Copy And
The marketing podcast where online service providers learn how to write copy that sounds like them, but converts BETTER.
I’m Sam Burmeister, your guide on this copy adventure. As a conversion copywriter & sales psychology expert, I learned the ‘right way’ to sell in my decade-long sales career.
Now, after spending the last 6+ years writing copy for hundreds of successful launches and helping dozens of entrepreneurs write better copy every week…I know what sells and what’s working in online business right now.
And what’s working is copy AND – Copy and messaging, design, strategy, navigating AI and more...
Together, we’ll put the pieces of the marketing puzzle together - and you will write copy that both serves AND sells.
Copy And
31. How to Give Your Service Provider Feedback
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In this episode, Samantha discusses something that's been (spicily!) making the rounds in service provider circles: clients giving feedback that was clearly generated by AI.
A friend vented to her on Voxer, Samantha took it to Threads (see the conversation here), and the responses confirmed two things:
1. Service providers DO NOT want AI-generated feedback and
2. They also realize that giving feedback isn't easy
So instead of leaving it at the rant, she breaks down what good client feedback looks like and why it matters to the process of working with a copywriter, designer, or other service provider.
This episode is for anyone who has ever hired a service provider and found themselves unsure how to respond to a deliverable, AND for service providers who want some additional language around AI & feedback.
Giving feedback is a skill, and it's one worth developing.
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I mention Laura Rae Consulting in this episode - she has a depth of funnel building knowledge after nearly a decade with LeadPages. Highly recommend her friendship and expertise :)
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Hey friends. Welcome back to Copy and the marketing podcast where I teach you how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. And today I am starting off with a story and a little bit of a rant because I had a friend slide into my dms today. She's also a designer and does some copywriting and some other marketing tasks for her clients. And she. Gets on the Voxer and says, Sam, have you ever had this happen? I have a client who just very clearly plugged in what I gave them to whatever their AI tool is, asked it what it thought, and they copy pasted that and sent that back to me, and my jaw hit the floor. I could not believe it. I thought it had to be a one-off. I thought a little bit more about it. She and I chatted and I went to threads and I asked on threads, I said. That I'm gonna read this verbatim. Another copywriter just told me that her client. Gave her feedback. That was ai. Someone talked me off a ledge because I have thoughts and they just might need to become a podcast episode. And here we are. So other service providers on threads started to weigh in Mad Impact Design said, I've heard of this happening more and more and I don't like it. But then she came at it with a tone of empathy. I'm wondering if people are doing this because they don't wanna sound like they're just going on and rambling in their feedback, or maybe they feel like they dunno how to articulate themselves, so they plug it into AI and are hoping that whatever comes out sounds better than what's going on in their head. A couple of people also said that they have people either fill out their forms or bring questions to discovery calls that were clearly written by ai. There were several people who came back with very snarky things that they would say if somebody tried to give them feedback that had been created by. But one of the most impactful conversations I had was with Laura Ray Consulting. She and I got on the dms in Instagram because what is a podcast if I haven't mentioned three different social platforms in the first two minutes? But Laura and I got on the dms on Instagram and were voice noting back and forth, and she brought up a good point. She said that if you give something to AI and tell it to optimize it, it will. AI is only as good as you prompt it to be. So if you tell it to make something better, it will make suggestions for you. So all of that to say, sure, your service providers do not want feedback that AI has generated. But what do we want? Honestly, I think that we spend a lot of time ranting and raving about ai. And not giving solutions that could be better. So that's what I'm gonna do today. Let's dive into the dos and don'ts of giving feedback in a way that I would appreciate and I will go ahead and speak on behalf of other service providers. When I say your other service providers, your brand designer, your launch strategist, the person doing a build out and dip sodo for you, would probably also appreciate feedback given in the same way. The first thing I wanna start with is kind of the end though, is that one, we're probably asking for feedback. If we're not, that's probably something that your service provider should put into their process, but if we're asking for feedback, it's because we want it. And we are grateful for it because you are helping us grow as professionals. And sometimes we look at things too long and it just doesn't turn out a hundred percent perfect. We love having that extra set of eyes. You hired us to work together on your project. So it is a collaborative process and so is the feedback process. So that's thing number one. Thing number two is that you hired us because of our expertise. So when you go and ask somebody who's not an expert in something, whether that's asking your besties and your mastermind and your mom and your cat, what they think of our output, before you give us feedback or asking your AI what it thinks about the feedback versus just coming to us and having that collaborative conversation, you're doing a couple of things. You're outsourcing your authority and you're a business owner. You own this thing, so you should be the one giving feedback. Two, you're diminishing our authority. You hired us and likely spent thousands of dollars hiring us because we're really freaking good at what we do. So come to us with a couple of questions in your feedback. It doesn't have to just be, this is what I like, this is what I don't like. It can be a question of why did you do this? I just wanna understand so that I feel really good about it when it's published. That's AO okay too. And that brings me to my third and final point, is that feedback is not negative. Sometimes it's constructive. Sometimes you are saying, Hey, I don't like what happened here. That's okay. But feedback can also be, oh my gosh, Sam, I love the first three parts of the sales page. I think it's amazing. The third part I have a question on because it does seem a little bit long, maybe a little bit wordy, but overall I'm really liking what we did here. So this is probably how I would say this other thing instead. Right. So feedback is part of a conversation. It's part of the working agreement, and it's likely part of your contract. It's something that you paid for. So remember, giving feedback is not necessarily a bad thing. Okay? So that's my rant. That is how I feel about the AI portion of it is do not hire me for thousands of dollars and then let a robot tell me what I might have done wrong. Rather, do me the diligence. Do me the honor, do me the respect of having a conversation with me. So. Then let's talk about it. How do you give good feedback? I've already touched on a couple of these things, so I'm gonna start feeling a little bit redundant here, but I have four different ways. The first one is, do not give it to me via ai. Instead give it to me as a whole entire person. It's gonna be imperfect like that person said in my thread. Maybe they're, you're a little bit, long-winded and, or you're not really sure how to describe what it is that you don't like. That's okay. It is not your job to be really good at writing. That's my job. It's not your job to be really good at design. That's your designers. They pull together your vibes and put them into an output. So don't worry about it. We're not expecting you to be perfect. We're expecting the outcome that we create together to be perfect for you. Thing number two, don't ghost. I've had this happen when people love their copy and they're like so excited to go plug it in that they forget to reply and say, oh my gosh, Sam. Thanks. I love it. I even have a reel. The, it's, the song, she Hates Me. It's a nineties song, but the joke in the real is that I. When somebody doesn't reply right away saying, Sam, this is great. I'll get you some feedback soon. But what goes through my head is she hates me. Nah, nah, nah, nah. She effing hates me. The uh, I'm not a singer, but maybe you remember the song. So don't ghost again. We are all people here. I had a client a couple weeks ago actually, when I wrote his copy, I had to reply again like four days later and say, Hey man. Are we good? Because the story I'm telling myself in my head is that he hated it. He replied, Sam, no, we're so good. This was perfect. I sent it to my design team'cause I wanted to see it in design before I used my one revision. That's included to get feedback, but wanted to let you know it's in design. Here it is so you can see it. Everything's approved and it was amazing. So don't ghost do your service provider the justice of replying, even if it's not full feedback right away, let them know when they can expect full feedback. And when I say right away, that does not mean that you need to be at their beck and call like within two business days. Let them know that you received it. If not, get them their feedback. Third thing when giving feedback is do not go to your mastermind and your mom and your dog and your husband and ask them what they think. Let me tell you this, your copy, when I write it, I'm not writing it for you. I'm writing it for your audience. I'm writing it for the best person to buy from you so that you continue to enjoy what you do and make a whole bunch of money so that you can have better impact in the world. That is what I mean when I say that the world is better when you sell more, is because the world needs more of what you have. And when I am writing copy to your ideal client, that means that you would be doing me a disservice if you took it to everyone and their mother to get feedback before giving me feedback. If you are going to go to other people to get feedback before you do your first round of revisions, take it to your ideal client and say, does this resonate with you? Where did you kind of fall off when reading this that say, okay, that is encouraged in my world. But again, remember, you don't wanna give away your power. This is your business that you created so that you could attract more people that you enjoy working with. So that's thing number three is don't when giving feedback. Don't ask for everyone else's feedback. Give what you've got and if you are going to look outside of yourself for feedback, do it with your ideal client cause they're the ones that this copy really matters for. And finally, don't be rude. Rude can look like a lot of things, but sometimes it's helpful just to do a good old compliment sandwich. It depends on how you're giving feedback. If it's in the document, which is common when you work with me because I write my copy in Google Docs so that we can collaborate, or if it's in a loom video or for your, your service provider might be asking for it in an email. But sometimes a good old compliment sandwich helps to say, Hey, overall I really like it. There's a couple of things that I just wanna make sure are aligned, and then you give them those things. It can be helpful to group things as well, so maybe you say, Hey, overall this is great, but I don't put periods at the end of my bullet points, so let's make sure we erase that throughout. That's an example of something overall versus needing to go through the document and erase every single bullet point or every single period at the end of a bullet point. So you can decrease the number of pieces of feedback that you give by putting them into groups, but also you're not attacking the service provider. Remember, you guys share a goal. So again, feedback doesn't have to be negative. Feedback can be all the things that you love. Let's do more of this and less of this. Ultimately it's collaborative because you have the same goal of creating an incredible output that makes you money because you are in business and businesses make money by definition. So if you're in your head about giving feedback and you're thinking about outsourcing that to ai, please don't. Please do not. Your service providers do not desire that, and that is evidenced by the thread that I posted this week. Remember you hired your service provider to be on your team, so by definition, you're on the same team. Give feedback that helps move the project along. Be nice about it and don't outsource your critical thinking. If you wanna work with me and go through a feedback process together, you can reach out to me at nomadcopyagency.com/contact. That'll take you to a form where you tell me a little bit about your project, and it will also automatically send you a calendar invite so that you and I can get on the same page and see if it does make sense for us to work together. My specialty is in websites, sales pages and sales emails. But if you have a question about something else, feel free to reach out. You can do that on Instagram or at my email address. I'm samantha@nomadcopyagency.com. And remember, in all of this, you are the business owner. You are the one who is powerful enough to go out on your own, start making sales and creating something incredible. You hire people to be on your team, whether it's short term or long term, to help you achieve that outcome, and you hired them because of their expertise. So work with them one-on-one. Give excellent feedback and you'll receive excellent outputs. Thanks for listening to my story, my rant, and my lessons. I will see you next week.