Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:00]:
There’s something I’ve been noticing about marketing copy lately, especially when it’s written with AI and even when AI has been trained really well on your voice as well, it’s that the copy is fine. It’s just bland and boring and there is no compelling reason in it to actually buy. So this episode is about how we go about fixing that.

Welcome to the Soulful Sales show where we talk about believing in the value of your offers, getting them in front of your right people, and selling more of what you do in your unique way. Hello. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Soulful Sales Show. So before I dive into what I’m going to talk about, I want to just say that although I’m going to talk about training AI to write better sales copy, I think a lot of what I’m going to share in this episode is still going to apply. Even if you don’t use AI for your copy.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:49]:
Because I know I have a mixture of people following the podcast who maybe you use AI but you don’t want to use it for your writing, that’s absolutely fine. I do use AI for a lot of copy, for sales pages, for freebie pages, for emails, all of the things. But I am very, very particular about how I edit it, about the human stuff that goes into it. And what I want to talk about today is one thing that I think it consistently gets wrong. Even though I have trained my AI very, very well and actually I teach people to do the same in my aligned AI lab, I have a signature AI brand kit training. You can find out more@ruthpound white.com lab even if you have trained AI well, this might be something that you are not noticing great about the output. It will probably be costing you sales and you might not even know it. But like I said, even if you don’t use AI for your writing, what I’m going to share will be helpful for improving your sales copy in general.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:01:49]:
So let’s talk about what AI does when we ask it to write marketing or sales copy. It doesn’t necessarily have to be for a paid product. It could be compelling copy for something free as well. What AI does is it will write about what it knows about the offer. It will write about the contents of the offer, the features of the offer. But that is not all of the story. In fact, that is only a very, very small part of the story when it comes to effectively giving people a reason to buy or to sign up. AI also doesn’t have all of the experience that we do with the people that we work with in knowing their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their desires.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:02:32]:
And. And what I have noticed is that no matter how well I have trained AI on my voice, usually it defaults to describing what an offer is in the sense of the features it contains. So, like, get a PDF with five ways to do this, which I think on the surface might sound fine, and it might write it in a way that sounds like your voice, if you have been teaching AI on your voice. But when you train AI on your voice, you’re training it how to write and how it should sound, but you’re not trading on what’s worth saying. Does that make sense? So this is the point of this entire episode, and it’s very, very important because it will make a big impact on your free and paid signups. So let me make this clear by sharing a few different examples. And I have come across this so much in my own AI copy creation lately that I really wanted to give you these specific examples because it would have been very easy for me when I was drafting sales pages and stuff to just leave it at the first draft because it kind of sounded good enough. But when I read through it, I realized, you know, there’s nothing to this.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:03:43]:
There’s nothing that’s making me go, oh my goodness, I really need this. Or it’s really worth me signing up for. I often read through the first draft and think, you know what? It sounds okay, but I could easily take it or leave it. So let me give you some examples. So, most recently, I relaunched an offer of mine, which is a behind the scenes offer explaining how I’m building up my recurring revenue behind the scenes. And this was probably the most obvious example. So Claude wrote a sentence about what it was that basically said, fortnightly behind the scenes updates with real numbers, honest reflections on what’s working and what isn’t. So, okay, fine, we know what it is.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:21]:
It’s behind the scenes updates. Real numbers is somewhat juicy, but it really is not getting at the heart of why this connects with people. So when it comes to the actual real page for that, and that real page, by the way, is@ruthpoundwhite.com diary, I ended up going with Dear Diary, I’m building an extra 10k a month, mostly Evergreen. And here’s how it’s actually going. That’s the tagline that I came up with. The real numbers, the flops I’d usually keep to myself, the mindset gremlins, the whole honest picture of building Evergreen income in real Time you can see that immediately it sounds more real and human because it is. Because I was working on this as a human, but also I added in some parts of it. For example, I’m just trying to find it on the page.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:05:06]:
You find it weirdly reassuring to watch someone capable get it wrong and keep going anyway. Do you see the difference in just reeling off? You get fortnightly updates. People don’t care that much about the features. Now of course there are people who want to know exactly how it will be delivered and we want to give them the information in a clear way. But we shouldn’t lead with that in the overall tagline, in the kind of top, most visible part of the page. We can save some of that stuff for the details lower down on a page or even in the faq. So yeah, that was a really, really clear example. Another example that came up, I have a strategic freebie builder AI bot and I got Claude to like go through our chats to find how I tweaked copy.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:05:50]:
So I could give you some real examples here. The original version was a step by step tool that helps you create a lead magnet, write your landing page copy and plan your launch. Now this would be so easy to just stick with because it is saying what it does. And if we know that we need those things and that it takes us time normally to create a lead magnet, write our landing page copy and plan our launch, then you know what, maybe we could leave it there and maybe it’s good enough. But actually listen to this reworked version. It works backwards from what you sell so that the freebie you end up with is the obvious first step towards people buying your offer. Your list fills up with future buyers instead of freebie collectors. Do you see? There’s so much more of an emotional weight to this that makes it feel so much more compelling to actually sign up to this.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:06:37]:
So it’s not just any kind of lead magnet. It’s a lead magnet that’s designed to link to what you’re selling. It’s a lead magnet that’s designed to get people onto your list who then go on to buy more. And what I found is that more and more I’ve been training my AI really well. It’s getting better and better at actually sounding like me, but I’ve been getting very, very sick of now that I’ve noticed, it’s like I can’t unsee how weak the marketing copy that it’s giving me, especially that first draft. You know, sometimes it will even say stuff like a handy PDF or something. And I have to tell it, nobody is buying this offer so that they can have a PDF. They don’t want a PDF.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:07:17]:
A PDF is not the ultimate outcome. So let me share with you four key ways or four key tests that you can run your marketing copy through. And you can plug this into AI or you can use it as a filter for your own human written content to make sure that it is more compelling. So the first test that you want to run all of your content to, and this is like marketing copy 101 but it’s really, really easy to forget. So don’t worry if you have but you want to link each feature of the offer using the word so that and fill in the blanks afterwards so you get a fortnightly update with real numbers. Okay, that’s an example from my behind the scenes updates. So that what if you don’t have an answer to that question? That means you don’t have a compelling reason for it to go onto the sales page. So let me give you an example of how I would change that.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:14]:
Every two weeks you’ll hear what I actually tried, what I earned, what I do differently. So that you can stop wondering whether your own numbers and fears or whatever are normal. Just kind of coming up with that off the top of my head. I’m sure that we could make that more juicy. But yeah, getting updates every two weeks, every fortnight is a fact. The bit that comes after. So that is often the reason, the emotional hook, the weight of it, does that make sense? The next test or filter that you can run your marketing copy through is asking the question who cares? So let’s take my aligned AI lab as an example. So my aligned AI lab is a community run through school.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:56]:
I could say the lab is delivered inside school. As soon as you join, you’ll get an email with your login details. This is true and this is probably important admin that needs to go somewhere. However, it needs to go into the FAQ where people who will need it will find it. So we’re talking about who is caring about this. Is it the people who are already sold and now need the details? If so that goes in the FAQ if it’s someone who really, really cares, because they don’t know if they want to join yet and they’re trying to figure out if it’s for them, if it’s going to bring a return on investment, if it’s going to benefit their life in some way. That’s the stuff that needs the bigger attention that goes Higher up the page somewhere. Does that make sense? Now, nobody is buying an offer because they know that they’re going to get an email with login details.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:09:47]:
That’s not the reason anyone is buying or not buying. So that kind of content needs to be like pushed down in order of priority to the faq. The FAQ does serve a very important purpose, but it’s not taking up that valuable real estate higher up the page. The third test, use their words. So think about the kind of language that you’re ideal client, your buyer would be using to describe the issue that they’re having or the thing they want solved. So it’s really, really easy for us to describe what we think they want in our language. But people don’t say things like, oh, I’m really struggling to be consistent with my healthy eating. I mean, actually people might say something like that.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:10:30]:
But what they’re most likely to say is something like, how do I stop derailing my healthy eating late at night on a Friday when I’ve been struggling to put the kids to bed for hours? Again, I, I’m really bad at coming up with examples off the top of my head, so please forgive me if they’re not the best. But do you see what I’m saying? Do you see how it’s so much more powerful for business owners struggling to stay consistent with their content could become something like for when you have 20 half finished drafts in your phone notes, but you still haven’t emailed your list in three weeks. Oh my goodness, that was a good one. What is the kind of stuff they would be saying? How would they be complaining about this to a friend or talking about their desire to a friend or what would they be typing into Google? Obviously you don’t know, but you can guess and it really, really can get you thinking in a, in a much more interesting way about how to talk to your ideal people on your sales pages and opt in pages and everything. Okay, so the fourth test, this is a really, really powerful one. I want you to skim read and this works for pages, emails, everything. Read only the headline of a page or the subject line of an email and any subheadings and buttons. Don’t read anything else.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:11:51]:
And you want to see if you are getting a feel for the outcome of the offer just from reading those bits that kind of stand out. I always think that AI will give me really, really bad headlines throughout sales pages that will say things like what’s inside? Or learn more. So for example, what’s inside could turn to again using My Aligned AI Lab, as an example, it could change to how the Aligned AI Lab is going to save you X amount of hours per week. Here are the specific tools inside the lab that are going to save you all this time per week or something like that. And then buy buttons you can change instead of learn more. You would change. You’re like, yes, I’m ready to automate my marketing with AI or something like that. So I do think this is a really, really powerful one.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:12:39]:
And it’s actually a very easy way to elevate any of your existing pages. And the thing is, you might have actually really, really amazing paragraphs and text throughout the page. But. But half the people or more than half actually are just going to be skimming the page and we need to speak to those people as well as the ones who read it in full detail. Okay, so they are four ways, four quick filters you can run your copy through either with AI or your own written copy, adding so that on the end of features and filling in the blanks, asking who cares whether it’s someone who has already made their buying decision and just needs the details. Then relegate that to the faq, trying to speak in your buyer’s words and making sure it is still powerful even for the skim readers. Now there are actually more filters that I run things through that I have trained my AI on. There are actually seven more.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:13:32]:
And they, you know, which ones are most helpful obviously depend on what we are creating and how we are writing it and you know, what medium and all of this stuff. And like I said, it’s really, really easy to think that the copy written by AI is good. Firstly, because AI will never write you something bad. It can write you something bland or something that doesn’t sound like you, but it’s never going to write you something bad because that’s the way it works. But it is absolutely going to write you copy. That is okay, but that won’t speak to anyone. That will be bland, that will be potentially on brand and in your voice, but is not going to be good at selling for you. So if you want the full skill to plug into your AI.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:14:18]:
So I made this include, you can plug it into claw, but you can also use skill files in other AI tools. You get all of the 11 filters to run your marketing and sales copy through. It’s called the Sales Copy Sharpener. This is a bonus inside both of my memberships, both the Soulful Sales Society and the Aligned AI Lab. It is not sold separately, but I really, really want to invite you to join the lab if you want this skill. As a bonus, but also we’ve got the train your signature AI brand in there. I am teaching you how to create sales pages, freebie pages, actual freebies, interactive tools, adding AI to your offers, all of the thing. Basically using AI as a team member in your business to do the marketing grunt work for you.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:15:02]:
But the price of the lab is going up on the 21st of July, so currently it is very very affordable. Low cost membership at $19 a month. But it’s going up on the 21st of July and it won’t be coming back down again. So if you want in before that price rise, make sure you join by 21st of July. Then you will maintain the rate as long as you stay a member. Go to ruthpoundwhite.com forward slash lab. You’ll get all of the AI tools and training. I’m also by the way adding an incredible library of done for you tools to, you know, editing your branding and using your own content and offers as well.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:15:41]:
Go to ruthpoundwhite.com/lab join by the 21st to lock in the current price and whether you join or not, just remember to always push AI on whether the content and the sales copy is effectively conveying the outcome and the desire and giving people a genuine reason to buy versus just listing boring features.

Okay, thank you so much for listening to another episode of Soulful Sales. If you have a moment to rate and review, know that it really does make a difference and if you would like to carry on the conversation then you can connect with me in the free community@ruthpoundwhite.com forward slash community or my personal favorite, Join me inside the Soulful Sale society membership@ruthpoundwhite.com forward/membership and keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.