The Copywriter Club Podcast

If you want to write more persuasive copy, you need better insights from your research. But how do you get them? Sarah Levinger is my guest for the 448th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast and we talked about research insights, trend spotting, how A.I. can distort your research analysis, and how to make your copy more persuasive. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Sarah's Community Tether Insights The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Can psychology help you capture and hold the attention of your readers… then sell more of your products to your customers? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. On last week’s episode of the podcast, we talked about buyer psychology and how to use it to sell your products and services. It’s a great interview and I recommend you don’t miss it. This week’s episode is a kind of part 2 to that interview. In addition to specific persuasion techniques, today we’re going to go deep on research and discovering insights that a good copywriter can build a sales argument. If you want to use the techniques we talked about last week, what we talk about in this interview will give you the baseline insights to make them so much more effective. My guest today is Sarah Levinger, founder of Tether, a research insights platform that helps uncover emotional, behavioral, and identity-driven insights so marketers can connect on a deeper, more human level with their customers. And she uses A.I. to augment the process. Sarah walks through the process and framework she created for finding the kinds of insights that resonates with customers. She categorizes comments and research data by emotion, which leads to a better set of avatars and marketing ideas based on emotion rather than taglines or words that get a little tired as prospects see them over and over in your ads and other marketing.  Then Sarah goes even deeper than feelings to uncover beliefs—she talks about why in this interview. I think you’re going to like what she has to share about that. Sarah also mentioned something about A.I. that I hadn’t considered before that kind of shifted the way I’m thinking about using tools like Claude and ChatGPT to analyze data. If you don’t understand this change, if you use A.I. in your research or analysis process, your copy will probably not connect as well you expect. Before we get to my interview with Sarah, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. If you haven’t jumped in to see what the Underground includes, now is the time. It’s guaranteed, which means you can join and if you don’t find the resources you need to grow your business, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. This week we’re adding another expert workshop all about how to create the perfect for you copywriter website. If your website doesn’t stand out or doesn’t help you land clients, you’ll definitely want to join us. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more and join today by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.  And now, my interview with Sarah Levinger…       Thanks to Sarah for walking through her research and analysis process, how she uses—and doesn’t use—A.I., and we can all get better at spotting changes in trends before they happen. If you’re not already on Sarah’s newsletter, you definitely should be.

When it comes to getting customers to buy more, it helps to have psychology working for you. So I invited buyer psychologist, Katelyn Bourgoin, to chat with me about the marketing tactics that truly make a difference when it comes to getting customer to open their wallets. This is a great discussion that covers insights like Jobs to Be Done, Trigger Events, and the deep psychology that engages customers and keeps them coming back for more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Katelyn’s Newsletter Wallet Opening Words <— Get this! The Milkshake Video Clayton Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life? The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Transcript: Rob Marsh: Why do people buy the products and services we write about? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you need this episode. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. Before you can sell the products and services you write about, you need to understand why your customers buy in the first place. This includes marketing concepts like market/message match, jobs to be done, market sophistication, clarifying an offer, finding pain points, and finding under-served markets.  My guest today is buyer psychologist Katelyn Bourgoin. She writes the Why People Buy newsletter and focuses on using science and psychology to sell more of whatever it is that you are writing about. Personally, these are the topics I could talk about for hours. If you want to sell more of the products and services you write about, you’ll definitely want to listen to this entire episode. What Katelyn shares about “trigger moments” is in my opinion one of the most important concepts in marketing that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.  Katelyn and I also talked about making difficult decisions like shutting down a business that isn’t working, or choosing between taking a real job and doing something on your own, and the mindset shifts required to make these decisions. And I grilled Katelyn on the methods she used to grow her newsletter. If you write a newsletter (or want to write a newsletter), her ideas will help you attract new readers faster. Before we get to my interview with Katelyn, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. If you haven’t jumped in to see what the Underground includes, now is the time. It’s guaranteed, which means you can join and if you don’t find the resources you need to grow your business, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. This week we’re adding another expert workshop all about how to create the perfect for you copywriter website. If your website doesn’t stand out or doesn’t help you land clients, you’ll definitely want to join us. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more and join today by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.  And now, my interview with Katelyn Bourgoin… So Katelyn, welcome to the copywriter club podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here. I've been wanting to have you on the show, literally, for like, a year. I'm not sure why it took so long to make the right connections, but thanks to Jordan for helping to make it happen. But since you're here, tell us your story. I know you've got a great story of, you know, some business success and failure, but you have created an amazingly successful newsletter. I love it. It's one of those that I wait for it to come into my email box,

Can copywriters who run a service business attract good clients using Facebook ads? The short answer is "yes". Facebook Ads Strategist, Tara Zirker, is my guest for this episode The Copywriter Club Podcast, and she explained that not only can they use FB ads to attract clients, they may be able to do it for as little as $10/a day... and that could attract dozens of leads—more than you would need to hit six figures. Want to know how to do it? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Your Ad Kit (Tara's Newsletter) The Successful Ads Club The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Do you think of Facebook ads as a tool for growing your copywriting business? If not, it might be time to update your thinking. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. This is not the first time we’ve talked about Facebook ads on this podcast. I think I keep coming back to this topic because I see so much potential here—both for our own businesses and for our clients’ products and services. This is the kind of strategic skill that helps set some copywriters apart from most others. When you understand the ins and outs of driving paid traffic to your offers, you become imenselly valuable as a writer. And if you use these skills for your own products and services, you could create an almost endless pipeline of customers ready to pay for your help. But, for some reason, Facebook ads feels difficult. You’ve probably heard the same stories that I have of a creator who turns on ads and steps away for the weekend, only to wake up Monday morning to bill for thousands of dollars and no leads to show for the ad spend. This is something you probably can’t set it and forget it, at least as you’re gettinng started. I wanted to understand more about using ads and the analytics we need to pay attention to when we start using them to maximize our experience. So I invited Facebook ad strategist and founder of the Successful Ads Club, Tara Zirker, to walk me through all of this. We talked about how to scale a business with ads on a tiny budget… like $10 a day… what metrics you need to watch, what to test and what you can not bother with and a lot more. I’ve been on Tara’s list for quite a while and really appreciate her approach for running ads to your business… and yes, this works for service businesses like copywriters and content writers. Tara is about to tell us all how to do that in this interview. Before we get to my interview with Tara, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. If you haven’t jumped in to see what the Underground includes, now is the time. It’s guaranteed, which means you can join and if you don’t find the resources you need to grow your business, just let us know and we’ll refund your money. But I doubt that will be your experience because The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more and join today by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.  And now, my interview with Tara Zirker… Tara, welcome to the podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here, as I was telling you, right before we hit record. But before we get into all of this stuff around Facebook, Facebook ads and your expertise, just tell me how you got to where you are. How did you become the expert in Facebook ads?  Tara Zirker: Thanks so much, Rob. I'm so happy to be here and talk to your community.

In a world where A.I. can write all of the words for free, what is a copywriter to do? What tools should they adopt and how should they approach artificial intelligence? I invited Petter Magnusson, the creator of PurposeWrite, to join me on The Copywriter Club Podcast to discuss these questions and talk through how copywriters can use tools like his to serve our clients better. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Petter on LinkedIn PurposeWrite (sign up for a free trial) The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: It’s been three years since ChatGPT launched and changed the world. So what does A.I. mean for copywriting today? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. When OpenA.I. released the first version of ChatGPT to the public, what had been a quiet conversation about artificial intelligence happening mostly behind the scenes suddenly burst into our collective consciousness. Writers and creators in particular were suddenly aware that at least at some level, these large language models could do some of the work we were being hired to do. Many of us dove into these tools to see what they could do. We launched a short-lived podcast that talked about how A.I. was impacting so many different ways of working, certainly within marketing, but also in many other industries. You can find the 20+ episodes of that podcast on The Copywriter Club website. Since that time, the dust has settled a bit. The A.I. tools have gotten a bit better. Image creation tools are significantly better. Writing tools have also improved, but it remains true today that the best copywriters seem to be able to use them to get the best outputs… if you want good copy, copy that captures attention and converts readers into buyers, it helps a lot to have a copywriter guide the inputs and rework the outputs you get from the A.I. model of your choice. Another thing we’ve seen in over the past couple of years is that while tools like ChatGPT and Claude get most of the headlines, lots of other tools have added components of artificial intelligence to improve their products, speed up useage, and make applications more sticky. At the same time we’ve seen the launch of job-specific A.I. tools that do one thing… like writing emails, or writing articles at speeds humans simply can’t match. So when it comes to A.I., where are we headed next? What tools will we be using to get better results? And how helpful is it to have a user or prompt engineer or copywriter who really knows what they’re doing versus just playing around to see what they can get a model to do? I asked Petter Magnusson, the developer of PurposeWrite to talk a bit about A.I., the tool he’s built, and also the broader environment of artificial intelligence and where he sees us going from here. And because whatever happens with A.I. will have a big impact on copywriters, this is a topic I may come back to in the coming weeks. This whole industry is fascinating. The speed of change is a bit scary.  During our conversation, I had a realization. In the past copywriters charged for the things we delivered… the words. Officially we sold blog posts or sales pages or emails or some other copy, but it was the words that clients expected to get. But now that ChatGPT can produce the words pretty much for free, we need to move up the value chain and sell the process, the strategy, the analysis, and the ideas. And bringing that to the A.I. model you use will make the outputs there so much better. Any way… I think this is a discussion you’ll enjoy. Before we get to my interview with Petter, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—an...

Building a simple business should be, well, simple. But it's not. So I invited business consultant Justin Wise to join me for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about all the complex ideas that go into building a simple business that supports you (and not the other way around). We covered a lot of ground from content creation to positioning to offers and more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Justin's Newsletter Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Transcript: Rob Marsh: What does it take to create and run a truly simple copywriting business? We’re going to talk about that today on The Copywriter Club Podcast. One of the many reasons that business owners fail at running their businesses is complexity—and by the way, this includes copywriters and content writers who own and run their own businesses too. We can serve so many kinds of clients and do so many kinds of work and even serve a bunch of different niches. And with all those options, we sometimes create a business that has lots of offers, and lots of messages to appeal to lots of different prospects. There are people who make that work, but this kind of complexity burns most of us out. So I invited business consultant and founder of Simple Business, Justin Wise, to talk about what we need to do to build a truly simple business that doesn’t require 60 hours of work a week to keep running. We cover a lot of ideas or levers in this episode… dailish emails, simple offers, customer journeys, pricing, content creation, sharing content…it all comes down to how you talk about what you do and who you do it for… differently. Differentiation is one of those things that a lot of copywriters tend to struggle with. We do so many of the same things that seeing what makes you different is really hard, especially when we’re sitting inside our own businesses. Someone once said, you can’t read the label from inside the bottle. That’s so true when applied to your copywriting business.  Figuring out the thing that makes you different from all of the other writers out there is critical. And if you can do it, you’ll probably not struggle to connect with your ideal clients and land bigger, higher paying projects. Justin and I also talked about the pressure to be producing all the content, talking about all the things on all the platforms and how none of that leads to a simple business.  I think you’ll like this discussion that Justin and I had so stick around. Before we get to my interview with Justin, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn or YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Justin Wise… Justin, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. I would love to start just by hearing your story and how you became basically an advisor to literally hundreds of companies that are trying to differentiate and simplify and find an audience and make money. So how did you get here? Justin Wise: Well, it's the standard career path that everybody takes, unemployed house painter to pastor to business owner. Rob Marsh: There you go,

Want your copy to stand out and get notice? Communication Specialist Sam Horn is my guest for the 443rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Sam talks about how to take "regular" ideas and make them "pop". If you want to get noticed by potential clients, or want to help your clients get noticed by their customers, this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Sam's LinkedIn Pop!: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title and Tagline for Anything by Sam Horn Tongue Fu by Sam Horn The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Want your copy to get noticed and remembered? There are a couple of simple tricks that will help you do that. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. The ability to help your clients get noticed and remembered is one of the main things they pay you for. And to find clients in the first place, you need to be able to get prospects to notice and remember you. If you can’t do this one thing… you really can’t help them with anything else because they never engage with you. There are lots of psychological techniques that help people notice you… or help people remember you… or make people want to engage with you. So what are they? I asked communication specialist Sam Horn to walk through some of these techniques. Sam is the author of the book Pop: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything. She walked me through a bunch of the tricks she uses to coin new phrases so her readers raise their eyebrows. One of the things you’ll notice as you listen is that Sam uses these techniques as she talks with me… you’ll hear rhymes, juxtapositions, cliches, and patterns that demonstrate exactly what she is sharing as we talk. The ideas and insights we discuss go well beyond typical persuasion techniques like urgency and scarcity to create a more fun, human, and interesting connection between the ideas you write about and your audience. This is a different sort of interview… because Sam actually workshops an idea for a presentation I am planning on offering to listeners of this podcast. As she goes through the ideas I share with her, you’ll notice she starts throwing out ideas and insights I might use when I’m ready to share my presentation. It demonstrates the insights she shares—especially her advice to show the shift as we communicate what we sell. Near the end of the interview, Sam walked me through the questions she asks as she starts writing a book—and she’s written a bunch of them. If you’re thinking of writing a book yourself, some of these questions may be useful for you. I think you’ll like what Sam has to share. Before we get to my interview with Sam, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. Unless you are hitting the 30 second skip button when you get to this point of the show, you are no doubt familiar with The Copywriter Underground. I talk about it every week. The Underground includes more than 70 different workshops—and accompanying playbooks to help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. The Playbooks make it easy to find quick solutions to the challenges you face in your business everything from finding clients, conducting sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn YouTube or Pinterest, and dozens of other workshops. You also get dozens of templates, including a legal agreement you can use with your clients, monthly coaching, regular copy and funnel critiques, and more. You can learn more by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. And now, my interview with Sam Horn… Sam, welcome to the copywriter club podcast. I would, I mean, I'm thrilled to have you here. You know, author of nine books, everything about language and communication. But before we get into all of that stuff. I would like to know how you got here. How did you become an author, speaker coach, I guess, an intrigue expert,

What's the best way to learn copywriting? Could it be hand-writing sales pages and other great copy from expert copywriters like Mel Martin and Gary Bencivenga? My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour, a program designed to help you learn to write by hand-copying great copy. We also talked about getting affiliates, mentoring, and a lot more. If you want to improve your copywriting skills, be sure to listen to this episode (and click here to learn about the CopyHour program). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: The CopyHour Course Gary Bencivenga's Olive Oil Sales Page The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: What’s the best way to learn copywriting? Would it surprise you that handwriting great copy is possibly the most successful technique? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. There must be something like a thousand different courses for copywriters to learn how to write copy. And probably another thousand more that talk about content—as if it’s a separate skill set. And there are probably an additional thousand more free videos in places like YouTube that promise to teach you the skills you need to succeed as a copywriter. With that many choices out there, you would think the world would be crammed full of phenomenally skilled copywriters, but it’s not. This should tell us that not all courses or workshops that promise to teach writers how to write copy and content actually work. So what does work? Is there a course out there that many copywriters talk about or recommend when it comes to writing engaging sales or conversion copy? And it turns out there is. One course recommended by people like Dan Ferrari, Chris Orzechowski, Elise Savaki, and hundreds of others is called CopyHour. Unlike many other courses, CopyHour focuses on handwriting great copy. Does that really work? I asked Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour to be my guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to answer questions like… why does hand-writing teach copy structure and pacing where other methods don’t appear to have the same level of success?  We talked about the genesis and evolution of the CopyHour program and what it includes… things like writing great offers, writing headlines and bullets, and how Derek has improved the course over time. Now I want to be upfront about something… I came to this interview as a bit of a skeptic when it comes to hand-writing copy. I’m all in on studying good examples of emails, sales pages, and other good copy. In fact, I have a swipe file with more than 500 different sales pages that I’ve saved to study… those swipes are part of The Copywriter Underground… But handwriting? I wasn’t so sure… I think Derek may have changed my mind. And if you’re a skeptic on this topic, you may want to hear what he says about the science of handwriting and learning. If you’re convinced by the end of this episode that you want to know more, you can go to thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour to find out more about Derek’s course. It’s open for new members the week this episode goes live, so check it out today… thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour Before we get to my interview with Derek, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve recently rebuilt The Underground dashboard to make finding the ideas and insights you need easier. But as I started recreating this new dashboard, it occurred to me that no one has time to watch more than 70 different workshops—even for those workshops that help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. So I’ve taken more than 30 of those workshops on finding clients, having sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn, and dozens of others… and I’ve created playbooks that break down the ideas in the workshops into...

Yes, you write. But when it comes to marketing, you can do a lot more than that. Today, clients are looking for help from specialists like copywriters who bring more to the table. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I spoke with Emily Reagan about how writers can offer additional services and expertise to their clients. Emily helps virtual assistants step up into a more helpful role as Marketing Assistants, and it's something we think more copywriters need to consider. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff we mentioned: Atomic Habits Emily’s Podcast Emily’s Instagram The Authority Framework The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  You’re a copywriter, but you can do other marketing stuff like design or email systems. Is there a need for that? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. As a copywriter, you probably have a hand in all kinds of marketing activities—everything from the overall marketing strategy to brainstorming lead magnets, to creating and posting content, or writing and managing ads, to figuring out which email systems will help increase engagement and purchases… you probably already do a lot of this stuff. What’s more, a lot of clients want smaller, more nimble teams these days, and that means working with people who can do more of the tasks they used to depend on an entire team to get done. Some people taking on these expanded roles call themselves marketing assistants. Whether that title works for you or not isn’t important. What really matters is that there is a growing need for writers of all kinds to take on this larger, more inclusive role and contribute more, often using A.I. to bring it all together. My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Emily Reagan. Emily started out offering marketing support especially related to Facebook ads, but she expanded beyond that to include copywriting and other marketing services. And she’s spent the past couple of years helping others do the same thing. We talked about the importance of adding additional marketing services to your copywriting business to make yourself more valuable—maybe even indispensable—for your clients. It’s yet another way to stand out from all the other writers out there who don’t offer clients anything extra. While we talked, Emily also shared a lot of details about her business—she works with clients and helps other writers grow their marketing skills. As she tells it, her business grew serendipitously… going from one thing to the next as it made sense. It’s not exactly a path that others can follow, but it is a strategy for finding your own path to the work you love doing. I think you’re going to like this discussion. As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve recently rebuilt The Underground dashboard to make it easier to find the ideas and insights you need. But as I started recreating this new dashboard, it occurred to me that no one has time to watch more than 70 different workshops—even for those workshops that help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. So I’ve taken more than 30 of those workshops on finding clients, having sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn, and dozens of others… and I’ve created playbooks that break down the ideas in the workshops into easy-to-follow steps. Each playbook is 3-5 pages long. You can read through one and implement the ideas in minutes. And then if you want more detail, you can watch the accompanying workshop. Each playbook even includes a checklist so you don’t miss any steps and can make sure you get things done. I’m working on completing playbooks for all of the workshops and training inside The Underground. They should all be ready by the end of April. You can get the first 30 or so right now by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

When most writers think about ghostwriting, they think books. But there's a huge opportunity to ghost for business leaders who need content... articles, blog posts, speeches and more. In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob is talking with Allison Evelyn (Ally) about how she pivoted from Day Rates and standard copy projects to ghost writing for clients—and how she's leveraging that work to ghostwrite books in the future. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Allison's Website Allison's Podcast: Holy F Allison's Instagram Get her freebie: Ghostwriter Gold The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Transcript: Rob Marsh:  When you think of ghostwriting, do you think of books? If so, you’re thinking small. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. We’ve talked with several copywriters, from time to time, over the past eight years, who have talked about ghostwriting. Most of those episodes focused on large projects like ghostwriting books—the in-depth process for writing a book and connecting with the kinds of clients who need help from someone who can write their book. But ghostwriting is more than that. Ghostwriting includes any project where a writer steps into the shoes of their client to write something in their name. It can be blog posts, articles published online, emails, webinar scripts, and more.  When you look beyond the book world, the opportunity for ghostwriters is huge. Landing these clients isn’t dramatically different from the way that you find, pitch, and close regular clients… though there are differences. Usually, as a ghostwriter, you’re not writing for lower-level employees. Rather, you’re writing for founders, CEOs, and other high-level thinkers, so your work needs to be able to reflect that. In fact, your pitches may need to include ideas and insights that a client can use to show up as a thought leader in their business and niche. Landing work with ghost-writing clients means you need to show up and be recognized at this higher level. My guest for this week is Allison Evelyn, that’s her professional name— she mostly goes by Ally. Ally’s been on the podcast before when we talked about an earlier version of her business. Over the past four or five years, the kind of work she does and the kinds of clients she works with have changed quite a bit. When we recorded that earlier episode, Ally was a member of The Copywriter Think Tank. She also taught several workshops about day rates and the kind of work copywriters can get done on those kinds of projects (one of those workshops is in The Copywriter Underground today). With all the changes she’s seen in her business and her personal life, I was excited to catch up with Ally and learn more about her role as a ghostwriter for some prominent online voices. I wish we could talk about a few of them by name, but as a ghostwriter, you usually need to stay behind the scenes so your clients can shine. Even if you’re not interested in ghostwriting for clients, a lot of what Ally shares in this interview about working with clients applies to the normal back and forth with all clients, and if you put her suggestions to work in your business, I promise, you’ll be more successful. Make sure you take notes as you listen to this one. As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. No matter what kind of copywriting business you want for yourself, The Underground is packed with resources to show up as a business owner—not just a freelancer, find clients, and solve big problems that clients are happy to pay big money to get off their plates. From copywriting and business templates to get you started (including a legal document and a proven onboarding process) to workshops to help you build your authority, attract clients, create products and services your clients want to buy, and more—The Underground is like a starter-kit for your business… o...

A lot of copywriters want to expand their businesses beyond client work. But what does it take to do that? How do you come up with a new offer? And how  do you test whether your audience actually wants it? Ross O'Lochlainn is my guest for the 439th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. He shares what it takes to come up with and validate a new offer. We also talked about how he found his first clients (and idea that works today) and how A.I. is affecting marketing and a lot more. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: Ross' Website The Client Studio How to Write Like a MoFo 10 Energizing Hook Frames The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:  How do you go from copywriter or content writer to problem solver and irresistible offer maker for your clients? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast. A lot of copywriters jump into client work with both feet, they find some success and create a business that makes money, but also find that it takes a lot of time they may have been hoping to use for non-work activities. Spending time with family. Having lunch with a friend. Or taking in a movie in the middle of the day. Serving clients is time-intensive whether you’re doing research, writing copy, managing the client relationship, or looking for and pitching your next client. And of course, there’s the bookkeeping and marketing and the other basic office stuff that takes up time. It’s pretty common that copywriters tell me they want to change up their business a bit so they have more time for the personal things they want to fit into their days. But the constant stream of client work makes it hard to fit in the other options like products for your niche or templatized services ready to buy off the shelf and easy to fulfill on. And once you have an offer you want to make… how do you test whether it will work with your audience? How do you find the problems you can solve or the gains your potential clients want to get? On this episode you’re going to hear about a process that can help with that validation and how you identify not just the problem, but the kind of client you want to work with on these non-copy products. My guest for this week is Ross O’Lochlainn. I met Ross a few years ago when he came to our Copywriter Club in Real Life Event in Brooklyn. Since then, Ross has built a pretty unique business where he works a few hours a day helping his clients solve big problems. Then he spends his free time training in Brazilian Ju Jitsu and spending time with his wife. Ross is a copywriter but he does far more than just write copy. He’s become an expert in client attraction, moving customers into high-paid coaching opportunities and like I said a moment ago, solving big marketing problems. From the outside, it appears to be a great business model, so I wanted to see how Ross built that business and what we can learn from his approach. As we talked Ross also shared the idea that having a product is not enough. Having a lead magnet is not enough. There’s some alchemy to making the elements work together to generate a “lead with intent”. The intent here makes a ton of difference. Finding “perfect fit” prospects to join your email isn’t easy. And Ross shares how he does it. Oh, and we talk about A.I. in this one too. You’ll want to listen to this episode right up to the closing credits. It’s a good one. As usual, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. This episode is all about creating a business that works for you and provides you with the time you need for the life you want to live. And The Underground is packed with resources to help you gain confidence and help your clients solve big problems like Ross does. From templates to get you started (including a legal document and a proven onboarding process) to workshops to help you build your authority, attract clients,