’re tracking it and not just guessing, your clients will just plain guess at this stuff if you do not have the discipline to ask for that data. So ask for it. Okay.
Some people are saying they can’t get the document to open up. You’re signed into Google, you should be able to, because other people are. And of course we tested it and we were as well. It’s sentence case, the bitly link. So make sure you copy it exactly as it was chatted out and paste it in.
And that should then prompt you to either sign into your Google account so that you can make a copy, or just make a copy. If you’re already signed in, and just say yes. Yeah, it’s going to ask you to make a copy. That’s the point. Just make a copy, and then you can use it without worrying about asking for permission. It’s yours now it’s done. It’s easy.
Okay, we’re at the end of our time. If you have more questions. There are quite a few questions left answered here. Pop over just like Ange said to that Facebook group, start chatting about that stuff over there. Make sure you use the spreadsheet.
You don’t have to talk to clients about this stuff. Join 10x Freelance Copywriter, and we can start coaching you through exactly those things. Other than that, we will see you next week, we’re going to be talking about how our Black Friday Cyber Monday email campaign went. So if you like emails, and you like Black Friday, and you like data. Join us next Tuesday. All right, thanks everyone. Thanks, Ange. Thanks all. Have a good Giving Tuesday. Bye, everyone.
