Okay, I'm going to give you a very quick example of what my video copy audit might look like.

And of course this would accompany your optimized headlines and subheads, which would appear in a Google doc.

And of course the website copy audit includes a Q&A with me afterwards as well.

So I'm picking on automizy here.

This is an email automation tool and you'll notice what they have here: it improves your open rate by 30 percent. So, I'm not going to talk about that just yet. I want you to keep it in mind though. Keep it in the back of your head because I'm going to return to it.

But the reason I'm not going to start here is this: there's a popular trend right now where marketers or copywriters will create copy teardown videos, which are essentially audits, and they'll apply basic best practices, but they don't look at the entire funnel.

So they have no idea of what's going through the user's head at the moment they encounter the brand.

So these so-called teardowns really have limited value for the watcher because you can't create effective messaging unless you know the mindset of the users arriving on the page.

So let's not make that mistake.

I'm going to start this audit at the source of Automizy’s traffic, which includes organic traffic, and one of their biggest organic traffic generators is the keyword phrase: ‘webinar invitation emails.’

And when you search for that they rank number two for this keyword phrase. So let's click that and see what we get. All right.

So here's a blog article — webinar invitation emails examples — pretty standard stuff.

So what is the mindset of these users right now?

Well, if you're looking at examples, if you clicked a blog article full of examples, you probably haven't started your emails yet.

So these are potentially a good lead for Automizy because it's possible that they don't yet have an email marketing solution. They could, but maybe they don't.

You'll notice a small CTA here ‘brought to you by Automizy — email marketing software designed to increase your email open rates.’

So, they've got that email open rate message again, so, we'll get back to that a bit later.

But now for someone who typed in these types of keywords, looking for these invitation email examples, this messaging may not come across as relevant to this type of user. It might come across as more generic to someone whose main goal right now is simply to get their webinar emails up and running.

So a value proposition that might resonate with this type of audience at this precise moment might be something around webinar email templates. People will always choose a solution to their most immediate and painful problems rather than a benefit that’s more vague like grow your business or get more webinar signups.

People tend to want to solve the thing right in front of them, even if there's a better offer to solve something further down the road. We're always thinking about immediate gratification.

That's just how humans are wired.

And so here Automizy has an opportunity to join the conversation in the user’s head because they already know what problem they have and what they're doing about it right now. They can still message around the get higher email open rate thing, but that doesn't reflect the core intent of a user, who's going to be dropping by an article like this. But the article itself is really nice.

But there's also a visibility issue. Where are the relevant calls to action? It would be great to see a larger more visible CTA, maybe in the sidebar here that explains how Automizy provides invite email templates or something relevant to that effect. Because I don't see anything like that in here right now, but let’s click their call to action and get back to back to the page.

Keeping in mind, you know, what is the search intent? Webinar invitation emails. So that's what brought us this traffic in the first place.

And that's one thing they do well is they match this message with this message. So they have a strong message match. You want to maintain that scent between two different pages.

So they do that.

It's just a matter of: is this relevant for this type of traffic? Would somebody searching for webinar emails, even be thinking about open rates at this stage? Probably not yet.

The person just wants to get their funnel up and running. They want to get things going.

They care about it, open rates, sure, but it's just not top of mind for them.

So a landing page that focuses on a single value proposition ‘create webinar invite emails easily with our templates’ or something like that would land a lot better. You can still message around open rates, but it's not going to be key here.

So now let's just think about how Automizy’s messaging comes across in general. Homepages are very difficult to optimize because you have traffic with different levels of awareness landing on them. They're coming from different sources: organic, paid, tons of referral traffic if you're more of an established brand.

And so you can't figure out exactly what brought them there. So typically you use a brand value proposition in this space. A brand value proposition is a unique promise of value that your entire company provides. Contrast that with a product or service value proposition, which is narrowly focused on just how a single product or service provides unique value to the audience. And so basically, Automizy is doubling down on their solution’s ability to deliver a single feature-focused benefit: higher open rates.

But since they're serving an audience with a high BS detector, most likely, marketers probably, I think they need to do a better job of proving their claim. Right now, the subhead that they use basically just repeats what the headline says. It's kind of wasted space.

Also, where does this 34% number come from? Again, a more savvy audience is going to question these things. How do they deliver on this result?

So you have the explainer video here,but I'm not going to play it for you. It basically covers the full range of what the solution does and the open rate promise isn't covered until the end. But essentially the way that automizy delivers on that open rate promise is that they have an AI system that can predict what types of subject lines are most likely to work. So considering that we might want to rewrite the subhead to provide more proof, something like this.

Okay, so now we're supporting this claim with some actual evidence. Right? We want to foster conclusions and not just make claims all the time. When a reader comes to a page, the first question they're going to ask is ‘what's the benefit to me?’ Okay, that's clear: higher open rate.

The second question they're going to ask is ‘well, prove it.’ Prove how you provide that benefit.

They're just not going to take your word for it, especially if you're marketing to a bit of a savvier, more analytical audience. You're going to have to have lots of proof to back up what you're saying. So that’s one way to revise it.

Also when we're talking about proof and topics like that, trust and credibility, here’s some trust bling that they call it and it's okay, you know. The 2020s are getting a little dated right now and I'm doing this video in early 2022. These types of badges though, like the GetApp award, when marketing to a more savvy audience, I don't think this is holding much weight. I think a lot of people know that GetApp is a for-profit organization and they basically sell these badges. I don’t think they're necessarily a credible indicator that it's a quality product because you see this happening all the time.

A few years ago it wasn’t used as much, but now it's become really prevalent and I don't think it holds the same weight as it did. So, again, our audience is a more analytical audience. You have to think about these things, if you want to increase conversions with your messaging. So let's go down the page a little bit here.

So, we got ‘grow your contact list.’ Okay, so we have a testimonial to back that up, very easy to use. Everything is intuitive. I tested adding a contact through a form, everything works clearly.

Okay, so it supports that message. You always want your testimonials to support the claim that you're making. Again backing up your claim with proof. That isn't too bad, it could be a little more specific but it's not bad.

Build email automations with ease, okay. All right, so create effective high-performing emails, test subject lines, before hitting send, here's the AI value proposition. Again, a feature. They're using a brand value proposition that's feature focused.

That's A/B test automated emails. Okay.

The problem with this as we go through these messages: does anything stand out to you about any of these subheads?

Probably not because Automizy isn't really saying anything about what makes their solution unique or highly desirable. That often signals a core issue with their positioning and their differentiator.

They're going with a feature based differentiator, right? We saw that right here. Here's the feature and they're leading with it. And that can be dangerous because features can be copied. And an AI feature might support a larger differentiation strategy, but on its own with advances in AI content writing tools, I'm not sure it's enough to differentiate an entire brand in such a highly competitive space as email marketing automation.

So I think they need to look at a different differentiator or look at how this open rate message contributes to a larger more unique brand narrative. And when we talk about email marketing automation and differentiation, a great example is Convertkit. Convertkit doesn't really do anything that is different than any other solutions. I'm sure they claim otherwise, but I've used Convertkit for years, it's not all that different from other tools.

But what they did very well from a marketing perspective is they differentiated their brand by telling a story geared to a very specific segment: creators. Specifically course creators, at the start.

They were the email automation tool for creators. And that's how they got people saying ‘this is the one for me.’ Not based on features alone, but because of the way they positioned their product and they positioned their messaging and they tapped into that audience, which at the time was a very underserved audience. That's how Convertkit gained traction.

Automizy is not doing that here. Doesn't mean they couldn't, but right now, feature-based differentiation is a risky game.

So, normally at this stage, I would walk through their sign-up page and look at their post-conversion experience and maybe their welcome email.

I actually noticed that they don't actually have any call to action buttons, asking users to start a free trial which is a bit odd. They have a sign up here, so that would obviously be something to look at.

But I'm going to cut this video short here. I think that gives you a general idea of what to expect from the video component of my website copy audits that would also accompany actual revised copy in a Google doc, and as I mentioned, a Q & A session.

Anyways, if you have any questions about this, you can email me at Dustin@copyguide.co