Reclaim Your Brand Voice and Rise Above the AI Slop with Chris Silvestri

Chris Silvestri: Like I visualize it as a seesaw. On one hand you have your point of view and on the other hand you have value driven messaging. So some companies might have a strong point of view but still frame things around their features over what's in it for their buyers. Other companies might do the opposite. Right. So they might have a good value messaging, but it's kind of bland and generic because they don't have a strong point of view, as I mentioned. But it's rare to see those companies that balance those two very effectively, which is when you actually generate the attention.

Narrator: Welcome to How I Grew this, where

Host: we dive into the world of digital

Narrator: marketing and connect with leaders in the space about how they're scaling, evolving and growing.

Host: Hello and welcome to How I Grew this. Today we are joined by Chris Silvestri. Before founding Conversion Alchemy five years ago, Chris spent over a decade as a software engineer working across automation. UX conversion focused design that technical background shapes how he approaches messaging not as just surface level copy, but as infrastructure that supports experimentation, decision making and long term growth. So we're very excited to have you on today. Chris, welcome.

Chris Silvestri: Thank you. Amanda. Adam, glad to be here.

Host: Glad to have you.

Co-host: Chris, I gotta ask question right away. We see a lot of backgrounds of people that come into marketing. Copy specifically doesn't usually have a lot of people that were engineers. And if they are engineers, they're usually software engineers. I Understand you spent 10 years as an engineer. What kind of engineer were you?

Chris Silvestri: So I was a uh, software engineer in industrial automation. So I don't know if you can imagine some of those robots machines, automatic assembly machines that you see in factories that assemble like plastic components. In my case it was for the biomedical industry specifically because the specific area where I'm from, we are specialized in that. So yeah, I did that for 10 years. I used to travel the world installing these machines, doing validation, designing human machine interface so the display that operators actually use to control these machines. When I left I kind of hated it. And I said okay, I don't want to think about this stuff anymore. I just want to do something that I enjoy. And that's when I stumbled on copywriting.

Host: Yeah, so let's dig into that. How did you study, what did you do to become a pro in all of this user experience and copy.

Chris Silvestri: So yeah, direct response first. And then I stumbled on conversion optimization, started studying some A, B testing, conversion optimization, best practices and that led me to UX design. And then I said okay, why not combine the UX design side of things? With the copywriting and I started wireframing my copy. Right. So basically designing the skeleton of websites to show my clients how copy should be formatted and should be displayed on a website. Which also, it was the first sign that, okay, if I actually design copy strategically and I show my clients first, I reduce rounds of revision of probably half because clients immediately see what it looks like on a website, even before designing it.

Host: Or an app even, right?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So even an app, even like for e commerce website, how would it look on a mobile interface? And you have to make it responsive, so you have to adapt sections that you design for desktop for the mobile interface. And so, yeah, there was a very long process. I started actually selling my services on appwork first. I got the, um, 100% feedback badge on Upwork in like a year. That probably got me started with actually getting paid. And then when I saw, okay, I can actually make this full time, if I dedicate more of my time to it, then, okay, I can leave my job. And that's when I basically went full time, Left my job, left Italy, left my band, left my girlfriend, and completely changed my life basically in one year.

Co-host: So that was what, about 10 years ago that you kind of went full

Chris Silvestri: in on, um, copy 2017. So nine years. Nine years ago, yeah. When I started was 2015, yeah. Ah, okay.

Co-host: And then you founded Conversion Alchemy, which is. Is it like an agency then for copywriting?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, it's more of a consultancy. So for now it's me, junior copywriter, an assistant, maybe looking at hiring a research specialist soon, but for now, yeah, it's very small consultancy.

Co-host: Okay, what is the biggest change you've had from going working for a job, working for the man, to opening up your own consultancy shop? Like, what was the biggest change you've learned?

Chris Silvestri: I had to learn how to manage my time, for sure. Building better habits, but also because I had more space to actually do that, which was nice.

Host: Uh, obviously a very different time now than when you started Conversion Alchemy. So talk to us about how it's different and how you approach your customers in a different way with AI in the world.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. I have to say right now, the writing part of copywriting is probably the least work that I do. And everything revolves around the research. Uh, research is always 70% of the work that I do. And then the strategy, that's before the writing. Once you do research properly and the strategy properly, then the writing almost comes on its own. Especially now when you have tools that allow you to build your Knowledge base using the research and the strategy. But yeah, a lot of the. Most of the work that I do is on the research and strategy. And writing is mostly adapting to your voice, tone, personality, point of view. But the actual mechanical execution of writing is way less than I used to do before.

Co-host: Can you give us some concrete examples of the strategy that you're talking about? Uh, what do you mean by strategy and then the style that you're putting into the research?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, so with research, I mean, typically it revolves around three areas. So I work on internal research, which is understanding my client's team. I try to get a perspective on messaging, on positioning of the company from everyone, from product, marketing, support, customer success, the founder. And I try to bring all of them together and understand whether or not everyone is on the same page for messaging. Right.

Host: And probably usually not. Right.

Chris Silvestri: Most cases not. That's right. But that's also why they hire me. Right. They know there's some inconsistencies there, and they also appreciate an outside perspective on their internal standpoint. That's the internal side of things. The second one is the external, which to me means understanding the prospect. So before buying and customer, after buying, understanding who they are, what kind of transformation they need to go through, and how we can help them. Right. With messaging. The third one is the market research. So understanding competitors, understanding, uh, who they're targeting, how they're positioning themselves, what kind of messaging they use on their website and all that. So these three sides, this for me is the research work. The strategy is all about translating that research into first positioning. So clarifying what the company does, who they do it for, and how they do it uniquely, better or differently for the right customers. Right. It typically happens in a workshop with the company, like a collaborative workshop, and finalized in a simple crystallized document. That's the source of truth positioning canvas. Then we translate the positioning into messaging strategy. Messaging strategy is basically starting to frame how we say all of that for the right customers, which typically includes a description of a market category, includes a, uh, sales pitch, a strategic narrative, uh, brand voice guidelines, and then the key messaging pillars. How do we frame them? Different lenses could be benefit, loss, gain, and all that.

Co-host: So that doesn't sound like copy specifically. That sounds like marketing strategy in general. How much of what you're doing is kind of helping them with the core basics versus just copy specifically, the copy

Chris Silvestri: is the final output. Right. So once we've done all of that, then we turn it into copy, which typically for me means website pages. Core pages could be. I don't know the homepage, product page, solutions page, use cases, Persona pages, pricing about. Or we could work on sales collaterals if we are working with sales led teams that don't have like a uh, product trial for example, or email sequences, nurture onboarding, emails and all of that. So everything that revolves around conversion but also onboarding and product usage, that's the copy that we write. But yeah, I would say as far as percentages, as I said the research is probably 70% of the work, then strategy is another 20. The last 10% is probably the copy. Right. Which if you look at it from the outside you would say, okay, like the result, the copy is what matters most. But actually if you don't do everything else before that, the copy doesn't come out. Right.

Host: Yeah. So I want to dig into something that's been coming up lately a lot for me, which is that a lot of companies are starting to sound the same, look the same as they plug in their ads to some automation platform and then something comes out. How do you make sure that the messaging is really distinct and that your clients and also in ways that anyone can learn from, the messaging is very distinct and unique and not just becoming one of the many in the ether that all sound exactly the same and

Chris Silvestri: that you don't say AI powered in your copy.

Co-host: Yeah, seriously.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. So a lot of it comes down to when we work on the messaging strategy, understanding your specific point of view. And that to me is something as simple as when I speak with teams asking questions like what drives you crazy about your industry? Or what are some lies and misconceptions that you see spread around that uh, piss you off and you're addressing with your product. Right. Those questions give me really good insights that then we can use to create that insight that it's basically the hook, when you hook prospects in your copy on your sales pitches with an insight, which is basically your point of view on the situation in the industry. The first thing you need to match what they're thinking. So they basically say, okay, wow, you understand me. But then with that insight you show them a different way of seeing things and that creates the attention that a lot of companies don't generate. Right. When you help people see things differently and help them get to where they want to go in a unique, different way, that's when you generate attention and keep them on the page. So a lot of companies don't have that specific point of view.

Host: I think, and I've seen you talk about the difference between push and pull messaging. Dig a Little bit into that and the importance of attention grabbing and how you can make sure that you're focused on that.

Chris Silvestri: I can visualize it as a seesaw. On one hand you have your point of view and on the other hand you have value driven messaging. So some companies might have a strong point of view but still frame things around their features over what's in it for their buyers. Other companies might do the opposite. Right. So they might have a good value messaging, but it's kind of bland and generic because they don't have a strong point of view, as I mentioned. But it's rare to see those companies that balance those two very effectively, which is when you actually generate the attention. Because once you have those two, that's when people see themselves in what you are saying, but then also see that you're doing things differently, which kind of garners their attention. Right. So when you balance those two and both are as powerful, then you, I think generate the attention that a, uh, lot of companies lack.

Co-host: So that makes sense for a B2B marketing standpoint. Right? You're trying to gather their attention, you're trying to put a point of view and show the value to your client. What about consumer based marketing or E comm marketing? How are you applying that for consumer

Chris Silvestri: based on that side of things? I think the point of view, rather than being more of a, um, market based or industry based, is probably based on the experience of customers or how, how do customers experience your product and what differences they've seen by experiencing it. Right. So once you understand the truly emotional, vivid experience that they went through by interviewing your customers and doing the uh, external research, then you can use that as your hook. Right. Which is probably going to be unique on its own because your product in a way must be unique in some way or provide some kind of a unique experience to your customers. And so I think using that as your hook is probably what gets attention. But the trick is making your copy as vivid as how your customers speak. Right. So that means doing a lot of the research, using, mirroring their language in your copy and making sure that you actually speak like they do and not like typical company jargon.

Co-host: Can you think of a company that does a good job of that today? Maybe a global brand. So everyone that listens to this around the world that does this and nails it, that says, I can speak to my clients in a good way.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, I think one that I'm seeing lately is whoop, probably the tracking bracelet because I think they address a very specific audience interested in biohacking but also kind of premium. Right. So it's different from the Apple watch. It's different from the Oura Ring, which is another thing. Whoop. Is probably more related to sleep, but also more minimalistic because they don't have a watch in it. Integrated Oura Ring is even more premium or high end, I would say. But yeah, the hoop is probably one that comes to mind just because I see it in a lot of advertising and associate to a lot of podcasts. I think they do a very good job and also they create a very good universe around it. I saw that one of their marketing. I think she has a podcast that interviews lots of athletes or stars or coaches. And so, yeah, I think they create a very good universe for their customers to be immersed in it and live in.

Host: Yeah, I think that is a really good point to hone in on because I think there's a lot of community building around a lot of these B2C brands that are what make them stand apart. It's really like forming that personal connection with their end users and kind of building a community of like minded people around it. Do you have any more thoughts around how B2C companies or B2B companies can do a better job of that one?

Chris Silvestri: That's close to my heart because it goes back to my band. Culture is liquid death. They do amazing marketing. I think they stand out because they have their own unique personality, their own unique approach. They partner with the right brands and associate with the other brands. They literally create their own world. I saw they even created. It was like a cold plunge bathtub made in the shape of one of their cans. Um, something crazy like that. Wow.

Host: And it's bold. It's bold and it's disruptive and it's brave. And yeah, I think honestly, as we get more into the world of AI slop and sameness, that's what it takes.

Co-host: Speaking of AI slop, how do you recognize it today? How prevalent is it? Like, when you're looking at copy today, how do you identify a slob?

Chris Silvestri: Oh, uh, my God. On LinkedIn. It's crazy. Like, I was chatting with someone on WhatsApp and I literally saw that they were using AI. Like people are starting to use it in personal conversation now, which is crazy.

Host: How did you know I was just like blatantly obvious?

Chris Silvestri: Well, I know because I know the person in real life and I know that they don't speak like that.

Host: You don't talk like this.

Chris Silvestri: Exactly. So this, I mean, it was a kind of like a personal, professional relationships. Because this Person is a designer that I work with. She does some design for my clients. And so I met her in person, but also when she talks to me about client stuff, I'm seeing that she's probably using AI, which is fine. I mean, I don't take it personally, but, uh, as far as what I recognize, well, now you start seeing a lot of very short sentences, cut off sentences, and sometimes very almost poetic sentences, which I hate when I correct AI. Like, one of my pieces of feedback is stop being so damned solemn or epic. Be more human, normal when you speak. But yeah, some of those that you see typical chatgpt terminology is stale is a big word that it uses always.

Co-host: Tight is one that I. Crisp and tight in today's world, for sure. Yeah, comma, yeah, yeah. So on that note, what are some of the values that a company should have to make sure they don't get succumbed by the potential for falling into the AI slop? Like, what are some of the things you'd recommend a company should retain to rise above that?

Chris Silvestri: Well, first, having a messaging framework that actually tells you how you speak, what are the characteristics of your brand, voice and tone, what to do and what not to do. That is pretty blatant, right? Because you have clear parameters and constraints that tell you how you should speak and message. But then, yeah, I would always say anchor in your own personality. If your brand comes from the founder, try to understand how your founder speaks, how they talk about your product, how they talk with your customers, and also anchor in how your customers speak. So if you have reviews, lots of e commerce brands have typically reviews that they can look at or even on Amazon, use those. If you're using AI to feed your AI models and instruct them how your customers and your founders speak, I would say, yeah, that definitely anchor to how real people that you care about and that inform your messaging speak the AI. Sometimes it's hard to instruct even with lots of data. In that sense, you have to have your own intuition, which I think is also the reason why I always like to first still be the person that jumps into the research. If I have 500 reviews to go through, I try to read all of them and make sense of them first before feeding them to the AI so that I absorb that voice of customer. I create that intuition that then I can use when it comes time to editing the copy, to actually do it the right way.

Co-host: That's good advice. You mentioned personality. Copy is an opportunity for personalization. And everyone says personalization is one of the biggest opportunities that you have to reach your customer and drive conversions. What are some concrete examples of how you can personalize your messaging? Because it's easy to say personalization is an opportunity. But what are you seeing that's actually working today?

Chris Silvestri: In a way it's always worked, I think, which is understanding the jobs to be done of your prospects. So what are they hiring your product to do? Right. Whether it's consumers B2C or B2B, what are the top three to eight things that they need to do with your product and you understand them looking again at reviews or running interviews with them or surveys. Once you extract those jobs to be done in a way, you can actually start understanding how to speak to them to address each of those jobs and make sure that your language is as specific as possible. Right. Because each of those is going to have their own unique scenarios, their own unique examples that you can use sometimes. One thing that I like to do when I interview customers and you can do this with AI as well, even if you don't have a lot of Data, especially for B2C, it's probably easier because there's more online knowledge. I try to reconstruct a day in the life of a ah customer and that's when you actually get a lot of good insights and a lot of good language. Especially if you have it, I don't know, write me a super detailed day in the life for this customer Persona from their own perspective. Be as detailed and as vivid as possible and you can get a lot of good language that you can use to be specific. Be personalized in your messages, in your emails. Yeah, I would say probably try to live their own life in a way if you can. Which I think AI uh now helps you empathize with them. So that's probably one of the best use cases they would recommend it for.

Narrator: That's a neat use case.

Co-host: This is actually my next question. If I were doing this is great, that's tuning the message to reach my customer. But in terms of. And I know this could reach re engagement and all other things. But for discovery specifically, how do you then target for those individual customer Personas that you're. Does that mean you have a separate webpage that meets each one and you market those folks individually? How does that work?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, I mean B2B typically we target different buyer Personas. So we might have a landing page specific for each buyer Persona in the buyer committee. For B2C, it might be based on pain points that they have or value propositions that we write for each of those pains. So One big thing to always understand when it comes to customers and their motivations and their psychology is understanding their, I call it, emotional direction. So are they landing on your website because they're moving away from pain or are they going towards a goal? So is it more of a struggle or desired outcome? Once you know that, then you can personalize your message based on whether it's a pain or desire, and that definitely helps. And, um, you might have different use cases or perspectives that your customers bring in. You would be able to segment them based on those.

Narrator: Nice.

Host: I want to pivot a little bit to how you understand when the messaging is working. Obviously, your work has been very conversion focused and bottom of the funnel messaging. So what do you have to say about making sure that you're measuring results and that you are taking insights and learning from that and adapting?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah. So before we launch messaging, we always try to validate it as much as possible. So we might run message testing or you might run. If you're a B2C. It's easier to run usability testing, which is not super intuitive at first, because the difficult part of usability testing, when you do it with an audience that fits your demographic, is being able to craft test questions that actually give you the right insights. Which is what I learned when I was doing it at a startup, is how do you craft a test that actually gives you insight that is not biased, that is not leading people to actually give you the answers that you want, but actually prompts people to dig into your website, into your messaging, and give you their actual thoughts on what they think? Right. So I would basically craft a test, uh, that shows exactly what people think from when they land on the site to how they go through it, and up to the point when they are about to pay. Right. The other thing that we might do before launching the copy is running synthetic research. So now there's platforms that allow you to simulate your customers with AI, which I always preface with don't use synthetic research on its own. Generate your customer Personas with real research that you already ran. And once we launch the copy, then again, if you have the traffic, you can run a B testing. We do a lot of that, especially for value propositions, which is the critical point to understand different angles. We might run testing for emails, outbound campaigns as well, or even nurture emails. Sometimes just understanding qualitatively what people prefer or what they would lean on more, that would keep them inside the app, for example, and those methodologies or otherwise. I always recommend to keep research consistent so it shouldn't be uh, a one and done. I would consistently run research at least once a quarter to keep data fresh and always keep updated on what's happening in your market with your competitors. Which also informs you on whether or not you need to adjust on your positioning and messaging strategy. Right. Which probably once a year I would recommend to at least refresh and go through again, which not all the companies do unfortunately, but that uh, should be the plan.

Co-host: Any favorite methods or tools or functions that can get that research and get those answers that you prefer?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, for usability testing, I've um, used uh, UX Tweak, especially if you have an app or E Commerce. It's pretty handy because they have a lot of methodologies even for testing navigation menu, navigation trees, usability testing, card testing, card sorting, if you want to understand how to organize your navigation menu. For example, ADA can do both mobile and desktop testing. So that's very handy. Another one is uh, UX Feel, which is similar but maybe a bit more affordable, simpler to use. They have a very nice feature that gives you video snippets of your test. So you can literally select different sections of a, uh, user testing, recording of a tester going through your website or app and export them. So you can show them, I don't know, to your founder or to your marketing executive and tell them, okay, this is what I've seen. These are uh, the proof we need to change this stuff. Right.

Co-host: I'm going to put you on the hot seat here. The market is changing a lot, right. It's changing every. You have to check the news before you get on a webinar to figure out what's going on. What do you see changing in the next year that an organization needs to address and how should they prepare?

Chris Silvestri: An interesting trend that I've been following just because in a way it kind of intersects with my work on social is the creator economy, I think is influencing the marketing sales, whether B2C or B2B World a lot for apps as well, both in terms of partnerships. So how brands partner with these creators? If you are a brand and you're partnering with a creator, how do you keep your messaging consistent and allow these creators to sell for you? Right. That's going to be super important I think, because social is going to be dominating. I think yeah, brands should probably pay more attention to how these creators work and the content that they produce because they will need to adapt in a way. So I talk a lot about message market fit, which in my case is having the right language for the right audience for the right awareness level. But then I saw from a creator or these guys on YouTube, they were talking about content market fit, which is basically creating the content that you want, but also for what the audience wants to watch on YouTube, for example, with the right format. Right. So that's something that I think is probably going to intersect a lot with what a lot of companies will need to do.

Co-host: Interesting. It's a good take.

Host: So you set out 10 years ago to solve X problem here. Can you reiterate what that problem is you were trying to solve and if that's still the problem you're trying to solve or if it's a multiple?

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, I think the problem when I started was, okay, how do I help, especially B2B companies, but also B2C in general. How do I help them communicate what they do and who they do it for, effectively, efficiently, through words? And I think it's pretty much the same, only now attention is way scarcer after 10 years. And so you need to be way better probably at uh, doing it in a more concise way and through the right assets and channels. So the adaptation factor is a bit more emphasized now, I think.

Co-host: So you nailed 12 months. Right. So that was a great take. I'm going to throw it an even tougher one, which is five years. What's going to change in five years that a company needs to prepare for today?

Chris Silvestri: I think probably something else that's on my mind is how do you write for AI agents? Which is probably going to be, I don't know if you guys saw the Maltbot that's been around lately. Basically this open source local bot that works on Macs where you basically chat with it on WhatsApp and it just does things for you, uh, controlling your folders, your Mac, sending emails, sending messages with whoever. And so I think the trend is basically that agents are going to start doing stuff online, buying, looking at websites for people. And so companies might need to start adapting their messaging, their UX for bots and AI.

Co-host: It's a great take. That's a great take.

Host: Uh, and real quick, the highlights of how you evolve your messaging for AI and the bots.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah, definitely your copy needs to be way clear in terms of your positioning because what bots extract is typically the very gist of what you do, who you do it for and who we do it for. Right. Which is also how you end up in recommendations from LLMs. So being crystal clear exactly. On what you do, less fluff, less jargon, better UX of how you frame your copy. But also there's a lot of technical stuff that I haven't even looked into, like metadata and all this stuff and how you schema and all of that. Right. So there's a lot of complexities that I still have no idea how we're going to address. But again, lots of learning.

Co-host: Well, it's encouraging that you're still figuring it out.

Chris Silvestri: Yeah.

Host: And it keeps things interesting, keeps us on our toes. Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining us today and, uh, sharing all of these insights. Let our audience know where they can continue to follow your work and stay in touch.

Chris Silvestri: Sure. You can find me@conversionalchemy.net where I have a newsletter if you want to sign up. It's a weekly newsletter where I write about positioning, messaging, AI and everything. Or I'm mostly on LinkedIn, posting about everything that we've discussed today.

Co-host: But not AI slop.

Chris Silvestri: Not AI slop.

Host: Great. Well, thank you so much and thanks to our audience for tuning in and we'll see you next time.

Chris Silvestri: Thank you, guys.

Narrator: Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please leave a review wherever you listen to this and share with someone trying to grow their career or their business. Until next time, keep growing.