The Copywriter Club Podcast

Most podcasts about email are pretty basic. Build a list. Email often. Create a lead magnet people want. That kind of tired advice isn't very useful. So in this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with copywriter Jacob Suckow about the skills and expertise it takes to succeed in this industry. This is a masterclass in succeeding as a six-figure email copywriter. Don't miss it. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Get Jacob's Playbook here The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Research Mastery   Transcript: Rob Marsh: Most podcasts about email don’t get into the nuts and bolts of how it really works. Until now. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. When you hear a podcast host like me say we’re talking about email on the podcast today, do your eyes glaze over? Do you think, here we go again… more advice about how you need to build your list, need to have a lead magnet, need to email regularly… or maybe you think of tired advice and adages like “the money is in the list” and “the more you hit send, the more you earn”. This is not that. This episode is not that. My guest on the podcast today is Jacob Suckow. This is Jacob’s second appearance on the podcast. The first time was about four years ago. And the change in his expertise and business is substantial. He was just figuring things out in that first interview. Today he runs a six-figure email business helping his clients grow their sales with high-level strategy using regular emails and email sequences stacked on top. How do you go from writing emails and pitching products to landing mulit-year retainers taking on not just the writing duties, but also strategy and responsibility for increasing response rates and sales? We talked about exactly how to do that in this episode.  We also talked about exactly how much you could be earning doing email for clients… Jacob shares all three of his pricing tiers to give you an idea of what you could be earning… and using his pricing structure you could create a six-figure business with just 3-4 client retainers. And we talked about what it looks like to lever your experience with email strategy into a fractional CMO role and what that looks like too. Finally we talked about newletters and how this is probably the biggest opportunity for copywriters out there today… the opportunity to grow and own an audience, then partner with offer owners or create your own offers for the audience you own is huge and one that perhaps every copywriter should be chasing down… and I’m not talking about writing weekly emails to other copywriters. These are niche opportunities that can be very profitable for the copywriters willing to put in a little work. There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode so stick around. Before we get to my discussion with Jacob, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery  And now my interview with Jacob Suckow.

Planning for the unexpected is one of those skills that successful people have. But you can't plan for everything. This episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast features my guest, Dani Paige, who has become an expert in figuring out how to move forward when you have to deal with the unexpected. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Dani's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Sometimes you can plan for change. Other times you can’t—and you have to adjust anyway. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. One of the strategies we teach in The Copywriter Accelerator and our other programs where we talk about getting things done is planning ahead for when things don’t go as planned. It’s pretty easy to set goals and expect the future to behave as expected. But the reality almost always turns out differently. So you might come up with a plan to spend next Friday creating a new product or service, strategizing who its for, the various things to include to make it valuable, and so on. But then Friday arrives and you’re not feeling well, or a friend from out of town calls and wants to see you, or a family emergency ends up taking up a significant chunk of your day. What happens then? Planning for the invevitable things that go wrong is a huge part of success. Thinking through the options before they happen can help keep you on top of things. But you can’t plan for everything. A lot of copywriters we’ve had on the podcast have shared that a career they planned on pursuing turned out to be less than they expected. And they make an unplanned switch to writing copy. But there are other ways that life throws you a curveball and you need to quickly adjust expectations and behaviors to make things work. My guest on the podcast today is Dani Paige. She started a corporate career that didn’t go as planned and found copywriting as a result. She’s changed the services she offers more than once. And she’s tried things she thought would work that failed. More recently, she made changes to her business to prepare for maternity leave. Everything was ready to support her new family situation but once again, things turned out differently than she had planned. So how do we as copywriters adjust on the fly when things don’t turn out the way we expect them to. That’s a big part of what we talked about on today’s episode. Dani and I also talked about her journey into copywriting and how she learned to write sales pages and launch copy… if you want to write those kinds of projects, you can learn a lot from Dani and her approach to learning these skills. And what Dani says about community and connection is a theme that has come up several times in the last few months here on the podcast. If you’re not building connections and participating in communities, you are not building a skill that is critical for your future success. There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode so stick around. Before we get to my discussion with Dani Paige, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery  And now my interview with Dani Paige.

Want to get more clicks? More sales? More clients? Then understanding why humans act the way they do will help. In his new book, Hacking the Human Mind, author Michael Aaron Flicker shares dozens of psychological "hacks" that copywriters should understand before they write copy. Michael Aaron is our guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Hacking the Human Mind by Michael Aaron Flicker The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Want more responses, sales, and customers? Let’s hack the human mind. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. Several months ago, I was fortunate enough to get an advanced copy of a book called, Hacking the Human Mind. Now… if you have a book and want me to read it, giving it a title like Hacking the Human Mind and including ideas and insights from behavioral science, neuro marketing, and psychology is pretty much guaranteed to get my attention. But this book goes one step farther by looking at marketing in the real world then searching for the psychology that explains why something works. The approach basically flips the usual marketing tactic to-do list from: here are a bunch of psychological triggers… exclusivity, scarcity, risk removal, curiosity and so on… make sure you include them all into your sales process, and instead look for what works already and figuring out why it works. That’s a bit different from the usual approach. So I asked one of the authors, Michael-Aaron Flicker to talk with me about some of the concepts from the book.  We talked about the Pratfall or Blemish effect and how to turn a product flaw into an asset. There are very few perfect products in the world, so understanding how to use this effect in your copy is incredibly useful. We also talked about how to address product changes in a way that doesn’t generate backlash. We’ve seen customers revolt against design and formulation changes over the last few years—Kraft Mac and Cheese did it the right way. And to hear that story, you’ll have to keep listening to this episode. Another idea we talked about is offer simplicity… we’re often tempted to stack feature on feature and then benefit upon benefit. We do this to pile on the good stuff and make our offers more valuable to our clients. But the actual effect may be the exact opposite. Again, to hear how that works you’ll want to keep on listening. One thing Michael Aaron points out that it takes more than knowing about a particular psychological effect or persuasion trigger, often you need to find new and innovative ways to use these triggers. Before we get to my discussion with Michael Aaron, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery  And now my interview with Michael Aaron Flicker. Transcript summary coming soon.

Writing for clients is just one way to build a copywriting business. Once you've done that for a while, you may decide it's not right for you. So what does the alternative look like? I invited copywriter Krystle Church to join for for the 266th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about that and a lot more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Krystle's Email List The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Research Mastery   Partial Transcript: Rob Marsh: When your business stops working for you, what can you do to fix things? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. There are a lot of copywriters who build a successful business writing for clients. Or maybe they build an agency around their offers and niche. But then after a few years they don’t love the business they created for themselves. Sometime we just burn out and need to do something a bit different. Maybe they no longer want employees or contractors. Maybe they get tired of working directly with clients. Maybe they realize that instead of using their skills to attract customers to other peoples businesses, they decide to use their skills to sell products to their own clients. And then many of us are entrepreneurs at heart and have always wanted to build a business other than writing for a list of clients. Shifting a business from offering services to clients to something else can be a challenge. It’s a very different kind of work. Instead of creating assets for clients, you may spend your time creating assets for your own business, then spending even more time getting attention for your offers. For many copywriters, this is the dream—a copywriting business with customers instead of clients. But there’s a lot of work that goes into a business switch like this. Validating offers. Finding a client base for your offers—which is almost certainly a very different set of clients than you’ve been writing for. Building out marketing systems to sell your new products. Figuring out how to deliver value when you’re not actually delivering copy. I wanted to talk about this with someone who’s gone through the process recently. So I invited copywriter and coach Krystle Church to come back to the podcast and talk about the changes she’s made to her business over the past couple of years. The business Krystle has today is very different from the one she was running two years ago. She’s excited about the new direction and having more fun than when she was burning out with a calendar full of projects that required her attention from the time she woke up until she went to bed at night. If you’ve been thinking about re-imagining your business, this episode may give you a few ideas to try. You’ll get a few tips about validating a new offer. And you might even decide to dabble with an offer for your niche that at least gives you a taste of what a different kind of business would feel like. This kind of business isn’t for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not for most copywriters. But it’s worth thinking about how you might be able to add to or change your business so it fits your needs a bit better. Before we get to my discussion with Krystle, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery  And now my interview with Krystle Church.

Copywriters are teachers. We teach customers how the products and services we write about help them. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with teacher turned copywriter Meredith Cooley about all the ways copywriters use their teaching skills. Even if you don't think you're a teacher, you'll learn a lot from this episode—including a simple copywriting lesson from Bluey. Yes, that Bluey. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Turn the Page Newsletter The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Research Mastery   Transcript: Rob Marsh: Copywriters are teachers. So should more teachers be copywriters? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. A few years ago I had a conversation with one of my copywriting mentors. She mentioned that she had considered teaching as a possible career path. And I shared that I had the same thought when I started my career. Then we talked about the number of former teachers we knew who had left the classroom to write copy. And that’s when it dawned on me that copywriting isn’t just something that former teachers or potential teachers do.  Copywriting is teaching. But instead of practicing that skill in a classroom, copywriters are teaching on the page or on the screen, helping potential customers learn about products and solutions, about processes and unique mechanisms, and how to solve the very real problems and pains they are experiencing in their lives. In the years since, I’ve interviewed close to a dozen former teachers on this podcast… people who are still teaching, just not in a formal classroom any more. Do you feel this as a copywriter? Do you see yourself as a teacher for your clients and their customers? My guest for today’s podcast is Meredith Cooley, a teacher turned copywriter who has helped dozens of other teachers leave the classroom and become copywriters for various businesses around the world. Teachers have so many skills that copywriters need, from project management to engaging with stakeholders at various levels of a business. And perhaps most importantly, good teachers have to be able to take dry, boring content and make it exciting for an often disinterested and bored audience. And if you listened to last week’s episode, you heard me talk about how I’ve started teaching marketing at a local college here in my home town. The crossover between teaching students and writing for customers is large. And that’s what this episode is all about. Even if you don’t see yourself as a teacher, this episode may change your mind about how you think about your relationship with the customers you write for. Before we get to our interview, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one-stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you’ll have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so they relate to your offer and buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the 4 critical areas of research… if you miss one of them, your research just isn’t complete. And it includes the A.I. tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unqiue program at thecopywriterclub.com/researchmastery  And now my interview with Meredith Cooley.