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- [00:00]
Chris
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Courtney Johnson
Welcome to Slay the Gatekeeper. I'm your host, Courtney Johnson and I am here to un gatekeep the gatekeeped. Thank you so much for being here. Enjoy. Hello Chris. Welcome to Slay the Gatekeeper. I'm so happy that you're here.
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Chris
Hey Courtney, thank you so much for having me. It's a blast.
- [00:23]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, I'm so, so excited to talk about copywriting, marketing, all the things because I know you are very good at what you at what you do and super excited to dive into these cheat codes. But first, I actually want to ask you something about newsletters because one of the biggest regrets that I have in my content creation journey is not starting a newsletter sooner and not collecting email addresses sooner. So I say that a lot to my clients, a lot of which are probably listening. So I'm just curious what you think about that and maybe that'll nudge some people to start collecting email addresses and start creating newsletters.
- [01:02]
Chris
Yeah, it's definitely a good idea to start as soon as you can, actually. So right now I have a weekly newsletter, but back then like two years ago, I even experimented with the daily newsletter and the first like a month or two months that I started, I literally did it just for myself. So if you are afraid of putting content out, maybe, I don't know, you don't want people to read your first emails because they might suck. I don't know, maybe try to do it just for yourself as an experiment. Write every day or every week, whatever, just put those newsletter, I don't know in your note taking app and it's still going to be good content that you will be able to reuse, repurpose if you decide to publish your newsletter. But I would say first get in the habit of writing every day or putting those ideas out just because it's both practice for yourself but also good content for your audience. And yeah, if you start collecting those emails as soon as possible, it's always a good idea because you never know who might stumble on your website, even if they are not in the mindset of buying right now, they're going to enter your network, start consuming your content, even passively, that's fine, but you never know. Maybe in two, five months they're going to be ready to buy. So that's going to be the right moment for them. So just start creating those relationships as soon as possible. I think it's a, it's a pretty good idea with email because it's still one of those marketing mediums that still very feels personal Especially now with AI. So the more you can inject your own point of view and voice in your email, the better, I think.
- [02:45]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, I love what you're saying about not having to put it out publicly. I've also seen some people that will put out their newsletter as like just to their five friends or just to a coworker, just to their partner to get the accountability to start setting things up without actually like going public with it. So I think that's really helpful.
- [03:06]
Chris
That's a great idea. At the beginning, I started just writing for myself and then I had one, actually one buddy where I was basically. We were basically sending each other emails and then I started putting out. Obviously there was my mom, my, my friends, my brother on it. So that's all good. You're gonna start attracting the right people.
- [03:24]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. So let's dive into some of these cheat codes. So cheat code number one is that research is 70% of the work. Tell me more.
- [03:34]
Chris
Yes. So this is a big one because there's a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of businesses. For example, I just had a. Literally just before this, I had a call with a potential client. They have an E commerce business. And so I typically work with software businesses, but this was an interesting little project. And these guys have an E comm that makes around 3 million a year. So it's not super, it's not huge, but still they have business. They have been around for a couple of years and one of the things they asked them was, have you ever interviewed, have you ever had a conversation or asked questions to your audience? They have a list of 9,000, 10,000 buyers or prospects. They've never ran any research. And this still sounds super weird to me because one of the first things that you should do when you start a business in the first place is you're trying to solve a problem for people, right. For your customers. So why not try to understand them as much as possible at the beginning? So everything that you put out, your marketing, your emails, your content is going to match what they actually want and what they actually need. That also is the same for product development. Right. So if you build features that they don't need or, or yeah, your role mode goes in a direction that's not really right for them. So start to understand them as much as possible. And I say for copywriting, research is 70% of the work, because once you do the research right and understand the motivations, the triggers, the pain points that your audience has, the copy basically writes itself. So you don't need to kind of Wonder or guess what they want. You know exactly the points that you need to hit. You. You know exactly the language that you need to use, the specific words that you can mirror in your copy. So, yeah, it's a. It's a big one because a lot of companies don't really run any research until they get to the point maybe they realize, oh, shit, we reached a plateau. We don't know how to grow past this. And that's the actual point where that reaches those foundations could actually help them solve the problem.
- [05:51]
Courtney Johnson
So you're saying that instead of, you know, this is my ideal client and we'll think about how to message them, you're actually talking, having conversations with your clients, with your audience, and speaking back to them in that exact same language. So it's not a theory, it's their exact language that they're using. You're just mirroring it back to them.
- [06:11]
Chris
Yeah, it's. It's more. It's kind of like you said, like a theory. It's kind of like a science as well. So I go super deep. Obviously, you don't need to go as deep as I do, but. But for example, I categorize the research in three areas. There's internal research. So if you have a team, even a small team, how do you speak about your product, your customers? What's your point of view? That's kind of the internal perspective, right? So you want to have that as clear as possible. The other one is the external perspective, and that is knowing your prospects. So who are the people that land on your website, land on your Instagram, who are they before buying? And then you want to understand the picture after they purchased. How did they change? What's the transformation that needs to happen there? And finally, the third one is the market. So you want to understand who your competitors are, how they message to their customers, to the people you might grab a share of. Maybe there are, if you have a software platform or E Commerce, go through their reviews and try to understand the pain points that customers have so that you can actually address them better. All of that. So those three areas, it's mostly the type of research that I cover, and I suggest anyone to understand and get as clear as possible in those three areas before writing any of the copy.
- [07:31]
Courtney Johnson
Mm. I love that you're bringing up transformation too. I think a lot of times that we get into this idea that we just have to sell and communicate about the features and benefits and how many modules it includes or how many calls your things include, but really the transformation is what People are looking for. So to even be able to communicate that in their words is really powerful. So yeah, yeah, let's move on to cheat code number two. And that is learn how people make decisions online. How do you do that?
- [08:03]
Chris
So that has to do with the research, right? So one, one big factor when it comes to actually understanding people, research. A lot of companies, maybe they do the research, but it's more like product oriented research. So if they run a retail store or a software company, they might run interviews to understand how people are using their product, what features they might want developed. Kind of like to get a roadmap. Right. The way that I run research and other copywriters run research, if they do it well, is to understand the decision making process. So we need to kind of map the before they buy, the during and after. So you want to have that as again, that transformation as clear as possible. And also it comes down to reframing how you think about selling. If you have an online presence, think of you're not selling a product or service, you're selling a decision. And the decision that you're selling is a set of micro decisions. So for example, let's say someone lands on your homepage, right? On your website you have this value proposition, your headline, subhead, maybe a button that leads to, I don't know, maybe another page or sign a page or book, a call. In that section there's a set of micro decisions. So the first decision is for them to read the headline and then to read the subhead. Then the decision after that is to decide where to click on. Should I click on this button here or should I hover on the navigation menu? What should I do? Right. So all of the research that I do helps me understand what those kind of micro decisions are so that we can actually write the copy. Yes. But also lay out the copy in a way that makes these micro decisions as easy, as frictionless as possible to make.
- [09:58]
Courtney Johnson
So we need to understand not just the decision making of a yes or a no, but all of the micro decisions that people make along the way. Is there like a good book or resource and maybe like keywords that our listeners can google or you know, use their AI to help around this. You know that feeling when nobody really gets what you're going through, when you're surrounded by all of these people, but you somehow still feel alone. I lived that reality for years until I discovered the power of healing and community. Reinvigorate and Restore is a luxury six day retreat in Cape Town designed specifically for women who are ready to move beyond survival mode to begin living your best life truly and authentically. Imagine six days in Cape Town April 14th through 19th by the way, in a luxurious villa where everything is designed for your restoration. Morning yoga overlooking the mountains, sound healing sessions, authentic connection with people who understand your journey without explanation. Imagine six days with people who truly get it, who see you, hear you and walk alongside you in your healing journey. Time is limited, so book your spot for April again. The retreat is April 14th through 19th and you can visit survivorsriseretreat.com to book a call with Paula to learn more.
- [11:21]
Chris
You can.
- [11:22]
Courtney Johnson
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- [13:46]
Chris
If you haven't heard about it, I would definitely recommend looking into the jobs to be done methodology. So that's a really good process and sets of question to really help you map out these jobs that your product or service needs to offer, what customers are buying your product to solve. Right. And that helps you map the entire journey. Another book, this is more of like B2B sales, but the thought process is really good behind it. It's called Demand Side Sales 101 and it's by Bob Moista. And it's really good because it helps you frame these conversations that you can have with people in terms of like you almost speak to them and interview them. Like if you are like an FBI negotiator or something or someone that needs to interrogate someone, extract as much information as possible. So it's very. It's very dramatic, but it's really useful. Yeah.
- [14:53]
Courtney Johnson
Beautiful. Yeah, I definitely want to check that out because that sounds super interesting. Okay. Cheat code number three. Clarify your positioning and messaging strategy before writing anything.
- [15:04]
Chris
Yeah. So again, here depends on your type of business. But in general, before you write anything, words, you should be clear exactly on what you do, who you do it for, and how you do it uniquely, better or differently. This is your positioning. Right. How you're positioning yourself, your product in the market to be as clear and differentiated as possible. And the other one is the messaging strategy, which is how you say your positioning. Right. So it's a set of key messaging pillars. What are the, I don't know, three to four messaging angles, which could be specific features or different ways that you are doing your service or offering your product that other companies can't claim in a combination can also be your sets of voice and tone guidelines or can also be your strategic narrative. So what's your specific unique point of view that you have on the market, on the industry that makes you different? That even if your product is the same exact thing that's around your point of view when you use it in your messaging makes you sound different for the right people. Right. So these are the two elements. Positioning, which is kind of the what and the messaging is the how, and then the copy is the words that you use to express all of those.
- [16:29]
Courtney Johnson
Totally. Yeah. That's super, super helpful. So let's jump into our last cheat code, and I think this is a very like hot button issue. Because a lot of people I think do this really wrong. And that is how do we use AI for copywriting the right way and not the shitty way that just looks super AI and boring and horrible.
- [16:51]
Chris
Yeah, so. So for my clients, what I do with all the work that I mentioned, so the research, the messaging, positioning, I actually treat AI like an assistant. Kind of like I create basically like a marketing assistant chat, right. And I like to start with models. I don't know how people are familiar with different types of LLMs models, but I like to start with models that have a big context window, which is kind of like the memory that they can use. So for example, Google Gemini, now they have the 2.5, I think it's got 2 million tokens, which is probably the biggest context window around. I like to start with those because then I feed them with all the research materials that I created. Right? All those, I don't know. We have 10, 20 customer interview transcripts. I share them all with AI. I have survey results or interviews with my client's team, internal research again, so I share all of that with an LLM that has this big context window. In this case, maybe ChatGPT wouldn't be super useful just because it doesn't have a lot of memory, even though now with access to Google Drive can still be helpful. But I like to start with something that keeps everything in memory. So something like that. Then I basically start, as I go through the strategy, I start creating those documents, messaging, positioning documents, until we have something crystallized, which for me is positioning Canvas, it's my document that tells you what we do. We have a messaging framework which tells you how we should say that. And then I might also, going back to that market research, we kind of extract, we call it Voice of Customer, which is basically going through reviews, extracting specific pieces of reviews that we find kind of sticky, that are very vivid, very usable for headlines, for example. And I share those as well with AI. The last thing is also sharing the research reports. So all of those conversations, again, I share them and we have. Imagine like an LLM with a project where you have these three to four documents. And then I transition to another LLM, which is for me it's Claude, which is a bit better as far as writing, even though ChatGPT is getting better and better. And I basically, with these three to four, five documents, I just ask questions to Claude. So I might ask, start with an outline. I always like to start with an outline just because I think, I don't know, I Think. If you instruct the AI to think a bit deeper about things, rather than just asking, hey, write me copy for this page, right? I ask, write me an outline. And then we are going section by section. So I know, write the copy for this header section, which is the headline, subhead and button copy. That's it, I get the copy, then I move to the other section, which is the feature or offer section, which is might be another headline with a couple of bullet points and so on. So all of those sections, section by section, until we have the whole page, and then I move on to another page. So it's a very conversational but also gradual process. But it all depends on the context and data that you share with the AI.
- [20:17]
Courtney Johnson
Totally. So what I'm hearing is that you have to feed it a ton of data, like all of the data you have, transcripts, calls, interviews, everything. Then you help it generate, or it helps you generate like a voice of the customer. And through that you're creating all of these different reference points that I'm sure then you can share with your team, you can share with other people that are working with you, your copywriters, social media managers, whatever. And then you're using, you're uploading all of those documents into Claude, and then you're asking questions to Claude based on those. Those documents. Okay, cool. Yeah, I love Claude so much. Like, I feel like it is just so much more. It's so much more conversational writing than GPT. It's really great.
- [21:01]
Chris
Yeah. Even though I was using like the actual app Claude, but since I had to write a lot of copy almost all the times, I used to reach the limit quite fast, like maybe in two hours. So what I do now, which is also helpful for if you have a team, I use another platform that's called Team GPT. And there are a couple of those, I think, that plugs into the Claude's API. Right. So if you have Claude, you can use the API and it basically creates these chats that are shared. So I can share the chats that I use to write the copy with my team member, with my junior copywriter, and she can basically write the same copy, she sees the same context, the chat history that I've gone through. That's super helpful because if you have a team, other people that you want to write for you, but with the same voice hitting the same points in your messaging, you can basically do it the same way and get really good first drafts.
- [21:55]
Courtney Johnson
Okay, this is really helpful to know because I also get kicked out of Claude like every few hours and I'm like, oh, I guess I have to stop working until 3pm I guess I'll find something else to do. So it's called Team GPT.
- [22:08]
Chris
Team GPT or there's another one that's called Typing Mind you can buy. Typing Mind actually has a very good solo account if you just need for yourself to using the API. It's I think a one off price, not even monthly. So that's pretty good.
- [22:24]
Courtney Johnson
Okay, so we're using Gemini to load the data, we're getting the documents out, we're bringing it into Claude and once we start, if we start hitting those limits, we're doing. We're using Team GPT or Typing Mind.
- [22:37]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [22:38]
Courtney Johnson
Okay, super helpful. Yeah, I wanted to clarify that so our listeners can take note of any, any of those. I would say like at the very minimum, like if somebody is like I want to start this. But it seems like a lot of work. I think at first just like user interviews, that's what I'm working on right now actually is just like 15 minute user interviews with the a bunch of people in my subscription to really hone in on how to speak to them. And then I'd also encourage everyone to just like try out Claude for any sort of writing. It's definitely a game changer.
- [23:10]
Chris
Yeah. Another thing that you might want to do with Claude, since you have your project knowledge, you can upload those documents, but you also have the style, which is kind of like voice and tone style. So after I write my first drafts like by myself, literally, I might share it with Claude and ask it, hey, give me your voice and tone guidelines. Or you can ask it if you want specific format, you can ask it in system instructions format and then use those to feed into the style that Claude has. And then basically you are sure that yes, it writes about the right points, uses the research insights that you shared, but also maintain the same voice and tone consistency as well.
- [23:56]
Courtney Johnson
That's super helpful. So before we get into how everyone can find you all of that, I actually have a bonus cheat code that I found on your website that I'm like, this is just so good. And that is that you, because a lot of people that listen to this, they have their offerings, maybe they have like a coaching offering, a subscription offering, maybe they have some sort of course that they've created something that you have an offering that you have that I think is just so smart is that you have like an audit or somebody can book an audit and you send them a loom back. Is that correct?
- [24:30]
Chris
Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of my introductory offer. And actually before that I have another one which I just recently added. So the audit, it's an introductory paid offer. Before that I have a kind of like a free scorecard that you can take and it basically gives you insights on where you stand in terms of copy and all that. But the specific audit, yeah, it's a very relatively cost effective offer because for a company like my clients, software businesses, I think it's $400. It's not a lot, but still they get a video of me going through their website using my heuristic framework and thought process. I send them recommendations in a report. So it's pretty useful and it's also kind of an entry point for me to then maybe upsell them to like a full project if we see that there's a need, obviously.
- [25:26]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, I think anybody listening to this that's like I want to maybe add something to my offer suite or I want to do some sort of introductory offer. I think like one on one calls are great, but a loom audit is so smart. That's so, so, so smart. And such a great way to kind of still have those like few hundred dollar offers without having to get on live calls all the time. Because I know that can be kind.
- [25:51]
Chris
Of, especially, especially now with AI. Like a lot of people want to see that you're a real person rather than having, I don't know, like an email, like a cold pitch. So having the video. And it's also in a way that you don't have to be live. It's pretty, it's pretty useful. Yeah.
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Courtney Johnson
That's so helpful. Well, beautiful. Well, Chris, where can people find you and connect with you?
- [26:15]
Chris
Yeah, so my website is conversionalchemy.net so you can sign up for my newsletter or try the scorecard if you want. And I'm typically on LinkedIn, mostly nerding about AI research, copywriting and everything of that sort of thing.
- [26:30]
Courtney Johnson
Love it. Well, we will include everything in the show, notes for people to connect with you. But thank you for, for coming on, Chris.
- [26:36]
Chris
Awesome. Thank you so much, Courtney.
- [26:38]
Courtney Johnson
Okay, y', all, if you like this episode, you would love, love my Patreon. Okay. You get exclusive access to me, exclusive content, tons of other resources and a lot of juicy shit. Okay. So I hope to see you on my Patreon.