In today’s episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, I sit down with copywriter, John Mckie. John works with business owners just like you to help them reach more people and change more lives using the written word. He believes that when used correctly, the ‘right’ words can captivate the mind, evoke emotion and create memories and transformations that last a lifetime.
I have personally worked with John to writer our evergreen sales sequence for Online Course Blueprint. He truly has such a unique, authentic, non-spammy approach that actually generates results.
And so today, John and I are going to talk all about copywriting – what it is, what to do if you think you’re a ‘bad writer’, how to write sales copy that doesn’t feel cringe-y or spammy, and so much more.
Links:
- Check out John’s website here: https://www.johnmckie.com/
- Connect with John on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mckie-%F0%9F%9A%80-571910159/
- Follow John on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/johnmckie_/
- Check out our Online Course Blueprint evergreen funnel here to see John’s copywriting in action (fill in the form and you’ll automatically receive the emails): https://www.onlinecourseblueprint.info/profitableonlinecoursetopic
Episode Transcript:
In today’s episode, I sit down with John McKie. John is an incredible copywriter based out of the UK, who works with business owners just like you to help them reach more people and change more lives using the written word.
John believes that when used correctly, the right words can captivate the mind, evoke a emotion, and create memories and transformations that last a lifetime. And I have personally worked with John a couple of times to help me with copywriting for my business specifically, we work together for online course Blueprint where he actually wrote our evergreen email sales funnel. So that’s the sales funnel that just works in the background. Evergreen. When people watch our free training, they get a sent a series of 10 emails, I believe it is. And so he was the one who helped us write those, and he truly has such a unique, authentic, non spammy approach that actually generates results.
Today, John and I are going to talk all about copywriting, what it is, what to do if you identify as a quote unquote bad writer, how to write sales copy that doesn’t feel cringey or spammy, and so much more So let’s jump into the episode. John, welcome to the podcast. Feel free to say hey to the audience. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited. I’m so excited to talk. I love talking about copywriting, so if it can help anyone, amazing. Good. And this is, honestly, I think this is the first time that we’ve really talked about copywriting actually on this podcast.
And this is, this will be episode 130 something. I know of 130 something episodes we haven’t really talked about copywriting, so this is actually a very exciting topic. This is a very new topic. It’s great for the audience. Totally. Okay, so let’s go back. I wanna hear a little bit more about your business backstory.
I always think that’s just so interesting to hear. And this is a group of people listening who are either aspiring or current entrepreneurs and we all like to learn more about how other people got started. So yeah. Can you share a little bit more about your business backstory? So what path brought you to what you’re doing today?
Yeah, so essentially, interest enough, it was probably the pandemic that really started for me, which. From what I hear of a lot of people changed a lot, right? The good and the bad changed a lot for everyone. And, I was in a, I worked at hospital and I was in a job that I’d been in for I don’t know, maybe seven years.
In that particular kind of role, I couldn’t go any further and I just got to the point where I was like, I don’t know where else I’m gonna go now. Like I feel like I’ve got too much in me to give to other people, but I don’t know how, I can’t articulate that. And I felt like there was, I think we’ve all, maybe it’s the entrepreneur thing, but we all have something in us, right?
The voice that says you can offer more, you can do more than what you’re doing. And I didn’t know what that was like back, I say back then a bit further behind what, like 20. 18, 19 maybe. And then I came across, I think I was looking through career choices. I genuinely was like just Googling what skill I was thinking, what skills do I have?
I feel like we’ve all been there. What did I do in my career? Google how to make more money online. All those, yeah. Willard stuff. But yeah, I was, I must have been looking through something like that and then it came up with copyrights. I think it was like the most. Most diverse jobs in 20, whatever it was.
And it on the list there, I was like just going through kind of some of, I was like, oh copyright. I haven’t like really come across that term. And I genuinely thought like it was legal. Everyone always thinks it’s like copywriting, like it’s like taking someone’s trademark or you’d like you’re a lawyer or something.
Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. Yeah. So I then just started to look into it a bit more basically. And I started to searching a bit more copyright, started to watch videos, trying to understand, and I was actually like, You know what I always said that I could write and people said that generally I could write and then I was like, maybe there’s something here.
Because in part of my job was writing, helped write like complaint letters, which isn’t great, cuz it was from people that had bad experiences I guess. However, I enjoyed the process of writing. I loved like structuring things and then, almost telling a story. I’ve always loved storytelling and it grew from there.
So then I took a course. And then just did that in the evenings, really alongside my job until I realized that I was all right at it, other people. All right, I was all right at it. And then wanted to pay me, and that’s really genuine, like how it started really. And then I started doing stuff like that and started seeing real success.
And then you just go down a rabbit hole, right? Like you just then go down and I was properly in the copy matrix I was in fully immersed. And and I just built it from there. So then I built that kind of on the side to my. My full-time job and then left and then started the business fully.
So yeah it’s been crazy, but to think of it, it was only a few years, just Matt. But, and yes. How quickly things can change. Yeah. And so on that note, how long did it take you from the time that you started your side hustle to when you actually left your full-time job? I reckon about 18 months.
Okay. Wow. Maybe, yeah, maybe a little bit less. And I think that’s probably my personality type. Like I’m quite an all in person and I think that probably helped me immerse to a degree. And yeah, I was I genuinely probably would’ve stayed longer if it was me. Like I would’ve done the really safe thing and maybe reduced how many hours I was doing, like maybe I would’ve gone part-time.
My, in my job. And then, but that wasn’t an option at the time, and that kind of wasn’t offered really, or it wasn’t accepted in that way. So I was like, you know what, let’s just I had this mindset that I could always go back. I could always find another nine to five or I could always find it.
And yeah. And it paid off so it’s, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Amazing. And so tell us about the services that you offer now. What does that look like? Yeah, so for me I tend to so for me it’s like I’m a launch copywriter, what I call is a launch copywriter know. I really like help.
Helping people when they have something either they’re relaunching or getting out into the world, maybe they’ve refreshed it or maybe they’re starting brand new and they genuinely don’t know how to structure it. I wanna put this out in the world. I a don’t know how to write.
I don’t understand how to sell it to people. I’m not sure if I have to email them or, I don’t know. I haven’t got like a. Page for anyone to go onto. And I started doing that a bit more especially in the early days. And then that kind of grew into like communities, like people, and I think like towards the end of last year, particularly this year, I still think it’s gonna be massive, is people really now wanna build communities.
Like they’ve built such an online presence now. They want to build, little pockets of communities, whatever that is. Whether they’re dietitians or Whether they’re marketers or whether they’re copywriters, or whether they’re just business owners, like to be around other people. And so I started to move in those circles.
Really so for me, I offer, like launch packages. So people that kind of get their stuff out there, I offer like what I call, I have it as what I call as the grow, launch, maintain. So to grow is to let’s say you’ve got a. Very basic email list or you just started one. It’s about growing that sort of list.
Then it’s about launch and then it’s about maintaining. So regularly communicating with your kind of members and or your general kind of like list. I’ve honed it to those sort of three areas. I still do other odd sort of bits here and there, but generally I’m in that sort of lane, really.
Awesome. And so now I think is a good time to define what copywriting actually means, and that it doesn’t have to do with legal copywriting. Yeah. So can you just tell us in layman’s terms, what is copywriting? Yeah. Okay. So in the most simplest terms, I. I always like the description. There’s like a river.
There’s always a very clear direct flow, and you want someone, something to happen at the end of that river. Think of it like a waterfall. There’s always something. So copyright essentially is helping people take action. So whether that’s, in the most simplest term, it says, click here.
You are essentially making people, take action, sign up for a program, click here to buy those kind of things. It’s, yeah, it’s taking, helping people take action where whether they land on your page or your social media, they, because they always cross over, right? You always get this kind of what is copywriting?
What is content writing? And they are really, they do crossover, but copywriting generally is very tunnel vision. There’s a start and end. It’s very clear. And there’s not any sort of tangents. You want someone to end up in a particular place and copyright is almost like the roadmap you’re laying out for them to follow, essentially.
So you’re using language, you’re using written word to prompt somebody to make a decision. Absolutely. Yeah. And you’re doing it the right way. And I do believe strongly in that because look, anyone, that’s an important piece. Oh, massively. You, like anyone can make someone buy something if you really want it to.
But how many lip tip do you wanna be, like how, what sort of person do you wanna be? Because what does that do for the rest of your brand, for the rest of your business Eventually, I always think the people that do that clickbait stuff, and it’s interesting because clickbait in general gets a bad rep, like the word clickbait.
You generally think it’s like spam. Yeah. But actually way back when clickbait was there to help people take action. But of course it gets, manipulated I guess. But I just think eventually you’ll get found out, right? Yeah. Like even if you try to, yeah, great. I’ve got a hundred people to sign up, but I’ve got ’em to sign up with something I’m not promising or I can’t deliver.
So it’s about doing it ethically. You want to really align with people, meet them where they’re at and just if you’ve got something you can offer someone that genuinely helps and serves them and get them to a better place, then perfect. Yeah. That’s so important. And so one of the. Roadblocks that I hear from a lot of my audience with regards to the idea of writing and copywriting.
I think that there’s a few. The first one is that I, they feel like they don’t know how to sell stuff. Like they don’t know how to talk from a sales perspective. But also I think the earlier roadblock is that there’s a lot of people that feel like they’re, quote unquote bad writers. Can you become a better writer? And if so, how? 100% yes you can. Of course, like in most fields, you’re gonna get people that have an exceptional gift for something. Let’s not just say you couldn’t have someone else that if, if you work at it in that sense, however, I actually think the best writing comes from bad writing.
And if you speak to any half decent copywriter, they will always say your, like your first draft of anything is awful and is never good. It’s more of a brain dump. You’re loading in everything you think you wanna cover and things like that. So I noticed, particularly in my early days when I.
I was, you look back on it, don’t you? Everything you do, you look back and you go, oh my God, what was I doing? Yeah. And I think you could do that now. I could do this two months ago and still go, oh, what was I doing in there? But it’s just, that’s part of the sort of the journey. Yeah. But I broke things down into what I would call perspective, intention and purpose.
Generally, most kind of copyright fell within those brackets. So like when you look at perspective things like who’s your audience, how do they view things, how aware are they? For example, and I spoke about this recently on a social media post, was. Let’s take a brand like Apple for example, really well known the world over most people.
You could just say the word Apple and they instantly can see a logo, they can understand what they do and those sort of things. Yeah. If you are a fresh entrepreneur or business owner who’s launching something that, let’s just say it’s tech, cause I’ve just picked on Apple, you wouldn’t be able to use the same tone and language that Apple would because they’ve got an avid audience that is tuned into them.
They know the brand instantly, so there’s not as much. Nurturing and education needed, but if you’ve got someone that’s completely unaware you, the, they don’t match. So you’ve gotta really meet your audience. Where they’re at, understand who you are talking to and that kind of and that can come from where you are writing.
So like for example, if you’re writing your email list, generally those people know a little bit about you cause they’ve signed up for you. They, they know roughly what you offer. They might have an idea of how you can help them, but they don’t know much more. So you would speak and write, say for example, in a way.
That would align with that. You wouldn’t go very basic and you wouldn’t go really advanced where they’re like, this is, I don’t understand what’s happening. So I think perspective is, you know who your audience is, how aware are they, what matters to them, really go into who is that person you’re talking to and how can you help them?
In particular, in relation to sorry. How do they think in relation to your offer? So what I mean by that is, if you are starting as a. I don’t know. Let’s just say you’ve just started an online program and you’ve got one program that is $500, I don’t know, and another one that’s 10,000.
How do they think in relation to that amount of money? So then your language would change and your tone would change. So really hone in on almost one person. And people will call this a customer avatar. They will call it all different types, and you’ll probably see things all over the internet.
It says right to one person, not to many, because you wanna attract a particular type of person so you can. Make these little fake profiles and they’re great, but they give you as if you are. I’m sat there now and I’m, I could be right into Krista, and that’s the person I’m talking to, and I’ll attract everyone that has those kind of beliefs.
So perspective is the first one. Intention. So this is like the how, how can they buy, how do you deliver what you do differently to others? How can they work with you and what’s that feel like? So it’s what’s so special about what you offer? And what separates you and what kind of pulls you apart And then purpose.
So what’s the point? Like we said, where do we want them to end up? For example, if you’re emailing your list once a month or twice a month, you’re not necessarily gonna be constantly click here to sign up. It’s more about nurturing, educating. There’s not necessarily gonna be like a clear kind of end goal there, but Yeah, it’s plan everything first, and if you are bad, I would, my first advice, and I always call this I dunno if you’ve seen the movie Dodge Ball.
So there’s a piece, there’s a piece in there when he says, turn your Franken fine. And Frankenstein into a Franken fine. And I always say this like about whatever you’re writing, just brain dump everything in that you want to cover. A little bit about you and then where you want to end up.
Just start with that and then break it down. Think about how it, reads to you as a viewer. What would you almost have to separate yourself from your own work, and that’s really tough. And even copywriters. I struggle writing my own content. And that’s why you find copyrights hire another copywriters.
Yeah. Because you can’t step out sometimes. Like it’s really difficult to zoom out. So I, it’s almost try to think of yourself as your own client or as another business owner you are, because you tend to be able to take the emotion away and notice Yeah. Where things are going wrong.
Does that, it’s a lot of information there, but No, that’s fantastic. I really appreciate that framework. I think a framework is always so helpful for how do you structure written copy. And I find and that’s one of the reasons why I found it so helpful. When I hired you for online course blueprint, you helped me out to write the launch copy for that program.
And just to your point around, sometimes it can be so hard as the business owner to remove yourself. And to think about how does a to write for beginners or to think about what is that person? And from a dietitian’s perspective to think about, I’m somebody who’s sitting here with six plus years of education in nutrition.
I don’t really remember what it’s like to not know anything about nutrition. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s where my ideal client is sitting. Yeah. So that’s a tough. Process, but it’s an important reminder. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is. And I’ve sat and because like you say, because you get so into it, I could sit and then use a load of terms and talk to people, and then you zoom out and you go John, they’re not, they don’t understand that level of it.
You don’t, and you don’t need to go there either. Some people like will get so caught up and actually would almost cause inaction. It would cause them to not write because they’ll think they’re not going into enough detail or they’re not so I think you’re right. Like a framework is great.
A framework is brilliant. If you can just, even if you can stick to a, just like you would have a book, right? A beginning to middle and end. Yeah. Think of it like that. Really simple process. Yeah. And I think that principle can be applied to, regardless of whether it’s an Instagram post, a page on your website a sales page or an email that you’re sending out, I think those principles still apply. Yeah. Yeah. What do you want them to do? Yeah. How are you gonna start and what’s the story? Yeah. If you want ’em to keep it really simple. Yeah. And so what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that business owners make when it comes to copywriting?
They make it about them. Not their audience. And I think that’s what you’ve got, I think people have gotta remember that the idea of copywriting is to get them into you. And if you start off with. Oh, the opening line is back in 2015 when I did this and I did that and it’s oh me.
So it sounds awful. Yeah. Because there is that element of it and it’s definitely needed, especially when people wanna know a bit more about you. But es in the off, like from the beginning, the instant kind of like almost hook for attention or to open that kind of loop where they’re gonna want to know more is you’re gonna be one of solving.
Something that they’re struggling with, bring it to attention that are you struggling to launch your online course in the next 30 days? God, yeah, I am. Then once that door’s open, then there’s a kind of a different avenue. So I think a lot of people think that they have to instantly showcase why they’re the best person to help them when really.
It’s all about the audience. It’s all about them. What are you offering for them? And I think that’s a great way to review anything, like an email or anything you put on social media. Just really be critical in the five minutes before you hit post or send am I offering so much value where people go, I want to wait for the next email.
I need to see what they post next, because I’ve been able to take something actionable and actually deliver it and it’s worked and it’s proven rather than. Oh, look at me. I’ve done $10,000 selling this program, or so yeah, I think just zoom out a little bit and think more about what the offer is for the person, how you help them.
Because eventually people will see, like I say, see the light, but people will get the point that who are they gonna trust, right? If you see my content constantly just delivering value over value, at some point you’re gonna go, you know what, I need someone to help me. Ro writer launch campaign.
I, I trust this guy. He delivers value here. Now I’ll reach out. So it is, it’s definitely a relationship building kind of aspect. But yeah, focus really on delivering value to your audience, and it can be hard. Because it’s not gonna be necessarily a quick win or an instant, I think in a day and age where it’s instant gratification, isn’t it?
Like you can go on Amazon and you can get something delivered the next day. You don’t have to go and rent a DVD anymore. You can get on Netflix instantly, and people get great feedback straight away. Whereas times like these, and when you are play, you’re doing things the right way and ethically, and you wanna build good relationships, particularly if you are just starting out or if you wanna build a community.
It’s about relationship building and what can you offer to your, how can you serve your audience? And then eventually yeah it’ll happen. I really like that point just around trusting. The valuable content that you put out there into the world to do a lot of that sales work for you, right?
It’s like when you’re putting really good stuff out there that just truly adds value and truly helps people, that sa or that trust is almost becomes a little bit inherent. It becomes attached to you. Yeah. As yeah, the brand, which is. Yeah, it’s really cool. And then I think there’s less pressure on you needing to have the exact perfect, sales message in your one email because it’s no.
Yeah, a hundred percent. The trust is already there. Yeah. And then you don’t put so much pressure on what you’re writing. Yeah. Like you still follow a great framework. You still follow the kind of like principles, but you can be yourself. You don’t have to put something pressure on the hard sell. And because you’ve already nurtured an audience that can trust you Yeah.
You’re just gonna continue to deliver the same thing. Yeah. And I think that this is a good prompt for people to go and do a little audit of their websites and see does your homepage start with, hi, my name is Krista and I do this. Yeah. Cause I know mine should have in the past. Yeah.
Yeah. And like you should still have information. Of course. Absolutely. You still have biased, you still have a great about page Cause where do people go? They get the homepage and then they go to the about page cause they wanna learn about the person. You absolutely still should. But it shouldn’t be always focused on what you offer as a service.
Yeah. Or what you deliver. It should be helping. It should be showcasing how you help your audience overcome that struggle, and then why your service is the thing that helps them. Yeah. That’s such an important point, especially for this group of people because I think dietitians and often health professionals, we tend to be.
Types of people who value and wanna talk about credentials and education and you trust me because I have this education under my belt and all of my credentials and that’s why you should trust me. But, and absolutely there’s a time and place for that, but I think it’s it’s such an important point to just.
Make sure that’s actually not the f that’s actually not the focus, cuz that’s actually not what makes people trust you. Yeah. Yeah. I think I remember, like I was toying with the idea of Stein like a program for myself like a year or so ago, and someone that reached out to me that potentially was interested.
I think one of the things they said to me was, if I’d seen more of your content, like over a longer period, it would’ve been different. But maybe then I would have to pay less because I don’t necessarily know where you’ve come from. In that sense, because I was still so early, and then that got me thinking yeah, if you were just consistently, being there and delivering value and de, delivering value, then it’s way easier to overcome objections from people, whether that’s a financial thing or whether that’s a.
You’re worried about that person helping them. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So can you talk for a minute about what exactly a launch is? So you mentioned that you specialize in launch copywriting. What exactly, what is a launch? Yeah. It doesn’t have to be something new. A lot of people think you’ve gotta create a whole new thing, and then it’s put now in the world, for example, like my services, they’ve always been there.
But I may look and, do a promo. For example, you see this all the time with Valentine’s Day, those kind of things. Like anything where you’ve got an end kind of date, a fixed kind of end date that you wanna deliver something by, that’s what I would class as a launch. So I might get someone reaching out to me and say, look I’m just about to open the doors to my next cohort of a community.
I want to really, focus in on my social media. Can we can you help write a launch the specific kind of like around my sort of social media or whatever that is? So this could be an, it doesn’t have to be new, it can be a re, revamp, it could be a new doors opening on a cohort.
It’s just what I would say is when you’ve essentially got a, today’s the day or the doors open and you’ve got doors closed, it is a very clear, defined start and finish. Kind of point because you’ll have things, particularly if you’re offering those sort of services all year round, that will stay open way round.
Like some people that have memberships might keep their doors open all the time, but they may run a promo campaign for seven days where they say, because it’s my birthday this week, I’m gonna be, so that’s what I would deem as a launch. There’s a fixed start and an end and you are almost.
Pointing people, you are, you’re almost pulling people in, like, how can I put it? Almost like octopus tentacles, right? Yeah. Each one is a different customer touchpoint. You might have your email list, your social media campaign. You might run some ads. Particularly in, in the beginning, you, you probably wouldn’t.
You’d just keep to nurture nurturing the people, you might be doing some. Outreach to people and you’re feeding them all in to essentially the body, which is, you’ll have some form of landing page or a sales page where they can learn more and sign up. And so it’s like you’re putting concentrated effort into promoting something in a defined period of time.
And so for dietitians who are, they run private practices. So what that means is that they’re seeing patients or clients one-on-one. And typically that’s more of an evergreen model where people will just come, they’ll find them, they’ll book an appointment, and then they’ll do follow-ups.
It’s a little bit more of. I would say that’s more common than, doing more of that open closed car model where I’m only accepting patients or clients during this time and I’m not accepting patients or clients during this time. What could launching look like for those people that just have that revolving door of patients or clients?
I think like obviously you’d have the obvious ones if they were offering a discount. Yeah. If they were to say that this week we are looking at, or the first week of, let’s just say June. Yeah, we doing 25% offer this first week, but you’ve got a book by this time. You could fit that kind of model into something like that.
Or, perhaps you’re offering A bonus. I dunno. Like an educational Yeah. Session or an extra or anything. That’s even a bonus, right? Yeah. If you book two sessions, you’re gonna get a third. We’re only gonna be running this at this sort of thing for the next two weeks. It’s those kind of thing.
Because you can fit them into anything you can fit them in. It doesn’t always have to be what we would class as live launching where you are going from there. Yeah. Come in right now cuz it’s gonna end then. Yeah. And a lot of businesses will have that evergreen model like you say there where Where they’re open all the time.
And particularly those people that are booking clients and then seeing them, they’re not necessarily gonna have that you can’t come and see me on this Monday to Friday cuz you weren’t exactly. Part of that cohort. Yeah. Yeah. So it would be more, it would be more heavily featured around promo times.
Yeah. Two for ones, anything that’s like in that aspect or any concept they come up with, like I say, like a bonus that they may be offering. Yeah. Block book six appointments and you’ll get the four free or whatever that is. Yeah. And I think that’s still really important for people who have more of that evergreen revolving door type business model to still think about running creative launches throughout the year because it’s still hard to always be selling.
Oh, it’s all, it’s exhausting always. It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting. Yeah. And so like for dietitian Success Center, our membership, what we do is we do, so it’s open all the time, but we do launches of a seven day free trial where a concentrated period of time people can get that. And that always helps to drive, drive more signups during that period of time.
And then the rest of the year it’s just people coming in as per usual. But I think that’s an important thing for all dietitians to think about, regardless of their business model. Yeah, absolutely. And that can be, like particularly if they’re looking to start like an email list for example, if they’re looking to like just tee into that kind of online world a little bit, and nurture an audience like that, they’ve only gotta create something simple for free.
There’s amazing value. And get their email address, get their e, get them on their email list, and then just talk to them regularly. Just discuss with them regularly. And I will always say that like particularly with emails, if you are gonna be communicating with people, if you’re trying to build up and, because it’s so much harder to for starters, social media can go down any time, right?
So if Facebook goes down, or Instagram went down, didn’t it while ago, your emails can’t ever do that. It can’t happen. So you’ve always got a community set there, even if it’s a hundred people, 200, 300, 400. Thousands. It can be, you’ve always got a group of people that you can talk to constantly, that you don’t have to force anything on them.
You can just talk, educate, and then when the time’s right, you can drop in little nuggets of, don’t forget we’ve got this coming up, or we’ve got that offer. And do you have any tips for, speaking of email marketing, do you have tips on what people can talk about with their email list? Because I hear that a lot as the fear of starting an email list, and I don’t know what I’m gonna say to these people, and I think this.
This perception that I have to send out this really robot, and this is just so old school, but it’s like this really robust newsletter every month with, all of these different Yeah. Components, which is no, you don’t, but no. Do you have any tips or any advice on what you can talk to your email list about?
I it’s really interesting because I probably go against everything they tell you to do. I personally don’t like formal, like newsletters. And what I mean by that is you sometimes will see them, they’ll have the same sections every time, and I’m just like, if I’ve invited people onto my email list and then I want to talk to ’em, I’m still go, obviously, for example, like my email list for example, will be specifically around copywriting marketing in general because they’re always, they’re one and the same.
Tips on how to launch, so people can sign up and if they’re ever worried, they can always go back through my emails and go, oh, I remember John wrote some about how to write an email sequences in his email list. I wanna just add huge value whilst almost using his therapy, which is awful.
Which is awful. I tend to talk to my list, like I’m talking to my friends. In the sense of how I’m educating. So there’ll always be a theme person there. I’ll always go okay I’m gonna talk about, like I said, writing an email sequence. However, there is that aspect of personal, Personal branding.
It’s got a bit of a dirty name, isn’t it? The minute cuz it’s everywhere. But like that personal branding, people have signed up cuz they’re attracted to what I’ve offered and they like hearing from Minnie and they like hearing the way I speak and the way I write and how I can offer things and how I can educate and they’re interested that I’ve got five children and they’re interested that, so there’s no right or wrong way, I think just remember what your purpose of your list is.
Because there’s no point put signing people up to purely hard sell to them all the time. Cuz I guarantee you people just unsubscribe. And there’s a degree where you don’t mind people unsubscribing because you want to attract the right sorts of people if you, especially if you’re building a community, if you want to get out there a little bit more and if you want to, bring in more clients.
However, nobody likes to just have. Spam. Constant. Constant. Like you just don’t read them. Like amount of emails that I got on Valentine’s Day. Don’t even open ’em. I just know Australia. I’m not gonna open them. So I think just be clear of what you want if you’re nurturing and educating, and then you’ve got another audience that you can sell to and you can open your offers up to.
Then brilliant, then use it that way. Talk about something that’s gonna help them because there’s a reason they’ve signed up, right? They, whatever that reason is, always focus on that. So for me it’s copyright tips to help people like yourself, crystal, or whoever that is, when they’re next, gonna put a post out or write an email or write a landing page that they could go to that email and go, ah, there’s a great little structure.
I’m gonna try that. So just be clear on what you’re offering and then don’t be too restricted. Just test. Like we’re all just scientists, marketers and copywriters are just scientists. We’re always testing something. We’ll always try something. Some subjects line won’t get open. Some emails will, some will get loved, but you didn’t like writing them.
It’s, it is really just trial and error. And then over time you’ll find what your audience likes and what they enjoy listening to and you’ll find what you enjoy writing about. And then once you find that balance that’s when the fun can happen. That’s so helpful.
And I think the moral there is just start writing things. Just start to do it, just start writing things. You have no choice. Yeah. Yeah. You have no choice. What are you gonna start writing? Only when it’s perfect. Perfect. By who? Yeah. It’s just people’s opinions. And people’s perceptions. Oh yeah.
So if it offers value and people, and people enjoy it and they, if they’re replying to your email saying, this was great. If they’re replying to your emails, again, this is really helpful. You’re helping someone. If one person out a hundred likes it, you’ve got one potential person that could come and use your services.
Should you look to market through emails at some point? Yeah, and value can be something small. It can be like in our domain, the nutrition domain. It can be, here’s. Five recipes that I found online that I think you’ll like for how to use beans? Yeah. Or whatever. Could you? Yeah. Just, it could just be like something so simple that to somebody else on the other end that has no knowledge in this.
They’re like, yeah, thank you. Wanted, how to use those bees just because it doesn’t mean someone else does. Yeah, exactly. And you hear this all the time with people that won’t post something more than once or they won’t email a similar theme over a period of time because they’re scared of saying the same thing over and over again.
And you get this particularly with launching because some people don’t like I don’t know, emailing every day or every other day. I always think of it like I personally love buying suits, new suits. If I was only to wear. A suit to a wedding on one weekend, and then the next weekend I went to a wedding.
I had to buy another one just because it wasn’t new to me. That would be wrong. That’s a different wedding. It’s a different audience. Not me. You’ve never seen that outfit. Yeah, exactly. It’s new to them. It may not be new to me, but it’s new to that audience. So don’t ever think you’re repeating yourself by saying something, so well inside out because to someone else that will make them go, oh my God, did you know that?
Or I, that’s really helpful. I didn’t understand that. So yeah, don’t ever think that. Don’t ever not repeat yourself or don’t think that your knowledge is not worthy of someone else, it doesn’t have to be new every time. Doesn’t have to be the revolutionary cuz it’s revolutionary to someone.
That’s important. That is really important. And so do you have a rule of thumb with regards to emails or just general recommendations that you stick to in terms of how frequently to email your list? Just regularly and then how frequently to email your list during a launch? Yeah, so Reg, the ones that you do regularly can vary to a degree by personality types.
To be honest with you, some people have loads of information and they wanna share it a lot. Some people like to do it weekly. I like to do it biweekly, so I do it every other week just because once a month I felt like I either had way too much information or. It W it, I felt like a month was a long time and it’s not the right, it’s no right or wrong.
Like it’s just seeing what works. I initially, personally started doing weekly emails, and I either couldn’t keep up with demand of writing them, because again, writing for yourself is way difficult. But yeah, I know people do daily, daily emails to their list. So you’ve gotta find what works for you and what information you kind of wanna share.
I think personally, once a month or every other week, Is fine because you don’t wanna bombard people. They’ve still gotta get value because people will come numb to it as well. If you’re not on your game all the time, people then begin to not open them, or I’ll look at that later and never come to it.
So you wanna find that balance to where they’re going, oh yes. This email I’ve got about this one. So I personally, like once a month or every other week when it comes to launching, it can depend on what you are launching and. And the style generally, and it’s very loose term.
If you were to launch something, I would say that you would look at it in three kind of phases. You would look at what I would call the pre-launch, which can be Around a week to 10 days where you are saying next week I’m gonna be starting this offer. So let’s say you’re offering a 25% off your services or your to your clients.
You would have that phase. Then you would have the phase of today is the first day of our 25% in a week, it’s not gonna be here anymore. So you got that middle phase, which is again, can be anywhere between Five and seven days depend on the value. If you’re offering like a $3,000 program, $5,000 could be a bit longer because people take longer to be, nurtured to spend higher amounts of money, really.
And then what I would say is you’d probably have three to five days at the end, which is doors. Doors are closed. I’m still gonna be running an extra, I’ve decided to run an extra offer for three days or I’ve extended the day. It’s open. I know of people that send multiple emails a day.
It’s not my cup of tea personally. Like I’m not a fan of it. It’s a, it’s o it’s a bit overkill, but it works. Look, and you can do it the right way, but it just depends on the volume. I’m pretty comfortable personally with an email today. In a launch because it is specifically launching and you can make your audience aware, like if you’re doing things the right way.
The very first email I send, I always would like to make sure look, next week, this next kind of seven days, I am gonna be talking about. This offer or this discount on top of my usual weekly email or whatever that is, if you wanna opt out of that, please do let me know. And just a little opt out button, like it doesn’t make a difference to you.
It doesn’t make any more work. And at least then you’re being really considerate of people. Cuz you, last thing you wanna do is like damage. Any long-term relationship either. Some people may just genuinely be on your email list because they love listening to you or hearing from you and getting your tips.
They may not ever need to use that other element of a service, so when it comes in, they can always quickly opt out. Nothing kind of changes. So yeah, so I think you’re gonna be looking at like roughly, you could be looking at anywhere between sort of four and seven in the first section. Again, like maybe another five during the actual sort of main.
Here’s the discount, and here it’s gonna end, and then maybe three afterwards. So you could be looking anywhere between what, 12 and 16 on the whole kind of period. And it’s really loose rule of thumb because it, it depends how long you wanna do it. I wouldn’t personally, in particular, if you’re launching an offer, I wouldn’t spread it out.
Too long. And what I mean by that is I wouldn’t have an email go out on the first date and then my second email go out four days later. Because the idea here is to be constantly priming and not everyone’s gonna see every single email, so it will sometimes feel like you’re repeating yourself, or it will feel like, God, I’ve just said that though last week.
But some people may have seen the first one and missed the next three or four, and then they’ve missed that whole chunk of information that they need to know. So don’t be ever scared of. Saying the same information, but using a different language, a different story, yeah. Or sign up to my email list.
I can give loads of tips. Yeah. But it’s hard. It’s, it is hard because it really depends on the style of launch. Yeah. But I think you can’t go wrong there five days, five days, three days, like roughly there, 15 day kind of window. Yeah. It really depends on what you’re offering and what you’re launching, the value, et cetera.
And I think that, the reason why I wanted to ask you that question is just also to reposition the mindset around it’s okay to repeat the same information. It’s okay to email people multiple times. The assumption being if they’re on your list, receiving your emails, they wanna be there, they wanna learn percent, and if they don’t, they can easily unsubscribe.
They can easily unsubscribe and we don’t need to be afraid of that or take offense to that. That’s fine. Because, yeah. I hear that sometimes where it’s like a fear of even, burdening an email list by emailing them once a month, and it’s yeah, no, we need to change our mindset around our email list.
Yeah. They chose to be there. Exactly. No matter what they chose to be there, it’s, this isn’t like you’ve, Stolen an email list from someone and just spammed a load of people. You see those all the time, yeah, for sure. Oh, I’ve seen your Instagram page. Like, how’d you get my email?
Yeah. Yes, exactly. How, where did you get it? Yeah. Someone tell me and then you get added to all these other email lists. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. They’ve chosen to sign up, they’ve chosen for information. They can always opt out, providing, you’ve always got that information and most do it through default.
Now you don’t even have to worry about it. So yeah, don’t ever be afraid to. Keep hammering home that message of what you do, like how you can help, how you can help them. Don’t ever be scared of that. Yeah. Such awesome information. So helpful. So what is next for your business? Ooh, what’s next?
I wanna continue helping people develop their communities, I think. And because I just. I know there’s so many wonderful people out there that can offer so much to people, to, to others. And I think we’ve seen community formats come in so many different places now, and those communities can be just simply on social media or whatever that is.
But I think I just wanna help as many people launch what they’ve got inside them that can help other people and showcase that to the best of their ability. Because I think everyone’s got a story. And I just think sometimes the world needs to hear it. Every single person, sometimes you hear the best stories from the random person you sit next to at the bus stop, or someone you meet at randomly at dinner and you hear their conversation.
You think, who, everyone here has got such amazing stories. And then you take that into the business world, dietitians and whoever that is, they’ve got something that someone else needs. So I think I just yeah, would like to just continue helping people get that out into the world. And I wanna just quickly talk about how I’ve used your services before and just do a little plug for you.
Because I think that if people are sitting here thinking, and I know there’s lots that are that feel like that, coming up with their own sales copy. For their program is just a little bit too much of a stretch. You can hire that out and that’s what I got you to help me with and I talked about it before with Online Course Blueprint is, we sat down and we said, okay, I’m launching online Course Blueprint.
Here’s some information about my ideal client. We had that conversation to make sure you really understood who my ideal client was and what I was selling, and then you wrote those emails for me, which was the best. Yeah. It was so con, it was just so awesome to have that package. And then from there, I’ve been able to, so I’ve moved from a launch model to an evergreen model with that course.
And so I’ve been able to just convert those emails into Yeah, an evergreen funnel. Which is amazing. And yeah. It truly is if you make that type of an investment, it can just be the gift that keeps on giving. You can use that asset again and again. Yeah, it’s a great investment just telling those on who are listening.
It’s an amazing investment and I highly recommend you. So I think people forget that. Like you can reuse everything. Yeah. It’s not just always a one time gig, particularly if you like yourself, but you offer that sort of program. There’s so much content there and actually what you are.
You really start to see is the frameworks from and things develop naturally like they always do and things move forward. But you’ve always got a trusted, at least a trusted framework where you go okay, this is how I did it here. At least I can loosely stick to that. Then you can get a bit creative cuz you Yeah.
You’ve got it all there. Yeah. Yeah. It is brilliant. It is brilliant seeing and the nu no launched the same or no? Yeah. Offer is the same. I’ve recently done one where it was really, the email list was big, but the main focus on social media, cuz they had a huge social presence.
So you’ve gotta work, find what works for you. There is no, one size fits all. Yeah. There may be loose frameworks and principles, but it’s really down to who you are and what works for you and your audience and Yeah. Yeah, they don’t need, people don’t, Need to stress.
And that’s, and some of the people that I work with that are genuinely came to me and said, I can’t write, or I hate writing. I wanna just either show up on camera or I just can’t deal with it. And, they say, I like to email my list once a week. They give me a set of themes and then someone like me will just go through all of their content and write their, so they can have their monthly newsletter or weekly newsletter, whatever that is, and don’t have to worry about that.
Oh God, is this the. Am I following the right framework? Yeah. Do I need them to go here? What happens here? You’ve you can outsource it. Yeah. Yeah. Or even just your email funnel. If you’re not ready for a launch. Yeah. If you have a freebie, but you just don’t know what to do after people download the freebie, you can just get a bundle of, yeah.
Emails written for you that can just be sent out after. Yeah. Especially you think of like people that sign up, like for a freebie for example. What happens then? People, that’s what a lot of people forget, Yeah. Are you are, have you got say a set I don’t know, four to six welcome emails that sort of say, Hey, this is me, this is what I do, and then, you’re like really educating and nurturing and showcasing what you do.
So then by the time, two weeks in, By the time you get their fir you, they get their, your first newsletter. It’s oh, I know Krista. Yeah. I remember she was saying about this and about that, and there’s already a connection built up. Always just, I would always advise that think what next.
Where do they go? They’re gonna click that button. Then what happens? What they gonna expect, how they’re gonna feel. Are they gonna be nervous? Do they want to click the button cuz they’re scared that it’s gonna take payment details. Could you add something that says, don’t worry, no money gets taken.
It’s all little once you get a base level down, that’s when you would start to look at the. Like finer tweaks and things, but frameworks are brilliant and like you say, sort of those foundations and to like guidelines of things are really helpful to see.
And some people may want to go at writing, like I’ve known people that say to me, can you just help with the strategy and the outline? I still would like to try and write it, but I can’t understand the sequencing and things like that. You can always just have strategy and have it laid out and have a map and say, there you go.
That’s. What you need to do, go and enjoy writing. That’s awesome. And so where can the audience find out more about you and the work that you do? They can find me on my website, which is john mckee.com. They, I hang out mostly on LinkedIn. And it’s just John McKee on LinkedIn and they’ll see me as everything’s bright orange.
Cool. All my brand and his bright orange and like really vivid colors. Yeah. And same on same on Instagram. They’re my two platforms really that I’m on. It’s John McKee underscore on Instagram and then just John McKee on LinkedIn. But yeah, that is, I would love if anyone just, they listen to his podcast and just drop me a DM and if there’s anything they got of value that is, awesome.
I’m so happy. Amazing. Yeah, definitely reach out to John. Thank you so much for, it’s been joining me today. It’s so fun. It was so fun. Such a great chat. So good to talk to you. And thanks for your time. Thank you so much. Bye.
