The Art of Selling Online Courses

If You Write Copy Without Doing This, You're Insane

• John Ainsworth

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Join me and our Funnel Strategy Lead Josip Belina as we break down why customer avatars are absolutely critical for anyone selling online courses.

Most course creators think they understand their audience - but we've never met a client who didn't learn something surprising when they created a proper customer avatar. You'll discover why guessing what your audience wants is costing you sales, and how to use data-driven research to create messaging that makes prospects feel like you're "reading their diary."

We cover everything from the biggest mistakes people make with customer avatars to the exact process we use to create them for our highest-performing clients. Whether you're struggling with conversion rates, product creation, or compelling copy, this episode reveals the foundation that makes everything else work.

We have a module from our course that our clients go through first. This is normally only available to our paying clients, but if you'd like to get access to it then email me a promise that you'll actually do the work and create the customer avatar. And if you do then I'll give you access to that module for free. Email me on john@datadrivenmarketing.co

Speaker 1:

There's a vital thing that we absolutely must have People make much more revenue after they have a good customer avatar. Josip Lina is a funnel genius. He has made our clients over $33 million through his strategies. He's developed systems that have cut copywriting time in half and made this into a straightforward system that anyone can follow. I don't think that I could even imagine trying to do any copywriting without a proper customer avatar, and I think the fact that people are trying to do copywriting without a customer avatar is absolutely insane.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is Jon Ainsworth and today's guest is Yosip Berlina. We are going to be talking about an absolutely vital tool that we use with all of our clients. Without this, we wouldn't be able to do copywriting effectively for anybody. We're going to cover what it is, why it matters, how to use it, how to create it, yosip, welcome to the show. Happy to be here. Use it how to create it, josip, welcome to the show. Happy to be here. So what is this amazing tool, this vital thing that we absolutely must?

Speaker 2:

have. Yeah, we had to hype it up. It's the customer avatar, Something that a lot of people think that they have it but don't really have it. So basically a database representation of your ideal customer. You'll often hear people call it a buyer's persona, so it includes stuff like demographic information, age, location, income, stuff like that. But it really goes much deeper by focusing on psychographics attitudes, beliefs, challenges, goals, buying behavior. That's basically the main thing we are after.

Speaker 1:

So why is it so important? Why does this matter so much?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it might sound boring to most people but it really isn't, because it's like the step zero in your marketing efforts, more or less. So it's important to understand who you are talking to, so you need to be able to speak their language basically. So you need to be able to address the biggest pain point, an objection that your audience has, or create a product or a service that solves that person's needs. A lot of people, when they have a big following and they're starting out, with course, sales, they just think of an idea this might work and then just build it. You have to understand what your audience wants before you start servicing that audience. So not creating stuff randomly, but actually with intent.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So for product creation it's vital, because you have to make sure you're actually creating stuff that is what your audience wants, not what you think they want or what you want them to want, or something like that. Where else is it helpful?

Speaker 2:

Direct communication. It allows people to feel heard. So if you are, you can attack their pain points and crush their objections. Basically shows people that you understand them, which is a very important step in sales. But for you, it allows you as a business owner to have better targeting. Clear Customer Avatar helps you basically create marketing strategies that speak directly to the people that are most likely to buy. Your messaging is stronger. You are more efficient with just budget allocation and resources that you have. For example, for us, ever since we've introduced a proper way of creating a customer avatar, our copywriting time got cut in half. It was way back when we were starting out, like five, six years ago, but that was one of the key moments in our copywriting journey and it also allows you for a more consistent brand experience. You know your sales team, marketing team, product team. If you are that one person, basically everything that you do is going to be more aligned with what you are trying to do, so you're consistent. It's very important to have consistent messaging across channels.

Speaker 1:

I don't think that I could even imagine trying to do any copywriting without a proper customer avatar, and I think the fact that people are trying to do copywriting without a customer avatar is absolutely insane. And people are doing this because, like, oh, I know my audience, I've kind of got it in my head. It's like you don't Don't lie to yourself, stop lying, got it in my head. It's like you don't don't lie to yourself, stop lying, stop trying to talk yourself into believing that you just have all this information in your head because you've talked to a bunch of customers need to like have. Well, first of all, you need to have it written down, but secondly, you need to have actually done the research, because there's a bunch of times we've found that people were wrong, haven't we about like who their audience was, who they had, who they thought their audience was, and then who their actual audience was was not the same, not the same person.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, wrong or partly incorrect. I'm yet to do an audit where, after we do a customer avatar, the client is like yeah, that's exactly what I thought would happen. They always learn something.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So it is vital. You should absolutely trust us that it is vital because it's something that we use consistently in the copywriting that we do for clients and stuff that we help our consultancy clients use, and it makes a massive difference. People make much more revenue after they have a good customer avatar in place. It also helps with product creation. It also helps with marketing strategies All of these things absolutely essential.

Speaker 1:

We're going to cover in this episode how to create a customer avatar, all the steps to it. But we actually have a paid module of our course, a module of our paid course which takes you through step by step, exactly how to do this, has all the templates in there, every single element about customer avatar creation, and it's normally only available to our paying clients. But if you want to get access to it for free, then email me. John at data driven marketingco that's john j-o-h-n at data driven marketingco and I will give you access to that module of the course for free. Now what you have to email me is a promise that you will actually create a customer avatar and then I will look forward to you then creating it and sending me a copy of it once you've actually done the work on it. How much work would you say it is. How many hours work, would you say, to create a customer avatar.

Speaker 2:

About four hours in total, with doing all the prep and then reviewing the content. It was a lot more previously, but now, with ai, you can cut a lot of the time that you spend on it cool.

Speaker 1:

So four hours, that's the commitment that you're making when you actually reach out, plus the time you spend going through the course. I suppose we're actually going to learn how to do it. So if you want that, drop me an email, john, at data drivenadrivenmarketingco. So where do people? We've covered a little bit of this, but where do people go wrong with creating a customer avatar? What's any of the mistakes that they make? I suppose one of the first ones is not doing it right.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, that's the first one, but we doing it. The biggest mistake is not doing it properly through a survey and having it based on data. You'll have a lot of customer avatars, and I've seen a lot of customer avatars that were designed based on what that person thought of their audience, whether it's a CEO of the business, more or less CEO, or someone in charge of their marketing. But they would just put something together based on some data from their analytics whether it's Google Analytics or YouTube Analytics, and their idea of who they are servicing, and it's better than not having it. It's definitely better than not having it, but it's often inaccurate. So, no, if you want to do it right, you do it database, you do a survey and you go from there.

Speaker 1:

So one of the terms that people use for customer avatar is ICP ideal client profile and I think that's really dangerous in some ways, because people draw out who they wish their customer was, but it's not who their customer actually is, and so they're talking to who they would love to have as an audience, but everybody who we're working with has already got an audience of people. Those are the people who you are selling to, and if you are trying to talk to somebody else who isn't that audience, it doesn't work right. There's a very mixed messaging going on there, and so I think that's a massive place where people go go wrong when they write up these custom rabbit holes, when it's not based on survey data.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. You know, even a simple survey where you'll ask them just a couple questions about what their struggles are and what they want to improve or do is a good step one. We normally send about seven to 10 questions open-ended, more or less um, and a lot of people think that the demographics data is what matters. It rarely matters, so you want more in-depth answers about what you're they want solved as an issue got it okay.

Speaker 1:

So we've covered why it's important and where people go wrong with this. So when in the process we've we've covered why it's important and where people go wrong with this. So when in the process, we've kind of covered this. But when in the process do people use or do we use a customer avatar Once we've got it created, we're going to use it when we're creating, when we're doing any copywriting work. Is there anything else? In the other points, we use it.

Speaker 2:

So that copywriting work is, for us, one of the most important bits Now. For us, when we work on product creation, that's a must-have tool. So copywriting and content creation is the top thing. Products and service creation. Second thing. That basically means that you're going to be using it throughout your marketing funnel and then it's very helpful for customer support and onboarding or offboarding people, but onboarding mostly because understanding where customers get stuck so challenges, fears, objections that basically allows you to create better documentation, faqs and better onboarding processes. So those would be the top three or four things where you'd use your customer avatar for Once you've got a customer avatar, what are the sections in it?

Speaker 1:

What's the headings within the customer avatar?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we have quite a few. I'll focus on some of the most important ones and for those people who do sales and have experience with sales, you'll notice that a lot of those headings are related to the sales process. As you would do it in person, like the current situation, where do they stand right now in their life or their business, you know? For an example, for someone teaching language learning, for example, intermediate level English speaker who struggles to find practice partners, understanding their current situation is super important because it then brings us to their challenges. The challenge is the main obstacle or difficulty that your ideal client would face, example being breaking through a plateau, let's say a speaking plateau, for someone trying to learn language. Then we go to pain points and frustrations, and this is a very important one because it's heavily used in pain, agitate, solution, copywriting framework that we do. So pains and frustrations are basically emotional and practical frustrations that cause stress or dissatisfaction where people start to learn or trying to find a solution to their problem English learning example again, feeling unintelligent when speaking English or forgetting words or needing subtitles. Then the fourth I think one of the top headlines issues that are causing them so deeper reasons that cause those challenges. So why do they exist? It's always three things that people struggle with Money, time and then something else. So figuring out what is that something else thing that people struggle with, maybe lack of time, fear of judgment Again example, for someone who would want to learn a language.

Speaker 2:

And then we move into what they want to achieve. We have goals and desires. So what do they want? Where do they want to be in the future Speaking fluently, for example? Then what their values are. So what do they care about on a deeper level, personal, cultural, social, for example? English, that's a universal language. So someone loves to travel, they want to be able to speak and communicate with more people.

Speaker 2:

Then we need to figure out what the objections are being the reasons why someone would hesitate to get your product Again, time, money, something else that's causing that. Then we have something that we call a role in the buying process. Are they a sole decision maker? Do they need approval from someone? Mostly, if you are focusing on B2, b2c, it's them. It's you know. But do they need approval from their spouse, maybe? Or a business partner? So sometimes you need to talk to them directly. Sometimes you need to talk to the whole family One of the important bits also is the before and after grid, which would be a visual or textual comparison of their life before they get a product and then after they get it. Super important to survey people that haven't bought stuff from you and people that have bought stuff from you and people that have bought stuff from you, because that way can then transition what's going to happen if you don't get the product versus what's going to happen when you do get a product.

Speaker 2:

The key thing are the words and phrases to use. It helps us to create something that we call a customer language document. Are there words that you want to avoid? Are they words that you want to use? Never going to use something like stupid or nervous if you are teaching a language, but maybe your audience wants to put those words, so you're not sure you need to figure out how do they express themselves. So those would be like the top 10 things. I know it's a lot, so I assume some people will want to re-watch this or just message john to get the template yeah, I think that customer language document is one that people just don't even realize how mind-bogglingly powerful that is.

Speaker 1:

If you've never done it, if you never had it, because it's the actual you include. It's a document where you include all the words that your audience actually uses. So how did they explain this problem when they were talking about it? How do they explain what their desired state is? You have the curse of knowledge. As the course creator, you know everything about this topic. You know exactly how it works, you know all the jargon, you know all the issues, etc. It works. You know all the jargon, you know all the issues, etc. And therefore it's actually quite hard to put yourself into the position of the person who you're trying to help.

Speaker 1:

It's some of the things are so obvious to you that it's really hard to remember how little these people know about that thing. And so by using their words, like actually having this written out in this customer language document, by knowing exactly what their main pain points are, what their main desires are. So you have to mention those things and then this is the words that they use when they describe that thing. This is the actual phrases they're using. Then you can just copywriting actually becomes more like a game of like, uh, compiling it, rather than like writing. It's not a very it's not actually nearly as creative of a process as people think it is doing. Copywriting. Good copywriting is much more about using all the analysis and the data and pulling it all from the customer avatar, from the customer language document, from all of these different headings. All right, cool, so we've covered why this is important, where we use it, where people go wrong and what all the different headings are. How do we actually create this thing? What is the process for creating a customer avatar?

Speaker 2:

So you want to start well with a survey. That's the easiest bit. So you send out a questionnaire to existing customers or potential leads and you ask them open-ended questions about their challenges, goals and objections open-ended questions about their challenges, goals and objections. You can also do one-on-one interviews. It's a lot more time-consuming but it does get you pretty good If you have the time. Spending time on doing 10, 20 interviews over a period of that survey analysis might be a good approach for you. You can also do market research. So you look at relevant industries, trend analysis forums, reddit, facebook and get your customer feedback and reviews. It's very good to entice feedback from your customers, whether it's a product or a service. You come through the reviews and testimonials to uncover what customers love or what they struggle with. And then, if you have social media just comments and replies that's always a good starting point. But yeah, survey is something that I'd suggest starting with if you have the audience.

Speaker 1:

So customer reviews, testimonials, survey, customer interviews, the crucial one of which being the survey of the audience. So what questions do you ask in the survey?

Speaker 2:

Ideally, open-ended questions around pain points and struggles and basically those 10 things that we mentioned earlier, those headings. You are trying to create questions so that those headings get filled out right. So what is their life looking like now? What do they want to achieve, why it matters to them, what they like or don't like about a certain product or a problem or a service. Where do they see themselves in X amount of time? What are their goals? What are their desires? What frustrates them? Go from there.

Speaker 1:

Got it All right, cool. So you've written the survey. You've sent the survey out to your audience. Do you send the same survey to buyers and non-buyers?

Speaker 2:

Similar I would say 80% similar. But with buyers, your main goal is to figure out how the product helped them and what else do they want, and with non-buyers, your main goal is to figure out why haven't they bought yet and what they want. So similar I would say to 80%. So if someone bought a product, some of the questions are going to be leading them to tell you how that product exactly helped them, and then the challenges are going to be more around now, assuming that the product helped you. Challenges are going to be more around now, assuming that the product helped you. What else do you want to learn or to improve, while with the initial set of people that haven't bought from you, your main goal, or one of the goals, is to figure out why they haven't bought. So, being very direct, if you're doing a survey after a promo and asking them in the last two weeks we did a promo about product X Can you tell me more about why you haven't decided?

Speaker 1:

to get that, got it All right, cool. So you collect all this data. Maybe you did the interviews, maybe you went through testimonials, reviews and comments from social media. You definitely did the survey. You got all the data. Now what? How do you analyze that?

Speaker 2:

So, definitely read through everything. It does tend to take some time, but it's valuable for you to understand what's actually written there and then it's going to help you to identify the common themes. You highlight the quotes that seem like good quotes to be used in your marketing and you focus on sorting that by relevance. So what we do is sort initially. If we have a lot of responses, we sort it out based on the length of the answer. It's an easy function that you can do in a spreadsheet or you can get AI to do it for you now and that basically helps you to build a narrative or a story about that your ideal customer and their day-to-day life. Then you refine it and you validate that idea by talking or sharing it with some people and just getting their feedback on it. But definitely use AI to help you with it. Ai JetGPT can go through a lot of data quite quickly and it's very good at identifying those themes. So you know, use AI if you can.

Speaker 1:

Got it Okay. So you collect all the data, you use AI to do the analysis of it, you collect it together into those 10 headings, you pull out the actual phrases that people use and you put those into your customer language document under those same headings. Now you've got this. Then you can use that in your copywriting, your product creation, everything else Fantastic. Are there any other steps that we've missed along the way here?

Speaker 2:

One thing to note about the customer language document is to collect raw language, so don't try to change it, don't try to make it sound nicer. Just use what your audience tells you. Copy and paste direct quotes and ideally organize those quotes by theme like pain points, goals, common objections. All of that is super helpful when writing sales pages and when writing sales copy and try to use their language wherever you can. It actually builds good rapport with people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the ideal is that people think oh my god, it's like you've been reading my diary, it's like you're inside of my head, you understand my inner thoughts. I've never told anybody. And you do that by doing the survey, collecting all the data and then being able to actually use their language back to them again. Okay, cool, so we've gone through everything here, like why this really matters, how it works, when to use it, what the headings are, how to collect the data for it, how to do the analysis of it. But if you want more detail on, like, okay, step by step, exactly how do I put this together? Can you give me the templates for this, exactly how to do every single part of it? If you want that, then just drop me an email, john at datadrivenmarketingco, and include in that email like put as the title or the subject line customer avatar. And include in the email just tell me I'm actually going to create this, I'm going to do the work on this, and then I will give you access to that module for free.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, normally this is only available to our paying clients, but we decided to make this episode as useful as we possibly could. We wanted to make sure you have access to this as well as always. Thank you so much for listening. Really really appreciate you. If you found the interview useful, you want to get future episodes, then subscribe wherever you listened. And thanks, josip, so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom. Yeah, sure, happy to be here.