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We discuss paywall strategies for content publishers. With over 1000 news, magazine, and content publishers running our Leaky Paywall platform we have learned quite a bit about what works (and doesn't) in digital publishing. Join Pete and Tyler for a deep dive that will help you grow your paid audience.
Welcome to the Paywall podcast, where we discuss paywalls and paywall strategies for news and magazine publishers. This episode of the Paywall podcast is brought to you by Leaky Paywall. Leaky Paywall is the most flexible WordPress subscription platform. Find out more at leakypaywall.com. And now for today's episode.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, this this this particular episode is, an output of one of my pet peeves, and that's, seeing publisher after publisher essentially, vomit features of, features to the potential subscriber versus focusing in on the benefits to the subscriber on, on all their touch points on the website. So what we're gonna do here is I'm going to show you a, a very quick way using AI to take all the feature language that you have on the important parts of your website, and convert it into benefits language, which is how to benefit the reader, if they become a subscriber. So it's a conversion. This is a how to convert more subscribers, with benefits language, and I'm gonna show you how to use AI to literally in seconds output benefits copy.
Speaker 2:So if you stay to the end of this podcast, I'm gonna show you, well, it's gonna be on the YouTube channel. So if you're listening, you're gonna have to go there and look at it. But I'm gonna show you exactly how to do it step by step. And it's unbelievable. Like, you will just absolutely be blown away by how you can take your the the language you you currently have on your website, pop it into, an AI tool, and then it will spit out beautiful copy.
Speaker 2:Now let me back up a little bit. So back to the problem. So when I look at and we're looking at the we're gonna pick on the Boca Raton, Tribune here. And this is a pretty classic example of a website that, has features on it, but not benefits. And the features that I see across the board, Tyler, you probably see you probably see this as well, are things like okay.
Speaker 2:I get to some subscribe landing page with some copy, and what do I see? I see something like, you know, get access to our 10,000 article archive or, for news, we have decades of experience or get full access or get our premium newsletter or get our, you know, afternoon edition or get our print edition or early delivery. And these are great features. I mean, don't get me wrong. These are important features.
Speaker 2:But how do these features actually impact your paid subscriber? Like, how does it make their life better? And that's the benefit for the reader turning into a subscriber. How do you make their life better? How do you make that subscriber the hero in your story?
Speaker 2:Does that make sense? Am I making sense?
Speaker 3:Makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm gonna, what I wanna do is just point you to a resource. It's a, it's actually, a book by Donald Miller. It's called, StoryBrand, and I'm on I'm on the, storybrand.com website here. And what I recommend is to get the book.
Speaker 2:Just go to Amazon, and grab that book. I've read it. We've done a whole we did a whole rebrand ourselves. And basically, the premise here is that you in every organization's, brand, there's, you know, you have products or services to sell, and you have, a villain to conquer to help your customers. And and so in the publishing world, subscribers, you have the the mission of helping your subscribers conquer the villain.
Speaker 2:And so as an example, just as an example. So for for news, what's like, one of the villains could be misinformation. Right? Like, there's just a lot of misinformation out there, and, one of the missions of, let's say, a news site could be to, basically get get accurate reporting, make sure that, readers, know what the real deal is to cut through that misinformation. I know that's a hot political topic, but that's that's just one example.
Speaker 2:Right? So how how do you if that reader becomes a paid subscriber, you're gonna help that paid subscriber, cut through the misinformation and whenever and and that's gonna help their lives in X, Y, and Z ways. Does that make sense? I know I'm getting pretty philosophical here, but this is the, this book will walk you through how to build a brand for your publication. It is, it is, it's an amazing journey.
Speaker 2:I read audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks and I read them, but, that's my way. Get the audiobook or read the physical book, whatever. I absolutely recommend this book. It'll give you, give you a framework for it.
Speaker 2:So making the reader, the hero, and this is where the benefits come into play. I'm gonna go back to book a return on. Let's look at an example. So if I hit the subscribe button on their site, I'm gonna pull up their subscription landing page here.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna pick on that subscribe button too, by the way, really quick.
Speaker 2:Make that make that,
Speaker 3:my account, not also red button.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Good point.
Speaker 3:Just blatantly, on my radar there. If you're if you're listening to this, they have 2 red buttons that look exactly the same for my account and subscribe, and they're right next to each other. Yeah. Try to try to make your my account button less prominent. Anyway, continue.
Speaker 2:Just a text link.
Speaker 3:Well, we are
Speaker 2:we are talking about touch points here. Yep. There are really 4 major touch points that we're gonna cover. So what we're looking at here is the the subscribe subscription landing page. And what do we see on here?
Speaker 2:Okay. We see a a a promotion, 1st 2 months for the price of 1. Okay. That's fine. Act now for unlimited access feature.
Speaker 2:K. I get unlimited access. Let's see. I get 247 access to the website feature. Let's see.
Speaker 2:Unlimited access to all our archives since 2010 feature. Let's see. The enewspaper, a digital replica of the newspaper, feature. Daily newspaper, feature. See where I'm going here?
Speaker 2:Now these are these are good. I mean, as a potential subscriber, this this is good, but we want great. We want compelling. We want to help that subscriber, you know, conquer the villain of misinformation or be be more connected or, you know, feel like they're part of the community. There's there's there's benefits here, and and I'm gonna show you in in a second how this plays out.
Speaker 2:Okay. So the, the touch points, the 4 touch points that I wanna do, this is a bit of a homework for you. You, who are listening is look at your subscription landing page, which is the page we're looking at right now. Look at your free registration, which we'll look at in a second. Look at your upgrade message.
Speaker 2:So once somebody's registered on the site for free, and then they get, hit with the upgrade message. And also look at your free email newsletter, to get these get this benefits, copy into. Those are the 4, I'd say, most critical areas. Did I miss anything?
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's that's it.
Speaker 2:I think those are pretty good. Mhmm. Okay. So alright. How do we quickly, like, change the change the game here for Boca Raton?
Speaker 2:Alright. So I'm gonna hop into chat GPT. If you don't if you don't have, and by the way, this you have to you have to use the paid version. It's $20 a month. What I recommend is if you haven't used it, just sign up.
Speaker 2:It'll be the best $20 you ever spent. And it's and it'll you can cancel afterwards and that and that's fine. So or if you have a friend who has it, just just just borrow it. But here we are, ChatGPT. And what you're gonna do is you're going to find a, an app.
Speaker 2:It's called Benefits Copywriter. Alright. And how do you do it? Basically, you click on this explore, GPT's button, and you go to the it's like the app store for, for AI, for chat GPT. And you can find, like, you find all sorts of stuff in here, like, you know, recipes, and and this is, some sort of PDF generator, and, they got, you know, writing assistance, productivity assistance, education, lifestyle programming, and you're just gonna type type in, the words benefits copywriter into the search, and that'll bring up, bring it up.
Speaker 2:And then what you'll do is you'll pin it. Now mine's already pinned here, but there's a, somewhere in here is a message to, essentially pin to the sidebar. So so it's there just waiting for you, and then it shows up here and you can see benefits copywriter is an app. So what I'm gonna do is, I just hop over here into the app, and I've already, done a little bit of work here. What did I do?
Speaker 2:I went into the Boca Raton about page. And one thing I've noticed about, publications is that generally have pretty good about pages. Like, there's a lot of information on like, if you look at your own about page, I'm gonna guess that there's probably some good, like, historical information and who you are and what you do, mission, maybe some mission information. All this stuff is is the core of who you are, and we just need to basically translate the the, this core into benefits. So and I know this is gonna look crazy, but what I did was what you're going to do is you're gonna copy all the text on your about page.
Speaker 2:And in this case, you you see that, you know, it's it's a number of paragraphs. Copy that in, and you go into the benefits copywriter, and you write a prompt, which is essentially telling the AI what to do. And you can just just copy this. Please write up the benefits of subscribing to the, in this case, Boca Raton, Tribune. It's gonna be your name of your publication, and you're gonna paste the about us copy into this.
Speaker 2:Okay? And I'd so I did that and check out the output. Here's the output. Here's a detailed breakdown of the benefits of of subscribing to the Boca, return, tribune based on the features, and you'll get a table. It's got 3 columns.
Speaker 2:Right? So what the AI does is it pulls out the features. It extrapolates a benefit second column, and then gives you a dimensional benefit, which is a pretty fancy word I've never heard before. What? Thank you.
Speaker 2:But it it's, it's interesting in that it this is what really sort of gives you the benefit copy that you can use to write up, to to edit your your website. So just look at the first one. So the feature is longest running print newspaper in Boca Raton. K? So that's something straight out of the about right off the about us page.
Speaker 2:What's the benefit to the reader? Gain deep insights and perspectives from a publication that has been a trusted part of the community for over a decade. Okay. That sounds pretty good. But what's the what's the the real personal benefit to that reader?
Speaker 2:That's the dimensional benefit. So that extrapolates to feel confident in the news you consume, knowing it comes from a source with over 400 editions worth of local experience and commitment. Feel confident. So let me point this out. What you're doing is your longest running print newspaper in Boca Raton, translates into making the reader feel more confident about the news.
Speaker 2:See how that works? The feature is, yeah, we're the longest running print newspaper, and that doesn't do anything for the reader. I mean, it does obviously, but you have to tell them what it does, and it's gonna create confidence. They're gonna feel confident in the news you consume. And I and and so grab this copy, edit it.
Speaker 2:I mean, you have to edit everything AI produces for sure, but this becomes sort of a foundation for, for the language, of what the actual benefit is. And then you can, you can do some editing for, to suit your, your, your taste and style and brand. What do you think, Tyler?
Speaker 3:I love it. I it just reminds me of of, like, when you buy a car and, you know, you see all the features. You see the heated seats. You see the heated seating wheel. You you see all these, like, features, but, like, what's the benefit of that?
Speaker 3:Right? It's like, oh, I'm not gonna freeze to death in the winter when I'm driving, or I can not have to go to the gas station because I have an electric car.
Speaker 2:You know? Right.
Speaker 3:Like, these are all benefits, like, oriented language that you see, on virtually anything that you buy.
Speaker 2:Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Let me see if there's one maybe one more to pick on. So if you're listening, it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 features that got picked out of that about us page.
Speaker 2:Family owned and operated with local columnists, 100% community oriented news, leading source of hyperlocal news, award winning community service, correct election predictions for 6 consecutive municipal elections. Woah. That's pretty interesting. Let's look at that one because that's pretty timely. Yes.
Speaker 2:So correct election predictions for 6 consecutive municipal elections. So this was pulled off the website directly. So what's the first benefit? Trust in accurate and insightful political coverage that reflects the pulse of Booker Tann. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2:Trust. But what's the dimensional benefit? Here's that word again. Dimensional benefit. Gain a deeper understanding of local politics, boosting your confidence in participating in the civic process.
Speaker 3:Crazy.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. Boosting your confidence. Now that's the benefit to your reader. You're helping them boost their confidence.
Speaker 2:So you're going from feature. Hey. We're great at at predicting elections. That's nice, but the benefit is deeper understanding for the reader and boosting their confidence when they participate. Right?
Speaker 2:I am I am I the only one, like, completely blown away by this? This is this is so easy and works so well. And I gotta say, just in general from using AI, AI is really good at copywriting. It does a very good job. You gotta edit, of course, but it can it can crank something out that's maybe 80% there.
Speaker 2:And then you go in and you edit it and you you fine tune it, save you a ton of time. I know there's a lot of concern about AI, and I can't speak to the future dark side of it if there is one, but I can speak to the usefulness of it as a tool right now. Okay. So I'm not gonna go through all these, one more step here. So we got all these things here, and we have touch points to deal with.
Speaker 2:Right? So let's let's actually just hop over to to a touch point.
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 2:oh, yeah. So let's let's 1st touch point, free registration. Just gonna mention this because it's so important, even though we talk about it all the time. I'm gonna go, go hit an article. And, come on.
Speaker 2:Alright. There we go. And I'm gonna click in and k. Running away here. And we get some sort of audio message here.
Speaker 2:That's sort of odd. Okay. Oh, well, okay. The free registration, I wouldn't sweat that one too much. That one's all about get access to this story, get this article now, get this story now, and then get our newsletter.
Speaker 2:Like, those are really the only two points on the free registration front. So let's just, I know that I have.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And and in that case, the reader knows the benefit quite clearly. They're gonna get this information. They're gonna be informed about, in the case, the rotary international club or whatever. So.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let me just do a quick quick incognito here just to because I'm already logged in. That's why I'm getting
Speaker 3:that. Alright.
Speaker 2:So here it is. So this particular touch point, when you're collecting the, you're forcing the email, and registration in the in the free registration flow. If you're if you don't have a free registration flow, we have a lot of content about it. Bottom line is give away an article, maybe 2 at the most for free, require this free registration. That'll build your email list 20% or more.
Speaker 2:It's amazing how it works. You'll get, higher quality readers logged into your site, which gives you some, some, benefits on like tracking what articles are converting. And, but the, the, the point here, the, the motivation is I'm gonna read this next story. You can do it. It's free.
Speaker 2:The story is free for you. Create a free account and then get the newsletter. Those are that's it. Keep it simple. Benefit is access to the article.
Speaker 2:Okay. So that's the free registration. Just gotta cover that because we gotta cover the free registration. It's so important. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So then the next, the next touch point is the upgrade message. Right? Okay. So here I've logged into, Boca Raton and I have read my free articles and now I'm stopped And I get the upgrade message.
Speaker 2:So here's a touch point. Super important. You must, the message here is you must upgrade your account to read the rest of the content. Okay. Then not much of a compelling, not much compelling copy here.
Speaker 2:So what do we do? Alright. So let's go back to our friend, chat gpt, and then, here's something else for you to copy. So you have this table, right? And you have you have this sort of these dimensional benefits that you can copy.
Speaker 2:But what do you how do you, like, insert this stuff into your into their subscription NAG and into your landing page, your subscription landing page, which we'll talk about. So what you do is you give, ChatGPT another prompt. K? And you can just copy this. So using all the dimensional benefits, write up a compact sales paragraph with a 1 or 2 sentence intro and bullet points.
Speaker 2:So you wanna make something that you can fit onto your subscription landing page and something that you can fit onto your subscription nag when they see when they see it. So what is what is, Chat GPT, do with the benefits copywriter? It kicks out, subscribing to the Boca Raton Tribune helps, or keeps you informed, connected, and engage with everything happening in your community. Here's what you'll get a subscriber. And then let's see.
Speaker 2:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 bullet points. You know, confidence in the news you consume with over 400 editions worth of local experience and commitment to book a return. I'm not gonna read them all. You can take a look at them if you're watching this, but the point is is you can literally grab this and paste this on into your, both your subscription landing page and your, your subscription NAG. So here, you can what I would do, of course, is probably, you know, pair this down a bit.
Speaker 2:You probably wanna edit this down. Maybe there's sort of 4 major bullet points of information that that are really, strike home with your reader. And then you can, of course, edit, you know, the little intro sentence. I know you guys are good at editing, so I won't belabor that. But literally, just take that and and add it to this subscription nag here, and you have a much more compelling reason to subscribe it and use a button that says subscribe or join or membership or whatever you call it, because we we love to click on buttons, so you gotta have the button.
Speaker 2:Okay. And then, this also applies to the subscribe page. So now you can use that nice long list and you could, what I would do, you could have it you could have it up top. You could, you could also make this box sort of half width on the screen, and you could have the for desktop, you could have the copy along, side, but use this copy. This is this is how you are making your your reader, the the hero in in, in the community.
Speaker 2:You're making their lives better. This is this is how you do it. How does your, how does your publication make the life of your reader better? So, Oh, one other touchpoint email newsletter, not gonna show it, but in your free newsletter, the free the purpose of the free newsletter is to sit to, promote, upgrading to a paid subscription or membership. Like, that's it.
Speaker 2:That's really the purpose of your free newsletter. Yeah. Yes. It's a benefit to your readers because they get to see the highlights of what you're cover. But for you as a publisher, your purpose is to, is to get people to upgrade.
Speaker 2:So you can use this, format for the copy, intro, sentence, and bullet points, I would say, in the bottom of your free newsletter. So it's always there in a nice block with a button that says join or membership or subscribe, and, and you got you got your major touch points covered here. Subscription landing page. We talked about the free registration. That's simple.
Speaker 2:The upgrade message in in the, upgrade nag when on the website and in your free newsletter at the bottom of the newsletter. That's it, Tyler. What do you think?
Speaker 3:I love it. It's great. Simple.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It'll, you know, this may maybe this will get your feet wet with, Chat GPT. It's a good reason to to jump in and use it. And, it'll it'll save you a ton of time. You can kick this out, just copy that about us text into the benefits copywriter, and then you go in and grab the copy and just start peppering it around all of these touch points, that we talked about and watch your conversions change.
Speaker 2:You'll go from either having very few features or a lot of features to having, you know, how you make your life. How how how does this benefit me as the reader? Why why should I subscribe? And you're not alone. Most 99%, 95% of publications we look at, even some of the big ones, are cranking out features and not really focusing on how it benefits the reader.
Speaker 2:That's it for now. If you have questions or you want us to take a look at your, your website, and your customer, just reach out, and we'll do it. Help you out. Till next time. See you, Tyler.
Speaker 3:See you.
Speaker 2:So if you want our help in actually developing benefits copy for all your touch points and have us install it across your website, just get in touch. And, let's let's, let's talk about how to do that. It'll help convert subscriptions.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Paywall podcast. If you'd like to get in touch to discuss subscription strategy, go to leakypaywall.com. See you next time.