#195: The Worst Copywriting Mistakes I’ve Ever Seen with Megan O’Leary

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia. Excited to be with you today and kick off another season of guest episodes. And we’ve got who I think is the greatest copywriter living today. Megan O’Leary on the podcast today. Now there’s a reason why I wanted Megan on the show to talk about copy, because it’s the most powerful weapon you have to sell your course.

This is the tool to make sure your course is a bestseller. I get asked all the time, Gina, how do I make sure my course launch is successful? How do I make sure I have a bestselling course? And when your copy speaks to your people and resonates with them, it is, of course, gold. I was just talking to a fellow marketer today about the old days where this is ten years ago you would put up a course.

It was $1,000. People would buy it because they wanted information, because it was novel. No one else was doing it. And you had to do just a little bit of marketing. Have a great sales page and you would sell. Now that doesn’t work anymore, obviously. And then the pandemic hit and people wanted information. They wanted entertainment, they wanted a distraction.

And courses had another spike. But now with a and technology, we are in a different era. And how do you make sure you stay competitive? How do you make sure your courses and programs sell? And my mentor and client, Bo Eason, who I’ve had on the show, always talks about you have to be the most valuable person in the room when you are the most valuable person in the room.

The phone will never stop ringing your emails will never stop pinging because you’re the best, because you provide so much value for people that they want you all the time. And how do you become the most valuable person in the room? By your copy, By expressing why you bring so much value, by communicating your value and speaking that powerfully to your audience.

And that’s why I turn to people like O’Leary to help me explain my value so I can go to students and clients and say, This is why I’m a must hire. Because sometimes I have trouble doing that. I have a big mouth, but sometimes I have trouble explaining why I feel I am the best course creator, course coach and digital strategist in the room.

And that’s why I hire people like O’Leary. Because when you have the copy thing down doors open, you make money, you get better clients. You were never not booked. And that’s why, by the way, O’Leary and I are teaming up for a brand new course called the Conversion Copywriting Playbook. We were going to teach you the systems we use to convert in our different marketing campaigns and our email campaigns.

There’s also going to be a very nice course marketing bonus in there. I even trained on course marketing. I haven’t released a new training on this in a little while and I’m excited. So if you’re interested, join the waitlist. We’re going to take limited spots because we’re going to teach it live. We’re gonna teach you live because we want to pitch and catch.

We want to customize it for who’s in the room. We want to do some critiques. So if you’re interested, all link to the waitlist in the shownotes. Of course, Creation boutique e-comm slash copy waitlist. Save your spot so you have dibs when we officially open doors. I also brought on O’Leary in this episode to talk through some mistakes that we are seeing in terms of copy in content and campaigns, because there’s a lot happening with A.I., like I mentioned earlier in this episode.

So to be the most valuable person in the room, you want to avoid these mistakes and show up like a rock star. So O’Leary is going to talk us through it all. Shut up so we can listen in on our interview. Megan O’Leary Welcome back to the podcast. So good to see you. So good to be back. You know, I was thinking about the last time we talked on the podcast.

You and I talk all the time, but it was like six years ago. Life is life in the world was a lot different. Yeah, it was 2018, obviously pre-pandemic. A lot of things have changed since then, so yeah, I’m thrilled to be back and talking about our favorite topic, which is words on the screen and words on the page, our favorite topic and the worst instances of it, right?

We’re going to talk about the horror stories, which is really so fun. But before we get there, though, I do want to do a little plug because you and I are teaming up. I’m just going to call it the ultimate sales copywriting course. Does that horrify you or what? That I’m over. I’m overhyping. There is no such thing as overhyping because you and I are collaborating on something and I think it’s going to be magical.

And guys, if you’ve been listening, you know, I think Megan O’Leary is the greatest copyright show of all time. I said it in the intro and we do some really, really good course marketing together and just any marketing event, marketing course marketing, right. We do the best in my opinion, and I’m going to be a little arrogant here.

So I think we have a lot to share. I think we are really fun and we break down information in a really great way and I think it’s time to let the people know our process. What do you think? I love it. And just to clarify a little bit, because I am terrified by the idea that I’m the answer to the ultimate sales copy.

We’re going to do emails in this one. We’ve we’ve sort of set the fence now. A lot of these concepts that we’ll talk about could apply to all kinds of copy, but we’re going to focus in on helping you make your emails better, whether you’re a writer who maybe comes from an editorial background and you want to be more persuasive.

Maybe you’re an entrepreneur and you want to do more of your own copywriting, or you want better language or tools to work with a copywriter or, you know, a position. Gina And I’ve been in a bunch of times you’re supervising a project and you’re supervising copywriters and you want to help them get better. So I think it’s going to be a blast and I’m really looking forward to it.

There’s something that new when you and I come together. It’s like that one plus one equals three equation. There’s something magical that happens, I think, because we come at it from a slightly different perspective, and Gina and I are not afraid to argue with each other, not in a mean way. More in like a devil’s advocate, Did you think of this?

Did you think of this? We call it pitching and catching. It’s super fun and I think we’re going to do some pitching, catching live in the course. So we sure are going to do some pitching and catching and we’re going to talk about course marketing. You’re right. We’re going to hone in on emails, we’re going to talk about offers and course marketing.

There’ll be an element of that will be an opportunity for us to critique some work we have to write. We’re going to do some of that. So the landing pages live, the sales page, I will link to that in the show notes. Check it out. Let me know if you have questions. Just couldn’t be more excited to work with you on this.

O’Leary I think people are going to get a ton of information and insights out of not just their emails but marketing overall. Totally. And I think, you know, one of the things I want to say we’re going to talk about is like the role of AI a little bit. You know, this is not only I course, but if there’s one hot topic and we’ll talk about it more today.

Teaser Alert For today’s Open loop to leave for today’s podcast. If there’s anything that’s been on the mind of copywriters more this year, I can’t think of it then I because the question is, is it going to take over my job? Are we going to even need copywriters in two or three years? And I don’t know the answer to that, but I think we can teach you how to be a more valuable asset to your clients, such that you’re not the kind of person that they go, Oh, I have Chachi, I don’t need you anymore.

So we’re going to teach you how to add more value to your relationships as a as a copywriter too. Okay. I love that. And we are on the heels of an episode I put out last week about three ways to use AI and three ways I think, to just not use AI and how to get the most out of it.

We’re going to expand on some of that today. I don’t think there’ll be sales copywriters out of the picture in three years, just based on what we see that sales copy, especially email, can make or break a campaign and make or break a course or event or whatever you’re selling. I, I think part of this course that we’re teaching, O’Leary is teaching how to be more of a strategist I think would you agree?

Definitely. And I think strategy is going to be one of the keys if you want to stay relevant and understanding strategy, working with your client on strategy, redirecting their strategy, those are things that I just really can’t do right now. And I think there’s going to be a human mind and that’s where you want to be. Putting your human mind is behind the strategy now, like transactional stuff, like, Hey, thanks for buying this course, You know, good to have you here.

By the way, I hated writing those emails. Anyway, some of those like Let I take the first crack at them. So I think there are going to be advantages and disadvantages or at least, you know, ways to use it that will work to our advantage. But we’ll get into all that. We’ll get into it. Okay, Let’s start talking about some of the big whoppers, the copywriting mistakes that we have seen, and we’re not going to keep it just for emails.

We’re just going to expand and just go for it. Okay. Number one. Oh, that’s a good one. Not warming up your audience right before you make the pitch. And I’ve got a story and then please add your thoughts to this. O’LEARY But I remember this was a personal development expert that I did a small project for. This was a couple of years ago.

We’re at the point where we’ve worked out so many projects, right, Larry? And he was saying, Well, I’ve got this retreat and we do a cold water plunge. We do these guided meditations like the whole bit. It sounded wonderful. And he had not warmed up his audience in terms of teasing about the retreat or talking about the elements that might happen before the retreat and just went for the sail boom right then and there.

Right. And wasn’t really nurturing like we love to do for ourselves and our clients week to week. And he just went guns blazing on this retreat and pretty much got crickets. I think he sold one ticket and it was an expensive retreat. I should mention that it was at least $3,000. So this idea of not warming up your audience, not getting them primed for when you’re ready to promote totally.

And I would even call that like not adding value to the relationship before you ask for something. Right. You know, it’s you’re going straight for the give me $5,000 without, you know, giving giving the list a little love, you know. And, you know, we have a client. And I think one of the best things that they do, they we have a weekly nurture with them and they give their client those clients love like 50 weeks out of the year, you know, I’ll call it 48 and maybe we promote for four weeks out of the year.

Yeah, but, you know, sometimes we just send an email that’s just like, I’m going to cheer you on email like inspiration, email, not asking you to do anything, not asking you to download anything. And I think we’ve seen great results from that community as a as a result. You know, I wonder why there’s one medium that that does that does this all the time.

And I wonder more and more brands don’t take more advantage of it, but it’s text marketing, SMS marketing. I feel like Eskimos marketing is just all like, bye bye bye, and there’s no value there. Like, I just I wish more brands would think about earning my text number, you know, earning my cell phone number or just delivering ahead of inspiration.

But it’s always like 10% off sale. Use my coupon, yada, yada, yada. And I don’t think they’re adding value. I mean, there are a couple brands who do it right. There’s a brand called Outerknown that that my husband and I enjoy, and they have like a very exclusive pre-sale and they sell out. So, you know, they give like a 24 hour notice if you’re on their list, which is value, that’s value, right?

That’s saying like we value you to like let you get in first. Dean Kratsios, he does a really good job of this. He sends like value based texts and does a lot of just value based Facebook lives to his to his list all year. And so then, you know, when he comes out with a promotion or something to buy or when Outerknown comes up with a promotion, they’ve earned it, right?

Yeah. We talk about this like building a relationship, like, you know, you got to go step by step. You’re not going to ask him to marry you on the first date, so you can’t really ask him to buy a5k product when they haven’t heard from you in months. They haven’t heard from you. You haven’t set them up for that.

And I love what you’re saying about texting because it’s so true. We don’t tend to add value. And the closest Bowie send is our co client of ours, and we have that 66 day championship, which we use as a bonus right now, could easily be used also as an opt in and every few days you get a pep talk from Beau.

I mean, how great like the king of pep talks, am I right? In my opinion? And that could be an easy opt in to just nurture some one to the next step with them. Absolutely. It doesn’t. And it doesn’t have to be long and complicated. I’m a really big fan of like, you know, two paragraphs can be a really awesome pep talk.

People are busy. They don’t really want to read your manifesto, so it doesn’t have to be complicated. So I think we’re talking about context here, right? That you really when you drop an email, you’ve really got to think of the context of your of your list. You know, it’s not what you say, but but when you say it, you know, we’ve we’ve had some talks with copywriters who want to drop some really aggressive messaging and like email one or two and we’re like, this is not the time.

You know, you’ve got to you’ve got to warm these people up a little bit and it’s about what you offer, too. You know, we’ve been working with a client to work on getting lower dollar promos early in the relationship that you can’t just grab someone cold off Facebook and try to sell them into a $3,000 retreat. Like that’s just that’s not going to work.

But, you know, can you offer them a $27 offer? Can you offer them a $7 offer? Can you offer them a $97 offer and like build that relationship up, you know, kind of like taking someone out for a drink, taking someone out for dinner, then, you know, maybe you you know, go out for an all day event, like, think of it like a relationship and that you really have to build it up like that.

Yeah. Crafting the customer journey. Okay, awesome. Good start. So let’s go on to our second biggest mistake and random acts of email. Okay. What is this? O’Leary Well, I think the first we see this in kind of two ways, and I think the first one we see is really well-meaning entrepreneurs and course creators who for whatever reason it seems like they get all shy, right, when they’re it’s time to promote their course.

So the the promotion plan consists of like a very small button at the bottom of a newsletter, you know, or the very small link at the bottom of a very long email. And when that doesn’t work, they get really discouraged really quickly. Oh, well, this isn’t going to work. You know, this is this business plan is just never going to work.

This course thing doesn’t work. But I think you have to remember, like, you know, people don’t think about you as much as you think about you, Right. So, like, how many people are in my email inbox right now? And if you’re like, giving me what did you call it, you had a great word for it. Like a whisper, if you like.

Yeah. Whisper to me, link to that podcast. Yes, totally. Like you got to be, like, loud and proud and, like, shout out about it, because I don’t. If you don’t do it, I don’t know who else is going to do it. I will say this like my mom bought a lot of my books when they came out. So like, you know, once you exhaust your mom, though, if you’re not willing to be loud and proud about it, it’s just not going to work for you.

Well, I agree with you. We are reluctant, especially if you’re starting out right and reluctant to get in people’s faces. And when it’s good news, we want to celebrate. But when we’re actually promoting something or trying to get a credit card, we sometimes back off. And why would we do that? This is your creation. Like, look at me in this and this copywriting course, right?

I’m like, I’m going to sing it from the dang rooftops because I know it’s going to be good because I’m doing it with you. So I’m not going to whisper it. I’m not going to hide it. You know, let’s, let’s really commit to ourselves and putting ourselves out there and knowing we’ve got something great to share. I think it’s fear of failure, you know, in the sense that if you if you give a whisper, it’s like, oh, well, nobody heard that, so I can walk away, you know, Whereas I think if you think if you go big on it and no one does anything, it’s like a larger failure, but it’s equally a failure.

So you and I are big fans of campaigns, right? So, you know, we’re think you really set aside a period of time like a monday through Friday or like a monday through a monday. And we want to see you blast out your offer in a respectful way to a list that you’ve warmed up and added value to. Right.

Context, Right. We’re not asking you to just get out there and spam random people, but, you know, find emails, a couple of social posts. I want you to be all over your channels too. That was another thing we’ve had, right? It’s like, yes, I’ll do an email, but I don’t want to do a social post. Like every channel should be singing the same song and working together because people are just going to miss it.

I mean, honestly, Simon People ignore it. It’s like you sent it on a Tuesday and you missed half the people who really wanted to see it. So, you know, send it again on Thursday so they can catch you. I remember we worked on a client together who had a newsletter and buried the course they were selling. And we kept saying, Well, no one’s going to be able to find this.

But they kept insisting, Well, this is the newsletter and and I and I get it. I think that was a little I don’t know if it was fear, but they’re not going to be able to find it. Right. Unless you make a promise. You send standalone emails like you really have to put it out there for people to take notice.

Definitely. And we’ve even taken the tack sometimes of putting like a little banner at the top of the email, right? You know, we’ve, I mean, we really try to weave in, in some of our some particular client’s work. We’ve tried to weave in story or weave in a lesson, but there are just times that we’ve said, listen, this lesson is great, but like we need a little banner at the top that says, like, expires tomorrow, you know, so so they can see expire some or some interesting and then they can read the story and go on.

But you know, I’ll see emails sometimes where it’s three quarters just text and then like you said, the baby baby button at the bottom and it’s just that’s probably not going to move the needle, not going to work. What’s the second aspect of this of this random acts of marketing? Because I know we have another one that we we love to hate.

Well, I’d like to admit that I have done this. So, you know, glass houses throwing stones, it’s it’s ghosting. So not emailing your list for months, you know, building a list and then just dropping away. And then, you know, you drop a promo email and you’re shocked when nobody reads. It opens it or checks it, you know, And again, I think this goes back to thinking about the personal relationship with your list.

You know, you’ve got to be building up that emotional bank account. Otherwise, you know, people are just going to either tune out or maybe forget completely who you are. Yeah, that’s happened to me. Where happens all the time, right? So in my personal email, I’ll see an expert in there and I’ll say, Who is Shirley? I don’t remember Shirley.

Right. And if I disappear and my podcast goes away. O’Leary, I don’t give a damn. Who the heck is Gina? Right? So it’s my job to make sure that they okay, they have an idea of who I am and they know, Oh, great, I’m going to get some awesome course tips here. So Shirley is telling me about how to take care of my baby because it’s been years, right?

Because I signed up for Shirley’s list when Triston was, you know, one and a half and now Kristen’s 11. I don’t really care what Shirley has to say. So. So she there’s that missed opportunity and there’s also that disconnect that happens totally. And Shirley is going to suffer, too, because. Well, I mean that like Shirley Lizzie out her staged out.

Yeah I know. We’ll talk a little bit about you know we’re going to talk a baby bit about email deliverability in our course but like that’s part of it too. Like if you’re sending two people and no one’s opening, it’s going to hurt your email results down the line. So yes, that’s actually really can hurt you in multiple ways.

You know who else has been the worst at this recently are restaurants. I don’t know whether restaurants have just caught up to email technology or if like Open Table just released their list to restaurants. But I got first of all, I got an email from a restaurant that’s in San Diego. I haven’t lived in San Diego in 12 years and I have not been to this.

Please come back. I’ll come back. O’Leary I’ll come and visit. But I couldn’t even remember what it was. I was like, What is this restaurant group? Someone something in San Diego. To top that, I got an email from a restaurant in D.C. that I can tell you I haven’t visited since the early aughts. I was like, Oh my God, I know.

When I was there last and I’m pretty sure I was 23. So guys, what do you what do you do and why are you emailing me like this? I don’t I don’t even live there anymore. So. Wow. Great example though. Great example. But if they were more consistent about their emails, right, we wouldn’t have these random acts. Totally.

And I might have visited them in the last 20 years. I might have a connection to them instead of thinking like I haven’t eaten mussels with fries at this cafe in D.C. in 20 years. And I mean, the flipside is I probably would have unsubscribed, but which again, you know, unsubscribing is not always a bad thing. I think people freak out about on subscribes, but it would mean that this this restaurant has like a good list of people who love them and want to hear from them and are opening their content and then boosting their reputation with the ISPs, which is always a good thing.

So I think you and I agree that, like if you’re not going to buy and you don’t want what I have, please feel free to unsubscribe. Please feel free. Yeah, so true. All right, let’s move on. We promised and I bit let’s move on to our third biggest copywriting mistake. And it’s this idea that we can use A.I. with no editing.

So I know I alluded to last week’s episode where I talked about ways use out ways to not use A.I. and I stole your concept of it being a junior copywriter. Right. And exhausting I took because there is no limit. Right? But. But you can’t leave it at that, right? We can’t just expect it. Just take it home from us.

Right? Take it home for us. Like, talk a little bit about that. O’Leary I think that this problem is maybe more prevalent in like marketing leadership. I think anyone who’s been in the trenches, I think we were naturally suspicious of anything that’s like, Oh, this is going to write like your client immediately. Like this is going to go straight immediately, like someone you’ve worked too hard years to capture their voice and it’s just going to do it right.

I think the copywriters were like, No, it’s not. But I think a lot of leaders were like, Oh yeah, you know, I can pretty much like content staff, right? Yeah, I don’t need content staff anymore. We can just churn out blog posts. As you and I discovered with like a couple different projects, it really there’s a lot of massaging to, to happen.

And you know, it’s like many things you got to put work in upfront like gold in, gold out and the opposite of gold in gets the opposite of gold out, like if you’re not priming it with great prompts. I worked with some great folks lately Tarzan Kane, Nicole Edwards, who have like a template for a voice guide you put in.

So you like primed with a voice guide and that gets it like, you know, 60, 70% of the way there. But if you’re not doing that, if you aren’t doing the work upfront, you’re you’re not going to get anywhere. It makes mistakes. It gets details wrong. I had some well-meaning folks recently like we we tried to feed some bios into AI to shorten them down, you know, and we’re working with some thought experts and we thought, oh, let’s let AI shorten them down.

But when I reread them, I realized it messed up a lot of the details, which would have been really embarrassing when you’re trying to work with a thought leader, like trying to be respectful and you’re like, Can you please review this bio that I completely mangled with the help of AI? I also think it’s like it’s not great at, you know, at rhythm and Cadence quite yet, you know, and maybe it’ll get there because, you know, people have had it write songs so it doesn’t not know how to do it.

But I think we start to teach you how to do it. And for every copywriter, rhythm and cadence isn’t really as important. But I happen to have a musical background and the sound of it really matters to me so I can turn out some real word salads that just I mean, we had one recently that was like, it’s 26 days to 21 effects to 72.

It was like four numbers in a sentence. And I was like, I don’t even know what this is talking about. Like, this thing is crazy. But, you know, I also think like thinking you don’t need AI is also a huge mistake for the reasons you mentioned. It’s like indefatigable. I mean, how exhausting is it to come up with titles?

It’s exhausting. I mean, yes. Oh, and you can just tell it now. Make me 30 more now. I didn’t like that one. Put another one in, use this word. And it just like cheerfully does, it gets it going. Why do we have you discovered do you there’s this rumor floating around that if you’re nice to chat GTI, it turns out better results to you.

Are you not mean to chat you beauty? I’m not like, get to it, you know, I’m not yelling at it or anything I do use there is there’s a theory that if you like stroke, it’s ego, you know, like, that was brilliant. Oh, I’ll try it. Like, I really liked this. You were really close, but let’s just tweak it a little bit.

I’m definitely not encouraging. Okay? I have a train day to try it. I’m just preparing, like, in case the overlords, like, our robot overlords take over. I just want to be remembered as the person who is nice. That’s a great idea. And I know there’s some people that you light up like you like to get inspiration from in this in totally right.

I think we’ll put them in the show notes. Yeah but there’s a guy, Christopher Aspen. He’s a little on the brainier side in terms of like how A.I. works, but he’s got some great practical frameworks. He releases a newsletter every weekend that he’s one I read every week because I think he’s he’s got good stuff. There’s a guy, bionic marketing.

He’s good. I took this class with Tarzan, Kay and Nicole Edwards. That was great. I think they’re redoing it again in a couple of weeks. And we got a recommendation recently for this guy, Jonathan Nast, and he runs a really great Facebook group where people come in and just show their results and share their prompts. And, you know, a lot of it is stuff that I will probably never use.

But it’s really fascinating to to see the inner workings. And, you know, there’s a lot of prompt troubleshooting in there, which I love, right, Because how many times have you gone there, given what you think is an awesome prompt and you get like not what you want back and you’re like, okay, what do I do now? So it’s a it’s a great group and I think your best, your best bet is to keep leveling up in new tech that everybody thinks is cool, you know, to keep yourself on the cutting edge.

I love it. I do a shameless plug for our course right now because we will be talking about AI. We will be talking about how to come up with those great prompts, because to me, that’s part of being a great copywriter. We also will be talking about flow of email. You mentioned that earlier and I never realized it’s really your music background that makes you such a great artist and architect of these emails that flow so well.

And, and I guess I never thought about it that way. I was like, Why can’t people understand the structure and the framework of this? And and we’re going to walk through that as part of the course. So, so shameless plug. Go to the sales page, link in the show notes. Let’s go to copywriting mistake number four and this is tied to I right?

And just not having any darn personality, not right and not shining through. What’s that about. Why would you a personality I mean I think at the end of the day I is not going to give you a personal true. You know, maybe you could sit around with the eye and like help come up with a persona for yourself.

I mean, I think there’s a really interesting idea out there in marketing of like the persona versus the real person, right? Because the person that you’re putting out there online is probably an exaggerated version of yourself, right? So maybe I could help you come up with that person, but I think personality is going to become even more important as as we keep churning out faceless content, what’s going to stand out of the people like you and I both love Laura Belgrave.

We saw her at Traffic and Conversion many years ago. She sounds like wild stories. She’s got a really great personality that like shines through her emails. And listen, if you’re having trouble with sales, I highly recommend you sign up for her stuff because she is a shameless saleswoman and she would tell you she is like and in fact, she has this great email about why do we even have to say shameless?

It’s just a sale. Like, you know what I like to say? Shameless. I actually have no shame. I am fine talking about it. Indeed. And you sent me something the other day from Mark Manson. He’s a great example of someone with a ton of personality. That’s just personality. First up there, basically I’ll I’ll post that, I’ll post that, make sure the show notes about people critiquing you.

Okay? I love that. Anything else that you wanted to tell us about personality before we wrap up and do our fifth and final mistake? I think it’s just, you know, one of those like best defenses against losing your job, too, you know, is is, you know, let your personality do shine through leverages that personality leverage a strong point of view.

You know our claim we write for both. Yes. And he has such a strong point of view and as a result, it’s I think it’s very hard to get air to write like him. I mean, we fed air his book, we fed in his emails. But there’s something about his his voice that air hasn’t captured yet. But I just love his strong point of view.

And I think that makes him stand out and his audience, like if you love him, you love him. Like he’s just like he’s got his like hooks in you in a good way and he’s like dragging you to the top with him. So I think there’s that. And I mean, if we’re on the topic of like, you know, losing your job, too, I let’s talk about strategy, right?

We were sort of teased out of the front that, you know, if you’re going to be the copywriter who churns out like welcome emails, you know, you might lose your stuff to chat up because confirmation emails like here, you had to deliver it. Yeah. My God, you’re here. Those are there people out there who love writing those because for me, they’re so painful.

How can we make them better? Let’s think about that. You and I think and Bowe talks about this, right? The most valuable person in the room will always be employable. Right. And you need to make sure you are the most valuable person in the room. And how do you do that strategy? I if I know that you can come in, tell me what this campaign is about, how to message the audience in a way that just gets them dying to buy that is that you are the most influential, most valuable person in the room.

O’LEARY Absolutely. And it’s honestly going to make your life easier. Like it’s I find it actually hard to come into a project where they just, like, hand it over to you and say, okay, here’s the deal and you’ve got to make this sound sexy. Whereas like when you’re involved in the creation of it and you’re there helping it sound sexy, I can already see how I’m going to market it.

00:32:26:22 – 00:32:44:09

Does that make sense? I think a lot of these are about that we’re going to talk about are about you helping them figure out how to market it and when you have your and when you have your hands in the pie early, your job as a copywriter is so much easier. So like one of the things we’re going to talk about is, is how to how to form an offer.

You know, we’ll talk about this in our course, how to turn things into a must buy. You know, you know, a client might come to you and say, Hey, I just published a book, can you help me promote my book? And that’s one thing. I mean, honestly, you could probably feed the book in a chat GTI and Chatbot, you could come up with a promotion plan.

But you know what? If you said to the client, Hey, you know, they can either buy your book for 1495 or why don’t you put together like a coaching course that goes along with this book to help people that Yeah, six weeks and we’re actually going to put what’s in the book into into implementation and so then we can charge to 97 397 and you know so let’s offer that let’s add some urgency.

Right? The course starts two weeks from now. So by now, like that really transforms your relationship with that client because you’re not just taking what they gave you and doing the job your you’re changing the game and making their results better. Yeah. And and for those solopreneur out there, right, who are writing your own copy, just being able to think a little differently and be able to step outside so you don’t have to hire that really expensive copywriter, right?

You can think this way for yourself and just kind of thinking through that process is a skill set. So thinking through what you think through. O’Leary Every time you get a campaign or you get a different client to me, that’s invaluable because if we can gain some of that skill set, then we can do it for ourselves as well.

Definitely, Definitely. And I think it’s a learned skill. I mean, I don’t think either you or I were really born with it, But, you know, we started doing this about 15 years ago and we kind of sat at the feet of the Masters and watched them. You know, we watched them come up with these things and we were like, Oh, oh, yeah, okay, well, what if we layer that on?

And what if they are that on? So I think it’s a skill and also it’s a template, right? I mean, there’s a, there’s a formula that that works really well for it. So and that’s something we’ll share in the course for sure. Yes. I also think, you know, troubleshooting because I think you can sometimes you run a campaign and, you know, you do the best you think you can and you don’t get the results you wanted.

And sometimes that falls back on the copywriter, like they’ll come back to you and say, like, your copy didn’t work. And if you have a broader sense of the business and the strategy, I think you can come back and not you’re not trying to say, listen, it wasn’t my copy. You’re trying to say, hey, let’s let’s sit down and analyze this a little better to understand how we could do better the next time, because all marketing is an experiment, right?

We run an experiment to see how it goes, and then we tweak and we do it again. So, you know, if you keep broadening your expertise into things like email deliverability, like if you have like and I’m not saying you need to become like a Pardot expert or a Salesforce certified whatever I’m saying, you need to understand the basics of, well, you know, were these statistics in line with your other emails?

Are these better or worse than what you’re getting? When was the last time you emailed your list before you sent this out and you know, understanding that maybe they haven’t purged their list in five or six years, they’re a restaurant and they’re sending you know, emails to clients from 20 years ago, which surprise isn’t going to get them any results.

So that in like we were calling customer journey management, you and I worked with a client and they’re like default landing page was, Oh my God, it was so bad and it was institutional. Like there was nothing we could do to change it within those structures. But it was the kind of thing where you land on there and you have no idea what to do next.

You’re just like walls of text, no clickable, big buttons, no direction. And so you were like, We’re building our own landing page. Like, I’m not using this. And that could be a problem. You know, people think the problems with your email, it’s not. It could sometimes be with your landing page. And so the more you can get a sense of that overall strategy and what’s going on, the more the more useful you can be, because Gbtc is not doing that yet.

So that’s something that, you know, if you can be that for your clients, you’re going to be sticking around. You’re going to be the most valuable person in the room. I love it that, by the way, was our fifth mistake and I didn’t frame it upfront, but no thinking beyond the words right? So I just want to leave myself open in case.

I want to say five ways that we were five copywriting mistakes. This is been absolutely genius, I think. O’Leary I can’t wait to do this course with you. I’m so excited. We’ll link to that in the show notes. Would you like to do a little plug to to buy the book? Oh, sure. Listen, if you are, I will always plug my book it, if you like a good mystery story and maybe you want to take a little trip to the Caribbean.

I mean, we’re releasing this in the winter, so it’s a little bit maybe it’s chilly where you are and you want a little escape or I love it in the news of the year. Maybe you just want an escape period and you just want to go somewhere else and think about other things. For right now, I welcome you to check out my book.

It’s called Into the Blue, and you can find it at Megan O’Leary dot com. You’ll find that URL in the show notes. But I would love to have you as a reader. And if you like it, leave me a review. If You don’t like it? Send me an email. Do me a favor, just email me and I would be happy to talk about it with you.

00:38:04:05 – 00:38:27:17

You will like it. Oh, thanks for being on head to the journal. I’m going to plug it again when I close this out. So but head to the show notes for all the goodies about our course. That’s coming up. And thanks again for coming by. O’Leary Hey, always my pleasure. If we want to do this every six years, I’m totally down with it or let’s do it sooner than that.

Oh, all right. What did you think? Did it spur some ideas in you about how to really make your copy connect and convert your people? Did you learn a little bit more about. I go back and listen to last week’s episode, too. By the way, do you maybe have some ideas how you can build more trust with your people?

Well, hopefully you took notes. If you like what you heard and you want more of O’Leary and I live teaching, you sign up for the waitlist for the conversion copywriting playbook and get first dibs when we officially open doors. And again, we’re going to walk through frameworks of emails, we’re going to talk through campaigns. There’s going to be a course marketing bonus.

We’re going to go live, you’re going to get critique some of your copy and content. It’s going to be a fun, fun class. I’ll link to that in the show notes, a link to the waitlist, and until next time, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.