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How deeply do you think about your customer and the journey they go through before they buy the products that you write about? This is the Copywriter Club podcast. I've got another guest list episode for you today. You'll remember a few weeks ago I shared an episode, just me, talking, sharing a few of my thoughts, and the feedback on that was positive enough that I'm going to give it another go. So today it's just me, Rob Marsh, sharing a bit of the process that a good copywriter ought to be thinking about before they sit down to write almost anything. But if my guess is correct, you probably don't think about your projects this way. So while this episode is going to be a bit shorter than our average, in fact it might be quite a bit shorter. It might change the way that you think about doing your work and it also might give you a skill that that you've never thought about before. But before we get to all of that, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one stop program that's going to change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you're going to have the tools and the strategies you need to truly understand your customers so they relate to your offer and they buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the four critical areas of research. I think of it like a four legged stool. You start taking these away and the stool tips over the table tips over or maybe even think about, about like the Beatles. You take away John or you take away Paul and the music's just not the same. If you miss one of them, it's just, it's not what you would sign up for. And your research is the same way. If you miss the critical areas of research, your research isn't complete and you can't write as well as you would. Research Mastery also includes the AI tools that you need to do research faster, to do it more effectively and to do it more profitably. There's a lot of things that are included and the best way to learn about it is by visiting. Thecopywriterclub.com researchmastery Research mastery is all one word and you'll see all of the details there, everything that it includes, including a bunch of killer bonuses. It's an amazing program that will, like I said, change the way that you write. So check it out. Thecopywriterclub.com researchmastery a bit more than a year ago, I started teaching teaching a marketing class at a local college here in my hometown. And the course that I teach most often is focused on customer journeys. In the course, I help students learn how to create them. We talk about why they should be using them and how to think about them a little differently. So that maybe prompts the question, what is a customer journey? Most of us have a sense that a customer journey is the process that a customer is going through as they buy a product or as they buy a service. It's that Eugene Schwartz stages of awareness, where they move from, you know, unaware to all the way aware, that kind of a thing. That's a big oversimplification of what a customer journey really is. And it's not really the way that I teach to my students either. When we talk about it in class, we actually draw out step by step maps of every point at which you or the brand or the personality that you're writing for or doing marketing for actually touches a customer. The step by step map captures the thoughts, the emotions, and the feelings that the customer is feeling at any point in the journey. And it includes a message that is calculated to change those thoughts and those feelings. And of course, it always includes a call to action to make the next step in the journey absolutely clear. Now, a lot of people talk about customer journeys using the frameworks where you'll see them broken into four categories with attention and consideration. Purchase. And then the fourth stage is just usually called something like retention or evangelism or loyalty, something like that. And if you look at the various templates online that show customer journeys, you'll see that there's one touch point in attention, one touch point under consideration. Purchase is a touch point. Retention is a touch point as well. One of the reasons why doing customer journeys is so important is that it puts the customer's perspective at the forefront. It flips the marketer's intentions on its head. And let me sort of walk through how that works so that you understand exactly what I'm saying. So let's say you've been hired to write for a launch. And we know that we need to get potential customers onto a webinar or into a workshop or onto a boot camp. We know that we've got to share specific messages. So we line up case studies. We write content to build trust and share expertise and resolve concerns and overcome objections. And all of these things that we tend to do through emails, through sales pages, through the teaching that we do. We also know that we need to get them onto a purchase page so that we can empathize with them and agitate their pain and show them how our solution fixes all of the things that are wrong in their lives. We need to keep messaging them, to set a deadline, to create urgency and scarcity. And if we can, we need to intensify their desire to click and to buy. We need to show social proof and show them all the other buyers just like them that are doing this thing that we want them to do. So they join the bandwagon and buy also, and maybe a dozen other tactics like that. And the problem with all of that is it's from the marketer side of the buyer equation. It's all about getting what the marketer wants, which is more sales, more clicks, more conversions, but it's not necessarily what the potential buyer wants or. Or needs. And customer journeys turn this entire process around so that we're focused on our customer, their perspective, their needs, and what they get out of the entire process. Now, this is a little bit risky because sometimes the customer doesn't need what we're selling. And if we're being honest about creating these customer journeys, we identify those people upfront so that we're not taking them through a journey that doesn't actually benefit them. We're helping them get out of that journey and only keeping those people that we can help deliver the results that they want. A customer journey forces you to take a step back and figure out who your customer is, what they want, and what they need to know in order to get your solution. So let's just take an example or two. Let's say that you're selling running shoes. Approaching this as a marketer, you might create a series of ads to get attention, focused on the kinds of things that you see in a Nike ad. Athletic achievement or, you know, the just do it attitude or. Or music and images that psych you up for a workout. And then you're going to direct the viewer to a retail store or maybe to an online store where they can get the product. Your job's done, and none of that is wrong. It's the way that most marketing happens. And I'm not just talking about running shoes, of course. This applies to selling coaching. This applies to selling SaaS and literally every other product or service that's out there. It's not bad, but it is backwards. And it risks missing out on a lot of other potential customers. When you look at the customer journey, we're starting with the end in mind. We're starting with the customer and what they need. And so thinking about that, rather than taking this idea that we need to sell running shoes, we start with the customer and think, okay, who is the customer. And even that question starts to get us thinking about potential customer groups. Obviously, there are marathon runners that need shoes so that they can train and run their marathons or their half marathons or, you know, 5Ks. The racers, these serious runners that need shoes in order to do this thing that they love doing. But they're also nurses who need a good comfortable shoe that's going to support them while they're on their feet for 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day. And then there's even another market. People who may have a disability that makes it difficult to stand in normal shoes might wear our running shoes because they're more comfortable, they're more stable, they give them the support, the balance that they need in order to actually do what they need to do. And then there are people like me. I'm kind of a runner and I just want something comfortable to wear when I'm out running in the mornings. I want to avoid injury and I want to get into better shape. But I'm not really interested in running a marathon. I'm not really interested in the just do it athletic achievement thing. I just want to be a little bit healthier, a little bit more fit. So there's all of these buyers that are out there who want to different things. And if we're looking at selling shoes and the normal way we sell shoes, we might miss some of these audiences. But when we start with the customer and what they need now we've just identified potentially four, maybe more buyers, journeys to take these customers from where they are right now to where they will be solving their four very different problems with the same product. So how do you create the buyer's journey? Like I mentioned, we start with the end in mind. This is an idea that comes From Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. And it applies to way more than just buyer journeys. But to know where we want to go, we need to identify what does that end? What does it look like? What does success look like, what does the result look like? And how are we going to feel? What are we going to do when we get there? Understanding that and what the customer wants helps us to, you know, create these journeys. So we're asking questions like, who exactly is your customer and what do they need? What does that end state actually look for them? And it's going to be different for the nurse or the marathon runner or the. The person with a disability or the person who just wants to get into shape. What do they need to believe or learn to get from where they are right now to the result that they're hoping to achieve. And usually what they believe now is not what they need to believe in order to make a purchase. They may believe that, you know, running shoes won't help them with their problem that they have. Let's say the nurse is aware of other people on her floor who are wearing nursing shoes and they're not necessarily running shoes, they're made for nurses. This running shoe may be a better option, but she doesn't believe that because, you know, other people aren't using it. Or perhaps the, the runner like me who isn't really interested in winning a race, just needs something that's really comfortable, isn't really interested in some of the messages that the marathoner is going to want about say, speed and performance. And so again, the things that they believe are going to be different in order to get them to a purchase point. And we have to understand where they are right now. What do they believe now that's holding them back from buying? Another question is what does the transition from where they are now to where they want to be look like? And if we can start to map that out, we have a buyer's journey, or at least the basics, the beginnings of a buyer's journey. And of course we've got to start out at the very beginning. How do we get their attention? You know, we may have to try out a lot of different things. There's so many different ways to capture the attention of the people that we're talking to. You know, we have ads, you know, on Meta or Google or Twitter or LinkedIn or Reddit. There's user generated content, blog posts, social media posts, PR and news articles. There's the old fashioned media like TV and radio, magazines, newspapers, if, if you can still find them. There's direct messaging on a variety of different apps that we have. There are things like podcast guesting, YouTube guesting, or even creating your own podcasts and YouTube channels, you email affiliates and so many ways to, to get their attention, which is really that first step of the buyer journey. We used to talk about when I started out my career in marketing, that it would take about seven messages, seven ads before somebody would actually respond. I actually think that number is quite a bit higher now. It's usually going to take a lot more than seven ads or seven quick messages to capture somebody's attention, get them paying attention to you, to build the trust to have them see that you've got the expertise to help solve a problem. But we need the first step, of course, is with this capturing attention. And again, so we, we start with that part of the buyer's journey. And there might be seven or eight or ten different touch points where we have a different message and a different call to action, addressing different feelings and beliefs in order to get people onto this buyer journey that we're, that we're building different audiences, again, have different beliefs. They need to know different things, they need different messages in order to start that process of learning about you. But once you've caught their attention, the next step is about moving them from where they've started out to where they need to go to get them to consider a purchase of your product or your service. Customer journeys cross paths with buyer awareness. Like I was saying earlier, Eugene Schwartz's model that includes, you know, these five stages of awareness, from unaware to pain aware to category or solution aware to product aware, and then most aware. And where your buyer is on that spectrum also determines the number of touch points, the number of messages that they're going to see on their buyer's journey. It's also going to change the content of the messages and the length of the messages and the calls to action that they're going to have. So a buyer in the most aware category is going to have a very different journey than somebody who is completely unaware or somebody who's say, pain aware. So let's take a look at a couple of examples of what that looks like. So I am a big fan of Michael Connelly, the writer. He has written a couple of different series. I buy his books and read them or listen to them as soon as I can get my hands on them. And, and all it takes for me to go and make that purchase is the prompt, is the knowledge that they just published another Michael Connelly book and I'm in the bookstore the next day or I'm in the library in order to get that next book. I am most aware of that particular product. I like it, I'm ready for it, I want it, I want it faster than he could actually produce the books. And so as soon as I get an email from Michael Connelly that he's just published another book or the ones on its way, I have set up, you know, my pre purchaser, I'm in the store ready to buy. That's most aware. And the buyer's journey is very simple. It's just a message saying, here's the product and here's how you can get it. Very short, very simple. But like our example with running shoes, when I'm buying running shoes, I Tend to shop a bit more. Now there's a brand that I particularly like. I tend to buy Hokas. They're the most comfortable shoes and I've been running on them for a little bit, maybe two years, three years or so. I've tried other brands. I've tried Nike and New Balance. And there's another new shoe out by Brooks that I think I might try at some point. But my buyer's journey in buying running shoes is considerably different than that of buying a particular author's books. I do shop around. I want to understand, is this going to be softer than the shoe that I'm currently using? Is it going to last as long as I'm going to need to last through my running season? Is it good for the short three to four mile runs that I do as opposed to the longer training runs that a marathon runner might do? And so it's going to take more touch points, different messages addressing my feelings at each step and different calls to action to move me through that buyer's journey. So I'm more product aware and need those kinds of messages to get me to the point where I'm ready to buy. And then of course, if I'm unaware of a product that then it's, it's actually impossible for me to say, hey, here's a product I'm unaware of. In fact, because I can't name something that I'm unaware of, clearly I'm unaware of them. I actually asked Chat GPT to give me a bunch of examples of products that I might not be aware of that would have really long buyer's journeys for me in order to understand, you know, the pain that I might have that they address or the way that it would help improve my life in some way. One of the products that is suggested is called the PIP Stress Sensor. Never heard of this before, before just a couple of hours ago. And what this product does is it monitors, it's a biosensor and apparently it monitors your stress levels through the sweat on your fingertips in order to give you feedback. And I'm not sure what that feedback is. Like I said, I'm completely unaware of what this product is or really what it does. And if you were monitor or if you were selling the PIP Stress Sensor to someone like me, you've got a very long buyer's journey where you've got to walk through maybe a dozen or 20 or 30 different touch points. Emails, direct messages, phone calls, ads, user generated content, all of these kinds of things to get me to be aware of the product to be aware of the problem that it solves for me, to be aware of my need for that. In order to get me to the point where I'm going to buy, I'm going to need a lot of information. So my customer journey is again going to be different, longer, it's going to include a lot more information simply because I'm unaware of the product. Another product that ChatGPT suggested that I'm unaware of and I've never heard of before, something called Neurable Headphones. These are headphones with a built in brain computer interface that detects focus levels through EEG signals that I guess your brain gives off. And so I suppose if you're wearing these, I'm guessing again because this is another thing I've never been aware of before. But if I'm wearing these, it might sense that I'm losing focus in the writing that I'm doing or something that I might be working on and it might change the music I'm listening to or change whatever it is that's going on in the headphones in order to help me refocus and get things done. That sounds like a really cool product and probably is incredibly useful. But again, having never heard of this before, it's going to take a lot of touch points, a lot of messages to get me to the point that I'm actually going to buy it, as opposed to the next Michael Connolly book which I'm primed to buy right now. So. And then this brings up the idea of multi touch journeys which, you know, jump between maybe an online interface that includes email and sales pages to also include things like offline ads or offline content or phone calls, sales calls from someone, or text messages, and sort of jumping between various kinds of content or messaging in order to catch our attention and continue to engage us through a buyer journey. Let me give you an example, a real life example of something that a buyer's journey like that that I've gone through. So for a long time I have wanted to learn how to read Hebrew. I don't really have, you know, a reason other than I just think it would be kind of fun to read some of the, you know, the, the Old Testament or the Torah in Hebrew, try to understand it with some of the original language. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. And about a year ago I saw an ad on Instagram for a program that, you know, offered to teach me how to read Hebrew. I probably, you know, spent a little time on that ad, read it, but did nothing for it. And then, you know, a few days later I saw a similar ad. I don't think it was the same one, but similar ad, same company or same school, offering the same thing. And again caught my attention. I think about the third or fourth ad that I saw. I finally clicked to the website. And because I clicked to the website, they cookied me. And then I started to see these ads even more often as they, you know, asked me to come back and to engage because this thing that I have kind of thought I wanted to do for a long time, finally I clicked off of one of those ads. So probably the seventh or eighth different touch point with varying messages, all with the call to action to go to the website. I went to the website again and there was some kind of a free offer, you know, a lead magnet there that was juicy enough that I gave them my email in order to, you know, provide me with additional content. So now I start getting emails in addition to seeing the ads when I'm on social media. And these emails, of course, are great sales emails, different messaging about various reasons that I might want to, you know, sign up for this course. The next course was starting in a few weeks, you know, giving me deadlines and creating some urgency around this program, offering scholarships that, you know, might get me to, to join the next time it was coming around. And this company was smart in that they also did a data append and I think got my phone number that was attached to my email. I don't remember giving them my, my phone number. I might have, but I think that they got it some other way. And so I got a sales call from somebody. I answered the call and talked to this woman who, you know, again talked about the program specifics, walked me through all of the details, invited me to buy, and I said, no, I'm not quite ready, you know, I want to think about it. And she reached out to her three different times, talked to her a couple of times. I got direct messages, texts from this company. I was continuing to get emails. I was still seeing their ads, ads. All of this added up to the point where I made a purchase decision and went on to buy. So there's so many different things that go into this journey and so many different ways to approach the way that I went through the journey as opposed to say, the ideal. But again, I was getting content and messages and calls to actions in so many different ways that finally it brought me to the point where I was ready to purchase. Every touch point has one message, has one call to action. And is addressing my feelings or the sentiment I have, or the hesitations that I have, or the objections that I have to move me from where I am right now, one step closer to a purchase. Okay, so that's a lot of talking about customer journeys, but brings me to this. As a writer, as a copywriter, or as a content writer, how do you think about your customer's journey? Journey? Are you taking it from the marketing standpoint where you're just thinking, okay, I've been asked to write five emails in a sales page and so that's what I'm going to do, or are you considering where your customer is right now, what they believe about your product, what they believe about themselves and their ability to use their the product you're writing about in order to solve a problem? Because if you're not considering that you're probably losing potential customers and potential sales, Are you considering touch points other than email? Are there ways to reach out to your potential customer through direct messages, through texts, through ads, through user generated content, through a variety of different things? As we've mentioned already on this podcast, are you considering other audiences beyond your primary audience? So again, going back to that running shoe example, the biggest audience is probably runners, serious runners. But there are so many ancillary audiences that could use different messaging, different email sequences, different sales pages, even in order to make a purchase of the same product. Are you taking the time to map out each step and think about the message that your customer needs to hear and not just what you want to say, and then creating experiences around these touch points? Now, I want to give you one more way of thinking about customer journeys before I wrap up. And you're going to maybe hear me say this and think, well, this is the way that a marketer would view the world. But I think if you think a little bit deeper about this, you realize that what I'm about to say is true. And that is everything is a customer journey. Every relationship is a customer journey. Your relationship with your partner or your spouse, what do you want from them, what do they want and what do they need to know or believe in order to get what they want so that you get what you want? You can even map out these touch points and what your partner or spouse is feeling at each step and the message that they need to hear in order for you both to get the things that you want and even the calls to action so that you go from step to step to step Again, I know this is maybe a marketer's view on the world, but it's true. It's true of our relationships with our children, with our neighbors, with our co workers, with our friends. Everybody has needs and beliefs and things that they want and we need things from these people around us. And as we map out these customer journeys, or at least think about how we can help people get what they need that often will help us get what we need. You're on a customer journey with all of these people. To get what you want, you need to understand what they want and walk through the steps to get there. You want to be on a podcast? Well, what does the podcast host need and what are the steps to get them from where they are now to where what they need and how does that help you? If you want to work with your dream client, what do they need and what are the touch points that they need to go through for where they are right now to where they hire you to give them what they need? Or let's say you want to land that in house job? What does the HR person need to believe or know and what does the hiring manager need to believe or know about you, about what problems you can solve? What are the touch points, the feelings that they have, the messages that they need to hear, the calls to action that they need to go through in order to change their beliefs and get them what they want so you can get what you want? Well, this whole idea of customer Journeys pairs well with Research Mastery, the proven research program that I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode. Research Mastery will help you write better, copy and sell more of what you want to sell because it walks through the various needs and beliefs that your customers have, and it maps directly onto a customer journey that you might create for the various customers you're selling to. You can find out more about research mastery@thecopywriterclub.com researchmastery. There's a bunch of cool bonuses there and a lot of information, so check it out, see if it fits with your copywriting process and the various ways that it might help you be a better writer, a better researcher, and maybe even a better customer. Journey Mapper that's the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. If you like what you've heard, please share it with someone that you know or if you don't know another writer or freelancer who you can share it with. And honestly, I know that's not true. You know everybody knows somebody and I know you can share this with somebody that means something to you, but if you don't and you don't want to share that, visit Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever it is that you listen to your favorite favorite podcast and leave a review of the show. I really appreciate when you share your thoughts about what I share. Helps me to know if I should be doing more of this kind of a show. If you haven't left a review in the past, now's the time. I promise when you share the Copywriter Club podcast, your friends will thank you and I'll see you next week.
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