I just listened to a Tim Ferriss interview with former professional poker player Liv Boeree.

She’s pretty a badass character and knows a lot about game theory and decision making.

The stuff I nerd on daily.

Anyway, at some point in the interview she gives a definition of what a scientist does and how that applies to playing poker.

I think it’s one of the best definition of what conversion copy is:

“A true scientist is maximally curious, and you do your best to devise experiments in order to get reliable, robust results that you can use to predict the world, and you try and minimize all the biases and things that could mess up your experiment and give you a faulty result.”

This is the hard work of research and validation any copywriter does.

The questions you ask in your surveys and interviews, are experiments, in a way. It’s a process of constantly and gradually minimizing your biases so you can predict how the world of your prospects works, as clearly as possible.

As you noticed, curiosity is the focal point here.

Reason why I always try to be even more curious than my clients whenever I interact with their customers.

It’s hard to realize how biased you are when you’re immersed in your product and business 40 hours a week.

And I’m there to help them out.

So is poker like copywriting?

Well, another thing Liv says stood out as a big no no:

“[Poker is] about maximizing deceptiveness while extracting information out of your opponent.”

Extracting information? Yes. Maximizing deceptiveness? Not at all.

Let’s be clear here, you’re doing the research not to figure out how to screw with the minds of your customers and tell lies about your product to fit that reality.

You do it so you can learn how your product, flaws and all, can fit in their world as a good (possibly the best) solution for them.

Never try to deceive prospects. Truth first, marketing tactics after.

At least that’s how I see it, and it’s worked pretty well for my clients.

I’m curious, how would you define conversion copywriting?

Just reply to this email chris@conversionalchemy.net.

Have a great weekend.