Hi, everybody. Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. I'm Nicole Begley. And today we are going to be talking with pet photographer, elevate coach and copywriter Xtrordinair, Kim, which camper. So stay tuned to up your website. Copy game.

Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addicts, chocolate martini, calmness, sewer, Nicole Begley. Hey everybody. Welcome to the show,

The dog podcast. I'm Nicole Begley, and I am so excited that you are joining us today because we have a doozy of a podcast for you. Oh, so much good content in here. Grab that notebook. You're going to want to take some notes and you are going to want to go up your website. Copy game quite a bit after this because Kim is giving us some killer tips and strategies for us to take our website from ma to really engaging and really start to capture those potential clients and get them super excited for what we have to offer them. So you definitely want to stay tuned for that. Now, before we get started, I wanted to let you know that we currently have applications open for elevate, which is our high level coaching experience. So we have at hair of the dog, we have myself and six other professional pet photographer coaches in this program to help you take your business further, faster. So I actually have a little pop quiz for you. Do you know what the biggest difference between someone that's running a thriving and profitable pet photography business and someone that's struggling, that's really trying to get more clients, but they're just not able to figure out what needs to happen. Um, if you guests quality of their images, Nope. If you guess living in a large affluent market. Nope. What about living in a market that didn't have any pet photography competitors? Yep. Not that either. It's actually knowing how to move forward. When you find yourself stuck in a state of procrastination and overwhelm, because let me tell you, we all end up there and that's not anything new. We've all been there. We all end up there sometimes. And if you can't get yourself out of it, you really just need a little bit of help to get you moving again. So that's what we do in elevate. We have seven calls per month, one from each of our seven coaches, we have extra content, extra support plug and play marketing templates. Really anything you need to move your business forward. We are there to help you get the clarity you need and get the action taken that you need to take. Now, some of the coaches that we have, we have Kim wish camper to help us with copy here. You're going to hear all about what she has to say here on this podcast. Bellsa and myself. We have Heather Lawton and that you've heard on this podcast quite a bit to help us with our limiting beliefs. We have Kim Harts who is incredible with helping what studio photography and off-camera flash and all of the nuts and bolts of running a business. We have Megan Murray, who is my sister from another Mister, and we bond over spreadsheets and numbers and the bachelor. We also have Mareka Moffitt who is incredible with helping us make connection in our community and interact with marketing partners and charitable partners and just creating meaningful connection in our business. And of course we have Charlotte Reeves who is helping us move forward in the art of pet photography as she does so incredibly well. So if you're a pet photographer, who's built a solid portfolio, but you still aren't booking enough clients. Come check it out. Elevate because we are going to help you crack the code to booking clients who can't wait to spend their money with you simply head on over to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/elevate, check out the program, throw in your application. Our applications are open through December 17th and our new class gets started, uh, this January. So we hope that you will join us and kicking off the 20, 21 to be your most successful year yet. But in the meantime, stay tuned because let's get started with this interview with Kim wish camper. And yeah, I think you're going to find so many incredible actionable takeaways from the next 45 minutes. So let's get started. Hey, everybody, Nicole here from hair of the dog and I am here with Kim, which camper and we are just like cracking each other up because I started this when she was taking a sip of water and then she almost spit it out all over her computer. So this is the kind of podcast interview we are throwing down today. Welcome Kim to the hair of the dog podcast. Thanks for having me, Nicole, of course. So excited to have you here. So I got to start it off with, I first met Kim at a hair of the dog retreat that Taryn and I were teaching at the Tiki house in Florida. What I want to give to go let's like quarantine and the Tiki house for this year snowing here right

Now. So being in Florida, it'd be like a pretty appealing

Option while you're the one that left North Carolina to go back to Montana. So that's on you. But yeah, I met Kim back at that retreat. Gosh, it was like almost three years ago. And so she's a pet photographer, but she also has the super magical superpower of copywriting. Which Kim, do you want to explain the copyright versus copyright?

Yeah, definitely. Because especially in the world of photography, they're easily confused because we're used to talking about copyright R I G H T, referring to the legal rights to the work you've created. So what I do is copywriting, w R I T I N G

I think that through not images

Of, of writing the words that sell your product or service, the, the words or copy as it's called persuade your prospect to take action, like booking a session with you. So yeah, it's like, it's what you say and how you say it. And it wraps in the science of user experience and consumer psychology as well.

Awesome. I love it. And you know, I've gotta be like super, super transparent here. And you guys like are reading all these podcasts emails and you're thinking, man, Nicole is so funny. Yeah. Yep. That's Kim Kim. It's so funny that I read I'm like money. That's awesome.[inaudible] pretend to be Nicole, the official hair of the dog copywriter. So she is doing all those podcasts emails because when I started this podcast, I'm a huge believer in creating our businesses that fit our life. So any, whether it's photography or photography, education, whatever we're doing is kind of a lifestyle business that should be serving our life. And I wanted to start this podcast back in the beginning of the 2020, but I was like, there is no way I have the bandwidth to do all of the things that go along with creating a podcast. So I said, the only way I'm going to do this is if I am able to book my guests, talk to my guests, record the podcast and then hands off. So my team takes it from here. And I'm so very thankful to have you Kim, on my team to bring these podcast awards to magic and each weekly email. So,

Oh, it is so much fun. I really am thrilled to be part of the hair of the dog team, for sure.

I love it. And Kim is also another member of the hair, the dog team, and that she is an elevate coach in our elevate program. And she is helping all of our elevate students take their copywriting to the next level, to get more clients and just, yeah, bring their voice out through their website. So thank you for that. You are one of our most popular. I say that to all of our coaches because really every coach is our most popular cause they all love all of you guys

Awesome group. I mean, just to get to rub elbows with the different coaches and the folks in there, it's been really great experience. So, um, and, and really fun to see what people do with, uh, you know, taking their copy and transforming it. And shoot, I have to say, like I've been spending a lot of time and energy on the writing side of my business and less on the photography, especially since COVID, but man hanging around elevate has me super inspired to pick up my camera. I got to get back on it. I got to get back on it.

I love it. I love it. That's awesome. And shameless plug when this airs, our enrollment for elevate is currently open through December 17th. So if you have been thinking for a way to get more support, to grow your business, check it out, hair of the dog academy.com/elevate. You can also, if you're, if you have any questions about it, you can also schedule a quick call with me and I'm happy to chat with you about your goals and the program and see if it's the right fit. But today Kim, we are going to be talking about copy for people's websites and some of the things that they can do to take their websites up to the next level.

Yeah. So, um, today I've got five simple things that you can go and implement on your website. If you haven't already done them and your copy will be much improved. So the first one is sort of some low-hanging fruit that I know a lot of you who are listening are already doing. I call it the five second test. You might've heard of it as the grunt test, Donald Miller, kind of having a moment and marketing and Nicole you're nodding along. Yeah. Um, he calls it the grunt test. And what it is basically is when someone lands on your website, you have just a few seconds to hook them. You know, we just get like one shot at people's attention. So if it's not immediately clear on your website without scrolling down what it is that you do and why someone might want what you do, you've got, gotta change that ASAP. So that's a really easy thing.

Yeah. And I would imagine you want to have who you serve, like location-wise there too on that.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, bonus points of a prospect can tell where you're located or what area you serve without having to scroll all the way down to the bottom of your page or, you know, dog forbid navigate to your contact or about page that's ideal. So, you know, you want to have a really clear headline above the fold above, above the fold is just a newspaper term that you may or may not have heard. And it means without scrolling down. So your hero section is that top section where you're going to want to have, you know, one of your best images and a headline up there, that's super clear, you know, like we, we, we might be tempted to be cute or be clever with the words there, but the headline really doesn't need to be flashy. It's job is to let people know what you do. And like Nicole said, ideally who you do it for, where you do it. And you know, if it incorporates the words, pet photographer or pet photography even better, because that's really great for SEO purposes, right. You know, also above the fold in terms of that grunt test, you know, you want to have a clear call to action so that someone knows exactly where to go. If they want to book your services, that the typical place that people look for that is in the far right of your header at the top of your site. So, so put it there, just make it easy.

Yeah. I love to put something up there. And if you have the ability with your website software to have like a button, so it's like different color than the rest of ringing menus. So your eyes just like, Oh, what should I do? I should book a session or I should contact them. Whatever your call to action is going to be on your website, trying to have that stand out. Cause definitely Kim, do you have this isn't necessarily copy related, but do you have an opinion on video header versus image header versus like, like the scrolling carousel?

Yeah. The scrolling carousel, I think assumes that people are going to sit there and spend the time waiting for things to scroll. And I think that's really the case. So, you know, I'm a fan of the static image in the hero section. And I think video can be great if employed further down on your site or maybe on a different page, but you know, the job of the homepage is to get people to click through like take the action that you want them to do. Like go, go to your session page, go to your about page, sign up for your newsletter, whatever it is that next best action, like the job of the homepage isn't to necessarily to get someone to go ahead and book right now, you know, we're rarely ready to do that. So I think honestly, keeping it simple and you know, using that video when people are a little bit more warmed up, maybe they've gotten to see a little bit more about who you are and what you do. And then maybe, you know, they've settled it a little bit and offering a video could be bent.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That homepage job is to say, Hey, if you like you out there, this is what I do. Do you like it? Stay here, stay here. If this fits you. But if you guys are going to put video on your site, just one quick, since like copywriting slash web design, because it all kind of goes together and we're looking at our website is to make sure that bull with images and video, that they are small size. So you don't sacrifice load time for your website because that is really a kiss of death of a lot of websites. And I speak from experience because before we redid the hair of the dog Academy website this past year, the load time on my homepage, can you want to take a guest, just take the guests and you're going to be under six seconds. No, it was like 36 seconds. I was so far in like the pit of red list of like bad website, bad, bad, bad website, new from the internet very much. I mean, Google is to the point now to where they're taking that load speed into effect. So Google is pretty much, I think I changed it right when Google started putting like the badge of shame on slow loading websites when you Google sites. So I definitely would have had like a giant badge of shame on my site. You want it quick? So keep an eye on that. And if you Google like load speed tests, there's a whole bunch of websites out there that will test your load speed and give you all that data. So just something to keep in mind.

Yeah. But I'm going to add on to that and say that you want your, your image files to be a small, manageable size. And at the same time, you don't want to compromise the quality. And so like for instance, I use Squarespace and they have in their frequently asked questions in their help section parameters on ideal image upload size. So that it's less than 500 K, but there are a lot of pet photography sites that I go to because I'm nosy,

I'm going to go check it out.

And I do see, um, on my 20 inch iMac, I do see from time to time images that look pixelated at that size. So, you know, if, if you're promoting your services as a professional pet photographer and someone's on their big work computer or home computer, and your first image looks grainy and pixelated, like that's, that's a bad thing. So you want to find that balance of fast loading website with optimizing your images for speed and quality.

All these four and 5k monitors are really thrown a wrench in that being small image size things. You'll get the badge of shame. Everyone don't get the badge of shame. Awesome. So we talked to him on page.

Okay. So this one is, there's a something that I see a common mistake that is really pretty easy to fix, and it's going to make a big difference on your site. And I call this one, the you rule, why are you not, you

It's you, if you're texting, you're texting it breaks or my daughter

Stuck in my way. Um, but basically here's the thing. A lot of sites, you know, we are so passionate about what we do and passionate about being a dog photographer, passionate about our own dogs, our own story that we want to share that with our readers. And so, you know, you'll write something like I've had a special connection with dogs my entire life. And what would the distance harsh? Nobody cares. You know, your prospect really only cares about themselves and that's not a character flaw. It's like an evolutionary strategy, right? Like we pass the tender own needs first. So again like this is something that Donald Miller talks about. And I definitely recommend his book building a StoryBrand it's worth checking out. We can link to that in the

Link to that, Sharon, this is a great book, highly recommend.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's really simple to read, but some pretty important principles. And one of the things he talks about is how your prospect just wants to know if what you offer will help them either survive or thrive. Because if not, then they're not going to spend the mental energy. It takes to read your copy. So they're going to tune out, click away to somewhere else in internet land. So this is super actionable. And here's what I want you guys to do. Go to your website. If you have one already and count the number of times, do you use the word I, and the number of times you use the word you or your,

We will not put a badge of shame if you say hi[inaudible],

But if you have a lot more eyes, then use it's time to do some rewriting because your prospective clients love to feel like they're being directly spoken to on your website. Like there's something really magical about going to a site and reading the word you it's like, Oh,

I think to me, you know, one of the things around that though, that tell me if you agree or not is being careful that you're not telling people how to feel like you feel this. It's like, if you're like most you probably, or you may feel, so you're not telling people like what they are feeling or do.

Oh, I think that's a good point. Yeah.

Writing about like, you know, just definitely, you know, but even, you know, you probably love your dog, like family, or, you know, like if you're like most of our clients, you, when you're sleeping in bed, you won't move because the dog's there, even though you have no feeling in your feet, you know, something like that guilty. So yeah, just random thought.

I, I might be a little more liberal with painting, a stronger, more clear picture. Um, that makes some assumptions, I think realistically like maybe 20 to 30% of the people who land on our website are going to be our ideal client. And I think it's important to write to those ideal clients specifically and, and not worry so much about that. You're, you're not being inclusive of every single person. So I'm actually a little more willing to take risks on that front and to paint a really clear visual picture, not to tell people what they feel like in a pushy way. But yeah, I think I might be a little more willing to take some risks there.

Yeah, no, I like it. It depends. I think what, what you're writing about too, you know, for sure. And you know, you bring up a good point there too, where we definitely need to write, hopefully this isn't one of your points later that I'm stealing your thunder. If it is stop me, but we need to write to our ideal client avatar, like writing directly to that person and not worrying about trying to please every single person that comes to our website, like figuring out who it is you want to serve what their interests are, how they feel about their dog, what they're looking to gain out of this and writing directly to them. You know, for instance, if you are a pet photographer that does like traditional beautiful paintings and like, you know, that kind of more traditional work, your clientele might be more empty-nesters. So maybe you want to make sure your copy is more written towards them, or maybe you're serving like a really young professional crowd. So maybe you're writing some more towards that. And maybe you just do that letter. You, instead of the word you,

Your audience is like gen Z and somehow they have the money to live, drop some serious coin on a session. Well, you're living in a different town than I am, but like you write Nikola. You want to write to your figure out who your ideal client is and write to them. And by them, I mean them specifically, you know, when you're writing your website, copy, when you're writing your emails, think, imagine that you're writing to one reader, you know, so it's not like you guys out there, you're writing to one person and you're talking to them about their, their love for their pet. So that, that one reader isn't going to be so interested in reading all about your childhood pets, right? They want it, they want to hear about themselves and their relationship to their pet and what that means and why they should book a shoot with you to preserve those memories. So, I mean, even, you know, little things like, so if you have a sentence like approximately a week after the shoot, I'll schedule a viewing session for your images, you know, like that's a place where you don't need to have the word. I, you could just rewrite that. Something like about a week after your session, you'll come back to the studio for the big reveal. I'm like any place that you can work, the word you in there get rid of. I, it just makes it feel much more focused on your prospect.

And I think that is a super common, that phrase that you just said right there, I think is on probably 90% of our website.

Yeah. You know, cause you're writing,

Writing, you're you're writing from your perspective. So you have to like have an out-of-body experience and be like, all right, I'm just channeling my client here. Like how am I writing that from their perspective?

Yeah, absolutely. It is a mindset shift. But if you can do that and step into like step out of the, this is my process, this is what I do. And yeah. Turn, turn your brain onto from your client's perspective and what will they get out of it? What will they experience? What, you know, how will it go for them? That's going to make a big difference and even on, and this is a, this is a tricky one, but even on our, about page where ostensibly, we think, okay, well this is all about myself. Like, yes, but you know, even on your about page, you want to write about yourself in the context of what you can do for your ideal client, right?

Yeah. Like how, how has this about them? Because that's what they care about most evolutionarily. That's where we're all our own number one, so.

Right, right. We're very, self-centered, it's just the way it is. So if you can, if you can like honor that and put that to good use, um, that's going to help your condition.

We start the page off with, you know, on the about page talking about what's in it for them, like why they should be interested in doing this, but then later on in the page, you know, then you can share some of what makes you, because I feel like having some of that, you know, I love to travel. I love chocolate martinis. I have a sweet tooth and can't pass a patisserie without stopping. Like those little random things about me might make connections with potential clients. So good to have on there, but probably not the best, not what you want to focus on as the main thing. Do you agree?

Yeah, definitely. I do. Because we want to build that know like, and trust factor and people do need to start to learn who you are. Right. But until your personal brand has reached the no like trust and stock level, which do call, like maybe you have a big community until you're at the point where people are geeking out over how great you are. And when I read everything about you, like yeah, like definitely add some, some interesting facts and things about yourself that people could connect to and relate to. But I'd say, you know, we, we want to resist the urge to be really self-indulgent here. So like writing a long story about our childhood pets or, you know, the camera where we got when we were six, um, like, you know, you can mention the camera you got when you were six, but spin that into how that helps your potential clients, you know, for sure. I love it. All right. What's next. Okay. Moving on. Okay. So number three, throw out everything you learned in high school. English class

Of works out well for me because I, yeah. I forgot

Filter everything out, you know, to write in a, in a very particular way back then. And it's, it's really like, not at all applicable for writing on the web today, you know, and I think when it comes to writing our websites, it's, um, you know, we sit down and we're looking at this blank screen and it's daunting. It's kind of intimidating and we want to sound professional. So we often default to this kind of like stiff, formal way of writing that we learned in school. And, you know, there's a danger that we end up sounding robotic and not at all the way we would sound when talking to a friend. Right. And people like, they want to work with someone who feels like a friend. So how do we create that feel with our words? And one big thing that I see a lot is a lack of contractions in the writing. So instead of saying, you do not need to worry about instead, it's going to be a lot more casual and approachable. If you say you don't need to worry about just that little shift, it starts to feel more like a human to human conversation.

Yeah, definitely. I recommend like actually taking your copy after you've written for your page and read it out loud. And if it doesn't sound like something you would say out loud and you probably want to adjust it.

Yeah. Definitely reading out loud is a great tool to just get a sense of how someone else is going to kind of hear those words when they go through your site. There,

Are you going to speak to, or my jumping ahead again too with, um, cause I tend to have this problem of being sometimes a little long-winded and having like the readability of our website of that, which kind of goes into design where this copywriter needs to be a marriage of the design and the copy because people just skim. I mean, a goldfish has more attention than we do guys, unless you're writing your website for a goldfish and even then they're still gonna skim, you know, just how much text is too much text

The question I am going to address that. But related to that, I would say is we can start with just, um, sentence structure, like when it comes to writing for the web, a simple sentence structure wins the day, you know, which really was a hard transition coming from the editorial world. But yeah, you're right. Uh, attention span is limited. And you know, when people are reading a magazine, they might be lying in bed with a dog at their side. You can afford to use those like long flowery, complicated sentences. They don't have eleventy billion, other like websites. They can go click off. But when you're writing for the web simple as better, I'll never forget. One of my copywriting mentors said, she said, if you use a semi-colon on your website, is your funeral maybe a little overly dramatic is short, punchy sentences can be great. They can be really powerful on the web, you know, sentence fragments, starting sentences with conjunctions. Like so, or because

Which is like a major high school English. No-no.

Exactly, exactly. But I mean, unless I don't know, like it's been a while since I've been in high school, maybe they're teaching writing. I dunno. But, um, yeah, actually I pulled a little example here, which is, it's not related to pep photography, but it can I read two sentences here. Okay. Actually there's a few more than two. Okay. So this first one, this is how I think we sort of like typically think to write. So we might write something like, well, not us personally, cause we're not writing about oil changes, but you know, imagine it in the pet photography world at Hanks auto, we know how important it is to keep your car maintained, which is why we came up with the oil change plus program. Once you have accumulated five stamps on your card, you're entitled to your free oil change. Okay. That's fine. It's all grammatically correct. It makes sense. That's probably how we would think to write right now. Let's try something a little more punchy at Hanks auto. We know how important it is to keep your car maintained, which is why we came up with the oil change plus program five stamps, free oil change. It's that easy, right? It's like, it's just more punchy. It's more powerful. It ends with a really short, easy sense to like reward people for reading,

Right? I mean, this is our attention span guys. We need to have positive reinforcement built in. So they keep reading.

Totally. Yes. So if you have a lung, you know, if for whatever reason you need to have a long sentence. Yeah. Reward the reader was something really short afterwards, you know,

And then maybe one day we can have like a way you press a button and you get a chocolate out of your computer for reading. We can reinforce them that way. Wouldn't that be nice. One can dream. One can dream.

I'll go ahead and skip ahead, Nicole, because you were asking about like readability and user experience and it is, it's really important to think about how you're organizing your copy on the page, because if someone lands on your website and they see big, long blocks of texts, they're going to look at that. And they're likely to think that reading your copy would be a lot of work and they're likely to bounce.

Yeah. They're like, I gotta save this brain energy in case a tiger comes to try to eat me.

Yeah, absolutely. Like nobody got time for that. Right. So we want to keep our paragraphs short, you know, probably no more than four lines. And it's definitely easier to read if the text doesn't ban the whole width of your computer, you know? So like think about narrowing those margins

And the body should probably definitely be the Sans serif without, you know, which is the fonts without the fancy ans cause the Sans serif fonts are so much easier to read for the body. At least

They are, they definitely are. Yeah. And you know, again, it's maybe a little different than we learned how to write a proper paragraph in high school English class, but for the web as single sentence can be its own paragraph. You know, like I do that all the time and yeah. Your question about using unnecessary words or too many words, I don't know. I don't know that there's a hard and fast rule about how many words are too many, um, kind of depends on what you're selling, but you know, if, if there's fluff that you can cut out and leave a more concise, powerful message behind do it. You know, sometimes if you just spend a few minutes fiddling around trying different things, you'll find that you're able to say more with fewer words and that's really ideal. Yeah. I love it. What else? Yeah. I mean, in terms of visual, you know, the user experience, we want to make sure that we're using our headlines to create a message hierarchy and guide people through the page, use things like old type and bullet points to draw their eyes to the most important messages. Because you know, like you said, Nicole, the attention of a goldfish. So we, we know people are, are meeting like maybe 20 to 28% of the words on our website. But that doesn't mean that those words aren't important. They're really important. They're super important. And we want to make sure that the ones that are the most important of all people's eyes land on. Yeah.

And it's almost, I'm thinking of, you know, some of the pages that we've done together and other pages that I've done. And it's almost like you look at the headlines, you could almost just like skim the headlines and still kind of know where you are on the page and what's going on that, that your eyes can just go down and you can like pick and choose a section here and there and just scan through it and still, still get the main gist out of it. Cause like you said, most people aren't going to read it, which then makes people say, well, why do I have it there? If most people aren't going to read it, but different people need to read like different spots are interested in different spots and there'll be the rare couple of you that maybe read it all. So,

You know, when it comes to people landing on your site and making a decision, there's, there's four different types of decision makers. There's the emotional slow paced decision makers. Those are the ones who are going to read everything. There's the emotional fast-paced decision makers. Those are the ones who are going to look at the headlines, look at your bullets and be like, this is amazing.

Okay.

And then there's the, the logical slow paced decision makers and the logical fast-paced decision makers. And I mean, I don't want to make too big of a blanket statement, but I'm guessing that for most of us, the people who are actually booking our services are probably leading with emotion. So it's probably a safe bet to say that we're working with the emotional decision makers. But even within that, you know, you've got the people who, you know, do want to skim and the people who want to be really thorough and methodical. And so, I mean, of course I'm biased. I'm writer. You want to write for the people who are actually going to read your website, you know, and

When they do well for the people that are going to skim.

Exactly. Yeah. Them a favor, make it scannable, do the, do the thorough. Decision-makers a favor. Have it there. But again, I mean, most of us, probably our process from when someone lands on our site to when they actually book a session, involves talking to them, involves maybe them getting on our email list, we're nurturing them along the way. So just to reiterate like the point of our homepage isn't to get them to book right now, there are a lot of steps that happen in between. So I have the copy there, but don't feel like you have to have every single, every single thing about your process or your products, et cetera on that site. Like we don't want to overwhelm people. That's not necessary. Um, give them enough to get them excited, give them enough to get them to take the next step. I love it. Oh, Oh one more. And this is a biggie. This is in terms of readability before I go to one last thing that we can work on, but it's really difficult to read a paragraph of body copy that's centered body copy should almost always. I'm sure there are a few exceptions. I can't think of the top of my head, what those might be, but body copy should almost always be left aligned. And I see that a lot. So you can send her your headlines. You can send her your buttons with the call to action in it. Um, if you've got subheads or crossheads, those can often be centered, but with your body, copy, go ahead and left a line. It that's how, you know, your typical reader of English is used to reading and it just makes it a lot easier. So again, we're not asking them to expend unnecessary mental energy. Yeah.

And along with that body copy, make sure that it's readable in terms of color, like dark copy on a light background and not light copy on a dark background. Cause that hurts our eyes or with like a picture in the back where the picture's coming through too much. So it's really hard to read the actual copy to make it easy for people.

Yeah, absolutely. We want to help people along as much as possible

Goldfish guys, goldfish. I need to help.

Totally. Okay. So the last thing that I'm going to throw out there today is to focus on the benefits and not just the features, the features are the facts about your products or services, but the benefits are what your product or service does for your reader. And that's what they really care about. We're not, we're not selling

Well. The one I like to use is, um, like a mounted print, which is what I do for my prints. So it's, uh, the, the features are, uh, Lustre print mounted on styrene with a linen texture and UV coding, whatever our clients don't care about, that what they do care is look at this print that has this backing. So it won't bend in a UV coating. So it won't fade in this linen texture. So it's beautiful. So you have this beautiful piece of art is going to last a lifetime. That's the benefit,

You know, to figure out the benefit. All you have to do is really like, look at the features and then yourself the question. Yeah. Right. I really like my gallery wrapped canvases use museum quality of canvas and archival inks. Right, exactly. So let's try it again. Well, the benefit, um, museum quality canvas and archival inks mean that your artwork will look as dazzling tomorrow as it does today. Right? So now they're getting the sense, like, yes, they know that you're using professional quality stuff in your products and it's going to last and look amazing for a really long time, you know? And you know, if you listen carefully to that example, you might have also noticed that the first sentence started with my well, the second version referenced your artwork a really subtle difference. But exactly that kind of shift in your website copy will help your prospects feel like you're talking directly to them.

Yeah. I think if you guys take nothing else from this podcast, other than to go do that, you, I count up exercise on your website like that alone, I think would make a wild difference to the experience on your website, going from the, yeah. The eye to the, you

Agreed. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's kind of a fun exercise just to rewrite every sentence that has an I in it with a year. You know, of course you're not going to leave it that way. Cause that's super weird, but that's really great practice just to get into thinking about things from your customer's perspective. So another example of going from features to focusing on the benefits as well would be something like I'll include a web ready digital file with each image you buy as artwork. So again, we'll try that question. So what or why, and then we might rewrite it as something like each image purchases, artwork comes with a web ready digital file, perfect. For your screen saver or for sharing on social media. And if you're listening to this and thinking like, well, that's obvious everyone knows what to do with a digital file. They probably do. But it's, it's still a really powerful, extremely powerful from a conversion standpoint to tell them, so tell your prospects at every opportunity what's in it for them, don't assume that they know, even if they do, it's going to go a long way for you to tell them and for them to read it right there.

I imagine too, as they're reading it, they're subconsciously picturing it. So like it's impossible for me to say pink elephant right now. And you're not to think of a pink elephant.

Yeah. See right here, all of us out there across hair of the dog lands analysis, we can think elephants. So as they're reading this,

They start to subconsciously picture like, Oh yeah, I could share that on my phone or S or Facebook or whatever Instagram, even though they might know that consciously, it just, it gets another part of their brain works.

Yeah, definitely. And I mean to that end, um, anytime that you can create like a, a visual picture with your words, it's going to be a lot more memorable people. Um, and I'm thinking back to, this was an example that I used in a coaching call and elevate was from coach Megan's website. This was her about page. She's really painting a picture for her ideal client before she ever starts talking about herself. But she's putting this picture of her clients walking their dog along like some specific Rivertrail, you know, in, in Houston, I think it is. And, you know, references the dog chewing up her favorite red, the owner's favorite red heels and uses some really descriptive language in there. And just the simple modifiers red, you know, that helps somebody create an image in their mind, which means that everything that you just said is going to stick in their brain a lot better than if it's just some generic words that don't really create an image in their mind.

Yeah. It's all about, I think creating this picture and creating these feelings. And I know if I get stuck and I need to write a piece of copy, like what I like to sit down and do is like, sit down, figure out what a, the intention of the copy is for and be who it's for. And then like put myself in their shoes and be like, okay, if I want them to do something or if I want them to see the benefit, maybe I write down, like, what are their feelings? What are their thoughts? What's the situation or the environment like before they have this change and then like, okay, now after they have their pet photography session, what does their environment look like? Are they looking at something on the wall? What are their thoughts about that thing on the wall? What feelings do they elicit when they come down the steps every morning and see that picture on the wall, like to really sit down and just brainstorm. Don't try to put them in any sort of words, copy yet. Just like brainstorm all of these feelings and descriptions of what the change is. So then you can start to take those and then it becomes a heck of a lot easier to start to write something about it.

Yeah. 100% Nicole, because again, we're not selling that styrene backed print. You're you're, you're selling the feeling that they get from looking at it, sitting down and kind of thinking through that transformation, those feelings that we want them to have before you ever start to write. And then once you do start to write, recognize that the first few drafts are probably going to be garbage out right away. One of my copywriting mentors has a saying that you, you get the nuts and bolts down on the page, you know, like what you want to say, and then you go back in and edit in the awesome.

Yeah, yeah, it is. Yep. And then you'll start looking at it and you're like, Oh wait, but this should be up here. And you start to rearrange a little bit and you can get rid of all the superfluous words that I tend to put down. But fun fact, I went through a long period of time where I could not figure out how to say superfluous. And I finally did.

That's one of those words.

And I was like, my mouth would not make it

For me. It's crunchy. And it's so hard. That's what words you can't say out there and have all been there. You'll have the advantage of typing it. Exactly.

I love it. I love it. Uh, Kim, this has been so, so good. Are there any other, just like final words of wisdom for our copyright, uh, copywriting pet photographers, ready to take charge of their website and start getting more conversions? Oh man. I mean

We could spend hours. Um, there's so many things, but one, one last small thing that I'll offer today is when it comes to your button. Copy, because you said one small thing, but those are small. So we sort of, we tend to overlook they're small, but mighty, because that is like, that's where all the magic happens. You know? Like we want people to click. So be really intentional with your button. Copy. And again, come up with a way to word your button. Copy. That doesn't sound like work. That makes it sound enticing. Like what's in it for me. Think about that question. What's in it, what's in it for your reader. So if you can make it sound enticing instead of like work, that's going to eliminate some of the friction that people have around clicking a button to give you their email address or, you know, download a guide or schedule a call with you or whatever it might be.

Yeah. So instead of maybe like enter your email here, it can be like, get your, you know, grab your five freed, whatever your five tips, your dog's love, whatever your lead magnet or thing is like the benefit of that to put that on the coffee instead of the action of what they need to do. Yeah. That's a big one, but small. I like it.

The smell of a big pig.

Perfect. Oh my gosh, Kim, this has been so, so good. Thank you.

Oh, it's open to talk with you or the dog world.

I love it. So if our audience wants more of you, I mean, they can obviously get more of you and elevate, but where else can they get more of you if they want to go to you directly?

Yeah. Um, well, you know, I had an on again off again, relationship with Instagram, but find me there. So my business name is lint roller productions, which is sort of like dog adjacent, but, um, you know, not totally obvious. So on Instagram, it's lint.roller.productions. And my website is just www lint roller productions.com. And I'm going to link in the show notes to a download with a little bit more about common mistakes on business websites and what to do about them. Just a little spot check you can go through and do some really simple things, things that we talked about today, and then a few other ideas to help you improve your copy, improve your conversion rate. So look for that in the show notes.

Awesome. Awesome. And you guys, this is one of those things that I think a lot of people were like, ah, I don't want to do it. This is my, my cat's voice. Emma she's cranky. So she has, uh, that's her voice anyways, MSS, I don't want to do the copy. Sounds like Marge's sisters from Simpsons anyway, but it's one of those, those 5% activities that have such a big, big, huge, massive difference in your business. So, you know, even though you might want to procrastinate out of not really knowing what to do out of feeling like you're not very good at it out of feeling like, uh, you know, it's not going to be as good as you had hoped again, it's a process, work on it, put some energy into this and you're, it's gonna pay off. It's gonna pay off. It's definitely one of those things that makes a huge difference in our business. But so many people don't do it. And you know what, the benefit for you that so many people don't do it as your website's going to look that much better than your competitors. So there's that tech. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks again, Kim, for being here with us, this was a great podcast, so much good information. Go to the show notes page, which is hair of the dog academy.com/four three, just the number four and the number three. And that'll take you to the show notes page, and then you will be able to download that special little sheet with all the different mistakes and do a little audit on your website. And of course, if you want to join elevate, we have our applications open through the 17th. So through next Thursday, and then you get lots of access to people like Kim, myself, and our five additional awesome coaches. So go check that out and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks Kim. Thanks Nicole. Thanks everyone.

Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe. So you don't miss our upcoming episodes. One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our [email protected]. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.