Comments Off on Build Your Copywriting Business – The Family Edition!
by allwordsbypeta
When I started my copywriting business there were a few podcasts that I binge-listened to while on the school run, cooking dinner, sorting laundry, you know the parenting drill. One was Filthy Rich Writer‘s Build Your Copywriting Business.
Nicki and Kate always had great advice and really interesting guests.
And now I’m one of them! *screams a little*
You can listen to my episode below, hear me giggle too much, and say “um” a lot, but also talk about:
How I got started as a copywriter
What I think abot Upwork (spoiler: this might surprise you)
How big a part laundry plays in my day
How I manage client expectations
How my previous career as a youth worker helps me deal with comparisonitis
What time management tips really help when you have small people you’re meant to be keeping alive.
I’d love to know what you think, and if you have any tips you could add.
Comments Off on When you can’t see the wood for the trees
by allwordsbypeta
Today’s blog is a little different. I’m sharing a little bit about how I work with my clients, and what I bring to the table.
Iâve just wrapped a fun project with a UK-based client (which makes zoom call scheduling a lot easier, Iâm not going to lie!).
When you get to see your work in real life (or on a screen) thereâs this little shiver of excitement. A lot of what I do as a copywriter feels abstract and amorphous most of the time like Iâm drawing in the air. The moment when all my hard work coalesces and appears in front of me on a snazzy webpage with a funky design still gives me butterflies. Itâs also quite nice to have something to show to my father-in-law to help explain to him what a copywriter actually does!
One of the reasons that this project was so much fun was the big picture thinking I was able to do.
Some clients just need you to write words.
They need a description of a product or a blog about why mums should buy their baby bottles. These things are important, donât get me wrong, and they take skill.
But, while jobs like that do involve a lot of Listening, Empathising, and Directing (you can find out more about these 3 Youth Worker superpowers of mine on my blog), the client has probably already sorted out who they are, what they do, and how to communicate this. Iâm just helping them speak more effectively to their ideal customer.
But occasionally I get to work with clients on a higher level, and itâs hands-down my favourite thing about my job.
This client was an established stationery company who was relaunching, with a new website and messaging. This gave them an opportunity to rebrand and be clearer on their marketing message.
But they were lost.
Theyâd spent hours and hours trying to come up with one strapline that explained everything they did. But they sold loads of stuff, so this didnât seem possible.
They needed another way to stand out and get people to stay on their home page, rather than wandering off because it was all a bit vague.
So, what did I bring?
How could I help when theyâd already been struggling for so long?
Well, a few things:
An outsider’s perspective:
You know when youâre doing a massive jigsaw and youâve been looking for one particular piece for AGES? And then your partner/child/mother comes along and immediately picks it up from the pile of loose pieces? Annoying, isnât it? But they looked at the problem from a different angle.Â
Weâve all been there. Stuck staring at a blank page for so long that you can no longer see any possible solution. Going around and around in circles. The issue? Youâre too close to the problem. Grab an outsider (preferably one with some understanding of your field or business, donât draft your dog walker in to look at your sales page unless theyâre your target audience!) and explain the issue. They can help you find solutions you hadnât even thought of, because their perspective is slightly different.Â
I helped the client look at his webpage from a different angle. We looked at how you could use it to take the reader on a journey that fit with their needs, rather than just focus on showcasing products.
A strategic overview:
Was finding this one phrase really the most important thing? Perhaps focusing on the feeling that you wanted to create on the page could draw people in more effectively than making sure that a reader instantly knew everything you did after reading the headline of your home page.
Strategically, this client operated in a fairly crowded marketplace. It made more sense to find a different way to engage their customer. So we settled on creating the feeling of a tribe, finding people like you and products that fit with that feeling.
That way, the company stands out, thereâs no need to try and fit hundreds of different product lines into a single magic sentence, and you end up with intrigued visitors who turn into loyal customers.
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So, Iâve ended up with a very happy client, and theyâve ended up with web pages that will bring them more traffic and more sales.
I donât know if itâs because Iâm a stationery nerd, but Septembers always feel more like new starts than Januarys.
It probably is the stationery thing, you know. On my first date with my husband, we spent about half an hour bonding over the Staples catalogue. (Yes. I am aware of how sad that makes us sound, but weâre very happy so we donât care!)
Having moved my task management system online over the summer, this is the first year since I was, ooh 11, that I havenât swanned around WHSmith or Paperchase picking out my school year planner. Itâs only the 2nd of September, and Iâm already debating buying one anyway, just for the new paper smell.
This is when my new year starts, when I gear up for change and re-imagine what my life looks like. Itâs in September when Iâm feeling energized, optimistic, and fresh. January, when Iâve spent all my money on Christmas and itâs all dark and gloomy outside, is not my time.
But wait, this is a blog about copywriting and marketing, letâs not get too hung up on me, shall we? I promise, there is a point to this post and it will help your business.
âWhat is it?â I hear you cry in exasperation as you scroll through new productivity planners on Amazon.
Well, just like me, your customers think seasonally. And so should you.
Why should you think seasonally?
There are two reasons why thinking seasonally in your business is a helpful tool:
Youthworker insight alert!
As human beings, we like rituals and rhythms, new starts and seasons. As a species whose lives revolved around when you could farm, when you could fish, when you needed to store food, and when you needed to scrape the ice off of the top of your basket and get gathering again, we are biologically tuned into the idea that things change on a cycle. We like to set moments in our year where we can reflect, plan, remember, or celebrate. And our thoughts and emotions (read: buying habits) are massively affected by this.
In times gone by, most cultures had set moments in their calendar where the changing of the seasons was noted. A harvest celebration, a feast to mark the end of Winter, the first flowers budding. And almost all cultures had rituals involving the passing of time in peopleâs lives. Initiation ceremonies, first communions, marriages, funerals, all of these mark the passing of the seasons (of life and the year).
In many western cultures, we have fewer and fewer of these universally accepted rituals as time goes on. A lot of the religious rituals have been swapped for secular ones (Easter being a prime example, there are definitely more Instagram posts about egg baskets than there are about crucifixes) and this is fairly normal for a more multi-cultural society. But, because of the way we are wired, we still need some kind of marker.
Now, back to business
From a more traditional marketing perspective, as a business owner, your sales and successes will fluctuate throughout the year. Depending on your specific area – the things you sell and the space you occupy – you may do better in the summer, or in the run-up to Christmas. For example, if you sell garden machinery, youâll probably be a bit quieter in January when most of us are hiding indoors and not thinking about our lawns. But July is going to be manic!
Tapping into these two reasons for seasonal behaviour can give you insight into the way your customers think and how best to market to them at different points in the year.
How can you make the seasons work for you?
Sure, you can stick to the traditional supermarket cycle of Valentineâs Day, Easter, Summer holidays, Back to school, Halloween, Christmas. But, letâs face it, youâre not going to stand out in a crowded marketplace when everyone else is doing the same thing. And, frankly, itâs boring.
Letâs be a bit more creative, shall we?
Research
The best way to develop a seasons approach to your marketing is to do our favourite thing: research! Consider these questions as a start:
What seasons do your customers most engage with?
What stages, in their life and in their year, are they talking about on social media and message boards?
What seasons (in life or the calendar year) do your products most fit with?
What seasons do you get most excited about?
Brainstorm
There are so many different seasons that you can tie into your messaging.
Sit down, grab a pen and paper, and think through the year. What events and periods spring to mind?
Spring cleaning,
Tax deadlines,
Summer holidays,
Back to school (even if your customers havenât been at school for a while now)
Christmas.
Then think about life seasons; things that might be concerning your customers right now and affecting the way they think and purchase.
A new baby
Coming out of the pandemic
Finally having an empty nest now the kids have gone to Uni
Ending a relationship
Getting married
Buying their first house.
Tying it all together
So, youâve got a better idea about the seasons that chime with your audience, now you need to make the connections between your products or services and the seasons youâve decided to focus on.
Now, a word of warning: shoehorning a âback to schoolâ call to action into every one of your emails, web pages, and social media posts through August and September wonât work (unless you actually are WHSmith, in which case âHi, thanks for dropping by!â.
Nope, you want to tap into peopleâs emotions around the different seasons, but you donât want to hammer it too much.
Think about it this way: If you sell soft home furnishings – cosy throws, inviting cushions, chic bedspreads – then you probably want to connect with the warm cosy feelings that your customers will have around Christmas holidays. Encourage them to fill their homes with tactile fabrics to snuggle up under whilst drinking their mulled wine. Paint a picture of how visiting family wonât be shivering up in the guest room if they have a couple of your bedspreads ready in the airing cupboard.
Alternatively, in September, you might talk about how a little piece of home can help student halls feel less lonely. Thus encouraging every mum of an 18-year-old to buy one of your blankets to pack on top of the IKEA crockery set.
The possibilities are endless.
And, you know, if youâre struggling you could always spend some time talking with an expertâŚ
I promise I donât bite…especially when Iâm feeling all optimistic this time of year!
Comments Off on How to Direct – and get more sales!
by petaobrien
Youâve been with me for the last few weeks as Iâve explored how my youth work superpowers can boost your business (in what weâre definitely NOT calling my copywriting philosophy).
We started with how making your audience feel listened to can build loyalty.
Then we moved on to the power of empathy in building a connection with your customers.
Now weâre at number 3 on my list: directing.
Now, fair warning, this one is the hardest to get right and the easiest to get terribly wrong (both in youth work and in marketing).
While the first 2 superpowers involve putting your target audience in the driving seat, youâre in charge of the wheel for this last one. So, strap in, check your mirrors, and pay attention to your blind spot. Letâs go!
What is a Critical Friend?
In my youth work training, one of the most interesting things I learnt about (aside from the fact that a teenagerâs brain is literally rewiring itself while they deal with Math and English lessons) was the concept of the critical friend.
A lot of youth workers want to be friends with the young people they work with. We want to be seen as cool, hip, with it, accepted. Sometimes that stems from not being accepted as a teen themselves, and sometimes it stems from a well-meaning wish to make life lovely for everyone.
The thing is, young people have enough friends. And theyâd rather hang out with someone their own age and talk about video games/politics/how annoying Mr Stevens is than listen to you try and make a conversation about Fortnite as if youâre one of them.
The one thing young people are short on, however, is someone to fill the middle ground between their friends and their parents. They donât want someone to tell them what to do, and they sometimes need more than a mate who will just agree with them.
A critical friend is someone who cares about the person, and asks provocative questions or introduces new information to help them see things from a slightly different perspective.
Let me give you an example:
Owen is trying to decide which A Levels he wants to do next year.
His parents want him to be a doctor – respectable, honest, well-paid profession. So: physics, chemistry, biology, maybe maths. He thinks that he might be really good at developing video games. So: graphic design, art, IT. Home is currently full of massive arguments over ambition and âwasting your lifeâ and âyou donât understand meâ.
As a youth worker, itâs not my job to tell Owen that he should listen to his parents because they know whatâs best for him (as much as his parents would like me to!). Itâs also not my job to go âsure, whatever you wantâ. My job is to help him look at the situation from a different perspective, and to make sure he has all the information. Has he researched game developer career paths, why is he sure this is the job for him? Has he discounted medicine just because itâs what his parents want? I can help him research all these things, and maybe point him in the direction of game developers and doctors so he can make his own decision.
How to be a critical friend to your customers
As business owners, sometimes it can be too easy to focus on trying to get everyone to like you (literally when it comes to social media engagement) or on constantly selling your stuff. But if you only use social media to try and sell (or for âbehind the scenesâ photos of your dog) then youâre missing a trick.
Teenagers donât want to be told what to do. It makes them instantly feel like doing the opposite. They canât help it, itâs wired into their brains. But they are open to learning from someone elseâs perspective.
Your customers are the same. They donât want the hard sell, but they are open to being convinced that what you sell can improve their lives. They want to be directed, to be shown a different path.
You do this by gently leading them to helpful sources of information or a different perspective. This can make all the difference in the world between being a business that is just trying to get their money, and a brand they connect with.
Blog posts and emails play a big part in authentic directing. Use them to tell your audience about you and your brand, sure. But also use the opportunity to widen their perspective on relevant issues, to expand their knowledge on topics related to your product or service, and to introduce them to interesting people.
Hazards on the road
(It would appear that Iâm sticking with the driving metaphor…which is weird, considering I could have gone the whole orchestra conductor route…but here we are, Iâm not rewriting it all now, I have a baby to put to bed!)
As great as âtelling people what to doâ might sound to you (âyou need to buy this⌔) itâs important to remember what directing is NOT:
Bullying your audience. Just because youâve positioned yourself as an expert, doesnât mean you get to harangue them.
Using your influence over your audience to manipulate them (the âfriendâ part is important: you should care about their wellbeing).
Making your audience feel âless thanâ if they donât buy from you (all these new subscriber pop-ups that say âSubscribeâ vs âI donât want to hear about cool stuffâ are not kind, and will not build a community. Theyâll just piss people off.
Itâs a journey
Thereâs a reason that directing is superpower number 3. It has to come on the back of superpowers 1 and 2. In order to direct in a way that is authentic, empowering, and ethical, you need to have listened to your customers and spent time empathising with their situations. When youâre directing youâre showing them how their lives could be better in some way if they worked with you. But you wonât know if that is true unless youâve done the first 2 things.
If you want to build a deeper relationship with your customers, to increase their loyalty to your brand, and to make them your biggest advocates (walking Facebook ads that you donât have to pay for), then you need every step in the process.
And if youâre struggling then Iâd love to help, because I want more authentic businesses out there, connecting with their audiences and enriching their lives.
How voice of customer best practices bring you and your audience closer together.
My copywriting philosophy is…..
Hang on, that sounds a little pretentious, doesn’t it? A little like I’m standing in front of a lecture hall wearing a jacket with leather elbow pads, pushing my glasses back up my nose, and asking you all to “take a journey with me”.
Let’s not do that, shall we?
If you’ve read myAbout Page (And if you haven’t then what are you doing here? Start at the beginning like a normal person!), then you’ll have read about the 3 superpowers I gained from being a youth worker that I use to transform your relationship with your customers.
If you skipped it (and you really don’t want to go take a look) then here they are:
Listening
Empathizing
Directing
If your brand wants to build a stronger relationship with its audience, then you should be doing every one of those things on a regular basis. They should be woven through your content marketing strategy (we can talkif you don’t have one of those yet), and written on faded yellow post-it notes around your workstation. Whether you decorate them with doodled hearts or not is your own business.
Today I want to talk about why listening is important for a brand. The key is this:
Everyone wants to feel heard.
Have you ever had one of those nights where you sat down with another person and the conversation lasted until dawn? That evening where you felt you’d found your soulmate? When you told your friends about it the next day and you said things like “It was as if we’d known each other forever”, or “It was like he was inside my head”.
Why was this different to a normal conversation over dinner? I’m willing to bet it was because you felt listened to. You felt as though someone was paying complete attention to you. In a world where we’re all constantly distracted by phone notifications (I’ve glanced down at about 8 just writing this paragraph), having the complete attention of another person for more than 2 minutes is a rare and intoxicating thing. It makes us feel important; like we matter.
Your customer, your email subscriber, your website browser, your Instagram follower. They all want to feel important. They all want to feel as if you’ve heard them. They want to know that you read their comments, take notice of their reviews, and pay attention when they unsubscribe.
The more someone is listened to, the greater a connection they feel with the person doing the listening. And people spend more money with brands they feel connected to (That’s why I love a good About Page!).
Voice of Customer questions to ask
Market research should always involve spending time learning about your perfect customer – your avatar if you’re going all “marketing geek”.
Us marketers call this Voice of Customer research – spending time in real life and on the internet paying attention to where, when, and how people are talking about your brand. Marketers love having fancy names for things, it means you can make up acronyms and have conversations with other marketers where no one else knows what you’re talking about.
But really, it’s just listening. Jump on the message boards your customers hang out on. Do they love your new product but wish that it had a different name, or handle, or box? How are they comparing it to other brands who do similar things? What problems are they using your product or service to solve (and are these the same problems you designed it to solve)? Do they have nicknames or shorthand for the things you do? Are they recommending it to others, and how are they doing this? What are they complaining about, and is this something you can fix?
And, if you can swing it, actually talk to your ideal customer.
The benefits of Voice of Customer research
Once you’ve done your “Voice of Customer research” (bleurgh: buzzwords), then you have to actually do something with the information you’ve gathered. Otherwise you’re just nosey.
The simplest way to start is to use similar language in your communications to how your audience talk. If people reading your social media posts, emails and webpages consistently see words and phrases they connect with and recognize, then they will feel a greater connection with your brand. You “get them”. And, you know, they’ll be more likely to open their wallet and throw some cash at you.
If you’re not sure how to weave this new information into your communications, then give your friendly local (or not-so-local) copywriter a call. It’s what we do best. Give us your reams of data copied and pasted into a Google Doc, and we can give you the words that reach out to your audience like a cup of coffee and a warm hug (if that’s what you’re going for).
Voice of customer best practices
You can also use the information to make changes to your products or services. These can be tiny tweaks, like the name or packaging, or adding in an additional element (say a module on time management to your online nutrition course). It could be a wholesale rethink of your product line. As an added bonus, acknowledging that it was feedback from your customers that caused this change, doubles down on the feeling of importance and being heard that they get.
Want a hands-down fabulous example of a brand that speaks like their customers do? Check out Tom Insurance – and be amazed!
I’m all ears
Access to your target audience (whether current or potential customers) is your biggest resource in building relationships. If you take nothing else in from the beginnings of my copywriting philosophy (oh, wait, we weren’t calling it that, were we…), then remember this:
Be the one that sits down next to them on the skate park wall and asks them how they’re getting on. Then they’ll be yours for life.
