WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
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Tips on writing authentic copy with Joe Pomeroy
- My whole focus is on writing authentic copy.
- If you’re hiring a copywriter and 90% of their time is not spent in research, then they’re not going to get your voice.
- It’s combining those classic [copywritng] traditions with authenticity and being able to write those headlines and do those bullet points and have those attention-getting boxes.
- Oftentimes, business owners don’t necessarily see themselves as an expert, but the reality is when you built a business and you’re making money at it and you’re helping lots of people, that you’re an expert to somebody.
- In terms of copywriting, where is the low hanging fruit?… The easiest place is landing pages or opt-in pages.
- It’s a process. If all you have is this phenomenal landing page and you get people to sign up and then there’s zero follow up to it, you’re going to lose those people.
- If you want to be a champion, focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
- The best way to figure out whether or not something is perfect is through A/B testing, which I always recommend.
- Get clear on what you want and get clear on why you want it. Clarity dissolves fear.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: Welcome back to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today in the studio joining me, Joe Pomeroy. He has a degree in marketing and a master’s in business administration with an emphasis on strategic development. While excelling in academics, Joe also worked as an instrumental leader in the rapid rise of a startup company now doing in excess of eight figures annually. He centered in all things communication, from acquisition to retention to satisfaction. Joe uses his superpower of empathy to quickly connect authentically with their clients. That same superpower that he used to understand those clients, he uses to understand your target audience, to create trust and connect with them to be your latest raving fans. After all, what your client really wants is for you to take away their pain. When they can trust you to do that, they will actively seek you.
Doug: Today we’re going to connect with Joe and we’re going to talk about all things to get more leads, more sales, and more fans as it relates to copy for your landing pages and email sequences. Welcome, Joe Pomeroy, to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast. Hey, Joe, super excited to have you on the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today. Welcome to the show.
Joe: Thanks, Doug. I’m excited to be here.
Doug: Super excited to talk to you about things, all things copy, all things copywriting. I sent out … My newsletter went out today to my subscribers and I said, “Hey, we’re going to be talking about copywriting today on this episode of the podcast.” Just before we hooked up on the show, I got an email in from a Weber, and the numbers are in. It’s 293 billion. That’s the total estimated number of business and consumer emails that will be sent in 2019 per day. With that competition, I’m hoping that you’re going be able to shed some light for our listeners on how they can compete. They can get their emails opened, clicked on, and they can sell more stuff. Do you want to fill us in and give us a little bit of background on the type of copy and the type of work that you’re doing right now?
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. You know what’s crazy about that stat, is that just emails. That’s only the competition you have with your sending emails. That doesn’t take into account anything else that can be distracting your potential customers. When you put it in that perspective, it takes that massive number and makes it even more critical to be able to get the attention of your target audience.
AUTHENTIC COPY
Joe: My whole focus is on writing authentic copy. We live in a society that is highly digitized that everything we can hide behind the mask of the Internet. Doing things that are authentic and vulnerable and can connect you to your audience, actually, as humans, we’re looking for that. That’s a seeker I might dive into later as we talk.
Doug: What do you mean by authentic? You said authentic. Describe to me what the difference is between what you would call authentic copywriting versus whatever else there is.
Joe: Inauthentic copywriting, think of things in all caps, exclamation points, buy now, big sale, closing soon, all these things that are meant to create some fanatical hurrah, the kind of stuff that you might see on a car lot commercial, things of that nature. That’s the inauthentic thing. I’m just trying to flash in front of your face, get your attention, and hopefully, if I can distract you long enough, I can get some bucks out of your wallet.
Joe: Authentic copywriting, that’s more of instead of somebody pounding on your door, if that’s me, I’m going to open up my front door and say, “Hey, you know what? I’ve got some things of value here. I’m going to welcome you in.” When you want to come into my house, you’re going to see the mess in my front room, the dishes in the sink. It’s just real. It’s real. It’s a connection. It’s about who I am, and I’m inviting you to come to be a part of that with me.
Doug: How do you get into your client’s head then to be able to write so it’s coming across authentically? In essence, they’re the brand. If you see CS speaker on stage and then you subsequently get his follow-up email or his marketing messages through whatever advertising format, it’s going to be the same message.
Joe: Absolutely. Here’s a tip for everybody. If you’re hiring a copywriter and 90% of their time is not spent in research, then they’re not going to get your voice. Just like Doug, you were saying, that’s going to miss the mark. Really most of the time and most of the effort is put into research, both understanding the core of the brand and the voice of the brand. A lot of times when I work with people, as I’m having those conversations, we get into deeper aspects and the aha moments that they didn’t even realize was part of their way as to what they’re doing with their business. When we get to those very real aspects and have those conversations, whether through discovery calls or researching material they provide, then we need to get the heads of the customer and really research, who’s your avatar? Who’s your target market? What makes them tick? How do we combine the two? How do we make friends out of those two people?
Doug: Well, how prepared typically are your clients when they come to you? We hear the word avatar, target audience, custom audience, all those things all the time. I listen to people talk about them, and I ask them questions and people ask me as well. It seems that we have trouble focusing on who our ideal customer is because we’re afraid we’re going to lose business so we cast this really wide net. How do you help them to rein that in?
Joe: Doug, you hit on one of the keys when you mentioned that we’re afraid and so we cast a larger net. To answer the first part of your question, you asked, how prepared are people? Well, the general answer is not as prepared as they think they are. Part of that is because of your avatar and your target market is constantly evolving. You can have your foundation, but as a society, we don’t stand still, and so you need to have people on your team that is helping you to continue to hone that in and really get excited on it. One of the benefits of not doing copy yourself and bringing somebody else in is when you surround yourself with experts, it helps to alleviate the fear and to be able to have the confidence that you need to move forward in what’s going to help you in the most immediate fashion.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: I think there’s just something different from writing it down versus having a conversation. I do well speaking and meeting with people and having sales conversations, but when it comes to copy, I just find, for myself personally anyhow, I find it difficult to … I wouldn’t say write authentically. I find it difficult to sell in print my old school stuff, the Dan Kennedy stuff, and Gary Halbert stuff with the attention-getting headline and the bold print and the Johnson text box and the italics. That’s where I revert to. I think that’s what you’re saying is, hey, that’s not the way to do it.
Joe: Well, actually, that is a great way to do it, and those are some of the … I go to the classics, the Eugene Schwartz and Gary Halbert as you mentioned, some of those classic copywriters and doing those headlines, but it’s combining those classic traditions with authenticity and being able to write those headlines and do those bullet points and have those attention-getting boxes. The content, the words you put in there need to be authentic because if you don’t do the attention-getting stuff like you just mentioned, you’re never going to get the attention that you need from your audience. You need to do some of that to get their attention, but don’t just put in rah-rah stuff. Once you use that to get their attention, put in things that are meaningful and that resonates with them.
EMAIL AND AUTHENTIC COPY
Doug: As you said, you need to add value to them. I found since I’ve been writing more and more now with just my own newsletter, I feel a lot more comfortable writing. My style and my attitude have changed from if you don’t like my style then just unsubscribe. You don’t have to be on my list, but it’s easier than the pressure you put on yourself of writing. How should I write so people will like it versus what information can I give them that will help them, which is a totally different mindset?
Joe: Doug, I love getting your newsletters, and I do read them. One of the things that I enjoy about them is it’s like I’m having a conversation with a friend who’s giving me tips and advice like we’re sitting around a campfire, just chilling, just connecting. Everything that’s in there is value. When you open up and provide value in a way that feels like it’s coming from a friend, that’s something I want to read. That’s something your customers want to read.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: I think as people, we like to do business with people that we have things in common with, whether it’s sports or outside activities or the arts or whatever it is. The more things that we can share and have in common, I think the better than deeper the relationships go. I guess writing in that style just draws people in that are attracted to the same things they are.
Joe: Absolutely. That’s how you get fans instead of just subscribers. That’s how you get people that want your business to succeed instead of just people that are curious as to what you have to say.
Doug: Do you have an example you can share with us of somebody that you’ve worked with so you can … It’s your option to give them a shout out or not, but that you’ve helped them walk through this process of saying, hey, they were doing it in-house and you’ve taken over their copy, their copywriting, and you’re helping them to manage this process and have a better end result.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I was working with a client, and she wanted to launch a course on teaching others how to start a business in her field. She was more than qualified, decades of experience. She’s an industry trendsetter in the US. She’s spoken at national conventions for her field, but she always had just avoided the spotlight. When I met her, she was at a point where she wanted to help more people and get more people on her list and give them what they were asking for, but she had never quite done that art.
Joe: We used an approach called the reluctant hero. The reluctant hero is where the person offering the product or service says, “Well, I was going to keep this to myself. I’m happy where I’m at, but you kept asking for it, so I guess I’ll go ahead and give it to you.” The key with that is that the copy communicated a true story about her journey from where she had no job to move to create a successful business, a true story about her expertise and about what she was ready to share with her list and how she felt about her list. Through that authenticity, through being genuine about her journey, 20% of her list latched on to the idea, cheered her on, and she even had a good number of people offer testimonials without ever taking the course, just based on her character and her connection with them. Now her course is out there, and she’s successfully leveraging her skill set by helping other people start their own business.
Doug: That’s really cool. I was really surprised at one point. I was at an event close to where we live in Vancouver. One of the keynotes there was Gary Vaynerchuk. Everyone knows who Gary is and what he has to say. What was interesting was the number of other business people they had on the panel, and each of them shared the struggle that they had in their business. One of the guys that’s got a lot of media coverage lately is a guy by the name of Brian Scudamore, who’s got a company called 1-800-JUNK. He shared how their company needed some financing, and he went to their finance guy and they were going to borrow some money, and the finance guy said it’s toxic money, it’ll be bad for your business. They had to make the hard decision of laying off some of their staff.
Doug: What was interesting was people took off their masks and they sat there and from the outside looking at people’s social presence in their company and the media attention they get, everything looked like it was wonderful. All of them had been through a major struggle that had never been published or printed, or not that I had seen any shared before. It just made the conversation more real.
Joe: Yeah, for sure. Oftentimes, business owners don’t necessarily see themselves as an expert, but the reality is when you built a business and you’re making money at it and you’re helping lots of people, that you’re an expert to somebody. Too often, as the viewer, we see where we’re at. Maybe I want to start a business, and then we see where the guru or the expert is at. All we see is that gap, and we don’t necessarily see the journey that it took to get there, the challenges, the frustrations. When the guru or the expert starts to shed light on that journey, it makes the pursuer feel like, hey, I can do that. As long as I’m willing to follow these steps that they’re giving me, I don’t need to leap over this giant chasm that separates us. I can just take small steps and walk that journey that they’re shedding light on.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: Hopefully not fall in the same ditch that they fell in because they told me how to avoid it.
Joe: Exactly.
Doug: Walk us through, in terms of authentic copywriting, where is the low hanging fruit? When you talk to business owners and they come to you, where do you think is the easiest opportunity for them to improve their communications and attraction and conversion lies?
Joe: The easiest place is landing pages or opt-in pages. People will go to your website and they’ll look around and they’ll see how things go. Too often, business owners don’t have action steps on their websites. If you change one part, you need to change the other part, and how many pages do I have, and how many clicks am I going to get to this person? You can do a single-page short copy landing page with minimal text on it and really it’s saying, hey, I care. This is why I care. This is the pain you’re feeling. This is how I can help. Send me your email and I’ll send you a guy. With 200 words or less, you can have the opportunity to get somebody on your list and start developing that relationship with them.
Doug: Keeping that in mind, do you typically work or recommend that people are going to hire a writer, they would work through the process of landing page and then the subsequent email sign-up process follow-up and all the other stuff that’s going to come after that to keep the same tone and messaging?
Joe: Definitely. It’s a process. If all you have is this phenomenal landing page and you get people to sign up and then there’s zero follow up to it, you’re going to lose those people. They’re going to go cold. When you finally do send them something, they’re going to unsubscribe. What’s the old adage? You eat an elephant one bite at a time.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely.
Joe: You’ve got to start somewhere. The best place to start is the landing page. You get your landing page, and then you need a lead magnet. You need to give them something of real value. Here’s the big secret. The real value, give it your best. Give them your best value, because one of two things is going to happen. You give them your best value, and they’re going to say, man, if this is what this guy is giving away for free, I wonder what I can get with paid stuff. They’re going to get really hooked and really interested. The other aspect is that you’re always learning as a business person. What was your best yesterday isn’t necessarily your best today? You can continue moving the first forward.
Doug: Yeah, that’s a good point. I think there’s a mix. I see people that hold back. They say, hey, I’d love to tell you about that, but it’s in my book. Just buy my book. That’s not going to convince me because they haven’t demonstrated any expertise. All they’ve done is pitched me something and they haven’t addressed my problem. I know there were times before where I bought people’s courses and materials just as a test if you want to call it that. Let’s see how smart they are and how good their content is. If it’s really good, what I’m going to do is I’m going to hire them to do the work. This is a way to evaluate the quality of the person, sign up for their course, buy their course, look through the material and say, yeah, make sense. Now let’s go hire them and get them to do the work for me.
Joe: If they had held that back, if they had only given chicken scraps, oftentimes the user ends up feeling more frustrated. They’re going to figure that out in a quick Google search. Giving real value makes a big difference.
Doug: To your point with regards to email, email is the welcome message that people get after your opt-in page. It typically has nine times higher revenue compared to any other promotional email you’re ever going to send. You’re leaving a lot of money on the table if you’re not doing that. About three-quarters of the people expect to get one and less than half the marketers send it. If you’re going to like you said if you’re going to write good copy and convince people to sign up for your lead magnet, make sure you send them a welcome message and follow up and don’t be afraid to make them an offer to help them further.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. If they’ve agreed to give you their email address, then there is an interest there and there’s an opportunity there. It’s the same thing. You talked about purchasing a course. Well, how many times do people purchase courses or buy a book or get a gift? I saw DVDs that are unwrapped or that I’ve purchased or movies that I’ve never watched. That’s something that’s lazy and easy to do. That’s just wasted opportunities. If you’re putting in the time and effort to get somebody on your list, that welcome email sequence is really important. It doesn’t have to be its own entity in and of itself. It can transition into your main product, your main offering, but there need to be steps along the way. If you give them a lead magnet and they’re just part of your standard newsletter and they’re lumped in with the rest of the crowd, that’s not going to do much for that authentic connection that we’ve been talking about.
Joe: You can have maybe a 10-email series that’s sent over the period of a couple of weeks where you’re just giving additional value and maybe introducing them to stuff that you’ve done in the past that has benefited people a lot. You can say, “Hey, I know you liked the information I had on subject lines. Now that you’ve got that, hey, here are some best ways to close out … a copy to close out a sale, or there are really good ways to introduce yourself.” You spread that out over the next couple of weeks, and now you’re ingraining yourself as someone who is willing to give value and willing to help. You put yourself in that connected friend position as opposed to just another sales guy in a suit.
Doug: Yeah, absolutely. What’s the biggest myth around hiring somebody to do copy versus doing it in-house?
Joe: That’s a great question.
Doug: Thank you.
Joe: The biggest myth on hiring somebody to write copy for you or doing it in-house, it really depends on the skillset of who you have in-house. If you’ve got somebody who’s phenomenal with Facebook campaigns and you want them to write copy, just because they can manage a social media market, does it mean that they know how to write an email sequence or long-form sales copy? The idea is you can write your own copy. Just like Michael Phelps, he could go jump off a diving board or he can play water polo at the Olympics, but he’s not going to win gold in any of those sports. Even worse, he could end up damaging his ability to win gold in swimming where he’s an expert, where he’s a champion. As a business owner, you have expertise. Your employees have the expertise, and that’s solving your client’s problem. If you do what you do best and surround yourself with the right team, your business wins.
Joe: The real question I guess becomes, do you want to just attend the Olympic equivalent of your field or do you want to be a champion? If you want to be a champion, focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: The other thing I found too is just an outside perspective. So often as business owners or entrepreneurs, we’re very close to … Obviously, you’re super close to what we’re doing, super emotional or emotionally attached to what we’re doing. Having somebody else’s outside perspective that doesn’t know the industry as well or doesn’t have that necessarily emotional connection can give you a new perspective on what your customer may read. Because when I write something, I read it and, for example, my newsletter went out today, and I noticed when I sought to open up my email today, I noticed there was a typo in the subject line.
Joe: Yeah, I found that.
Doug: Great. Typo on my subject line. You saw it. I saw it. I said to my wife this morning when she got up, I said, “Hey, did you see that email?” She said, “Yes. What’s the subject line?” She read it to me three times, and each of the three times she read it to me, she read it to me the way that I intended to write it. I said, “Did you get a different email than me?” There’s perspective. There is an outside view. You noticed it. I noticed it, but I didn’t notice it before I scheduled it a couple of days ago to go out. That’s the way it goes.
Joe: It makes me think of in American football, a lot of times, the defensive coordinator will be up high in a booth so that he can look down, he can see where the opposing team, their positions, how they’re laid out, where they are in the field. Based on that, he can get an idea of their strategy and tactics and how to approach for victory. He’s not necessarily the coach standing on the headlines walking up and down the sideline … sorry, standing on the sidelines, walking up and down, yelling at the team, pat people on the helmets as they come in. That guy is right in the heart of it. You need an outside perspective.
Doug: I just want to ask you a different question. This is a different direction. We’re talking about copy. We have landing pages and opportunity websites. Obviously, you need to make sure that at some point that they are in alignment with the copy you’ve got in your landing page. When you write, say, I don’t know what to call it, a block of copy for somebody, say for a landing page. Do you typically help them to reformat that or recycle that or reuse that, repurpose that for social? Being your conversation earlier, just because you can write for Facebook, it doesn’t mean you can write for a landing page. I’m assuming that you want to have the core message. That’s my question. Do you take the bulk of the copy and content you’ve done and help your client to repurpose it into the other media?
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Joe: That depends on the scope of the project, to be honest. In reality, all copy is going to come down to a basic core message. If you want it to be unified, you need to figure out that core message first, and then the kind of copy you write evolves from that core message. If I’m writing a landing page for somebody then the bulk of the research is going to go into what is the core message? Let’s get it nailed down. Let’s understand what that is. How do we connect that as quickly as we can in a landing page, which will be different than how do we connect that core message in a social media blip? It will be different in how can we connect that core message in a post on LinkedIn or the front page of the website.
Joe: If they all have that same core message, then the modality in which you deliver the message will vary. It becomes, okay, where do you want to start? We figured out the core message. Let’s get the landing page written. Whether or not I help them in the other aspects depends on how much they want to grab on to that core message and how much they want to deliver that core message across their different modalities.
HIRING A WRITER
Doug: Setting expectations when you’re talking to a client or a client is looking to hire somebody for a copy. I know there are all sorts of expectations that we have. Some are spoken and some aren’t. I used to joke about, this is a different example, your stockbroker phones you and tells you about a great stock that’s going to be a long-term hold. You say, yeah, long term. I hear from you. I agree. I’d buy it. What do you do? That first night you go to bed, you dream about it going up and becoming an instant millionaire. Although, he told you, and you agreed it was going to be long term. How do you work with your clients in terms of setting expectations for how long is it going to take to work with them to get their first bit of copy out and then realistically how much testing and changes are going to need to be done over a period of time until you’re basically up and running and you can ramp it up?
Joe: Yeah, great question. You mentioned something at the very beginning of this conversation where you talked about needing to write down who your target market is. Anytime you’ve got multiple people communicating about the same topic, putting those things in writing can make a big difference. That’s why I love that you transcribe your podcast episodes because the way that somebody says something versus how I read it can be different. You get those different things written down and have those expectations laid out in front. What’s our long-term goal? Where are we looking to move for this?
Joe: The other part of it and something that cracks me up with copywriters is as a copywriter, I’m supposed to be an expert communicator, but if you sign the contract, if you send me the cash and then you don’t hear from me until three hours before the deadline and I say, “Here you go. Good luck.” How is that expert communication? Mapping out like, hey, we’ve got … This is the scope of our project here. Our deadline is four weeks out. We want to have all these pieces put together. Then, having weekly communication to check in, the same thing if you think of a pilot flying a plane. He doesn’t wait until he thinks he’s five miles … Here in Canada so we’ll talk kilometers … five kilometers out from the airport before he decides to check his bearing. You check that bearing all along the way and you can get the most direct route. That’s part of the expectations, setting up front.
Joe: The other fact is as awesome as I think I am at copywriting, as I believe I am at copywriting, it doesn’t mean that I’m perfect. If you look at American baseball, if you’re batting over 300, meaning that you get a hit and get on base three times out of 10, you’re considered a really good batter. If you’re doing it four times out of 10, then you’re done an unbelievable hitter, and teams are going to offer you loads of cash. I like to think that my batting average is higher when it comes to copy and would get more hits than losses. Nothing is perfect. It’s all part of the strategy.
Joe: The best way to figure out whether or not something is perfect is through A/B testing, which I always recommend. Anytime I do a landing page, and this is something I actually want to offer to your listeners without an additional charge, but usually, I recommend you’re going to do a landing page. We’re going to give you version A, and then we’re going to make some slight, tiny adjustments to the headline. We’re going to switch these words around. We’re going to change this bullet point. We’re going to reword this just a little bit different. It’s the same basic theme with some minor adjustments to see, which one works better?
Joe: We can do the same with email sequences and things of that nature. That way, we’re figuring out what resonates the most because you may have something that is getting you a 10% return, and you change two words in it and it can jump into a 14% return. There are just those minor adjustments.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: Yeah, I always find it so interesting that in the sales and marketing field especially … I guess it’s probably the same in business in general. There’s this expectation of never losing. It’s like everything I do has to work. Yet, as you said, you watch the baseball game or you watch the football game or you watch the basketball game, and nobody makes 100% of the shots.
Doug: The other difference that I see in sports compared to business is that all the athletes are coached. Most of them are coached mentally, coached physically, coached nutritionally. Yet, as business owners, we somehow think that, hey, I can just run this by myself. I’ve got my staff, and I’m good on my own without having, in your case, a coach to come in or someone coming into the copy and to help out, and know that we’re not going to hit it out of the park every single time. Not every time we get up to bat it’s going to be a grand slam.
Joe: Yeah, for sure. It’s really having those expectations. I think a lot of that for me comes down to mindset. Do you have a fixed mindset where failure represents your inability to ever succeed, or is it a growth mindset where if I don’t succeed this time in this way, then I can look at, okay, what happened? What do I need to change? Let’s get up. Let’s try again. As long as you keep getting up and you’re learning, then you’re moving forward. That can be scary in business. When you’ve got money on the line, when you’ve got bills to pay, that can be scary.
Doug: Absolutely. What are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months?
Joe: Oh, man. I’m most excited about the classics. I feel like marketing goes through cycles. I feel like there’s an explosion of excitement and everybody starts running around for the latest and greatest thing, and then the smoke clears and the dust settles, and the classics are what remains while everything else has just faded away. That’s the cycle of marketing that I look at. Email is the key classic. Email is constant. Doug, you know that as well as anybody else. I look at the next six to 12 months as a settling period. The movement is still happening. Other people are still searching for shiny objects right now. That’s okay, but that’s why right now makes it the perfect point in the marketing cycle to build your email list because that email list is going to give you the foundation, the habits, the processes. When this marketing cycle settles back down on the classics, you’ll be months ahead of your competition. They’ll still be trying to figure that stuff out and you’ll be cruising along.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: It’s funny that you say that because, in some of my reading, I spend a fair amount of time doing research and reading to see what the leaders in the industry are doing and what the influencer is doing. I’ve heard a bunch of times in this last week to 10 days about how LinkedIn, although the platform has been around for a long time, is they view it at this infancy of where Facebook was five, six years ago. I also heard someone else talk about SMS. I’m thinking, man, I haven’t heard anyone talk about text messaging for a long time like it was something brand new. Here are some more traditional, older forms of marketing, SMS, Linkedin, email, amongst all these brand new things, and we’ve got some of the major marketing influencers in the world saying, hey, I’m spending my time in these areas. Find to spend some time. Spend 20% of your time testing the new stuff, but spend 80% of your time in the core.
Joe: That’s how you know where we’re at in the cycle as well, is because if the influencers, if that’s what they’re talking about, people are still trying to decide whether or not they believe them, whether or not they’re ready to let go of some of that stuff and really go after the trends. You mentioned Gary V. earlier. One of the things that have brought him great success is anything new that came, he just went and attacked it. It didn’t all work for him, and there are some things that were a bust, but because he was always on the front edge of that, he was able to reap the benefits of that. That’s the same idea. When you’ve got the influencers and what they’re talking about is what’s coming up next, don’t wait to see if the herd moves in that direction. You are the leader following after those influencers. That seemed like an oxymoron, a leader following after the influencers.
Doug: I saw Gary V. post this last week. Here’s a guy who is super successful in what he’s doing, in demand, speaks all over the world, and he does a post on LinkedIn saying, hey, I lost this much money on my uber IPO. He’s a venture capital guy. Don’t be so hard on yourself. If you invest in something, you try something and it doesn’t work because you got guys that are much smarter, have much more money. Still, like you said, trying to think tactics and going, you know what? I tried that. It didn’t work. It didn’t work for my business. Maybe it worked for somebody else’s business and move along.
Joe: Yeah, I love that. If I were to throw any advice on the tail end of this to your listeners who are struggling to pull the trigger or take that next step or make a change, really, you got to get clear on what you want and get clear on why you want it. Clarity dissolves fear. Maybe it doesn’t eliminate it, but clarity can help you see your fear for what it is. When you have real clarity, you can move past that fear. There’s a quote that I love, there are different versions of it, but the version I like the best is attributed to Bruce Lee, and its courage is not the absence of fear. It’s the ability to act in the presence of fear. Get clear and get moving.
Doug: I hear you. One of my favorite quotes in terms of stress when business sometimes goes well and sometimes it doesn’t go well comes from Dan Kennedy. I remember sharing this with a few people around me when I was really focused. If the house is on fire, do not in any circumstance disturb me unless I’m in imminent danger. Call the fire department. Just let me work, and you guys figure it out. I’ll be just fine. Thank you very much. If I’m going to perish, you might want to come to knock on my door and kick me out.
Joe: I’m at the other end of the house. I’m good.
HOW TO WRITE GOOD COPY
Doug: Yeah, I’m all good. You all just wait. Don’t shut the power off because I got to reboot my computer. Don’t do that. What are the steps for someone who is saying, okay fine, this sounds cool? I want to explore this a bit more. I’ve never used somebody for copy, or I’ve used someone for copy and it didn’t work in the past. What are the steps that people would take to prepare themselves to move towards working with someone like you to help them to have a different look, a different perspective and hopefully have more success in their sales and marketing effort?
Joe: First, the number one step is to get things down on paper or in a Word doc. If you just have ideas floating around your head, they’re going to change based on your mood. They’re going to change based on what bills you have coming up that are due or whatever. Start getting things down on paper. That’s step number one. Once you have it down on paper, share it with some close trusted people to make sure that you’re not just BS-ing yourself that what you’ve got down on paper is real and authentic to who you want.
Joe: You can start reaching out to find somebody who resonates with your core message. The reality is there are people that are doing businesses and projects like as an example, I met somebody who she teaches strippers how to make more money as strippers. I thought, hey, okay, that’s not for me. That’s fine. That’s her way where she wants to go, but I’m not the copywriter for her. You need to find somebody that resonates with your message, and that can take some trial and error. My focus is anybody that has a business or a message, who is striving to help people become better than who they currently are. Man, I can resonate with that, and I can connect with your audience and your target market all day long on that. If you want to write some things specifically for the financial industry and use terms that are not familiar to me, then I’m not your guy for that, but I can point you in the right direction.
Joe: Reach out to people you know and people you trust. See who they guide you to. Find out why they’re guiding you to that person. Do they have real experience with that individual or is it just a name that they know? Have a conversation face to face, if you can over Zoom if needed, but get to know the person because you’ve got to recognize this person writing your copy is going to be acting as your voice. If you don’t connect with them, your audience isn’t going to connect with them, so stop wasting your time, and move forward with something else.
Doug: I’d say don’t expect it to be perfect the first time. My experience as I’ve been working with writers is I’ll put together a creative brief, which basically is here’s our audience, here’s where I think they are in terms of their demographics, psychographics, education, all that stuff so you get a feeling of who the person is. Here’s their pain point. Here’s where we want to lead them. From there, the writer goes away and comes back and we start with the draft and say, hey, we’re 80% there. We’re 60% there or 90% there. It goes back and forth. It does not have one phone call with Joe and then magic happens and 24 hours later, the copy is Perfect. It’s done and it’s out producing everything by 500%.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. That’s part of what I mentioned before about that consistent communication. Whether your listeners choose to work with me or find somebody else, that’s awesome. Set up the expectation from the start of how you want the communication to be. If they don’t offer anything until they send it to you right before the deadline, I’d say, hey, that’s not going to work for me. Let’s figure out a date and time that we can connect, even if it’s just 15 minutes to get updates or where you’re going to send me some information that I can review to make sure that we’re still on track. You’re right. It is a process. It is a journey, but you’re going to get to your desired destination a lot faster with the right guy.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Doug: Yeah, totally agree. Let’s bring this to a close here tonight or this afternoon. Who is one guest I absolutely have to have on my podcast?
Joe: I knew you were going to ask that because you always ask that. I was thinking about I’ve talked a lot about connection, authenticity. You’ve got to get Stu McLaren. He’s Canadian, so that’s a plus. He’s got a company called Tribe, and he deals with membership sites, membership platforms, and that’s everything that he does on the business side. He and his wife, they started a nonprofit organization building schools in Africa. When you hear about his story and how he got involved in that and what he’s doing, and then you look at … It’s amazing the things that he’s doing on the business side as well as on the personal side and what he’s doing with the legacy that he’s creating. Stu McLaren is who you’ve got to get on the podcast.
Doug: Well, that would be awesome if you’d do an email introduction. That’d be wonderful. Now for people who are interested in learning more about Joe and what it looks like to work with a copywriter, how to find you, track you down, how do they do that?
Joe: Shoot me an email. Put the podcast, Real Marketing Real Fast, and Doug’s name in the subject line. Shoot me an email, Joe, J-O-E, at forwardwithjoe.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn.
Doug: Excellent. Hey, well, I just want to say thanks for taking time today and sharing with our audience. I think the art of the written word, I won’t say that it’s dying, but I think that people underestimate it. We’re all working on these mobile devices these days, typing with our thumbs, and what comes out the other end isn’t always pretty.
Joe: Yeah, I’d agree. Never lose sight of the importance of connection. It’s relationships that propel your business forward. The stronger you can make those connections, the faster you can get to your desired destination.
Doug: There you go, listeners. There’s another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today we didn’t talk really fast, but we did talk about something really important, and that is the importance of authentic copy, good copy and why you need to consider how that looks. Does it align with your brand on your webpage, on your landing pages, and your social media feeds? So happy to have my friend, Joe Pomeroy, as my guest today. I hope that this episode was helpful. As usual, we’ll make sure the show notes are transcribed, and I’d suggest two things to you. One is making sure you subscribe to the podcast, and if you like the episode, leave us a review and make sure you’re subscribed to my email list so you can get the inside scoop on what’s going on. As I said before, if you get the email and you don’t like, just hit the unsubscribe and I’ll wish you well. Thanks again, Joe, and have an amazing rest of the week.
Joe: Thanks, Doug. You too.
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WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
WRITING AUTHENTIC COPY
Focus on what you do best and get the right people around you. Hire the right people to come in, write copy, get that outside perspective, and get you on the medal stand as the champion.
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Get in touch with Joe:
- Special offer to RMRF listeners – 20 minutes with Joe! The first 20 listeners of Real Marketing Real Fast will get a FREE 20-minute call to discuss your copy. No pitch. No sales. Just specific insights to improve your copy and increase your sales. See Forward with Joe
- Joe on LinkedIn
- Email Joe – joe@ forwardwithjoe.com
Find out more about Joe:
- Joe on Twitter
Links to other related podcasts and or blog posts:
TIPS FOR WRITING COPY THAT CONVERTS
THE FOUR PILLARS OF WRITING COPY THAT SELLS