44: Week 1 of the series How To Automate & Streamline The Backend Of Your Lead Magnets (and Offers)The Importance of Copy & Having A High Converting Landing Page Featuring Ashlyn Carter

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Dolly Delong
Welcome to the systems and workflow magic podcast where I help entrepreneurs go from scattered to streamlined in their creative businesses. I’m your host, Dolly DeLong, a wife, a mom, and a photographer turned systems educator. Join me every week as we have conversations centered around creating tactical workflows, and automation in your business. Now, let’s make some strategic workflow magic. Hi, and welcome back to the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your workflow and systems-loving host Dolly DeLong. And I have something big to share with you today. Well, actually, I have two things to share. The first thing is this. So as of today, I am starting a new mini-series called how to automate the back end of your offers and options. Because I know there are just so many diverse and moving parts of the backend of getting all the puzzle pieces together in place. And the series idea came to me for multiple reasons. One of them is obviously I love systems, it’s no secret. But I also know it’s no secret that many creative small business owners dread the puzzle pieces of putting together a sequence of events on the back end of their options or offers. And you know, as a creative business Senator, you may not be able to hire an integrator or even a VA yet to help you out with these essential puzzle pieces. So why not have a little guidance and fun with your fellow systems BFF in the next several weeks, we are going to tackle this topic and of course, I’ll sprinkle in a lot of fun resources for you to dig into. And the second thing I want to share with you today is to kick off the series I wanted to go big or go home. Okay, so I invited my friend Ashlyn Carter, who is a conversion copywriter for creatives on the show today, to chat about a puzzle piece you should consider if you are wanting to have a high conversion rate when it comes to putting together the backend of your opt-ins. And this topic is about how to have a highly converting landing page that advertises set lead magnets and service or challenge, whatever. And before I get into the nitty gritty details of landing pages, and I promised Ashley’s here, I’m not just making this up. I wanted to give a warm welcome to her, and I’m going to share her official bio with you all right now. So as an entrepreneur, international speaker, mentor, and marketer, Ashlyn Carter is the premier expert for copywriting for creative entrepreneurs. She’s the founder and CEO of Ashlynn Rights, which is a copywriting business and marketing curriculum source for creatives. She has helped so many one on one clients over 5000 students and seven figures in revenue later she’s pinpointed what it is that helps lock in a half a million dollar launches for digital marketing campaigns. She has worked with amazing brands like Delta Airlines and Ford Fry restaurants and has supported a lot of different creative entrepreneurs, including Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Julie Solomon, and so much more. She’s been honored as 30 under 30 in the Alpha Delta Pi international organization as well. And she’s a contributing educator with Creative Live ConvertKit and honey book and has been featured in Forbes, Southern Living style me pretty and so much more. And Ashlyn lives outside of Atlanta and convinces her husband, baby, and toddler to go with her to grab tacos weekly. So Ashlyn. Welcome to the show. Do you mind sharing the unofficial BH one behind the scenes bio view first?

Ashlyn Carter
Oh, my gosh. I love it. Well, thank you so much for having me and who has a long bio, I forget, like how long it is written now. With this accent. I’m clearly in Atlanta, right outside of the city and I love what I do. I work from home. I have two kids. I always want to preface that they are in nursery school and my husband is so helpful with the business he actually helps out more than I think anybody sees and I couldn’t do this without those two things going on as well.

Dolly Delong
It’s actually an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I don’t think I shared this with you but my son Blaise is going to be sad he missed this recording because again, this is so random but he likes to wave to you Whenever I watch your YouTube channel, oh my gosh, I love it. You’re live and he’s talking to you. So he’ll come up and say hi and he’s a full-blown conversation with me. So, really funny. So I’ll let him I mean, he likes listening to the podcast episodes. So I’ll let him listen to your voice next week. So I am so excited you’re here. And actually, you are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to copywriting. You have been at this game for years, and in the world of online businesses, that’s decades, because everything changes so fast to read. And you have most likely seen and experienced a lot of change and growth in your own copywriting business. So as much as I wish, I can just sit here and ask you all the questions, I will spare you, and let’s hone in on just one juicy topic that creative business owners need to start off with. And that is how to actually have a highly converting landing page, because I know that that just leads people into again, as mentioned your OPT in your challenge your service. So how do we get people to actually click over and commit to either subscribing or learning more about you?

Ashlyn Carter
Yeah, I love it. And I like that you’re kicking off this series because I do think one thing I wrote down when you were talking is it’s so important. For those of us who are in this creative field, a lot of us are perfectionists and people pleasers to like start, start and build your wings on the way down with automations. And stuff as well. And like trying to figure out landing pages and connecting them up. A lot of what we’re going to talk about today is kind of just like, you figure it out by doing. So I don’t want perfectionism to hold anybody back that’s listening on this. So the first place though, that I like to start with, even though my words girl is let’s look at the numbers, and let’s define our terms. There are different kinds of landing pages and the thing that’s most important to make sure it’s high converting is like, do you have the receipts? Can you prove it? And so you have to figure out what is the one goal on that page. Are you trying to get an email address? Are you trying to get them to book an application? Are you trying to get them to hop on your discovery call? Are you trying to get them to download something I need you to be very specific about what that is, because there is out there and I always ask people that please, like DME, or come find me, I’d be more than happy to give you a set of numbers that you need to fall between? But like, if you’re just asking for an email address on the page, like you mentioned, challenge, a challenge landing page, for example, I’m gonna want that to perform at 40%. So 40% of all the eyeballs that land there need to be saying yes, whereas on your page where you’re selling your photography services, and it’s a four-figure price tag, we’re going to be looking at more like two to 5% of all people that land there are going to be filling out that application and booking with you. So that’s the first place that I like to tell people just start because of the numbers, we just get so hard on ourselves. And we’re so quick to say this is not working or diagnose the problem, when a lot of times for a lot of people, you have a traffic problem, you have a numbers problem. And it’s not like we need to figure out where the leak is. So we can fix it. So that’s my first and foremost thought on high-converting landing pages.

Dolly Delong
Can I peel it back even more? Please do. Okay, so would you say numbers? When a person is listening to this? They might be like what? Yes, she talked. Yes. Where’s your scope? Is there a specific conversion or equation?

Ashlyn Carter
Yes, I love that you asked that. So the first thing you want to do, I’m going to just use show it as an example here, because I think the majority of the creative industry loves to build on show it, which is fantastic. However, you need to be really good at Google Analytics, or at least know enough to be dangerous to be able to figure out if are you hitting these numbers. Otherwise, when we say high converting, or if you’re shaming yourself, and you’re like this is the worst converting thing I’ve ever made, we don’t know unless we look at the numbers. So what you want to look at is the number of unique views that land on that page, divided by the number of people that took the action that you wanted them to take. And then, of course, we’ll do that, as you did in third-grade times 100. move that decimal place over and that will give you the average number. Again, that is converting there. So that’s how you figure that out. I have a YouTube video where that to me once I like saw that equation and I wrote it down it made sense. Most of us are visual. So if that went right over your head, no worries. If you look at the equation, I think it’ll walk in your brain. Like we talked about key performance indicators or KPI and business like that is a very important one is you need to know because then that helps you determine well if you need 12 clients in a year that It just helps you work the numbers backward instead of feeling like marketing is this constant, never-ending exhausting rodeo that you have to play? No, we just need to get strategic.

Dolly Delong
I love that so much. So I will have that YouTube video link and also have the equation in the show notes. And I will look up any other if you’re wondering, okay, like how to set up Google Analytics on the back end of Showit. I know a great video for that too. So I will take note of that. So that’s a really good place to start starting with the numbers. Looking at the numbers you mentioned that 40% is a really good number for a challenge or full opt-in.

Ashlyn Carter

Like if your freebie download page a lot of you will perform higher a lot of you will perform it like 60% because you’re the face, you’re the brand length or people love you. I usually see between like 40 and 60%. And remember, like, when I’m talking that page has no escape hatches like it is a landing page for that offer. Your navbar isn’t up at the top where they can jump over to your blog, like no escape hatches, I’m talking like they can do pretty much one thing on that whole page.

Dolly Delong
I love that you mentioned that. Thank you so much for breaking it down even more. So if you guys didn’t hear Ashlyn when she said to make sure again, don’t have any type of navigation bar or an arrow to get to the homepage just like one key focus is to focus on the landing page, the opposite. No escape hatches. I love that phrase. So much. Okay, what would be a second place to start now that you know, like how you set up your Google Analytics, you have a general idea of unique views coming to your webpage? Then what?

Ashlyn Carter
Okay, let’s talk about the word synth. That’s the fun part for a lot of us, or at least I hope it is like an ocean in a teacup when it comes to like the word specifically. But what kind of landing page do you want to talk about?

Dolly Delong
Let’s talk about if we have time, let’s talk about two different types of futures. Yes, let’s start with an opt-in or illegal. Okay. Okay. I would love to follow up with like a specific type of landing page for a challenge, for example. Okay, so yeah, let’s start with the lead.

Ashlyn Carter
Okay, so let’s talk about like your freebie landing page, your signature freebie, when you make this page, you’re probably going to be sending warm traffic like people that follow you on Instagram, you’re posting about into your stories, same swipe up kind of thing. But you also may have some pins on Pinterest that are driving to that. So that’s cold traffic. So the first thing we need to make sure happens is message matching. So if I am, I always give an example. Because I feel like it’s just happened to me so many times, I’ll be sitting on the couch, watching Bravo scrolling on my phone, and you’ll see an ad, you’ll get hit with something and you click in after the jump, or maybe you’re in your inbox, and you click and then after the job, you land on a new page, and you’re like, I thought I was looking for XYZ, there’s a disconnect that is a major conversion killer, you have got to make sure that however you’re advertising again, let’s use Instagram, as an example. You’re doing your Instagram story and you’re talking about it, swipe up to get it or whatever, you can use that same copy on the landing page. Use the same hook and message that is so important because a lot of times a page doesn’t convert because it wasn’t what people thought it was when they landed there. The next thing is the headline is obviously going to be one of the first things they read. I have a lot of thoughts on headlines. But overall, I like headlines that we know that you don’t have much space. People don’t read all the copy on the page. We know that we know they’re probably gonna read the headline though. So my favorite headlines are ones that go ahead and make a promise or start kind of arguing for that thing. I don’t like headlines that say exactly what the thing is, unless when it comes to your opt-in. That’s part of the promise. Let me give an example. So for example, I have a freebie out there for Google docs for writing templates. When you land on that page, the headline, I believe it is outlined your web copy with ease. So it’s a promise-driven headline, right? But then there’s a mock-up next to it. So you can indeed see that says like Google Docs, website writing template, so a lot of times I think too, you can use your imagery juxtaposed with your copy to keep communicating and selling that message. So you can then afford your headline to be able to say something different, like let your markup be the thing that speaks for itself. Yeah, use the headline otherwise, other little copy tips, bullet bullets, game changers. Big problems I see in the creative industries you’re using. Way too small font and you’re using much too pretty colors. Your call to action button does not pop at all. It is beige or blush pink and I need it to pop it’s hard to see like me It looked like a button. Those are things I think, I fix all the time. So I think that gives us enough to keep talking. But what kind of clarification can it give on that?

Dolly Delong
Something that I really liked that you bring up is even on landing pages for lead magnets, just how do you speak to the different personality types? Because yes, there are a lot in copiers, creative. And even your free education on your YouTube channel. You speak to remind creatives Hey, you’re not just talking to when getting personality you’re talking to you? I think it’s five different personality buying types. Do you mind speaking about that?

Ashlyn Carter
I love that. Yes. Yeah. You know, we start off in copywriting for creatives, like getting really clear on this. So we all have a style that we like to buy. I am like, give me the facts. I don’t want a lot of fluff. I just want to know the facts. What do you buy? Like,

Dolly Delong
I’m kind of a complicated mess myself. I don’t. Because I’m hormonal due to being pregnant. I’m a mix of give me the facts, but also paint a picture for me. Yeah, helped me visualize and daydream about. Yes.

Ashlyn Carter
I love that. You said that. Because most creative entrepreneurs, most people listening to this, yes, you want to kind of be future pace, because you’ve got a vision, you’ve got a long game strategy, and copy that appeals to us usually going to help you just like, fill in those colors, even more, you’re gonna just start your brain is leaping ahead and you’re dreaming and dreaming, your wheels are turning. The thing is, I mean, use me as an example. Not everybody likes to buy like that. So one thing that you need to make sure is that you’re speaking to all the different types in your landing page copy. Yes, for all of your copy. There are four big keystone types of ways that people like to buy. And I love it when somebody’s Ashlyn I never read long copy and like yeah, no one does. No one reads like, I mean, we know again, like 20% of that copy is

Dolly Delong
My husband reads everything (ahah!)

Ashlyn Carter
There are people out there, right? But most of us websites, emails, we’re treating them kind of like a menu we’re looking for, where’s the piece that jumps out at me? What’s in this for me? Like, where are my interests gonna get picked? And there are different things that pique different parts of our interests. So that’s why yes, on your landing page, but in all of your website, copy, you do need to make sure that you’ve got those proof points that speak to the person that’s like, Okay, well, I’m a skeptic, I don’t believe you until I see this kind of proof. Then you’ve got the vision casting type argument, you’ve got the story and the emotion and for the people that want to understand, like, how does this connect to the world and like that you’ve got different things in there for everybody. And so that’s so important. I’m glad you brought that Dolly.

Dolly Delong
Yeah, I always forget. Well, I don’t always forget, it’s just a difficult thing for me to comprehend. Sometimes that Oh, somebody else with a different personality might be reading this because, oh, this is so compelling. Like, in my mind, why wouldn’t somebody want this lead magnet so I love going back to copywriting. For creatives, you start off copywriting for creatives, reminding a creative center, hey, like, you have to factor in all these different personalities. And here’s how you can weave that in. So you all if you’re listening up, take notes, Ashlyn just dropped, like the biggest golden nugget of wisdom in your laps for free. You’re welcome.

Ashlyn Carter
That’s all say to you. That’s why like copy frameworks, you know, we go into that and copywriting for creatives. And that’s why it’s so important to you do want to approach your copy like a lawyer and have different levers that you’re going to pull for different reasons. And so that’s why like a framework where pages built out, to speak to those different things is so important because I think we just need to swallow the diet pill. Sometimes people are not reading all your website. And we know this about our content, right? Like their mom is probably the only one looking at all your Instagram posts and Instagram stories. And so if we can kind of take that same approach to our website marketing or email marketing, I think that can be helpful.

Dolly Delong
I love that. So we’ve spoken about starting with your numbers, knowing just that unique views divided the action, according to Google Analytics, that KPI that you called it. Then we just went into the importance of copy for your lead magnet. And we started specifically with headlines and just keeping the different personalities in view as you’re writing out your copy for this lead magnet. Do you have any other words of wisdom when it comes to copy for your lead magnet after the headline? I know you’ve mentioned the visuals like pairing a good visual with the headline, which is great. I know that has nothing to do with coffee. But can you just like hit up on that just a little?

Ashlyn Carter
Yeah, because I got put in my place on this one time, I was working with an artistic director. And this was Gosh 2017. So I was only a year and a half into business. And we were assessing imagery needs for an upcoming brain photoshoot. And she was like Ashlyn. The copy is great on these pages, the images that you have next to it have absolutely nothing to do with that message. And I was like, That is the first time like getting called on the carpet myself, that you have got to make sure that your image isn’t just like, it has to be the supporting honey with the supporting actress like they have to work together. They are both carrying unbelievably important amounts of communications, we know the images are carrying about 90 94% of the message. That’s obviously the bulwark like that is major, but getting them across that finish line, it has to be the copy. So do make sure I see this on a lot of home pages, not as much about pages, services pages, too. That’s why for those of us who are crass people and service providers, having imagery of you doing your job or having imagery of the happy client at the end of it that can be so important to come alongside your messages. Because yeah, just a pretty and there are so many incredible stock photos out there. But it is good to put on your like-wish list in business to try to get some images of you in action because that does help communicate so much.

Dolly Delong
Calling all creatives if you have an amazing opt-in offer. And you have been asked to be a part of a bundle with other creatives, which by the way is also awesome. But if you feel stuck because you don’t know what steps to take to Automate, optimize and streamline the back end of said, opt-in offer or bundle offer, then listen up. You don’t have to hire an integrator because I have created a step-by-step mini course to guide you through the process of putting together the puzzle pieces you need. In order to lay the groundwork for this back-end process. I have created how to automate the back end of your often and offers many cores. Because as a systems and workflow educator for creatives, I want to help you succeed as a small business owner. And I really want you to feel confident in your systems. After listening to the podcast, don’t forget to head on over to the show notes. And click on the link for an in-depth look at what this mini-course entails. As always, stay magical with those systems. You amazing Muggle, that’s so true. I’m gonna do a little shout of little love to Abby Grace. Oh, yeah. If you guys do not know her. She’s an incredible branding photographer. And she has done a lot of action oh my goodness, yes. Amazing. So it’s so true. Like you really have to help the prospective client the lead, start visualizing, okay, well, how can I use this lead magnet, I know it’s something for free. But you have to get them thinking, like envisioning themselves actually using this free resource. And one of the places I utilize for my digital downloads is Canva. And that’s free. Yep. And I just took a screenshot of the final PDF with a checklist and I like optimize it in some pretty camp template.

Ashlyn Carter
Yes, that’s so good. And I liked you mentioned optimization because I think a lot of people don’t take it into account again, we love to show it so much. But a lot of times page load speed and videos are the background and all that stuff can clog up a page again, especially if you’re spending money on ads or sending cold traffic there, you need to make sure that page gets to the point fast on a phone, you need it to load quickly. And all that stuff I think a lot of us forget because we’re image-driven 100%. Like after I use my copy framework, I get the hook and get a great message for an opt-in page. And then we get all the design pieces in there. The last piece of the puzzle I ever do is actually trying to figure out okay, is this sucker going to take like five seconds to load or how am I going to figure that out? Because that does impact your conversion rate. 100%

Dolly Delong
I love that. Okay, so we talked about visuals. I like digging into like what we’ve already spoken about. But you mentioned bullet points. Can you share with the listener the headline is there okay, well, what do you mean by bullet points? I just write out two or three paragraphs.

Ashlyn Carter
Love it. Okay, bullet points are your secret weapon, put them in your back pocket. You can use them all the time. Anytime you have a peer graph that’s looking a little clunky consider bullet points. We can talk about, like, fancy grammar words like parallelism. But I think the biggest mindset shift first is thinking like, you can look at one of your paragraphs on your website and think like, how could this be pulled into bullets like that, you know, again, we talked about it in CSC. But the way that people read online, they’re only reading a little bit of the paragraph, like the first line, first line, and a half before they’re jumping. So I always tell people, you can have that paragraph there, I just need you to be completely 100%, okay with the fact that they’re not gonna read that whole thing. So sometimes you dive to your darlings, and you’re like, but Visually, it looks like Vogue magazine. And I want it to look like that. Okay, like, I get it. Sometimes we do want that look. But it depends on what the message is. And so the message is paramount, it’s really important to help them understand, consider pulling that into bullets. So you’re, you know, giving, I would say, like three at a minimum of little snippets, and you’re breaking that sentence up. One thing that I correct a lot in student work is to make sure then that you’re starting, let me see if I can say this simply, you’re starting the bullets the same way. So I guess like if you’re using a verb each time, he’s a very rich time, if you don’t switch back and forth, I guess. Oh, that’s awesome. Can you give an example of that? Yes, I would not say so I can help you with bullet number one, writing your web copy. Number two, ad copy. Number three, see how I jumped from a verb to a noun. You can make sure to come up with drafting your ad copy or something like that. So keep whatever kind of word you use to start the first bullet use that same form, and type of word for the rest of the bullets, I think bulleted lists, and I’m not talking about like an offer stack where you’re listing out everything that you do and your photography service, your VA service, but when you’re using them to like show benefits, etc. I think three to seven is a good number. Again, if we take what we know about eye tracking to be true, they’re probably reading the first couple of bullets, and they’ll probably hit on the last one. So usually when I have a list, I put my first two bullets are always my strongest to my third strongest actually put last. And then I fill in the rest of them if I have some others. I love that.

Dolly Delong
I’ve been taking notes this whole time if you’re wondering, I’m not watching a TV show.

Ashlyn Carter
A girl after my own heart, I’m a constant note-taker.

Dolly Delong
Again, these will all be in the show notes for those of you who are listening, but I love I’ve never thought of that putting two of your stronger points. And then if you have three strong points, leaving the last one to the last point that Oh, that’s great. Okay, we’ve been talking about lead bandits, just how to convert a viewer subscriber, and you gave some really good points like headlines having good visuals, and making sure you’re speaking to different personalities. Yeah, they’re not buying anything, but they are subscribing they’re exchanging something value, which is their anger. I love how you said that. Yes, dress and then, of course, have the bullet points broken up. So let’s, I guess merge into okay, like, I know how to use landing pages for lead magnets. But what if I don’t have a lead magnet? What if my lead magnet is a challenge? Or what if I want to do a three-day challenge? Can you speak on how the landing page would differ?

Ashlyn Carter
When it comes to the length of a landing page? My answer is always going to be tested. But I think for something where there might be more questions involved, like a challenge or you’re doing a free workshop. I remember after my first year in business, I did a free workshop, where I said the first things I learned in business. So a masterclass, you’re doing something like that. My opinion is, the amount of time in exchange is how long the page should be. So like you said, they are giving them something of value when they’re just giving you their email address. And you’re getting a PDF in return. If I’m giving my email address, and possibly an hour of my time, because I’m joining you on your first year in the business workshop, or comm giving five days in my time for a challenge like they’re gonna get sequentially bigger with the amount of time you’re asking them to spend because basically, you’re not just trying to sell them on their email address, but you’re trying to sell them on actually showing up and attending that thing. So if then you need to have more copies there to argue why they should even show up. So you’re going to have to be selling that as well. So for a challenge page, a webinar page, they’re going to be longer because you’re trying to help them understand why is it worth their 60 minutes and they’re very busy day. Why is it worth figuring out childcare, whatever it is going to have to take to make that happen? So you’ve got to sell them on that as well.

Dolly Delong
That’s great. Okay, so I know I’m gonna like me merge into I know you have a challenge coming up. Yes, do you mind sharing what the challenge is? And just like how you created your landing page shall have it. Okay, I was sharing with Ashley earlier, I joined. And I was actually reading the majority of it. And I’m like, Wow, I love the theme. I love the challenge. And so I wanted you to kind of dissect it for the listeners.

Ashlyn Carter
Okay, so this is fun to talk about because this is a little like, kind of off-the-record practicum style stuff. Because we’ve been I’ve been trying this, I haven’t done a challenge since we’ve had clients do them. But I haven’t done one since 2017. But I was like, you know, we’ve launched CFC a lot. Let’s like playing around with it this time. So first, I’ll tell you something interesting. So we are going to try to split tests, if you go to its homepage homecoming.com, you’ll see, I would say like a medium form, often landing page, because remember, like I just said, I’m trying to sell the idea to that you gotta show up to get results. And this is what each day is going to include. But you’ll scroll down to about midway, and you’ll see a navy-colored canvas that says it has different types of styles. And it talks about it says like this week is designed to help you see if I can remember verbatim, the strike gold on the right thing to say something like that. What I want you to know is the feedback that I got from mastermind and coaches and other people were like, what if we split test and we send half traffic to that long-form page, and then half traffic to a shorter form page where we pull that Navy canvas up to the top, let’s just see. So that’s something that’s kind of fun to do, too, when you get pages rolling and up there, that’s again, that’s a little bit harder to do with, show it for landing pages. But if you’re in a tool like ft funnels, or click funnels, or LeadPages, they give you that option ConvertKit gives you that option on some pages as well. But that can be so fun to play with. One thing I will say too, when it comes to your split testing traffic, only change one variable at a time, I think I see a lot of creatives like you don’t want to split test, a completely different headline in all new imagery and all new hook versus another page, because we won’t be able to put our finger on Well, what did make the difference. Whereas if you’re just like changing up the length of the page, or changing up the imagery, or what if you want to play with the button color, whatever it is, you can start to figure that out. So that can be fun. But yeah, so those are some pages that were split testing right now if you go to that link, you’ll be able to see it. It was fun to write copy for this goes to anybody to that if you’ve offered something over and over the great now, I have a lot of peers that are in and out of launches. And being creative right now is like the hard right time. Yeah, there are a lot of new businesses, and there are a lot of internet noise algorithms, volunteers, and iOS updates that have all changed. So I think really being able to pinpoint what a hook in a message is and get that really strong. And narrowing down is so important because that’s what our brains are operating and looking for like, where’s the difference in the market? Where’s the blip on the radar? Where’s the conflict in a good way? Like, I mean, just like a differentiating point, you’ve got to be able to figure out what those are. So you can start to drive traffic there. But yeah, I feel like I have seen a lot of us pushing for that right now. And it’s a tough market. So I just want to encourage people out there who are yeah, getting into it or launching new things right now. Like it’s a game of FaceTime for sure.

Dolly Delong
Yeah, I do want to like encourage other listeners, like if you are brand new at your creative business, online business, whatever, or if you’re seasoned wherever you are, I want to remind you Ashlynn has been at this, especially with copywriting. For creatives. It’s her 11th Time launching. And so she has tested and retested, like so many different types of launches, and has collected data. I’m sure she liked so much data collection from you. But you have reminded me all the time that it’s a long game like you just have to test and see what works. And sometimes it’s more than just data collection. After 90 days, you’ll know exactly what to do. Sometimes it’s, you’ll know, one variable after maybe after a year of doing this business. And so I wanted to encourage the listeners, like if you’re in this business for the long haul, then just be patient with yourself as you gather this data. It’s hard for me to I’m speaking to myself, it is hard to compare yourself with others and we live at such a fast pace. Like I mean things answers now, be patient with yourself.

Ashlyn Carter
Yes, exactly what you’re saying the reason that we did a challenge this time is that I guess it’s a tough launch mark in a tough market. So we’re like okay, let’s try something else. This could fall flat on our faces. We don’t know and this is different. So I don’t know about you daily, but sometimes I look up and I’m like whoa, a year passed like another business here past and that does happen. I feel like I must feel like that at least once a month. I’m like how did it already you know, and so play the long game because a lot of things Hearing out the best message or like the best hook, the only way you figure that out is by putting stuff out there, that doesn’t work. And then over time, you do figure out the thing that does work. So these lodges, these messages, these landing pages, these ad campaigns that you’re seeing out there, like very rarely is it a one and done like flash in the pan, we hit the right message, day one right out of the gate. That’s not typically the case at all.

Dolly Delong
That’s so true. Remember that and be encouraged by that. And I just wanted to say to you Ashlynn my personality, I love challenges. Because I like to get a win every single day of the challenge. I like to know that I can get from point A to point B, and then from day to point B to point C.

Ashlyn Carter
Thank you. I’m so excited I think, why not try something new and themed it a little bit cheeky theme, like why not? You know, so I think I like to report learnings from all these things. So I’m sure I’ll do like a teardown after that. We’ll see it is kind of fun to shake things up a little bit. So hopefully users

Dolly Delong
enjoy as well. Do you mind sharing a little bit of a challenge with everyone?

Ashlyn Carter
Okay, so the theme we went with is like homepage homecoming. One thing I’ve wanted to do in my business has more like regular reoccurring new we’ll things we had a Christmas cocktail party last year with our membership, and it was so fun. I was like, I love back to school. I love school supplies, like all that kind of stuff. So taking that idea of like, let’s do a homepage homecoming theme. And so Abby and I, we’ve done so many shoots together, we were like, You know what, let’s go. I love working at this little hotel outside of New Haven, Connecticut, which is right next to Yale, she was like, Let’s shoot on this. And so it was so much fun. It was like, This is the 11th time. So it’s like, for those of you when you’re launching a service, my goodness, you’re communicating about that all the time. So yeah, maybe this can be just a reminder to, don’t be afraid to like, be creative with it and shake it up and just try something new with it. So offers get tired offers to get fatigued very quickly these days. And you’ve got to implement some of these things to help people’s attention. Stay in.

Dolly Delong
Love that. So it’s gonna be a homepage, Homecoming, and how many days is it five days,

Ashlyn Carter
we’re going to start on Monday, October the third, and go through the end of the week. So I cannot wait again as I told you before we started on like a little nervous because it’s something new. But um, I think it’ll be really fun. It’s gonna

Dolly Delong
be a lot of fun. And for those of you who are listening, I have put the link for the challenge in the show notes. So please sign up for it. Because, again, this is a free challenge from Ashlyn, who’s going to be delivering, like, valuable content every day for five days. So you guys are in for a treat. And I’ll be in the challenge, too.

Ashlyn Carter
So we all ended together trying to figure out the challenge ropes, and it’ll be fun.

Dolly Delong
Let’s set up on one more point about the landing page of the challenge. Is there something else that you added to this specific page?

Ashlyn Carter
That’s it, let me scroll through in my head. So you’ll see the headline, you’ll see the hook, you’ll see, we have found, at least for my audience that opt-in pages that have the fields there do convert higher than if they have to click a button in the opt-in like, box pop up. So that’s interesting. I’m working through implementing that on other pages because we did learn that in some split tests, you’ll keep scrolling, and you’ll see some agitation copy, we also gave one slide that has the three takeaways from it. We did a canvas that breaks down what happens each day inside and the specific day-by-day takeaways. We did a credibility slider, which I think that’s pretty, you know, even on our services pages, a lot of us include things like that. Social proof passes, for sure. And then there’s a Hail Mary down at the bottom like kind of the last time I actually did include this as a last-minute addition, I thought I think I should have a slide in there that says like, why is this even free? You’ve heard me say it before, but I always find it so helpful in your copy, if you address the elephant in the room, if there’s anything that your reader may be wondering when they read their copy whether this is too good to be true. Where’s the catch? Or it’s they’re thinking like isn’t XYZ the easier way to do this? Always addresses the thing that you think your audience might be thinking because it makes your argument that much stronger.

Dolly Delong
I love it. And it also helps establish you more as more trusting. She’s being upfront with us. And she’s letting us know the room. I was just thinking this. I don’t know if he did this on purpose. But when you said that you shared the itinerary. It’s kind of like a college itinerary. Like when you start the first week of classes.

Ashlyn Carter
Yeah, and like the names of every day. It was so fun to just like, brainstorm and think like, okay, obviously this is completely facetious like, pie in the sky homecoming except like my friend in my mastermind said she was like in my homecoming we had like Cheetos beer and jeans. I was like, I know like, this is I’m toeing the line here, but why not? The thing was, why not?

Dolly Delong
I love it. I love it so much. And I love college and I love homecoming. And yeah, I just probably listen, he’s like, Yeah, you loved college, a little too much.

Ashlyn Carter
We can all live our Gilmore Girls fallout.

Dolly Delong
Exactly, exactly. I love that so much. So okay, Ashlyn you’ve shared so much information with us. And of course, everyone who’s listening, all the links mentioned will be in the show notes. And I want to remind you all to like really take part in this challenge because you can really transform your homepage in some really creative and transformative ways for free. So I think that’s always fun to like, just partake in. And Ashlyn. I wanted to thank you again, for being on the show, and for sharing so much of your wisdom with my audience, and I know they’re gonna just fall in love with you. If they’re new to Ashton Carter, then I’m so excited for them to follow you. This leads me to how can somebody find you and follow you. Where are you on the interwebs?

Ashlyn Carter
I feel like your love of like systems and workflows, I share that love but like in a weird writing way. So I always tell people, like if there’s something that you can’t have figuring out how to write, please reach out I’ve probably got a YouTube or freebie download or something on it at this point after six and a half years. But Ashlyn writes.com is my website. We have a template shop there too. But like I said, if you can’t figure it out, email me first. Probably have a video on it.

Dolly Delong
I’d love to just share a little bit about your YouTube channel as well.

Ashlyn Carter
Oh, yes, I’m the most reluctant YouTuber ever. I actually as a copywriter, I wrote a sales page for a youtube program. And then I turned around and bought it because I sold myself on it. And I’m telling you to like, I love my coffee cave. I love days when I don’t have to get dressed. I love being quiet. But I started to realize probably like you with the podcast like there’s a level of you’re just able to explain more. And I wanted to go more in-depth and I was able to do blog posts and stuff. And so yes, started a YouTube channel and I now I love it that, Wolf, those first few videos, you can find them. They’re rough.

Dolly Delong
I still love them. They’re still like very valuable. we’re our own worst critics. I’m sure I’m like, don’t listen to my first podcast episode because I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I love them. And I know a lot of moms who are creatives Listen to me in this podcast, Ashley’s very clean. Like she can have your kids in the background like I was sharing with Ashley earlier like Blaze thinks that she is talking to him during the YouTube channel. And it’s so funny to me. And so I’m like, tell him that this is not gonna let him wave to her. So it’s clean. It’s fun and very educational as well. So again, thank you so much option.

Ashlyn Carter
Thanks, Dolly, I appreciate it.

Dolly Delong
course and everyone. I will continue next week with another puzzle piece of automating the back end of your opt-in challenge or offer and I hope that you all have a magical and streamlined five. Thank you so much for listening to the systems and workflow magic podcast. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at dolly DeLong photography.com forward slash podcast. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it with your stories, and tag me at Dolly DeLong education over on Instagram. Until next time, go make some strategic workflow magic.