The other day, I had a client reach out to me flustered and frustrated.
Weâve been working on her Pinterest ads for the last two months after another social media giant shut her out of their ads manager due to an error on their end (a different story for a different day đ).
Iâm pleased to report that the Pinterest ads have been working way better for her than her old ads ever did, bringing her multiple new customers every day. But she wants to switch her strategy a bit and promote one of her higher ticket products to see if she can increase her ROAS (return on ad spend, for my ad newbies).
For weeks, sheâs been stuck on the ad copy for those new ads. And her frustration finally spilled over as she vented to me in an email:
âI tried and I just have no clue what kind of storytelling I can do. Itâs too much, Iâm confused, and itâs defeating.â
Itâs something Iâve heard easily a thousand times in my work.
For a lot of business owners, marketing doesnât come naturally. We see it as a necessary evil, something we have to do to share our stuff. We convince ourselves weâre not good at it, will never be good at it, and are therefore doomed to sales purgatory for the rest of our entrepreneurial days.
Complaining about it seems harmless enough, but we let those beliefs take root in our mind until they become these massive blocks. And no where are those blocks more felt than in the dreaded task of writing copy.
Instagram posts, scripts for Reels, email campaigns, ad copy, website copyâyou name it, it trips us up in the worst way.
But it doesnât have to.
So Iâm going to give you the exact same advice I gave my client in the hopes that it makes it way easier for you. đ
First, forget just about everything youâve ever learned about writing.
This isnât high school English class. You donât get a gold star for how long your essay is. You donât need an intro and a conclusion, a juicy plot twist, a dash of allegory, and a character arc to rival that of Don Draper in Mad Men.
Writing marketing content and copy is, as the Wizard of Oz would say, a horse of a different color. It plays by different rules.
Hereâs what you do need:
A message worth sharing that ties back to something worth offering.
A clear value proposition (if you want a basic take on âvalueâ, read this)
A hook that lands with the right person
A compelling call to action and an easy way to get more.
Sometimes you can do that in 2 short sentences on a Pinterest ad. Sometimes you need a 1,500 words sales letter.
The length is often irrelevant. The components are what matter. And to be honest, sometimes the long-winded versions bury the plot anyway.
When it comes to marketing copy, longer isnât always better. More detailed isnât always desired. And big words wonât earn you better grades. Those things donât matter here. What matters is that it resonates.
But what about when they say: âTell a storyâŠâ
Back in the day, when I would hear copywriting experts say, âTell a story in your marketingâstories sellâ my mind would automatically go to: âOnce upon a timeâŠâ
I assumed it needed characters. A heroâs journey. A time. A place. A made up word or two for extra fun, like, âalohamoraâ or âmuggleâ.
It took me awhile before I realized that when it comes to your marketing, a story doesn't have to be a long, detailed, or flowery tale where someone learns a valuable lesson or goes on this epic quest. It also doesnât need to be about you or even a customer.
A story is just a moment in time or something of value that you give extra meaning and context to. You can tell them about literally anything:
An ingredient or tool you use
A problem you solve or result you help achieve
A process or sequence of events
An important concept or principle
A surprising fact or myth
A product or service youâve created
The truth is youâre getting hung up on semantics that other writers, teachers, authors, and journalists have imparted. But again, this is a different game with different rules. Coco Gauff doesnât take tennis tips from Caitlin Clark.
When you let those other rules go, everything becomes way easier.
A story can literally be as simple as:
"You have this problem. Here's why nothing you've tried before is working. Here's my solution and how it's different."
OR a different way to frame it:
"I created X to help people with Y. Because what you're currently using/doing isn't working and here's why. Here's how my solution is different."
Build from the ground up. Not from the top down.
This is a tip I canât stress enough.
When you go to bake chocolate chip cookies, do you pull the ingredients from your cabinets and just throw them straight onto a baking sheet and into the oven?
Not unless youâre insane! You take the ingredients. You read the instructions. You measure how much you need and add them in the right order (mostly). You mix them up, portion them out, and only then do you put them on the pan and bake them.
There is a process. If you want good cookies, you donât take ingredients straight from the cabinet, put them directly into the oven, and expect a miracle to come out 8 minutes later. It just doesnât work like that.
But thatâs how a lot of us write our content and marketing copy.
We sit down, position our fingers over the keyboard, and just wait for the perfect copy to come to us. Or we take a vague description of our audience and our offer, pop them into ChatGPT, and expect it to work miracles of the loaves and fishes variety. đđ„
Either way, you canât be surprised when what you get out of the exercise is a mess of words that doesnât even get you a .4% click-thru-rate.
Garbage in, garbage out, friend. If you want better copy, it always starts with better inputs.
Hereâs how:
Do your research.
I can hear you mentally checking out now. đ Nobody wants to slow down long enough to do research. Itâs the step we all want to skip over because it takes time. And we donât want more data points. We want sales.
But your results are on the other side of your research. The fact of the matter is that business is 99.9% wooing customers. And you canât woo someone if you donât know what makes them tick.
This isnât about running some massive focus group. Or googling demographics until your fingers are broken and your eyes are like sandpaper. Itâs about listening to your people and making the effort to really see and understand them.
Read their reviews. Mine your emails and conversations. Scour forums and communities. Copy/paste the useful nuggets into a doc and keep it close.
Gather your ideas and inputs.
Copy is always loads easier when you know what needs to go into it and youâve organized your inputs. Marketing copy in particular is all about trying to demonstrate to your audience that you have the perfect solution to their specific need or problem.
So if you have 30 minutes today, pull out a piece of paper and brainstorm the following:
The problems your people have that your offer can solve
The things they're currently doing or trying (products, ingredients, regimens, etc.) that aren't working and why
All the ways your solution is different (or better) and why that benefits them
Don't censor yourself or even try to write marketing language. Just brain dump everything you can think of. You can beautify the copy later.
Start there. I often find myself trying to write perfect copy from scratch and that's really hard. When I break it down into steps and get ideas in front of me first, itâs like the floodgates open and the words come.
Write out a few.
Once youâve got ideas on paper, pick a couple and write them out. Literally in that framework I gave you:
"You have this problem. Here's why nothing you've tried before is working. Here's my solution and how it's different."
Hereâs the one place where all writing is similar:
Think about your reader. Why should they care about this? What am I promising to give them in exchange for spending their time with this ad, website, or piece of content?
Give it a hook and a call to action. Donât over think it. Just get it in a good spot and share it.
Read NextâŠ
Test them before you commit (or put $$ behind them).
Never assume you know what will land. (You know what they say about assuming, right? đ«)
Itâs always the posts or captions or subject lines that I think will work that bomb and the ones I think are just meh that my people gravitate to. Never trust your own opinion. Your audience will tell you exactly what they want if youâre down to go into something with an open mind and a willingness to be proven wrong.
And then you can use that intel to keep creating better and better. You can double down on that problem, hit harder on that benefit, etc.
Iâll tell you the exact same thing I told my client the other day:
You're not bad at selling. Youâre just learning a new skill. Selling is hard. No one is born an amazing marketer or saleswoman. But thatâs good news for all of us. Itâs not like dreaming of being a pro basketball player but being born 5â4â.
Anyone can learn how to write better marketing copy. It just takes practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it. And over time that muscle grows and that knowledge compounds.
Compounding knowledge, building muscle đȘ, and growing confidence = sounds like a formula for success!