021. Copy Camp Week 3 - How to Break the Rules and Troubleshoot Your Copy

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Hello. Hello, my friends. How are you? Hope you're having a fabulous start to your week. Today is our third in a series of three episodes about how to write great copy. This is Copy Camp. Welcome to Copy Camp. Come to camp and create compelling copy. So I'm so glad that you've joined me for this third installment. I hope that the first two have been helpful for you. Make sure and reach out to me on social media or on email and if I can answer any questions that you have, I would be happy to do that. I would also love to hear how Copy Camp has been for you, like if it's been helpful. And we have today also. So, so I just quickly want to recap on our first session, our first episode, I should say, of Copy Camp, we really talked about changing your thoughts around yourself, your ability to write and communicate and connect and talked about the definition, my definition of marketing, of great marketing, great copy, is that it creates connection with fellow human beings and simply, that's what it is. In that spirit, we're going to continue our discussion of how to create compelling content. Last week, we talked about the foundational practices for writing great copy. I hope those you've been able to put those into practice and that they have been helping you to improve your copy, improve the engagement and the impact that you're having with it. So today is going to be super fun because we're going to talk about breaking the rules. And then I also want to have a little troubleshooting session and talk to you about the problems I see most often and how we how I solve those. So first of all, let's talk about breaking the rules. Now, this is something I do quite often as far as around marketing and building a business. I have broken a lot of the rules. And when I've done that, the more rules I break, the more success I create. So in that spirit, I'm going to, I want to share with you the copy and marketing rules that I love breaking. And the first one that I encourage you to think about breaking is I used to hear, and I even used to preach this myself, that you should have the 8020 rule of content to offer. So the thinking like, okay, I'm going to have 80% value and content, you know, great content valuable content and then only 20% offers. And I think it's nothing wrong with that ratio whatsoever. But I think where we get tripped up is in thinking if we're doing it right. And so anytime you hear a rule like that that trips you up, that gets you thinking, like, what am I doing wrong? I say just break that rule. And so I say always give value and always make offers. I definitely think that you're going to have more traction, get more traction and more results when you are giving as much value and over delivering as much as possible. And I always like to have an offer or like I mentioned in the last episode, have an opportunity for next steps. So you don't just put copy or content out and not offer a next step for your reader or your listener or watcher. You always want to have that next step because of course people are going to fall in love with you and what you have to say, what you're putting out there, they want to go to the next step with you. So why wouldn't you have a next step in there? So just forget about whether it's 80 or 20 or 5 or 95 or 50, 50, it doesn't matter. I want you to think about how can I be over delivering and offering value at every opportunity and then offering the reader a next step to get in touch with me, to schedule an appointment with me, whatever it is. All right, so that is rule number one that you can break. Rule number two is, we've heard this a lot. Don't give away too much. Like, you know, don't give away the gold, right? You've got to keep the gold for the paying clients. And I think that is bs. I say always to just keep value upon your audience. So much value that they can't help but hire you, right? And that will never steer you wrong. And I have a mentor that famous that says you will never go broke giving more than you receive. And I believe that a hundred percent as a person of faith, that's what it says in my Bible. And, and I really, I believe that you will never go broke giving more than you receive. And so, and it feels so much better, right? Like not having to get caught up in thinking, okay, the rule says I can't give too much away. Well, what is too much? How do I know what too much is? And, and you spend all of your time and mental energy trying to figure that out rather than just putting value out there at every turn and letting, letting it be, right? So let's just let it be and offer all the value, and just know that it's all coming back to you. Okay, so that's number two. Number three is to the rule of don't bother people too much. And I hear this a lot from my clients. They are very cognizant, very sensitive to emailing their list too much, to posting on social media, too much, to reaching out too much, like thinking that they're bothering people. And that all comes from a frame of getting versus giving. So if you're thinking I'm trying to get something from people with my copy, with my marketing, then of course you don't want to bother them too much. Like, that's awful, right? But what can you give them? What is the value that you can offer them? And can you ever offer someone too much value? Can you ever be giving too much? Right? And I would say no. Like, there are always going to be people that don't, like, you know, how often you email or how often you post. And they're always going to be people that want more and people that want less. And that's totally fine. Let them be them and you just continue loving, serving, heaping value upon them. And if they want to step away from that value, that's totally fine. Right? Just let them go. So that's another rule that I don't subscribe to. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm emailing my list every day. I don't, I literally don't have time to. But I think what I do is I do post on social media almost every day and I do post videos and stories almost every day. And so that is my way of offering value. And I have never had anybody say to me, well, I think you're emailing me too much or posting on social media too much. I've never had anyone say that because they don't really need to. Like, they can just scroll by. Right. That's my thought around that. So there's the rules that you can break. Now I want to turn the focus to troubleshooting. And so what if you say to me, melissa, my content isn't converting. What is happening here? I have lots of thoughts about this and, and want to discuss with you how I go about troubleshooting with my clients and what are the, the issues that I see most often? Number one is that we forget that value equals money. And so if you want to make more money with your copy, with your content, you need to be offering greater value, density and or quantity of value in your copy, in the copy you're currently producing. And what does that take? That takes knowing what your audience values, what is the result that they want, what are the desires they have, and how can you help them to solve their problem, get what they want faster and easier, and doing that through your copy. So you need to know, you know, what kind of value you're putting out there. And if you feel like it's not converting, like you'd like to, start thinking about how you can make it more dense with value, how you can make it easier for your audience to get the result that they want. Do some thinking and journaling around what is valuable to them and what is value in the way that you can offer it. And that's work I do a lot with my clients. We talk about the service that they provide and not only the features and benefits. Remember, we're not just talking about features and benefits. We're talking about the result that you offer and what is the value of that result to your clients. And I'm not just talking about financial value, but what the transformation or the change or solving the problem will mean to them, to their lives, to their futures, right? And then how can you help them get that? And how can you help them through the copy and the content that you are producing to get that result? And just keep in mind that this is something that we all have to continually work on. We are continually improving and getting better if we're working on it, right? And so same for me, like, I am not perfect in this regard and I'm still always seeking continuous improvement. So just challenge yourself and your mind in a new way and thinking around value and how you can help your clients, your audience at a deeper level. And then number two, what I like to look at is consistency around troubleshooting. And if copy and content isn't converting, consistency may be an issue. I want you to remember that consistency compounds so consistently. Providing value over time in a very trustworthy way that your audience can learn to trust you and count on you will create more and more clients. And it not only makes you better at your craft and better at offering value like we just talked about, but the practice of consistency will result in compounding results. Okay, so just like if you think about compound interest, if you're saving for retirement, like I am at my age, saving for retirement, we are counting on compounding interest, right? So we've saved a little bit of money, a little bit of money over a lot of years. And when that compounding effect is, takes, gets rolling, then the savings, it's interest upon interest, then the savings balance grows Exponentially and much faster. And it's the same with your value that you're putting out out there, the consistent content that you're putting out there. The compounding effect will begin as you consistently are providing value. Now, this. You don't have to wait 20 years like we do with our retirement accounts for this to happen. Right? But I want you to think about consistently creating and providing value and content for months and months and months without expecting a major return. Okay? It's not like, okay, I'm going to go out and write a sequence of five emails and send them out, and now I'm expecting five clients. Like, that's not how it's going to work. You need to commit to consistently over time, over a period of months, providing value to your audience, and then you will begin to see a return. All right? And so what that means is also you get to decide what consistency means for you. Now, I'm not going to be the one to sit here and tell you you've got to post every day or send one email a week or what. None of that matters. What matters is that you're doing it consistently. So find a schedule that you can keep up with and keep up with it. Give it a try, see what the results are. If you feel like you could be doing, doing providing value more frequently than and you want to do that, then do that. But it's not the schedule that's going to create the results. It's you providing value and doing it consistently that's going to provide or is going to create results. All right, so number three, what I like to look at in terms of troubleshooting is what are you expecting? What are your expectations on getting results from the copy that you're creating? Now, a lot of people will say to me, well, I posted, you know, every day for a whole week and nothing's happening. Nobody's engaging with my content. What's wrong? And first of all, when we just go back to thinking about consistency, you've got to be doing it over a longer period of time before people will begin to trust you. They will begin seeing your content, reading your things, and will begin engaging with it. But seeing you come across their feed on social media or across their inbox a couple of times is not going to create engagement. So I think in a lot of instances, what I see is people are expecting too much too soon. So I want you to just be thinking about, how can I be serving and giving and offering value? And I know it's going to come back to me, but I'm not going to have any expectation of that for quite a while. It could be months if you're just starting out. So if you're expecting too much too soon, that might be where the trouble is, that you just haven't given it enough time. And so I want you to just stick with your plan, be consistent and be consistently putting value out there. And also think about what are your expectations as far as engagement. A lot of folks will say to me, well, I've been posting on social media and there's a few comments and a couple likes, but that's it. I always ask, well, what is your expectation for social media? What are you expecting to happen? Because I personally do rarely, I can't say never, but very rarely will I get a client from social media. It's not a client generating effort. I don't consider it a client generating place for me in terms of that people are shopping for me on social media. What I see social media as for a trust based service business, which is what I see that I, I and many of my clients have. Social media for us is a great place to be sharing our thoughts, to be offering thought leadership, to be offering value, to be nurturing relationships. But I think it's kind of unreasonable for us to be expecting that it's going to be a client generating venue. So just check yourself as to what your expectations are and think more about what you can be giving rather than getting. Because when you're focused on giving and loving and serving and giving as much as you can, then the getting will take care of itself. Okay, so number four, what I always am thinking about is are you taking risks? And so for me what that means is like an emotional risk, like sharing something vulnerable about yourself or just kind of offering something that other humans can relate to. Because if we're just putting out content and copy that is full of value but not really personal, it's not going to convert because you sound and appear very corporate. Right? So I like to think about sharing a little something personal or just kind of taking that emotional risk of revealing something that's, that really allows other humans to connect with you and to see you in your vulnerability just a little bit. I mean, you don't have to obviously be an open book or anything like that, but letting them know that you share in their struggles. Because we will always connect with others when we hear about their struggles. We admire others for their accomplishments, but we connect with them in struggle. So I encourage you to just think about that in your content and if it's not converting. Maybe it's just because it's not revealing anything personal or allowing people to connect with you. And then finally, do you have a call to action or a way for people to convert? Are you offering next steps? Are you offering next steps? That I would consider what I call a micro conversion, which is a small step they can take in furthering their relationship with you. So for example, if you do a video or even if you write an email and send it out to your email list, what is that audience most likely to do as a next step? And yes, they're in. They've subscribed to your email list. They're now receiving your email. Now what is the next like a next small step for them? That's not a lot of commitment. Commitment. Our audience wants to go further in relationship with us, but I almost think about it like dating. So for example, if you go out on a coffee date with someone that you met walking your dog or something, right? And they ask you out for coffee, that seems doable. That's not a huge commitment. You're not going to be like sitting down to a two hour meal with them. Like it's a comfortable micro conversion. But if you meet someone while you're out walking your dog and they're like, oh, let's go away for a ski vacation in Vail, like, that's way too much. That's too much too fast, right? So if you think about it in that way, are you offering a call to action? That's like a micro conversion. Just like a nice, non committal easy next step for them. So those are the five areas of troubleshooting that I think about. When someone comes to me and says, what if you know that my content isn't converting? That's what I would look at. So that would be for you to work on this week. I would, um, I would say just think about those five areas if you're ha. If you feel like your content isn't converting in a way that you would like it to. I mean, we talked about, are you expecting too much? So that's definitely one thing. But yeah, we always want to be growing our list and just nurturing those relationships along. So if those relationships aren't moving along, these are the five things that I would suggest you take a look at. So that's what I have for you, my friends. And this is a conclusion to Copy Camp. So I hope this has been super helpful for you in learning how to create compelling content, create compelling copy, further connect and develop relationships with your audience to grow your list and grow your business. And I would love to help you specifically on all this as well. So feel free to reach out to me and I would be happy to help you understand maybe why your copy isn't converting your content, isn't isn't doing the job that you want it to be doing. So this, everything that I have taught you in Copy Camp is a great start. But please feel free to reach out to me and we can talk about how you can take your business and your content, your marketing to the next level to scale and grow grow your sales and and thank you so much for being here for Copy Camp and I will see you next time. Take care. Bye. If you like this podcast and want to take this work deeper, I invite you to coach with me one on one. It all starts with a conversation. Let's get on a call together and I'd love to learn more about you and your business and together we can identify what is standing in the way of creating the business and life you envision. And then we'll create a plan to get you there. So visit my website@melissamkellog.com and find a spot on my calendar. I look forward to seeing you.