The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 080 - Peep Laja - Your Brand is Your Value

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comPeep Laja, founder of world-renowned conversion optimization company CXL and the copy testing platform Wynter.io joins the podcast to explain why every we do is a commodity except our brand. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello and welcome back to the show. Today we have a dynamic episode for you in which I bring someone from outside the industry in, Pep Leja, who is the founder of ConversionXL or CXL, one of the top in the world conversion optimization organizations that exist. They have all kinds of courses. They have consulting work. They put on a tremendous, used to be in-person conference, I think virtual conference, but Pep has been around the marketing space on a very, very high level for a long time. And he recently started a new business called winter.io spelled w y n t r.io and it is copy

testing and we'll get to that but the reason that i actually reached out to pep was because of a tweet a tweet that had to do about branding essentially what he said is all services in the end are commodities and what differentiate our businesses are our brand, what define us, what build value and growth into our business are our brand. And I'll be honest with you, the deeper that I get into running Rogue Risk, the more I believe that his tweet was true. And I brought him on to talk about it, to explain it, to talk about brand and branding. You're going to get so much out of this episode.

It was absolutely a pleasure to have him on. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to Agency VA. Agency VA is one of the sponsors of this show, and they power Rogue Risk. I actually have three different individuals that work through Agency VA. Each works on a part-time basis doing different functions inside my agency. And to be honest with you, I don't know that I would have made it from the summer to today without their help, helping me get things done, helping me move data between systems, helping solve customer problems, doing customer service work, pulling statements from different carriers. It just, the amount of communications and touches that it takes to run an agency,

as many of you know, is absolutely bananas. And without the help of agency VA, I don't know that I could have got there. I think they're world-class. Nat is a tremendous worker, tremendous part of my team. And I'm looking forward to growing my relationship with agency VA as there's many things that I want to do with Rogue. And, you know, I'm going to be sourcing talent from agency VA first in all cases and only backfilling where I think they, or maybe they believe that they don't have a good fit. And that's a different way of looking at it, I think. Backfilling into local people rather than virtual assistants.

And we'll see how that goes. But I could not have a better partner than Agency VA both to sponsor this show and to help me run Rogue Risk. So go to Agency VA today. If you're looking for VAs, go to agencyva.com today. All right, let's get on to Pep. So the crux of, and just so you know, like super casual conversation, you know, we can just roll. So, you know, the crux of what got me to reach out was your tweet around brand and the importance of brand. And being that this podcast specifically speaks to, so the people listening right now are insurance professionals. This is 95 plus percent of the audience are insurance people from up and down the space. So everything from carrier,

staff, and executives to independent agency owners to vendors in the space of all different shapes and sizes. And one of the things that I think continues to specifically retail insurance agents. So, you know, Williams Insurance of Main Street, America, wherever you live, zero, zero emphasis or thought put into brand zero, um, outside of my last name is Williams and your last, and you know, and my agency's name is Williams. So we have a brand. Um, and, and I guess I just wanted to dive into that topic and you can kind of take it wherever you want to go to start. But, um, I really want to talk through why this is something that we should even consider uh when there's all these things happening you know you're running a business you're trying to manage a business trying to why do we have I think that brand is the only way you can, is your only sustainable competitive advantage.

Because anything else your competitors can copy, can mimic. And, you know, if you think about objective differences between you and everybody else out there it's like if in insurance like what what's the what's like the actual practical differentiation there's probably minimal to no difference between insurance agents you know there might be some differences to category connoisseurs so if i'm an insurance agent i can read and understand you know the minor minutiae that's different but if i'm a just a regular dude wanting insurance and you say oh you sell auto insurance so does everybody else you know and i think that's what caught my eye so i want to read the tweet exactly for everyone so this was the tweet that that

caught my eye november 29th i'll have it linked up in the show exactly for everyone. So this was the tweet that caught my eye, November 29th. I'll have it linked up in the show notes for everyone. And then you can go and follow Pep on Twitter, all the other socials as well. We'll have them all linked up. So it says, your business is a commodity. Commodity in the sense that it's fungible, quite easily replaced by another competing business. You can't really win on better. It is your brand that is your best defensive against commoditization. And this is, this, I think in a very succinct way, you summed up my complete feelings on what is missing in our

space is that, you know, there's hundreds, hundreds of carriers. Well, I think technically there's 1,300 kind of independent carriers that exist. That's, you know, in the United States, there's 38,000 agencies. And my point is always to these guys, out of those 1,300 carriers, do you care if it says Hanover or Safeco or State Farm? Like, so you can drive your car, right? Like you want to go from your home to your office. Does it enter your mind even a little what the brand stamp of that carrier is on?

Like, do you think there's, you know, is there any differentiating difference to a consumer? And the answer is no, they don't care. Because all they want to know is if some dude runs into me or I run into some dude, you know, I'm not going to have to come out of pocket for the full thing. That's what they're worried about. So to me, it feels like it's this, it's the human and the brand the human has is the only thing that separates who I buy insurance from. Is that what you were trying to say? Or, you know, or what were you

trying to say in there, you know, beyond that? Well, there's, there's endless amount of choice for the consumer, right? And so how, like, there are two aspects, like, how can somebody even, how do you even stand out, you you know from all these other possible providers out there like if even if they stumble upon you somehow how would they even notice you so that's the differentiation how will you stand out if you say the exact same things like everybody else you just they won't even find you or if they they find you to just, you know, walk right past you, right? There's nothing about you. And two is that even if they find you and pause you and you are trying to

compete them better, like, let's be honest, can you really be objectively better than anybody else? You know, like, and even outside of insurance like any category like can you tell me a product that is objectively better than competing products like when software or or uh like agency services or like cars you know so like the only only example i could come up with was that tesla makes better batteries long range batteries for now all these other car manufacturers are making you know electric cars they're trying to catch up and so i think that current competitive objective advantage will will erode will go away so then they also need to compete on brand i mean tesla is already

competing on brand because they are spending zero dollars on advertising zero compared to what like gazillions that everybody else is spending plus but they have the biggest mindshare biggest brand value etc so so think about it so you can't really compete on better you can't win on better um it's like banks and checking accounts i mean this is all the same stuff right so if you can't be objectively better stop trying to compete on better you have to compete on other intangible things which is your brand and so so uh you know and then how do you compete on brand I mean obviously there's a there are many many many different ways there's you know your personal brand can be a reason to choose you and even big companies

play that game you know Microsoft and Apple you know used milk Steve Jobs and Bill Gates you know until eternity right even though they were huge and elon musk is still pimping tesla who's the who's the representative of ford motor company i have no idea so but personal brand can be a massive asset and so if i like you i buy from you right the classic zig ziglar sales thing, you know, people do business with people they like. So also then you need to have, you need to have a personal brand, you know, but that's just one way to compete by with brand. I mean, we can go into all the different ways here. So if you're, so I think the issue that a lot of my peers in the space run into has to do with, they have a brand that they haven't put much work into.

It's always a personal brand, right? Because it's, I see you at the country club or at the kids PTA meeting, or we play in the same softball league, or we drink beers at the same bar, and I bump into you. And one of the one universal consistencies of any independent insurance agent is that if they bump into you more than twice, they're going to ask you who does their insurance. And that's basically the marketing plan. Some people cold call to start relationships. Some people, you know, do snail mail still or whatever.

But it's all based on I bump into you. We both smile at each other. We seem to have something in common. And I pitch you on why you should try. And since you don't give a shit because it means nothing to you, because to you, insurance is a commodity and you like me. So you decide to do business. That's it. That's as far as it goes. If you're starting there, if that's the baseline for what we're most likely working with, with most of the people that are listening, and I don't mean that to be offensive because a lot of them are very successful, but that's as far as it goes. What has happened, and if I'm giving you too much

context, I just want to set the stage why I think this is such an important topic. That's doing a bad job of interviewing since I'm talking more than you are. But what's happened is since in 2016, there was a technology revolution in our industry. It's called the insure tech revolution. Whether it was a revolution or not isn't important. A lot of direct consumer facing brands

built more in the Silicon Valley marketing methodology than in the old traditional methodology have made their way into our space. So now we have public companies like lemonade. Um, you know, we have big consumer brands that have started just three, four years ago, like hippo, like a clear cover. I mean, all these branded agencies who are primarily digital have started to leak in. And now you have the William Stevens and Thompson agency of Main Street, you know, wherever, trying to compete against these clearly defined, well marketed brands. So, you know, if you had to give someone in that space, some advice, what are some steps that they could start to do to start to establish who they are,

how they talk to the market, how they start to build that brand if they wanted to do that? Yeah. Well, first of all, let's acknowledge that real differentiation, it's hard. But it is not enough to be just a little bit different. You know, differentiation needs to be big enough to tell the decision in your favor. So you just, you know, adding a line in your website copy here and there, just like having those small cosmetic differences is just not enough. So basically you need to give somebody a reason to choose you over others. And, you know, competing on price, like I'm the cheapest, is not sustainable.

Probably also not possible. But, like, you need a structural advantage. Don't even go there, right? So small, subtle differences are not really enough. And as I mentioned, like, you know, where category connoisseur sees differences, a novice can see, novice likely will see similarities.

Because a connoisseur would know how to look for the differences, and novice likes the necessary experience filters to find or assess those minor differences. But it's also scary to be different. You know, because there's a temptation to be a safe and boring company, you know, especially in insurance, I think. A safe and boring company, you know, like you say safe and boring stuff because it's inoffensive and does beyond criticism. Nobody will call you out, nobody will criticize you, nobody will say weird things about bad things about you, so you won't get hit. But also the problem obviously is that nobody will care either. If you're an old established company with deep pockets like you are like State Farm, you can get away with it but like if if if you're you're looking to grow you're

looking to build awareness around you it won't serve you you know and yes some people prefer to buy from boring companies but people who like to buy from boring companies they already have one you know so they're not looking for you they're not looking to switch so so so I think most people get the fact that you need to be different that's not hard but like that that radically different part that's hard it's it's it's uh most deem it too risky and it's hard to predict how it will play out um yeah so yeah i think there's so much in there i i really wanna so i think i think you've really touched on it i think what you've touched on on is the idea that if you were to bump into any

one of the individuals, listen to this show right now and, and talk about differentiation logically, logically, I think this, they would completely either agree and possibly even understand and be able to come up with some of what you just said logically, but emotionally, emotionally to get past the emotions of doing something like this, I think would be beyond most people. I mean, if you were to scroll through, um, if you were to, if you search the hashtag, uh, insurance, Twitter, there's a lot

of amazing people, right? But if you were to, you would find a lot of really common themes. There's not a lot of people going that far out of bounds one way or the other. In terms of their look, their feel, relatively safe, muted colors for the most part. Usually, you know, kind of standardized website theme, standardized copy. You know, you'll probably see save money a a million times um and so how do you uh or how do you start to make that move like how do you start to crack that because i can i again this this is what i believe i mean the the my agency i own an independent insurance agency um and, and, and the name of it is rogue risk. So the very first thing I tried to do was hopefully easily to easy to

remember, you know, rogue risk, two syllable name, uh, the alliteration, you know, rogue risk with the two R's you don't hear rogue with insurance. It feels like a pattern breaker. So I tried to be very deliberate with that. What's interesting is, and this is the part that I find very interesting, is that I get two responses. Oh, shit, man, rogue, that's awesome. I want some rogue insurance. Or, yeah, what's that all about? That's the reaction you want to get because the worst mistake is like you try to appeal to everyone you know yeah which obviously means that nobody

will care about you is like you you've you've turned up the vanilla and nobody cares you will not stand out you're just like so ideally a strong brand is polarizing it is repelling a certain part of the population and it is therefore also more magnetic to another segment of people that's what you want because like winning everyone over is impossible it's not going to happen so you do want to figure out what is the type of person who will find this appealing? And you're going to go all in. And in fact, you want to turn up the repel factor.

You want to drive away a certain type of people. So in your case, probably these are maybe you know and i apologize for generalizing but maybe like more uh risk-taking younger uh less conservative people who i tend to get a lot of uh motorcycle people who like motorcycles tend to be i tend to be i get a lot of motorcycle people they'll be like hey i want you to my workers comp and, down the line, I'll find out they own a motor. Just that, that has been something that I've found for whatever reason that, that, that is a segment that I've never rid of motorcycle in my life. I don't know a Harley from a Indian from a Triumph, but it's just interesting how

that works. So, so let's, let's talk about talk about some of the ways how you know with brand and your communication how you can set yourself apart so business not involve radically changing what you do as a company but you might need to change the DNA of your company meaning like what do you stand for right so so in insurance case you know so so one classical move is, um, this is not about insurance, but like in general, it's attribute leadership. You are better in some one very particular aspect, uh, an aspect that buyers might care about.

So, you know, it might be customer service, but let's just say we provide good service. That's, you know, nobody cares. Right. So it needs to be very specific. So like, uh, I don't even, I don't know enough about the insurance to give you an example that might be but like for instance like in website hosting if you know that there's this company called wp engine wordpress hosting company yep when they came out and there was already a seven billion hosting companies they said we are the fastest WordPress hosting company.

They doubled down on that speed attribute. Of course, they did optimize their business also to be fast. Attribute leadership. You're better in one specific aspect. Then you can be the preferred provider. This is

the classic more doctor smoke camel type of thing or you know like yeah more and more dentists recommend this toothpaste but also so in your case i don't know if do you do local insurance or yeah it might be a market segment like um more bikers use rogue yeah more bikers yeah local motorcycle gang association is recommending you. Nine out of 10 Hells Angels riders prefer Rogue Risk over the competition. Exactly right. Right.

So that becomes a reason to choose you. You know, there might be a heritage thing. So like, oh, already my grandfather was serving these areas, you know. And then you like make it about the history and the tradition. And, you know, my father was hanging out with these areas, you know. And then you like make it about the history and the tradition. And, you know, my father was hanging out with your father, you know. Yeah. If you have that. That's a big one.

That's a big one. Because a lot of independent agencies tend to be legacy businesses. And their strength is they have generational knowledge, which is really a strength. 50, 60, 70 years into a community and um and it and it is a real value proposition and then you can double down on that messaging like make your design and you know your web design and your everything about you reflect that yeah the history of the safe uh you know all that stuff use black and white old photos on your you know website i don't like go all in yeah yeah i love that then there's the the leadership aspect so you are the leader in

some category and so like i don't know so this is similar to attribute leadership but you're saying like most most companies or humans in this segment are using you. It needs to be true, obviously. Most small restaurants in southern Nebraska are my customers. If you're a restaurant, you should also join. Something like this. Specialization, always good. So you go after a very specific niche. I am an insurance agent for people who are into heavy

metal and orgies you know like super category dominate that category you know yes that is that's a wide open category pun nobody owns that yeah that's a good one uh so that one is used a lot too so i think what's interesting here is, and because I'm cycling it through, what do I hear? So the legacy one locally, so geographic preferred provider and specialization, I see a lot. Leader in a category, I see less. And attribute leadership, I don't see much of at all.

Just out of the ones you've named so far, I don't see a lot of agencies using those to brand their business. Another one that everybody can do is you differentiate on customer experience. There's this great book that I do recommend everybody pick up. It's called Never Lose a Customer Again. It's basically how to compete in customer experience. So this is exactly when you're in commodity business. You're a dentist, right?

You fix teeth like everybody else. So the moment somebody calls you or makes an appointment or something like you do something ridiculously crazy that they do not expect yeah you know so so if you think that the best type of experience is a five-star experience just as an exercise thing what would a 10-star experience look like you know it's like uh if you're if i get insurance with you then then tomorrow, you know, you have, you know, Elon Musk pick me up in his Tesla, drive me to, you know, Disneyland and, you know, take me on a ride. That's part of your service. You know, it's like, that would be epic. I'll sign up just to hang out with Elon.

So like, of course you can't do Elon, is a busy guy but like what are some of those things that are like over the top value add experience that you can add on top obviously if you have you know if you have a you know a customer database and receptionist you can like maybe have a database of all their family thing you know you call on you know little jimmy's five year fifth birthday and you know, you call on, you know, little Jimmy's fifth birthday and, you know, send a cake and a clown and, you know, like you differentiate, like you use your imagination here. No, I think that's wonderful. I really like that one. And shout out to Joey Coleman, Joey Coleman, keynote speaker at Elevate 2018. That's a tremendous book. Never lose a customer again. Okay. Customer experience. I think, you know, that one, I think one of the things, so here's, here's my question on customer experience for you. So customer experience is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Right. And what I feel like a lot of people do is give lip service to the term or they do like this little thing, like a, like a, not, not anything that actually is interesting or engaging.

Just, just, they do something very small, like a, you know, just like a, a birthday card that's auto printed from thanks.io or something which is better than nothing but wholly forgettable so i mean car birthday cards i mean don't do anything right like if you send the postcard like my insurance agent i don't even know what they are they change every year because i'm part of old state they just i get a so i get a birthday card that I throw into the trash. It's so impersonal. Or I get a Christmas card from somebody I've never met. No, that's not. I think that's more like a waste of money.

Also, it's very predictable. Yeah. So that was my next question. It's not something I'm going to tell my neighbor about, you know? So is, so, okay. So I'm, so predictability, you don't, you want it to be something they don't see coming. Exactly right. How do you figure out what that bar is? Cause,

cause I know it doesn't have to be something expensive and it doesn't have to be something overly time consuming. It doesn't have to be, you know, so what are the characteristics that, that might trigger? Wow. That was thoughtful. That was something I didn't see coming. Like I didn't, what are some of the things that people could be thinking about? Hmm. Well, this is a, you know, it's a creative exercise, right? It's, it's, it's a, this is a, you know, it's a creative exercise, right? It's a classic Seth Godin's book, you know, Purple Cow, you know, you see, you know, a remark, he defines remarkable experience as something that is just worth making a remark about. You just pause and say, Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So it needs to, uh, so what I would do is like brainstorm 10 or more ideas on a paper and just go read them out to your friend, your neighbor to, you know, somebody you trust is like, Hey, which of these things would be,

would make you go, Hey, that's cool. Yeah. You know what I think is fun? This is off topic slightly, but what I think is really interesting that I feel like so few people do is just call a customer and go, Hey, also make you happy. Like what, what part of this relationship that we have, like what have you woke up in the morning? You know what, man, I really wish they did that thing. Like, is there anything, is it zero or is it, is it five things? Like what? Because I had an opportunity. I don't know what was going on in my brain because I don't normally ask this question. So this is kind of me talking to myself, but I had a customer on the phone and just something popped in my brain.

I was like, Hey man, like, how's it going so far? Like we've been doing business together for eight months. How's it going? He's like, it's going great. I said, well, was there anything I haven't done? He said, well, you never followed up on this thing I need you to follow up on. And I said, and I, and what he did by asking that question, what he did was find, he found a gap in my followup system that I didn't know even existed. And I wouldn't have known it was there if I hadn't asked him. And I made a note and I'm now starting to build reminders to do this because I was like, holy shit. I just asked randomly for whatever reason, just popped in my head. How's it going so far? I don't even know if that's the right question to ask. And it helped me plug a gap in my business that wasn't there

before. And he then gave me all his personal insurance as well. So I ended up upselling him just by answering this stupid question. Yeah, totally. I mean, calling people, I'm part of a gym or used to be before Corona hit. And so they got a new trainer and the trainer called me. And I had a really nice experience. And I was more motivated to go back into the gym, you know? So definitely a good personal touch.

Just to see how you were doing? The trainer was just calling to see like how you were getting by? Basically, yeah. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah. How I'm doing, you what uh what are my needs and and it was also like i i hadn't been in for a while yeah more like hey what's going on in your life man and i had i had the shoulder injuries oh man we have this you know whatever rehab class and blah blah blah

so you know the old saying like people remember how you made them feel. Yes. So that made me feel real good. Like, oh, they care. Yes, it's a capitalistic organization, but I felt like somebody showed interest in me, you know? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I believe that it is possible to be both ambitious and capitalistic and also do the right thing at the same time.

I know that that's maybe not the norm or the perception by, by some, but I do believe that that's very possible. I think it is. I think it often gets, I think, I think a lot of people, I think sometimes we get lost in believing that you either have to be high growth, high ambitious kind of leave, you know, your, your customers are users or whatever. And we don't really think of them as anything more than a number in a database, or we're hyper hands on, we know everything about them that ever existed. We know their entire life story,

but we can only grow this fast. And I think you can be both. I don't know that that's, I don't think it's easy, or everyone would do it, but I do think that it's very possible. And I think what you're talking about, and again, this is why I wanted to have you on and have this conversation was I think brand is the method to do that. I think by focusing on brand and making it a core part of what you think about day-to-day interaction by interaction, you can be both of those things you can be both a scaling business and a business that cares about its people at

the same time i think it's that that that to me i guess you i saw your tweet like the perfect times this has been going on in my head and i was like i feel like brand is the keystone to this concept that connects these two pillars is brand uh right. Does that seem crazy to you? Yeah. I mean, what is a brand? You know? So also we need to like be on the same page about the definition here. Brand is not what you say you are. It's what they say you are. Yeah. But you can,

brand management is helping to control that perception. So it's not 100% in your control, but you can influence it. You can influence the perception of you through visuals, the communication, the words you use, all those things. And obviously, it's a sum of all the experiences somebody has had with you like if you're you've been addicted to somebody you know for for years and now you're suddenly i care about you and it doesn't work right yes i do i do know it and it's it's uh it's a weird feeling i think um it's a weird feeling that you get when you see messaging that does not match your perception of the brand. It's a weird, you get a very, it's almost like it's a, we have some sort of sense or

instinct to, you know, when you see, like you'll see it, you'll see a message, a brand message that does not match what's actually being delivered or what your experience isn't delivered. There's a clear disc. I guess what I'm trying to say is you can't lie about it. Like you can't actually, you know, if you're saying that your customer service is world-class and it's not, it's just run of the mill at best. When you put, we have world-class customer experience on your facebook post everyone just goes if anything it creates a counter negative reaction to it it almost is the exact opposite effect of what you wanted to have because of how disconnected it is from what

reality is yeah you're absolutely right here yeah yeah so um so i want to i want to uh adjust course a little bit and i want to talk about uh your company um and when i first came across your work and i've been following your work for a long time uh i'm not gonna fanboy or anything but obviously from conversion excel days and stuff and um a lot of the chops that I use on my own website, I, I guess, learned reading, you know, some of the tremendous content that you have. And, you know, actually became friends to a certain extent with some with a lot of people used to contribute because I, it was a you had a very high quality contributor network that was producing content on conversion Excel's website. And now, you know, tell me, you know, so I was looking through the site

and getting kind of reacclimated to what you were doing. And this idea of, you know, and I kind of found it right on your About page, was, you know, achieving message market fit. That is something that feels really difficult, I think, for a lot of people. So tell us a little bit about the business, what it is, what you're doing. And then that's kind of the concept. I want to try to get into that concept and how we help maybe the takeaway from this podcast at the very end is, here's what you're helping people do. And if they can't do it on their own, they know where to go yeah so

the company is called winter winter dot IO and it's a messaging research service if you will it's so what it does it helps you achieve message market fit as you alluded what is a message market fit so message market fit is that you're sending out some messages on your website or landing pages, you know, whatever, web properties. And does that message that you're sending out, does that resonate with your target audience? Do they find it appealing? Do they find it, yes, I want that. It helps create buying intent.

So how do you know, people in a target audience, what do they think of your pitch, your sales pitch, your copy on your website? That's what it's about. You cannot achieve product market fit where people just want to buy your stuff without message market fit first. So your messaging needs to land on them. So it's kind of like, excuse me. situation, like if I'm trying to sell you insurance, there are certain arguments that I'm going to be making that are more powerful than others. So over a period of time, I'm testing and tweaking, I'm selling a bunch of people and

then I'm finding like all of these three key arguments are really that's driving it home. These are the main arguments that work so that's when you achieve you know message customer fit basically like i know that this when i say this they go ah yes yeah um and you find that either through experimentation in a one-to-one sale situation but but also, you know, you don't scale. So you can't sell to every customer on a one-to-one basis. So you need your website. And marketing is sales at scale, right?

It's scaling you. Now, if your messaging is boring, if it's like me, if it's like me too, if it's like, you know, you say you sell car insurance. Well, I mean, I already have one. So like, if you still say these boring things, it's just not going to resonate. So you don't have message market fit. They're not going to buy. So winter helps you, lets you know what people think about your messaging,

what about it resonates, and what actually turns them off. Yeah, I love that. So here's what I found so much in our space. What's funny is the example that you just gave is a great one. You said, hey, can I quote your insurance? And you said, I already have one. Now, to an insurance agent, they're going, well, of course you do. Or what I'm asking is, can I provide you with a quote for

my insurance? You know, my, whatever I'm providing to you. And it, but your mind, you're like, bro, I don't need your thing. I already got mine. And that is a complete disconnect that happens a lot. A lot of times with struggling salespeople in our space, struggling someone in our space take what they know and can do unconsciously one-on-one and move that to their website? Because that to me is an enormous disconnect in our space. When I look at insurance websites, I'm like, God, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. When I meet them at a conference, I'm like, wow, this person is brilliant and is a killer. Completely disconnected. I just feel like for some reason, there's a huge gap from getting it from them being on the ground

to them being digital. Right. So, I mean, buyers are different, right? So, some are more price sensitive than others. For me, I'm not particularly a price sensitive buyer myself. Obviously, I mean, buyers are different, right? So some are more price sensitive than others. For me, I'm not particularly a price sensitive buyer myself. Obviously, I have insurance. But if somebody would tell me that they, you know, get a quote, maybe it's cheaper. It's a hassle for me. Like, I don't want to, I mean, happy. It's, you know, I've been with the same company for many years. I don't want to rock the boat because I don't have a problem to solve.

Yes. And so if you're going to pitch me and say you have this problem, this problem, I might even get defensive. Right. So the way around that is that instead of you, um, sell it, telling me, you know, like I either get a quote or that something's wrong with me, open my eyes to look at the situation with new eyes, essentially. So I would see that there's a problem without you telling me. And the way you, I mean, there are multiple ways to do it, but like one good way to do it is you talk about a change that is happening in the world.

So me becoming aware of the problem is me adapting to this change. So, so for instance, I've been an Allstate customer since, you know, I don't know, like many years. But you can say, hey, Allstate is an old school insurance company. You know, like things have been changing and, you know, like you're locked into this. I don't even know what the argument is. You can say that things have changed dramatically since. And like, you know, you can say that something has changed. And now I'm like, oh, really?

I've never considered this aspect. And then it's like, oh, so what has changed? Oh, so what should I be aware of? And then now I start asking questions. And now you might feed me with some information that might make me reconsider my choices, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that I love that.

I think that's really, really interesting because this is a major obstacle for new business growth for a lot of agencies. So what we find is referred agencies that grow oftentimes have just fallen into many times because of their generational nature, referral sources. You own a mortgage company. I'm an insurance agent. We've become buddies over playing little league together and going to college together. You send me all your business. It's teed up. It's in a moment of change. There's not really a heavy

pitch. I don't actually have to sell you. I just have to provide you with a product because you're coming in on a tee and I grow my business. For the agencies that don't have those relationships who need to go out and actually engage with customers and get them to and create that emotional differentiation, this becomes a major pain point because get a quote, if it ever did have power is losing power every single day, almost at a logarithmic scale. Me coming to you and saying, hey man, can I quote your stuff? It's going to be the answer you just gave, which is that sounds like a hassle to me. And the last thing in a post COVID world that I need is another hassle and uh and this is a major problem that we're that the industry is facing right now um is is people just don't want to they don't need another thing to

spend brain cycles on even if it could help them yeah so so it's yeah i love that that's really really interesting so there's this there there's this classic copywriting technique when it comes to writing headlines is a question that makes you go, how do you do that? So let me give you an example. So the other day I landed on this website called, I think it's FastSpring's FastSpring.com.

And on their homepage, they say, hey, you are missing out on 30% of sales. And it's a merchant account service. So I'm using Stripe. I'm happy with Stripe. I don't want to rock the boat. I don't have a problem but now when I read that headline they didn't say more merchants who accept credit cards I'm already accepting credit cards they say you're losing out on 30% of sales and that makes me go oh really how's

that and now they cut my interest and i'm going to read and i'm actually dive into their pitch and then that particular website fails to deliver on the promise like they never actually answer how i'm losing out so it's a dud but like you can do better so like you you know i don't know what the equivalent is but like you could be paying 30 less for your insurance yeah although if you're just about the cost i think it's hard yeah because then then there's a demographic that for sure that every year is switching insurance you know like who is cheaper this year for sure uh and you know it's better than i do uh but so i think ultimately competing on price is everybody wants, everybody's competing on price, you know, so you need something else. Yeah. Can I hit you with the headline on my

website and you tell me how it grabs you as a little example? So I say, insurance is confusing, time-consuming, and costly. We fix these problems. I feel like it's close, but it's not there. If I had to give you my thing, I think it's close, but it's not there. So my first reaction is, you might be right, but I have it solved already. I'm good with Allstate. Yeah. Right? Like, I don't have those problems.

You don't find it confusing, time-consuming, or costly because you feel good about where you're at. I've already dealt with it. I like, I don't know how I even chose Allstate, but I have them for whatever reason. Yeah. So they're just, you know, and I've had a couple of, you know, incidents where they, they were good to me. So I got like some minimal brand loyalty. So it's not a problem that I,

so you say it's complicated. Maybe if I was in the market to choose one, I would agree, but I'm not on the market. So obviously I don't know. I'm different in that case. Like you have, you know, different personas you're selling to somebody might be actively looking for one. And maybe you aren't the consumer or it's the right time because maybe

it does become time consuming for you i guess how how would you i don't want to pitch you on why i think it's right i i'm i'm tweaking it but i i felt like it had some of the elements of actionable differentiated and but but i it also doesn't feel all the way there to me for some reason. I guess that's why I'm asking you. And I know I'm putting you on the spot here, but you know. Yeah. So obviously, you know, there are multiple reasons why somebody might buy anything and I'm just not actively in the market for insurance yeah so that headline i think is not speaking to my kind of passive person gotcha i will say though um and because i've because i've i i asked another friend and he um he said something a little different but we were talking

through different scenarios you would never come to my site if you didn't have an insurance problem that is true yeah right like you're not gonna go hey you know what i'm gonna do for the next hour i'm gonna go take a stroll through roguerisk.com for some some light insurance reading totally totally so so even even if i would see your ads i would not click because i'm not in the market for one but those who would come to your site you're absolutely right there's some sort of a you know lead qualification you know what however you want to do the lead scoring there but it will be a signal yeah signaling some some level of interest for sure there are some people who randomly somehow happened there but like most majority would would be would have some

level of interest you're right yeah interesting so okay so i want to ask you a question about winter um because and i want to be respectful of your time so i'm i i this i mean i think this looks super cool i'm probably gonna do one of these tests. So basically I'm looking at, you know, you can either get business to business or consumer, which I'm assuming if you're going like B to C. So you'd have actually. Exactly. If you're selling to individuals, that's a consumer panel.

Cool. And then you can target them by different psychographics. Gotcha. And then you, then you guys go out, send some consumers through, and they give you feedback on this headline doesn't make sense. I never saw this button. Talk me through what kind of feedback. So it's not about usability.

It's not like usertesting.com where you test usability. It's all about the messaging, the copy on your website. Yep. And so it's asking the consumers if if that's your audience research questions so it's not what do you think it's more like uh what about this is unclear what about this is off-putting what about this is do you find compelling and also like you can do likert scales on a scale of one to five you know so after after reading your headline on a scale of one to five how how much do you want to keep on reading because you know like the classical thing is

like your goal of the headline is to make them want to read the next line and so on and so forth. So you can measure that by asking and you'll get a score. The reading of the headline it's 3.5 or whatever right and then you can change the headline and test it again and see if the willingness to read more goes up. And so people will rate you on clarity, they will rate you on so the likers possible liker scale is how badly they want to keep on reading, they will rate you on... So the possible Likert scale is how badly they want to keep on reading, how clear it is, because clarity is most important in copy. If it's vague or uses complicated, big words, jargons, doesn't resonate for sure. Also, do they care about the arguments you're making? We call it care care score so on a scale of one to five how much do

you care about this so you maybe came up with this idea for a differentiation where i don't know maybe you're eco-conscious you know like for every dollar you invest you know spend with us we give five cents to homeless dogs or you know yeah and then does that gesture actually resonate with people? And maybe yes, but maybe they don't give a, you know, rat's ass. And so, so you get, uh, all the feedback you get is answers to research questions and you can choose, and you can ask different questions about different sections of your website. So maybe you have different, one set of questions for a headline, one set for your, you know, the service description, things like that.

Guys, if you're listening at home, go w-y-n-t-e-r, winter.io. And if you're selling personal insurance and your website is important to you at all, I mean, 99 bucks to have, to have vetted consumers walk through and be able to, to give you feedback on your messaging to me is a fucking joke. Like, and I mean that in a good way. I mean, a good way.

Like that is absolutely something you should do. Like you are going to get immense value out of this. Like, you know, I'm absolutely going to do that. I mean, I obviously I checked it out before you came on and everything. And, but I mean, it, to me, you know, this is the difference. And I've even, I do a lot of testing on my site and I'm bad because I don't use all the, all the tools I probably should use, but, but I do, I do do a lot of testing and you know, right now I'm testing a video and in a very small headline versus real text. And it's interesting, the feedback that I'm getting, but, but you know, this, this to me as a way to start to craft a

message, it's actually going to get people to grab onto your brand, your agency brand, I think this is a no-brainer. This is an absolute no-brainer. To add some context, another company I run is called CXL that you mentioned that we do online courses on all these things. We have 50 plus products, like courses. And then we have PPC landing pages and webinar pages. So we have like hundreds of pages that are very copy heavy, a lot of words. So in order for me to increase the conversion rate on those pages, get more people to buy, sign up, et cetera, I need to improve the words. I need to make the copy better. Copy is the number one thing that gets people to take action. Now, how do I improve the copy on all these pages?

You can't improve the copy if you don't know what's wrong with it. I can just have an opinion and you can have an opinion, but we are not the buyers and we know our products so well we have forgotten what it's like to not be the expert at our thing right yeah so it's it's it's rather it's like impossible for us to see our product the way our customers see and we should not underestimate how little we might actually know what customers think about our pitch. Yeah. And that's the power of this data. So now you know, oh, this stuff that I'm writing here is completely not resonating.

And maybe it's unclear. Maybe it doesn't communicate value. And I want to take everyone back to your reaction to, to your, your own, you, you, you were kind of talking to yourself in this scenario, but your honest reaction to the question of, can I quote your insurance was I'm, I already have insurance. Like, and I don't think that that is the reaction that most insurance professionals would necessarily think. And that's not a knock guys that I just think this is a blind spot for anybody in any industry, particularly for us is you would not your your reaction I don't think people would expect your first reaction for you to rank them if we were to put seven reactions on a list and

say which one do you think would be first I do not think I already have insurance as it would be would be even close to the top because the insurance professor is like yeah no I know you already have it I'm trying to get I I'm trying to show you something different. That disconnect I think is powerful as much as I might not be articulating it in the best way. That might be an interesting headline to lead with. You put it in quotes, but I already have insurance. And people are like, oh yeah.

Yeah. Because you're now connecting with the conversation in the head of the customer. Like, oh oh yeah so why should i you know but now you're you're addressing the elephant in the room right up front and you might actually get me obviously i don't know but i'm gonna start running ads with but i already have insurance in austin texas and we'll see what happens yeah, I'm an upstate New York. So you, you won't have to, you won't be Facebook stalked by me, but, um, no, dude, I want to be respectful of your time. This has been

absolutely tremendous. I really appreciate you coming on. Um, I know like the insurance industry is not your primary niche, obviously, but I do think that, um, the work you've done both at CXL, um, which, you know, I kind of came in contact with this, Conversion XL and all that, and now with Winter. And particularly, these are, this is a very, you know, guys, I think a lot of times tools like what we were talking about, they tend, you know, they feel outside our reach, right? They're $500, $700 a month. I mean, we're talking about very manageable, reasonable prices for a service that could drastically month. I mean, we're talking about very manageable, reasonable prices for, for, for a service that could drastically improve. I mean, just, just your headline being more,

uh, grabbing someone can improve what's going on. I, you know, can, can get them going down further and then, you know, maybe they catch a video or another set of copy or whatever that really pulls them in. Um, but if they're not getting past that headline, just that alone, just being able to dial in your headline alone is worth what you'd spend. And so I just want to push everyone there. And I want to say thank you for your time, man. Where can everyone get at you besides these websites? Any of the socials?

What's your favorite social? Twitter and LinkedIn. Those are the two where I'm active posting daily. Gotcha. Well, hey, man, this has been great. Thank you. Appreciate you. You have a great day. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, baby Yeah, baby Yeah, baby Yeah, baby Yeah, baby

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