iphone listening shutterstock_519216199

The HaBO Village Podcast

Writing Good Copy for Marketing [Podcast]

Episode 12: In this episode, Michael and Kathryn start diving into what it means to have good copy for your marketing. Because this dynamic duo have been running a successful marketing and advertising agency for more than a decade, it's safe to say they know a thing or two about writing good copy. 

Women typing on laptop computer

Some of what you will learn from this episode:

  • What "copy" really means
  • What pieces are necessary to create good copy
  • Why write in the second person?
  • What your goal should be from good copy

 

Ready to take a listen? Like what you hear? Make sure you become a subscriber to get the latest and greatest of our podcast episodes. 

 

                                       itunes logo Listen on Spotify                               

 

SHARE | | |

Michael:           And welcome to the HaBO Village Podcast. I'm Michael Redman.


Kathryn:
         And I'm Kathryn Redman.


Michael:
         And we're really glad you're here with us today. Thanks for joining us, thanks for tuning in, thanks for putting us in your ears, because we know that some of you are just listening with your earbuds while you're exercising, while you're working out, while you're doing something. Way to go, we're proud of you. All right. So today we're going to talk about good copy for marketing. So as we go through for those of you who might be joining us today as we're going through the four main quadrants of business, finance, leadership, management and marketing. You can find that out in the third podcast, at some point it will be uploaded and it was absolutely in podcast eight. We're talking about those four areas everybody needs, every entrepreneur, every business leader needs to pay attention to those four areas, and in those four areas we've also got a podcast, I'm not sure which number it is right now or going to be, and on the nine areas of business and those four areas are kind of thrown in so there's five underneath them. One huge quadrant of that obviously is marketing, and under marketing we have four or five different areas. And you know, you're trying to get customers, right?


Kathryn:
         If you're going to have a passion and provision company, the provision part comes from actually having clients and customers.


Michael:
         How about that.


Kathryn:
         And people actually buying what you're selling.


Michael:
         Buying what [crosstalk 00:01:25].


Kathryn:
         Otherwise it's really, really hard to make a living and have any sort of passion and provision.


Michael:
         Absolutely. So we're going to, and because Half a Bubble Out, our parent company is a marketing and advertising firm, then what we're going to do is we're going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about how do you write good copy. What is copy? How would you define copy Kathryn?


Kathryn:
         I would define copy as anything that you are doing to communicate to your customers or potential customers. So it could be in a traditional form, it could be billboards, or radio, or television. It could be email, online, could be video, wherever it is that you're providing content with the goal of trying to acquire a client or to keep the ones you have. So that is how I would define a copy, Michael.


Michael:
         I think that's good. And whether, like for instance we write copy for radio commercials.


Kathryn:
         We do.


Michael:
         Right, it's the script. We write copy for the website, it's the words on the page, right? So basically that kind of stuff as Kathryn talked about, and there is a difference between good copy and bad copy.


Kathryn:
         There is indeed.


Michael:
         Good copy in business, good copy gets people to do, or a larger percentage, let's say it's not a 100%. I always hate it when people do that, it's absolute. A larger percentage of people to do what you want them to do with that piece of communication.


Kathryn:
         Yep.


Michael:
         And bad copy does not.


Kathryn:
         Bad copy does not.


Michael:
         And a huge part of that is how well you communicate, how clear are you and how you hit and communicate in certain ways at certain points, and we're going to talk about those certain ways and certain points. At least some strong tips that we use to train our staff, and we're going to give you some gold information that has taken us years to codify and remember, and some great teachers who again, they have gone through the school of hard knocks, and if you pay attention today and take some of these things, it's, I'm going to tell you this, this happens a lot. It's kind of a syndrome of those of us who study online education, we're reading all the time, we listen to podcasts, is the information you're going to get is super accessible because you just downloaded the podcast and you started listening today. That sometimes makes you feel like either the content isn't that valuable because you didn't, most of the time we think if we had to fight hard for content, and we see how it's relevant, then we have a increase the sense of value, and what happens a lot of times is you get into this cycle where you're just a podcast listener or you're just a book reader, online reader, or whatever, and all of a sudden you get into this scenario where you are valuing the content because.


Kathryn:
         Well yeah, and I mean, the thing is we're going to give you some incredibly, incredibly important things that go into creating good copy and good marketing copy, but I will tell you, and this is a little bit what Michael is saying, that the only way that you get to grow in this is to keep doing it. It's just important that you keep writing, and keep trying, and keep testing, because good copy is an art, good writing is an art, and it's one of the reasons why companies that can afford to outsource to marketing people because that's their expertise, and not all marketing people do it as well as others. But it's one thing to know the information, but actually putting it into practice over, and over, and over again and honing your skill is a completely different choice that you get to make.


Michael:
         Completely different. Yeah, so let's jump in. All right, if you're listening and you got a pad, a paper, anything like that, this is going to be great stuff. We'll have some notes on the show page on our website in the blog for the podcast. But we're going to start with four important things that when you're writing copy, these are big pictures. Roy Williams is a mentor and a friend of ours, acquaintance, and we have known Roy a long time. We studied under Roy. He owns his own advertising agency and does works on very large accounts and different types of things, and he also runs a small academy, a non-profit academy in Texas called Wizard of Ads.


Kathryn:
         Wizard Academy.


Michael:
         Wizard Academy because he wrote a book, a number one best seller called Wizard of Ads. I don't know if it's number one, but it was a best seller on the New York Times.


Kathryn:
         It was indeed.


Michael:
         And then he learned this from Ray Bard who is a publisher, especially in the non-fiction business area. So giving credit for this, but this was, this actually came out of a couple of different things. One, these four points that we're going to tell you about, good copy, that the big picture. Well, let's just instead of talking [inaudible 00:06:30], right?


Kathryn:
         You can't be using big picture to define.


Michael:
         So here are the four. Big picture, hope, nuts and bolts, entertainment.


Kathryn:
         So I'm going to say that again.


Michael:
         Good.


Kathryn:
         So when you are writing good marketing copy it needs to include the big picture, it needs to include hope, it needs to include the nuts and bolts, and it needs to include some entertainment. So we're going to just spend a few minutes flushing out what we mean by that and why we would even suggest that those four are kind of the central key. So just so you know. Big picture, hope, entertainment, and nuts and bolts.


Michael:
         Okay. One of the things that's actually I was going to say before we went into that list, is Ray Bard found that a huge chunk of the really successful business book or non-fiction books, they had at least, the ones that are successful have at least big picture and nuts and bolts. The ones that are really successful actually add hope and entertainment to them. So it can be really, it can be moderately successful, people know about it and everything else, but the ones that are really successful, what they have in common are those four. Big picture. Everybody needs to know what's the big picture, what you're talking about. We're talking about here is the subject.


Kathryn:
         So think about big picture as context. If you ever think about just you're wondering what's the point, what's the context, and if you can establish the big picture, the context in which this information is being given, you have a much better chance of succeeding in your communication.


Michael:
         So when we talk about, when we introduced, did the introduction today for today's podcast, we talked about the fact that we're going to talk about copy for marketing. That's really high level big picture, and that's important because it's everything you write, say, communicate to your market, and so there's the big picture. The hope is, and we probably could've shaped it this, right? But we didn't. Bad on us. But the hope is this for copy. A lot of people write bad copy. Bad copy, poor communication in your marketing and in your business communications can cost you money. It can cause you to not have nearly as many customers as you could have. It could cost you to lose prospects that come to you and walk away. You want to you know what your conversion rate it, figure out how many people are talking to your salespeople or coming to your website, and how many people are turning into a conversation or a customer, that's a conversion rate, and that can be really bad.


Michael:
         The hope is with today's stuff that you're going to learn, you actually could implement this and radically improve the quality of your copy, which is going to increase over time the amount of people that you are turning into customers. The amount of opportunity your salespeople are getting for leads. This is a real, it's a craft that you have to learn over time but it's this simple, and we learned that. So there is, you can do this. Anybody, if you can write at all. I mean just, you don't even have to be a great writer, but you can learn these techniques and you'll become a better writer than you already are. The nuts and bolts, so we're going to talk through the actual pieces and parts of what that looks like, and this four list right now, big picture, hope, nuts and bolts, and entertainment, that's part of the nuts and bolts. Those are four things that you can start thinking about. It's a structure, right?


Kathryn:
         Yep. And then we're going to talk about other things within the nuts and bolts, even as we move forward.


Michael:
         Some other clear tangents on how do you do this.


Kathryn:
         [crosstalk 00:10:10] And bolts. Yeah.


Michael:
         Some tasks or things that are really tangible, and then hopefully we're entertaining.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         In the midst of it. And you know what? Entertainment is an interesting thing. First of all, it has to be delivered, you don't want to be monotone and sit here and talk about it all day long and there are some people who can do that and that's how they address the information.


Michael:
         Having Kathryn and I here, we just like to have a good time talking, and joking, and she has no problem correcting me and vice versa. So you get all that live style stuff and we like to giggle and laugh a bit. Then on top of that you, entertainment is a funny thing because what we find as entertaining, I'm not even sure entertainment is always the right word, but I say this, I think it's fair to say entertainment means the person consuming the content is enjoying it.


Kathryn:
         Yeah, so just as an example, there was a guy who ran a very large Christian organization that many of you will be familiar with, and he would say as you're, if you're evangelizing that he was running an organization that reached out to kids, and he would say it's a sin to bore a child with the Gospel, right? It's super fun news, it's really good news in that organization, and the reality is when you present it in a really dull, boring fashion, you don't engage your audience. So another piece of entertainment is just not boring.


Michael:
         There are multiple people who went to church as kids, they're going, "I wish someone had heard that guy?." Because see I was bored to death thinking.


Kathryn:
         If somebody had told that guy.


Michael:
         Oh my god.


Kathryn:
         They would've helped the sermons in my church because I fell asleep. So that issue of how you actually engage and not bore your audience. So entertainment doesn't necessarily mean you're singing, and dancing, and putting on a show, but it does mean that in marketing it's a crime to bore your audience.


Michael:
         Yeah, it really is.


Kathryn:
         Let me put it that way.


Michael:
         It really is, in marketing it is a crime to bore your audience. And here is the other part I think that's important about entertainment, because talk about, we've talked about fuzzy terms. I think last week we talked about fuzzy terms or a couple week ago we talked about fuzzy terms, and fuzzy terms are ... If there is a fuzzy term, entertainment is one of them, especially in writing copy in marketing because it's like, "I'm not entertaining, this isn't fun, I'm not going to win an Oscar, I'm not going to win some kind of award or something like that." No, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about especially when you're selling stuff and everything else, is it relevant, and are you able to play with it? Is it just boring gobbledygook business speak, or are you talking real naturally to people? Are you willing to make jokes? Are you willing to laugh at yourself? Are you willing to tell stories, here is where stories are key, tell stories about case studies, tell stories about people and talk about their before state and their after state. People think that a story, if they hear a story in it, oh it's like John, or it's like the people who started this one Christian organization. He started the Christian organization, he started working with teenagers because his church wasn't really doing anything, he thought he would get involved.


Kathryn:
         It's Young Life, by the way.


Michael:
         It's Young Life. And then he ... And this was in the '40s I think and then he would, started hanging out, and what he realized is look, if I'm going to reach out to these teenagers and talk to them about God and the Bible, I should make it fun, and quite frankly, shame on me if I don't. That was his thought process, and it started catching on and there were more and more kids that were engaged and interested in the bible because somebody actually cared enough to make it interesting, and it grew to an international organization that has impacted hundreds of thousands of people, and literally, I could tell you stories, more stories on how it's impacted governments around the world bringing more justice, more kindness, more integrity to systems in different places around the world.


Michael:
         Now, I just told you that, but realized I just told you a story about an organization and how it started, and how and why it started, and it grew. That's a story, and probably it engaged you at some point, or a lot of you engaged you, but it was, the next part is how do you make it relevant, because sometimes the stories are just, here is a case study, here is how it applies to you. We started before, we went through this, here were their problems, here is how we implemented a solution, and here is how we brought their lives to a better place because their problem was solved. That's a story that you can use in a business context. So that's, entertainment is the one that is the hardest for everybody. Some people get stuck on hope, and hope really literally is your life can change because of your service. It might be a little change, you go from a before state to an after state, an unhappy state to a happy state. I have a problem, I need it solved, my washing machine broke, I am in an unhappy place. I need a washing machine, I found one, I found a good price, I found one that I like, and I got it installed, and it went well and now I'm happier. Before, after.


Michael:
         So those four things, big picture, hope, nuts and bolts, entertainment. If you can remember to put all four of those in your communications as much as possible, you're, I can't tell you how much your content will improve, and how much your communication will improve, and you can do this in one-on-one sales, all of you who are doing sales. This you get. You understand this intuitively and you've been taught different models of it, this is amazing selling because you start with that kind of stuff. Here is the big picture, here is the nuts and bolts, here's let me, let me tell you how this can help you and it's possible that it really can help you. Case studies, examples, stories, involving entertainment, really engaging them and moving forward, those are four things. Kathryn, you want to comment any more on that before we move to the next part?


Kathryn:
         No. I think we'll talk a little bit about this, but in the midst of it there's an assumption that what you're trying to sell has some relevance for your audience, and so we'll talk a little bit about just relevance, and in the midst of it, if the story you're telling isn't a story that impacts them or they care about, then it's not going to have the impact that you're looking for.


Michael:
         Absolutely. All right. The next main point, and we kind of already alluded to it in entertainment or spoken directly to it, is tell stories. We can't say that enough. Tell stories, tell stories, tell stories.


Kathryn:
         Well and I would say that telling stories does more than just entertain. There's times when stories, your stories might give the nuts and bolts of something. Like we actually solved this and this is how we did it, and it was a step by step process. So the story doesn't just entertain, it actually can give you a bigger picture, it can give you.


Michael:
         So there's crossover.


Kathryn:
         There's crossover. It can give you hope because you're talking about a person who is moving from one state to another state. So I would say that telling stories is a way to communicate all four, in all, kind of in all four quadrants of this communication stack because it allows you to hit a bunch of different things. Obviously if it's a case study it's going to be a little bit more in the nuts and bolts, but again, you're going to be stating the before state and the after state so you give hope, especially for people who are experiencing a similar challenge that you already solved with 10 clients kind of thing.


Michael:
         Yeah, I think that one of the things you said that stands out to me is stack, the communication stack. We're always catching techniques, we're always catching these things. There's no one technique that solves everything. I mean, maybe you have one, but I haven't found it yet and I've been looking for a very long time. What we do is we take things, and sometimes we only need to use one technique, or one style, or one thing with communicating with people, but often what you want to use is multiple, and that's what the multiple communication tactics and to stack them, and you get just like a piece of plywood, it has lots of layers of super thin pieces of wood, together they're actually stronger and lighter than a lot of pieces that are solid that are only that thick, and it happens with beams and things like that. So this is a stack, big picture, hope, nuts and bolts, entertainment, when you tell stories it can overlap and interweave throughout all of those and allow you to stack.


Kathryn:
         So the next thing that we want to just remind you about as you're trying to write copy is that so often when we are writing about what we do as a company, we spend a lot of time talking about what we do and what we've done, and how our CFO did this, or we solved that, or we did this. One of the really, really important techniques in writing good copy is to write in the second person. So instead of writing about what we did, I'm writing about what you are going to experience. I'm writing about how you are going to have your life changed, and literally if you can shift your marketing copy on your website, on your ads, whatever it is that you're doing to more of a you focus, away from a we focus, that is very much more engaging for the listener or the reader of your copy.


Michael:
         Huge. And we, you'll hear us talk about this a lot, and if you listen to all our cast you may have heard it, is over benefit. You want to talk about benefits and features, everybody knows that, or most people in business have heard that. Often times what we do is we start with features, our product known as, we're talking about us again, our product does this, this, and this, and this. And if you get to it, many companies don't, they just assume you're going to know what that means. I have [inaudible 00:19:57] during on this new van and I have ABS brakes, and they're assuming that the average purchaser of a mini van understand the implications of that and the value of it, and you have to tell them what the benefit is.


Michael:
         Well, you really should start with benefits first and then run the features, and when you start talking in second person and you start saying, "You, you, you." You actually give yourself a headstart in talking about benefits, and in a more clear and concise you can be about a single benefit or one or two benefits, and concrete about it, and not vague, is that's what we call overt, because in this day and age there are so many messages trying to get our attention, and so many people doing stuff, unless I see it as clearly relevant and you're clear with me, my attention, you're going to lose my attention, and that's one of the things that you're, it's a currency of marketing and communication today, is attention. So second person is huge and it forces you also into often times into talking about the benefit.


Kathryn:
         Yeah, and when you're talking in a second person, it's easier to be focused on giving hope because you're automatically thinking about what the client needs, and then beginning to shape based on that, which is kind of another big piece of it, which is actually answering questions that the client is, or the potential client is asking.


Michael:
         Yeah, huge. Elaborate on that.


Kathryn:
         So if you are trying to offer to a client something that they are not looking for, you're going to have a very, very difficult time garnering their attention. If you spend time really figuring out with your team, with your clients that you currently have what is the pain point that they're experiencing that your product or service solves, because if you can define the pain point, then you can speak directly to that, which absolutely heightens relevance. So I can listen all day long to a commercial about a leaky roof, but if my roof isn't leaking, it's not relevant. Having said that, if it's an entertaining, hope filled, problem solving, focused on me commercial, that'd be focused on you, but focused on me in this case, then when my roof leaks I will be much more engaged because it's solving a problem I actually have as opposed to just telling me how great this company is who can fix roof leaks, and they're licensed, and contracted, and bonded, and by goodness, I hope so isn't everyone doing this.


Michael:
         Right. Okay, so there's a couple of things I heard in what you're saying that I think are important to highlight. Let's start with the last thing. Bonded, I'm bonded, licensed, if you're talking about a service company. Hi, we're licensed, bonded contractors. Well, the average person isn't asking that question. Their assumption is if you're a professional, you are. It's just not something that everybody is asking their plumber when they show up to unclog their toilet. Are you licensed and bonded? There's an assumption that there is, even if you saw a license number on their ad or something, you're still assuming that they didn't lie about it. You're just like, "Oh yeah, okay." And you don't even, most people don't even notice the number because they're not asking. Can you unclog my toilet?


Kathryn:
         That is the pain point.


Michael:
         That is the pain point and that's the question they're asking. I need it unclogged, can you do it? Great.


Kathryn:
         We had that very experience yesterday here at the office. There's nothing worse than a staff full of people and clogged toilets, and when that plumber came, I was not checking if he was licensed, insured, and bonded, I just wanted him to fix the problem.


Michael:
         And just assuming he can, and then if he can't, then you try and figure out why. The other thing that you mentioned in the midst of that, just left my mind. So I'm not even going to worry about it. So that whole significant issue there of making sure you're relevant, relevance is key in everything, and one of the relevance is making sure you're answering the questions that other people asked. I remember what it was.


Kathryn:
         If you keep talking loud it's going to come back.


Michael:
         Okay, so here it is. Kathryn said, "If I don't have a leaky roof, it's not relevant to me, but if you do it in an entertaining way." And what she was implying but she didn't say directly is if you do it with enough frequency on top of it, that when she has a leaky roof, then the chances are higher that she's going to remember that company and call them because she's looking for what comes top of mind, right?


Kathryn:
         Absolutely.


Michael:
         It's really important to remember that the application here is this. When you're writing good marketing copy, you're never converting a 100% of the people listening. There's multiple reasons. If you're converting 10% of the people that are listening.


Kathryn:
         You're killing it.


Michael:
         To talk to you, that's really good. If you're doing 20%, that's amazing, and it just doesn't ... Just know that eight out of 10, nine out of 10 with really good copy is good numbers. You're probably getting one or two out of a 100 with mediocre copy, and with bad copy you might be getting one out of a 1000, or five out of a 1000. The numbers are getting worse, and worse, and worse.


Michael:
         So know that your goal with good copy isn't always to get immediate response. It's like a savings account. You're looking for the people who have an immediate need, and then you're trying to build up recognition, awareness and recognition and top of mind with good copy for the people who when they need you, and then it's relevant, they can remember you quickly. Those are two things, and that's, it's hard to evaluate.


Michael:
         We have this one example that I like in one of the other podcasts I listen to, they were talking about this woman who sells a bunch of health products online and it literally, she puts her products online on her website, she puts ads out there on Facebook, drives ads to her content, she's selling stuff. The average person takes two months from the first time they visit her website to the time they purchase. They track this with the analytics. So two months. The average person doesn't even, in a business you'd probably, you'd go, "What?" But you know that there is a time between the first time somebody starts thinking about your product. You know this intuitively and you may because you thought about it, even more scientifically in your business. There's a time in which, from the time they're first thinking about it, to the time they contact you, from the time they contact or start looking for information, to the time they purchase, there's a time span, and sometimes that might be, we have one client, we figured that process is two years.


Kathryn:
         Yeah, and the other thing too to say about this is you might be thinking, "But my product is so not exciting. It's just kind of dull, and I don't know how to spruce it up." And we're going to tell you that no matter what your product or service is, if you are relevant and you're writing to the pain points of the people that are trying to solve problems, it's going to catch attention. And we've worked with this one client who they just were like, "There's no way anyone is ever going to want to read about." In this case it was homeowner manage, a homeowner association management, and we're writing to boards. We're writing to folks who actually manage, are on the board of homeowner associations. The client just didn't believe that we could actually make that interesting or convert any.


Michael:
         Or there was anybody out there looking.


Kathryn:
         There was anybody out there even looking for that kind of stuff, and we have just proven wrong, and it's been really fun.


Michael:
         We've killed it.


Kathryn:
         It's been super fun, because they're looking at it going, "Okay, not only now do we know that there are people actually looking for some of the problems." One of the blogs we wrote was about building a reserve fund. What could be less exciting than building a reserve fund? But if you're on the board of a homeowners association, and your homeowner’s association has a leak or a reroofing problem in the club house and you don't have reserve funds, and you hadn't planned for that, then you have all sorts of problems, and then your homeowners get mad because you're raising the rates, and blady, blady, blah.


Michael:
         Well a reserve fund in that context is their corporate savings account.


Kathryn:
         It's their savings account. Yeah. So not an exciting topic, and yet just thousands of people downloading that offer, that response because it was really relevant to them.


Michael:
         Okay, so if you write with relevance and you write to the customer, it radically increases your potential of converting them into somebody to talk to and then a customer, but you have to have one other thing that's super important, and that thing is a call to action.


Kathryn:
         Yes.


Michael:
         How many times do we talk about our company, and then we don't tell somebody what the next step is? We don't ask them or help them, because they don't necessarily know. We're assuming, if I write this great informational stuff they're going to know, oh I want that, and they're going to come forth. Ask the people, do you want this? Do you need this? Then call us. Hear that? There is a question there. Does this fit you? Does this description fit you? Do you have this need or do you know somebody who has this need? Prompt, that's a prompt, and then you call to action. Then call us, the fill out this form and somebody will contact you.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         And it's amazing how many people, and they call it in sales ask for the sale. It's amazing how many people will talk, talk, talk, and they don't ask, "So would you like this? Would you like to buy this today? Is this something you're interested in?" Asking for the sale. You can do it in so many ways and not be pushy, but if you don't have a call to action, you're in trouble. A couple of last little tips to throw in there for your writing, if you're making notes, I'm coming back to this. The first one is active verbs and unique adject.


Kathryn:
         Adjectives.


Michael:
         Adjectives.


Kathryn:
         Easy for you to say.


Michael:
         Wow, it's not coming out right today. Active verbs are verbs, there's passive and active, now some of you English people are going to correct this a little bit, but that's basically what we're, this is generic enough for folks. Please don't send us an email telling us the exact, we know, the exact definition of active and passive and all that kind of stuff. Active verbs are things that show action. He ran, you ran, you were taking a bath, You turned on the hot water and it was.


Kathryn:
         Too hot, it scalded you.


Michael:
         It scalded you.


Kathryn:
         It happens.


Michael:
         Or there was no hot water, right? And these are, you turned on, you did this, you do that, or better yet present tense active, you are. Imagine yourself going into the bathroom. You're in the bathroom, you turn on the water and you're all ready to take that amazing shower, and it's all perfect, and you step in the shower, and you flip on the little lever to turn on the hot water and the water comes out, and it feels so good, and within 30 seconds all of a sudden you're there and the water is cold. Now you have cold, ice cold water running down your spine and you're screaming. That's all present tense, right? Because now you're there in that, I'm talking about it as if it is happening, and I can take a story, and if I put it in present tense it immediately draws people in more. It's a psychological and a neurological magnet for your stories, okay? And then using unique adjectives. Don't always say good, or great, or awesome, or gnarly. Does anybody use gnarly anymore?


Kathryn:
         I don't know. It was trendy for a long time.


Michael:
         It was.


Kathryn:
         There you go.


Michael:
         Come up with creative ones. They enthusiastically.


Kathryn:
         Enthusiastically, radically.


Michael:
         Use Google, type in synonym to your word, type in great or amazing and synonym and it'll come up with samples.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         But it varies up, and quite frankly you stand out from the crowd just by using a unique adjective. Then the last little tip here, well we have it on our list, I'm going to come back to it because we've said it two or three times, but it's just worth underscoring, answer questions they're asking. Just make sure you're doing it. Answer those questions. So we've talked about all that, let's highlight it real quick. Kathryn, the top four.


Kathryn:
         Okay, so the big end. The four things you're trying to achieve in any good marketing copy is the big picture, the nuts and bolts, hope, and entertainment. So those are your four that you're trying to achieve. You're trying to make sure that you cover and I want you to, as you're just listening, you get the opportunity to test this, and one of the ways that I want you to start thinking is I want you to actually start listening to commercials, or reading copy on websites, and I want you to start evaluating, not just in your own company, but even as you hear an ad that really catches you. Why does it catch you? And I'll bet you that when you start paying attention to ads that really move you or catch you, you're going to have discovered that they are.


Michael:
         They're employing at least two to three of these.


Kathryn:
         They're employing some of these techniques. Yeah.


Michael:
         Right?


Kathryn:
         Absolutely.


Michael:
         That right there folks was a call to action.


Kathryn:
         Yeah, it was a call to action.


Michael:
         She was calling you to do something.


Kathryn:
         Do something with this information.


Michael:
         Okay the next, and then the next four things that we talked about were to be entertaining and engaging you want to tell stories. You want to write in second person, you instead of, talk about them and the customer, not us, you.


Kathryn:
         Yeah.


Michael:
         Your. Call to action, make sure that there's a call to action at the end of your content. Use active verbs and unique adjectives. That will take a story, it's amazing how many people tell a story and they tell it in passive terms, and when you put it in passive verbs and things like that, the story is less engaging, it's less involving, it grabs your attention, putting it in first person or second person active terms, it's amazing how that works.


Kathryn:
         Yep, and then answer questions they're asking.


Michael:
         You can even talk about yourself if you use present tense active verbs because you're telling a story and you're recounting it as it's happening. This morning I got up, I went to the coffee shop. I approached the counter, I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that can you, a lot of power in that. Then just again, answering the questions they're asking. Being relevant, relevant, relevant. All right, that is copy for marketing. That right there is like months, years of learning and shoved into one piece, and now we want you to take some of it, and not only listen and start listening to other stuff, but I want you to practice. Whatever you're going to do this week. If you're writing a letter to your constituents, if you're writing a letter to any kind of customers, or writing any kind of copy for your website, take some of these and think about it. If nothing else, make sure you put the big picture, nuts and bolts, and the hope that they can go from a before state to an after state by using your solution or thinking about that. Really I think it will really tone it up, and then let other people listen to it.


Michael:
         All right, that is it for HaBO Village Podcast today and we're really, really, really grateful that you showed up and listened. We appreciate you and we like doing this, and we like it when we get feedback. So if you would do us a couple of favors, that would be awesome. One, rate us on iTunes and leave a comment. That's how people find us more often, because the more ratings we get and the more comments, iTunes will lift us up in the rankings, and the go to our blog and put a comment. It'd be great if we could hear your feedback, if we could even hear the things that you're struggling with in business.


Kathryn:
         And what are your pain points?


Michael:
         Was today helpful? How was it helpful, and then what are the other pain points? What are the things that keep you up at night running your business? And on this page it'd be great if you just, what are the things that keep you up at night in with your marketing? All right. Thank you again. Have a great week, and we will talk to you soon.


Kathryn:
         Bye, bye.


Michael:
         Bye, bye.