Dunno what's happened with my social feeds, but I'm seeing a tonne of copywriters making ma-husive claims recently.
A few of my favourites from the last few days.
- My client spent 140k on ads and made over 1M back. I wrote all the ads.
- This sales page generated over 1M in sales in a year
- I wrote a story based email for my client and they closed 10k from it
Do I believe them?
Sure.
But I don’t believe those results came just from the copy.
Copywriters… exaggerating? Never. 😅
Anyway.
Single assets are great. The right one can move the needle.
But a killer ad, page, or email won’t change your business unless you’ve got everything else in place.
I remember back when I was doing pure copy work for clients.
I had one client where I spent about 4-6 weeks on a single sales page. I did all the things you're supposed to.
- Customer research
- Understanding pain points
- Wireframing the page
- Writing and editing
- Initial user testing
- Improvements
- Launch
I put my heart and soul into that beast and you know what happened on launch?
Nothing.
No real impact on the business. No hefty sales increase. Nothing I could then brag about.
I still to this day think it was one of the best pages I wrote, but it's undeniably my biggest failure.
Why did it fail?
Simple.
No traffic. No follow-up. No system.
That page was a diamond — buried 20 feet underground.
Nobody ever saw it.
Both the client and I had fallen into the trap a lot of marketers fall into.
We see claims that a single asset like...
- An ad format
- A sales page
- An email
... transforms a business and think that's all we need.
The truth is, these are all useless without the right system.
I mean, take the initial claims I quoted in this email. Let's look at what also helped drive those results.
- “£140k ad spend → £1M back”
Cool. But it also needed:
– A great offer
– Solid economics (average order value + upsells)
– A system to turn one-time buyers into repeat ones
- “Sales page made £1M in a year”
Sure. But only because:
– The offer converted
– It had consistent, quality traffic hitting it
- “One email = £10k closed”
Yep. But:
– The list was primed
– They had a solid relationship
– And the offer was right
Not knocking anyone making these claims. Hell, I’ve done it myself in the past.
I’m just saying: the asset didn’t do it alone.
The system did.
A Ferrari engine is impressive. But without tyres, a chassis, and a driver — it’s a very expensive paperweight.
When you're building a growth engine, you need to think about the model.
Oftentimes, you'll get better results with even average assets IF you build the right engine around them.
If you want help with that, hit reply and send me "Growth Model" and I'll let you in on something I'm working on that could help you create a better model for your biz.
Happy Friday
Pete "no longer a single asset copywriter" Boyle