I don’t know how you feel about being given unsolicited advice.
Personally, I don’t mind when people do it. I always assume they’re doing it with good intentions….
At least until it becomes a noticeable pattern.
It does become a problem when people give unsolicited advice without taking the time to learn the situation first.
For example:
During my job hunting phase, I was on a call with one interviewer who decided to pull up my website.
When you go to my website, the first thing you’ll see is my landing page to get the sample chapters of How to Become an Email Titan.
The person took a look at it, and immediately, she gave me some pointers.
“Change your headline so that it’s more benefit driven.”
“Trim your copy, it’s too long.”
“Make your ‘Continue to Homepage’ button bigger.”
I actually listened to the last piece of advice since it wasn’t the first time people have complained it was too small and thought the landing page was my entire website.
But everything else?
To be honest, it just sounded like regurgitated textbook copywriting advice. Now, if it was the case where she asked things like:
“Why did you decide to write your landing page this way?”
“Who is your audience, and what problem are you solving for them?”
“How is it performing?”
“Are you happy with the results, and are you looking to improve it?”
Then I’d be likely to take her advice a bit more seriously.
And before you say anything, no I wasn’t upset at the person during the call. At the time, I was just happy to be having a conversation with someone who had some sort of copywriting background.
It’s just after my brain processed it for a while, that’s when I thought about everything that I mentioned to you above.
But this is also the exact reason why I don’t pitch ideas to people, and I decline when someone asks me to.
Who am I to give you ideas when I haven’t taken the time to learn your business, your marketing strategies, and what you’ve been doing that’s working and not working?
But sometimes I’ll be a hypocrite and tell you to email your list more, daily if possible, and especially by using the methods in my book.