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Most ad copy is written to attract everyone—and that’s exactly why it doesn’t work. I sit down with copywriter Justin Blackman to talk about how writing for clicks instead of conversions leads to wasted ad spend.
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Justin is a brand voice expert who goes overboard. He’s written for more than 429 people and dozens of brands, and created voice guides for industry experts including Amy Porterfield, Stu McLaren, Todd Herman, and Danny Iny.
We cover why including your price in the copy actually helps performance, the kind of copy that pulls in the right people (not just curious scrollers), and how to think more strategically about what your ad is actually selling.
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Speaker 1:
So, if you wondered, is it just writing good copy that affects an ad? And then, is that the only part of the funnel, or do you also need to worry about connecting to your new leads inside of your email, nurture sequence and, what is most important, is it just going after the conversion? Is it relating to them on those like personality traits that you have that they also could identify with? Is it about putting the right kind of case study in your email, like how do you build authority and do all of this? Well, I have a guest. He is a copywriter, and I’ve talked to other copywriters and I just got finished saying to Justin Blackman that I love having copywriters on the podcast because I myself am so utterly horrible at the written word, and so I’m happy to have you, justin, on the podcast. Dear listener, you’re going to enjoy this episode because Justin has written ad copy.
Speaker 1:
At one point I think, justin, you said that you were writing ad copy in an agency like like a Facebook and Instagram ad agency, and you wrote ad copy for how many different people in one year? Was it 200 something?
Speaker 1:
239 different people over the course of about 18 months that makes you an expert at learning and writing in other people’s voice. That is an absolutely insane stat.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it was one of those things that I didn’t realize how insane it was until I, like sent it out loud to someone and they’re like, wait, you did what I know and so we’re gonna have to go into that.
Speaker 1:
So, dear listener, when I was chatting with justin blackman in on instagram and after having seen him on a couple of other podcasts you know online friends that I know he made it a point to say that he believes in connection over conversion and that the connection will eventually lead to the conversion. And we’re going to talk about how to sound and write more like you in an authentic way. Let me read his bio. Justin Blackman is a brand voice expert who goes overboard. He’s written for more than 429 people and dozens of brands and created voice guides for industry experts, including I’m sorry, your name’s here Amy Porterfield, stu McLaren oh my God, I love me some, stu.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, we like Stu.
Speaker 1:
Todd Herman and Danny Innie. He uses a process called the brand ventriloquism.
Speaker 3:
Why is this word Ventriloquism?
Speaker 1:
I like that Three times fast. There are certain words like that, like that linoleum, the stuff in the kitchen Linoleum, that tile, I just can’t say that. But I can’t say millennium. So there we go, I never knew that about you.
Speaker 3:
It’s a very difficult word for you. We’ve been married 16 years almost.
Speaker 1:
I know he couldn’t say it there’s certain words I can’t say but yes, rad ventriloquism to analyze and replicate the nuance, make your writing voice unique and documents it. He documents it so other writers can scale like your content without sacrificing authenticity. He’s also worked with top brands, including ihg hotels we used to go here a five hour energy. Oh wow, like at the fast um, at like the am pms, like right there on the counter, that little yeah, bottle station yeah, the gas station, there we go, and red bull would not stop in.
Speaker 1:
Bell would not embellish his own bio. He runs workshops that’s great for writers. At brand voice academy, he helps founders identify the true essence of their brand. So writing becomes a snap, no matter who’s creating the content, and all the people say he’s pretty fly or a right guy awesome I’ve heard of weird al yankovic. By the way, welcome to the show officially have I heard of weird out.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it was the second tape I ever owned. It was weird. Al on 3d, thank you seems like you just aged yourself a little bit, just a whole day of a proud gen xer, part of a generation that has forgotten while we’re still here we’re still running things.
Speaker 1:
we’re still running the show. Justin, before we jump into these things, ad copy and just copywriting in general, can you give us a snapshot of your business as it stands today, this year, so far, like you know? Where are you pulling your revenue? From what kind of offers do you have More done for you, your program that you have, and then we want to kind of know a little bit about how you got to where you’re at now, and then we’ll dive into all the good copywriting.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so there are two arms to my business. The first one is there’s Brand Voice Academy, which is the teaching arm, where I work with copywriters and basically help them understand how brand voice works, how to sound like any client, be able to kind of throw their voice to sound exactly like a brand or an agency or a person and really mimic them and mirror their style. I also teach them how to create brand voice guides and have a couple of different trainings over there. And then I have justinblackmancom, which is my done for you service, and that’s where I work with entrepreneurs to either help them punch up their writing to lean into their style and to create brand voice guides, which I do for both solo, personal brands as well as corporate brands, so I can train their content teams and the writers to stay on brand. So one teaches writers, one helps document entrepreneurs and brands to really solidify the writing style.
Speaker 1:
And when you say brand voice guide, can you educate me a bit? Sure.
Speaker 2:
So most people are familiar with the brand guide and you think of like these are your Pantone colors and your fonts and your logo choices. I do that, but with words Most people define their voice. Saying is like we’re happy, we’re casual, professional, but when you get a designer it’s like our Pantone color for blue is like one, three, eight, six, nine, two, whatever. They get the exact shade of blue down to the pixel. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
But with with writing, they’re saying write happy. That’s like saying write in the color blue. There are about 362 different shades of blue. Which one?
Speaker 2:
Write in what I do is I put the same type of depth and analysis on someone’s writing style as they do the colors and the branding. So I define how they write and I define that. I define their brand, voice, their approach, their writing style. And we define voice as vocabulary, tone and cadence. So vocabulary is the level of writing that you’re saying, like if something is, is it big, is it grand, is it large, is it grandiose? They all mean the same thing, but what level of writing do we use? Cadence is the rhythm of your writing. Do you?
Speaker 2:
write short and choppy, do you write like curt and abrupt? Or do you write long, flowy, wordy, bird sentences that go on and on forever and hardly ever use a comma and just have this gentle flowing feel to them and you run out of breath or you actually reach the end punctuation. This mind, just have this gentle flowing feel to them and you run out of breath or you actually reach the end punctuation. This guy knows his words right well, is it shorter? It’s like a breath that was almost passed out right there. And then you’ve got the tone, which are the emotions in your writing. But rather than saying like happy, we need to figure out like what that means. Like happy can mean anything from like tranquil and balanced and serene all the way to like giddy and jubilant and euphoric and ecstatic and sounded like a caffeinated kangaroo. What level of happy do you want, god?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that’s a really fantastic description of comparing the colors to the writing.
Speaker 1:
I’ve never heard that one before, and so what you’re saying is is by defining a brand voice like this, it really changed the writing that much Tremendously.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Between the references and analogies that you might make, like if you’re watching the video of this, I’ve got, you know, star Wars and Muppets and things like that. So those are going to be my type of references, as opposed to you know, some of the broader things that you might, that you might reference. So everything down to that, all the way to the like, literally measurable elements of your writing voice, that that you can, that you can help, they can scale, and a brand voice guide will do that. It will help you throw your voice for writers, which is where brand ventriloquism comes in.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, nice, throw your voice for writers. Yeah, okay, you did just say that. I did.
Speaker 2:
Well, it was just, you know, basically having having someone speak for you Like a ventriloquist has their dummy where gotcha, it sounds like its own, like it’s got its own persona, its own style, but it’s really the ventriloquist speaking. The copywriter is doing the actual speaking, but it sounds like someone else. It’s being able to throw your writing voice.
Speaker 2:
I think, Okay, cool, I wanted to go back and ask on the Brand Voice Academy is that a course or is that like a group coaching or what does that look like? I’ve got another one that I’m working on and then I’ve got write more personality and those are pretty much copywriter specific. Write more personality is 81 ways to add like punch, power and pop to your everyday writing. That one can really go for everyone.
Speaker 1:
I want that. Which means you should take the course.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, great. Of course it’s funny, it’s a few years old but it’s timeless, like. I actually watched it about two weeks ago and I was like this is still a great course. So it’s where it is More personality. It’s it’s just, it’s silly, it’s fun, it’s just a, it’s just a good time. It’s just it’s timeless. Techniques that like have been around since you know the, the Rosetta stone for like how people write.
Speaker 4:
Since the right, uh, since the good old days, all you had was copy and no media.
Speaker 2:
Back to the myspace, back to newspapers, okay, yeah and then I do have some live training programs which are more intense and more in-depth. Those are my favorite ones to run.
Speaker 1:
That’s for, like the true brand voice nerds wants to run, that’s for, like the true brand voice nerds, so a copywriter that also trades other copywriters. I got a question. This one came to mind why do you think it is in very blunt terms that the stew mclarens and amy porterfields of the world are dropping serious coin on brand voice guides, when someone that’s making 50 grand a year, a hundred grand a year isn’t?
Speaker 2:
Well, part of it is because they have teams and because their style and personality is so identifiable, it becomes almost more important for them to for their copywriters to sound like them. You don’t want it to sound fake, you don’t want it to sound wishy-washy. Stu McLaren is one of the happiest, most energetic people in the world, but it’s a very distinct level that he’s in. I mean, he’s for like the excited and giddy level, but he’s not like euphoric, like, and you can’t just be optimistic or hopeful. I mean he is, but that’s not enough. So, even just a little bit off, it starts to fall apart and be like this doesn’t sound like Stu and it actually begins to raise some doubts in the readers, like what happened to stew here, like in sense when the writing is off.
Speaker 2:
So being able to identify his approach, his style, not just what he talks about but how he talks, it’s really important to maintain that integrity and authenticity for everything, because it’s not just about Stu doing the writing, it’s about encapsulating all of his approach and his tone. And Stu McLaren has a brand, same with Amy Porterfield, like we have to understand how she sounds, how she wants everything to come up, to come across. So it’s authentic, even if she’s not the one who’s writing the copy. Because a brand doesn’t mean that every like authentic doesn’t mean it has to come up to come across, so it’s authentic, even if she’s not the one who’s writing the copy, because a brand doesn’t mean that every like.
Speaker 1:
Authentic doesn’t mean it has to come from one person, it just means it has to be on brand.
Speaker 3:
Authentic doesn’t mean it has to come from one person, it just means it needs to be on brand yeah, because I feel like most people probably know at this point that someone with those big names right, it’s not them writing their own stuff, right, yeah, sometimes it is.
Speaker 2:
Sometimes it is they write a lot of their own stuff but they can’t possibly write all of it Right or even just repurposing some of the content, changing one of their videos into an email or a podcast like an announcement that doesn’t have to come from him.
Speaker 2:
It’s more a goal. He’s got bigger things to do. She or he or she, they have bigger things. It’s it’s not effective for them to write everything. It’s not realistic for them to write everything. Right, it’s they. They are the visionary of the brand. They need to be doing it. They need to free up time to do that bigger thinking. It’s okay. It’s okay, it’s still authentic if a copywriter who understands their message and their approach and their voice can step in and do this. And you know, I’m not just saying I have a lot of clients that whose names I can’t say because they don’t want that, but I’m fortunate enough that many of my clients are are open about the fact that they have some content teams. And you know it’s realistic. I think it’s helpful to know that, like if you see them everywhere, they’re like how do they show up everywhere? Well, it’s because they have a team.
Speaker 3:
Right, right.
Speaker 1:
They are not super humans. I think it’s helping people. Yeah, transparent about that, because otherwise you kind of have like this false idea of what and who you have, what it takes and who you have to be to get to a certain level. You know it’s like actually it’s couldn’t be further from the truth it’s still them, it’s just scaled authenticity, scaled often that’s good, I like I didn’t know those two words could exist with each other, but I like that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
When you figure out what your voice is, you’re able to do it Cool, Even with AI Like I can get some really good stuff out of AI because I define my voice extremely well. Mm-hmm. And the people who are saying that like, oh, ai is terrible and it’s just generic. It just means that you’re using random things or generic things, like saying that you’re writing as friendly and casual.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
Those aren’t voices, those aren’t personalities Like let’s say you’ve got six friends, let’s say you’ve got Chandler, phoebe, joey Monica Ross and Rachel. They sound familiar. I like where you’re going with this. Keep going. Joey Monica Ross and Rachel, they sound familiar.
Speaker 3:
I wish they were I like where you’re going with this. Keep going.
Speaker 2:
Oh, those are six friends, right. Uh-huh. They all sound friendly, but they all sound entirely different. Some sounds, you know, controlling. I just thought about you. Some sound uneducated, some, you know, sarcastic. Those are elements of a voice. Friendly is not a voice, friendly is a personality you need to actually understand what the voice is, what the writing is, to make it sound like you. It’s much deeper than three adjectives in an avatar.
Speaker 1:
Wow.
Speaker 3:
That’s really good.
Speaker 1:
That is so for me. It’s just I realized how little I know when I talk to someone like you. Thank you, I know a whole lot about very little. Justin, can you tell us about your emotions wheel and where the listener can get it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So this all comes back to brand voice. I mentioned before how like friendly isn’t a personality. Friendly isn’t a voice, it’s a personality. We need to get specifically granular on these things. I mentioned before that like happy can mean anything from jubilant and elated all the way to peaceful, calm and balanced and tranquil. There are so many different levels of these. So if you want to write better, you actually need to get granular. You need to understand exactly what tone you’re looking for, like the Pantone shade of blue. We want to understand your Pantone shade of emotion, not just write in the color yellow, but, like we want you know, sunset yellow, canary or marigold. Yeah, marigold, there you go.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there you go. Way to pull out a color. Yeah, that’s my shirt.
Speaker 3:
Or let’s say it’s true, yellow yeah.
Speaker 2:
That’s 3PO gold. That’s what we want, so it’s understanding that nuance. So I have they are probably familiar with emotions wheels or tone wheels. It’s primarily used in psychology but I actually have one that I created for copywriters and for copywriting that’s geared toward founders, which are the most prevalent brands, the prevalent tones that show up in brands and in writing, and if you go to justinblackmancom, slash feelings, you can download a copy of the founder feeling wheel and you’ll get some emails that will help you identify some of the important tones and obviously it’s also something that I offer if you need additional support on that.
Speaker 3:
Wonderful, awesome, well, so how did you get started in copywriting? Did you study?
Speaker 1:
brand voice.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, like that specific.
Speaker 2:
So my background is in field marketing.
Speaker 2:
That’s where I work for Puma, red Bull, five Hour Energy and I ran a lot of sampling programs.
Speaker 2:
So I was in charge of speaking to hundreds of thousands of people about certain brands, but they’re all one-on-one conversations and as I sort of aged out like I was working for Red Bull and I was on a college campus and someone called me sir and I was like I can’t do this.
Speaker 2:
So, yeah, so I moved to the corporate side where I started writing and training the, the sampling teams and really helping develop the scripts. So that’s where I I started leaning into writing and, uh, eventually just moved from speaking to the written word and started doing websites and content and working for IHG, where I had to write for 14 different brands at the same time, like all their different hotels, and so one message, each message, had to change 14 different ways. And that’s where I really leaned into brand voice and tried to and started to understand and learn the nuance and the structures behind brand voice and was just fortunate enough to get mentored by some great people and, yeah, I just went into it deeper than anyone ever should and kind of became the go-to guy for brand voice.
Speaker 1:
Dang Wow. I wonder if there’s a listener like me who is now scared to write any email. I’m just kind of understanding like the breadth and the depth and just kind of the gravity of my words. How do I write that next email? What should? What should be something where I should figure that out.
Speaker 2:
Sometimes I break people’s brains. The good news is I help put them back together. I definitely have a couple of students who I teach this to and they’re like oh my God, I don’t know how to write anymore. Mike, you didn’t forget. I just made it a little harder for you, which? When we figure it out, we’ll be good. Yeah, it’s a Dunning-Kruger.
Speaker 1:
I just like pushed you off the edge like if it make it drop down, let’s make it very like at least I’ll give a super straightforward question within the context of a weekly email that is doing double duty and emails shouldn’t do double duty but so many of our emails do where we are talking about a weekly podcast episode that aired and also somewhere down the email transitioning to say buy my stuff.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so yes, there is.
Speaker 1:
Pretty typical like very down to earth.
Speaker 2:
Like from a conversion perspective, I would say the right answer is to send two year print emails, but the I understand that that’s not always going to be an acceptable answer for people and there are ways of doing it. Getting people to do two things at once is always going to be a challenge, but you can preface it like listen to a podcast versus buy. My stuff is a little bit different and I’ve done this before. It’s not. It doesn’t work as well as two separate emails. I will say that off the bat.
Speaker 2:
But sometimes it’s like if you listen to this episode, it will help you explain why you want this and sometimes people will click that and open it up and if you can then explain a little bit more about why they want it, sometimes that that explanation can be enough to make someone buy right there or take a second action. Sometimes they might open up the podcast. Whether they listen to it or not is another story. If they just made the purchase and sometimes they want to justify it, sometimes they’ll listen to the podcast. If they’re on the fence, maybe they’ll listen to the podcast, but ultimately the conversion is the thing that you want, your conversion to listen versus to buy. You’re splitting your goal and you’re 50% as likely to get it. So kind of different response.
Speaker 1:
All right, listener, you’re tracking with me. So my next question, then, is going straight to the buy my stuff kind of email. When you and I were talking, you had said connection over conversion. Can you, can you unpack what you mean by that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So getting someone to buy your stuff, it’s easy if, like, you’re selling sunglasses and people are saying, yeah, I need a new pair of sunglasses, oh, here’s some, let me get it. That’s, you know. Sometimes there there’s filling a need, but then there’s also a desire, and when it comes to like coaching, for instance, sometimes people will say I would need to learn brand voice. Here’s a class I will take it. Other times, people will start to know you, and I have people that join my courses because they’re like I want to learn from Justin, and you guys probably get that too. There are people that listen toin, and you guys probably get that too. There are people that listen to you because you’re you, and then there are people that listen to you for the information yeah, actually, yeah.
Speaker 2:
So sometimes we buy stuff, sometimes we buy people, and I’ve actually been talking about this a little bit more lately. It’s sometimes actually, it’s more like just talking off the record. I haven’t been emailing about this and my journal, which I’m not going to share yet, but sometimes, when, like, I’m creating a new program or a new workshop, I’m trying to figure out why, why they’re, why someone would want this, and it’s an exercise that I think every course creator should do to really just kind of free write for like five minutes or so. Why would someone want this? And then, ultimately, what a lot of it comes down to at a certain point is because they want the same success as you. You’ve been successful at this. I want that success, which is really saying I want to be like you. So by sharing a little bit about you and sharing the realness behind some stuff, people will buy you. It’s not a fast sale.
Speaker 2:
It’s not a quick sale. There are ways to do this quicker. I’m on the fence about whether or not I believe that should be done quickly or slowly. I understand that we have businesses for runs. We’re looking for an ROI. We obviously want to speed that up the way. Businesses for runs we’re looking for an ROI. We obviously want to speed that up. But there are ways of giving a little bit of insight about you through connection that will make someone buy. It’s just not directly trackable. It’s not necessarily a measurable result. There’s many people like if someone buys my course and I have a an email that goes out and says hey, let me know what’s going on in your business that that made you know that now is the right time to buy. And very often I will get an email saying oh, I knew for a year that I wanted to wait for you. I just was writing for waiting for the right opportunity Sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:
That happens because of something that you wrote that had nothing to do with business, but it was an insight into you that was relatable. That was the thing that made someone want you Showing accessibility versus authority, or leading with your outlook Like Stu McLaren. That is one of the happiest men I’ve ever met in my life. There’s just something like you know what I really need levity in my life right now and I want to learn and and I want something fun that I know I’m going to enjoy with, like you know, break, dance intermissions or dance, break intermissions. That’s Stu.
Speaker 2:
And you know, as opposed to some of the other people I’ve written for it’s like man. I just want you know, as opposed to some of the other people I’ve written for it’s like man. I just want to know. I want to learn from someone who is detailed and meticulous and just, is a higher level of expertise and is wants experts to teach experts. That’s someone more like Miracy and Danny Innie that’s. Then there’s Amy Porterfield, who’s like I want someone to teach me who’s more nurturing, a little more hands on, a little more empathetic, a little more parental. That’s Amy Porterfield. Those are three different people who all teach very similar things, but you’re going to be attracted to someone’s persona and their character and their personality, more so than their material.
Speaker 1:
How does a person like me, or maybe the listener who doesn’t feel as comfortable with the written word, get good at writing in a way that expresses their persona, like would be expressed when they show up on video? What I’m trying to say is, like I do great on video and I’m myself on video, but my writing does not sound like me at all. Yet so many people read my emails and I know for a fact that people connect with me in real life and therefore on video.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So there’s a couple of different ways and it depends on your, your level of writing. The fact is, the way that we’re taught to write at school is academic. That works well for textbooks, it works well for tests. That doesn’t work well for social media. You see a long, like a five sentence paragraph, the way that we’re taught to in full sentences, the way that we’re taught to write in English. It doesn’t work for email because it’s not mobile optimized.
Speaker 2:
It’s not that our attention spans are short, but if we see a chunk of text, we’re like you know what I need to focus when I read this, I’m going to come back to it. And then, especially on social, you know, no one scrolls back, it’s scrolled out. So it’s got to be captivating enough, it has to be intriguing enough, it has to have a right hook. There are copywriting principles that you can learn, but like, for instance, I’ll just say that the average sentence length in English is 15 words. Written is 15 words. Okay, so you know that’s pretty much a, a, a complete sentence, that it doesn’t matter what that looks like, and just know that it’s 15 words. Most copywriters hardly ever write over 11 sentence words. So like we just go, shorter we go, we go choppier we. We do one thought per sentence so we’re taught in in academics to write complete sentences with you know, subject predicates, all that stuff. Copywriting breaks that rule on a on a very consistent basis.
Speaker 2:
It’s just easier to digest, and there’s a lot of strategy to that, but the fact is you have to write more and looking at something with curiosity. One of the ways that I started to really understand writing a little bit more was to, when I read something that was interesting, I was like what did they do there? And then I just started analyzing it and that was, honestly, my introduction into it. I know that’s not a perfect answer, but there’s really no best way to do it other than just read really good writing and mirror it until you develop your own style.
Speaker 1:
I can definitely relate. I still think of not just my high school teachers, but even my college professors. When I had to do writing, it was always the same thing, like red pin everywhere, and they would be like, okay, this should not be an intro, this should be at the end of your paper and this should be up here and this should be down there. And then they’re just like drawing all these lines. It was like every time I wrote it. It was so horrible and through this day when I try to write for social media or in an email, like it just sounds robotic and I just freeze up, I’m like I’m done all right before, like when we I mean when we learned to write.
Speaker 3:
Like you were saying it’s academic writing. I mean at that time no one knew the power of social media and what that was going to look like and how to write for that you know, like that’s not what we were taught. We were taught to write essays and some people knew.
Speaker 1:
Al Gore knew when he could. It’s right.
Speaker 2:
Well, he knew it Right. I would say this, kidding me it’s right, oh al, he knew it right. I wouldn’t do this. So like that type of instruction, it’s like it’s ingrained in us. It’s like this is gonna sound bad, but it’s like small t trauma. It’s stuff that like we, it’s part of us that we we’re writing, we’re still writing to impress that teacher.
Speaker 2:
I am, we are, it’s okay. It’s okay to cry, it’s. The fact is like it takes a long time to be able to let that go. Or I would say this Write if that teacher’s in your head your goal is to get a C oh, Then you’re gonna get a better copy. That’s even more pay-to oh, Then you’re going to get a better copy.
Speaker 1:
That’s even more painful. Not your hands and the son of an immigrant father. C that means spanking. There’s no room for C-.
Speaker 2:
You ought to write spank-worthy copy. Here’s the key to spank-worthy copy. Here’s the bottom, the key to staying worthy or not.
Speaker 3:
Who knew? An episode on copywriting would just like bring out this childhood drama.
Speaker 1:
We never. We are just another part of that. I wear that shirt. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Feeling that throughout the shirt we go to YouTube and check, we should say while we’re transitioning.
Speaker 1:
Because Jamie has a question about personal brands, since we were talking about how people, when they want to buy something you’re selling, they effectively want to buy you and that ties into personal brand. Not to ask a question, but yeah, if you’re not watching us on YouTube, it’s kind of cool, click down in the show notes below so you can see us and experience us better. But also a lot of the other episodes I do Cool, click down in the show notes below so you can see us and experience us better, but also a lot of the other episodes I do about Facebook and Instagram ads. They’re just visual in nature and I don’t know if you knew, but you can see all that on YouTube. And so when I’m clicking around and ad accounts and showing you all the ninja tricks that I live and breathe daily like that’s better consumed on Right Plus, let’s not overlook the fact that I live and breathe daily Like that’s better consumed on Right From where you’re going.
Speaker 2:
Yeah Well, plus, let’s not overlook the fact that I’m really good looking.
Speaker 3:
Ah, there’s been that I mean, you guys gotta get over to YouTube and see this guy.
Speaker 1:
You got to be.
Speaker 2:
Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld had a kid. Oh really Okay.
Speaker 1:
Actually now I could kind of move there. Bruce. Bindler like 20 years ago, yeah.
Speaker 2:
We’ve got gym shorts on. Can’t see.
Speaker 1:
You remember those plaid shorts? Oh, those were horrible.
Speaker 3:
No, they were great. Well, at the time they were great yeah. Oh, how fashion changes. Okay, so what I was going to ask this is all supposed to lead into was what is some outdated advice, then, of personal brands?
Speaker 2:
So all right. So this is actually where my shirt comes in. It says you’re gross. Where where my shirt comes in, which says gross. So there was this trend going on for probably 2020 to 2023. It seems like it’s kind of dying a little bit.
Speaker 2:
Well, actually, there’s two. The first one I was going to talk about is weaponized vulnerability, like after bernie brown said, like the power of vulnerability and all this stuff. People just got too carried away with it the crying on LinkedIn, the, the, the pity parties, the, the showing just like marketing pain or trying to make something painful, where it’s like, yeah, dude, get over yourself. Like there was some of that and it was just to me that was a major turnoff. It was when people, when private lives, started becoming way too public. I thought that was awful person.
Speaker 2:
I’m happy to see that the trend as has moved away and this might be a little off topic, but but I think it’s important to say, like, even if you go on LinkedIn, like the about section, people are like as a proud parent of three people, and you know someone who has ADD and you know, you know from this country or that country. That’s the first thing that they lead with Now here in the States, if you’re applying for a corporate job, I’m not allowed to ask you are you a parent? Are you, do you have any medical disabilities? Where are you from? I legally cannot ask you those questions because it can affect it will affect my view of you. It will like it can’t not, it will subconsciously happen. The fact that we’re leading with all of this stuff in most of our bios, yes, it is a good point of connection, but honestly I think that sometimes it goes too far good girl yeah oh, honestly like that.
Speaker 2:
That’s one of my things that I feel like boundaries are good.
Speaker 2:
And when it comes to my shirt, the feelings are gross, so it’s kind of like the pretty fly for a right guy. It’s a pun. Feelings are gross. They’re everything that you have accumulated throughout the course of your life. It is your gross earnings. Your brand is your net. It’s you minus deductions. It’s putting boundaries around certain things so that everything shows up. It’s everything that you’ve accumulated versus what should be in your brand, with brand voice, and all this stuff is putting those boundaries to figure out what your net is that’s actually showing up in your business.
Speaker 2:
It’s understanding what’s real, what’s not what’s real. But what’s what’s here? Like watching this video you see here to here, you have no idea what’s beyond these words or what wearing on the bottom yeah, you don’t know this down here on the bottom.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, you don’t know this down here.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I’ve got from the ceiling right there. You can’t see it right. It’s true, I love rose birth net feelings are gross. I I didn’t even get that until you said it, but I like it yeah, and I also enjoyed back in the pandemic days, in the depth of the pandemic, when we would just like, on these Zoom calls, pan our computers around so we all could like see what our space truly looks like. Rather than the actuarial and the eyesight and I’m okay with that.
Speaker 2:
Like there are times when it is absolutely great to show that stuff. You want to have your cat and your kid show up on camera. Go for it.
Speaker 2:
I don’t have a problem with that. But there are some things that just that aren’t necessarily representative of your brand, which it’s okay to acknowledge them, but it’s not necessarily that we should lead with them. And even as a personal brand, you’re still selling something and it’s okay to share. You’re still selling something and it’s okay to share. I believe in translucency. I don’t believe in full transparency. I don’t want you to be able to set a window. It’s a tinted wall. I can see the sub stuff. It’s just not see-through, it’s not entirely see-through.
Speaker 1:
It’s cloudy.
Speaker 2:
Translucency. I believe in translucency, not transparency, less transparency. Okay, it’s cloudy translucent, translucency not transparency, less transparency okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
I was gonna ask like in part of this, do you also mean like where people were hitting pain points too hard?
Speaker 2:
so that there can be. So, from awriting perspective, there’s the problem agitate solution I know you’re dealing with this and it feels like this and it’s twisting the knives. But there are different levels of it. It can go too far sometimes. From a conversion perspective, that actually works better, but from an empathy standpoint and from a humanity standpoint, everyone’s line is going to be different, and I’ve worked with certain people who were like oh, I don’t even want to mention pains, I just want to be full sunshine and rainbows, and that can work for certain people. But there are other people that are like, yes, yes, twist the knife, make them bleed, make them laugh, and it works. It’s a Dr Burns mentality or Mr Burns mentality. It works, but it’s also a turnoff to certain people. It depends on the audience, it depends on what it is, and so that was the thing, like with some of the Facebook ads that I that I wrote. Everyone has different lines.
Speaker 2:
There are certain things that I would never say, that I absolutely refuse to say. I would never say you can’t afford not to do something, and a lot of people said like, oh, put this line in there, I won’t write it. You want to hire you? Like, I’ll give you the copy. If you want to put that in yourself, that’s fine. I will literally never write those words you can’t. I don’t know what someone can afford. I don’t know what they can’t afford. It’s not for me to say what they can’t afford to plus Plus. I’m not the one who’s making the final deliverable and I don’t know if it’s truly going to work for them. It’s between you know learning how to write copy versus paying your electric bill. Pay your damn electric bill, like that’s Keep the light on yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and that was something that I, you know, I didn’t. I didn’t. I’m not the one who came up with that boundary, but I heard it and I was like, oh yeah, no, that makes sense, I’m sticking with that, but everyone has different boundaries. Uh, there there are. There are absolutely some people who have refused to write, to write, for when I see their work, I’m just like this feels like predatory really I’m just and I’m not.
Speaker 2:
I don’t like that. But there are also a ton of great people who you know. They, some people like the. The empathy is good, but empathy also means acknowledging pains. So as far as talking about the pains and the agitation and things like that, it works. It’s just finding your own comfort level and also understanding what your audience likes, and sometimes you actually have to write a little bit more than you’re comfortable with, like just not a lot, I’m not saying go gory, but acknowledging and truly describing what their pains might feel like. Sometimes it’s actually an act of compassion because it’s saying, if you’re providing the solution for it, if you’re genuinely providing the cure for it, ok to talk about.
Speaker 1:
Right Agreed.
Speaker 3:
That’s good yeah.
Speaker 1:
Agreed.
Speaker 3:
Is this a good place for you to mention that word? That?
Speaker 1:
you said before we hit record. That word was bouncing around in my mind and I was like we have to talk about it right now.
Speaker 3:
Linoleum, Not linoleum. We already covered that Right right.
Speaker 1:
The listener is like what is the word? What is the word?
Speaker 2:
Right, and this is where we break for an ad.
Speaker 1:
I was just going to say Please have a Zorg. Oh man, the old TV days when you had to watch commercials. That word just was so funny to me when I heard it. So much sense. The word is broetry. How did you use the word broetry? How did you use the word broetry? How did you use the word broetry?
Speaker 2:
Broetry. So back when I was writing Facebook ads, broetry was the thing that was that really long copy of filled with really short sentences. Okay, have you ever heard of this Line break? What about this Line break? And when you do it, this happens Line break, and then this and this. And when you do it, this happens line break, and then this and this.
Speaker 2:
And it was funny and it was and it was. It was punchy, but they were like 123 lines long where you just kept scrolling and scrolling and LinkedIn took over doing this for a long time. It seems to be changing a little bit right now, but it’s basically it looks like it’s poetry a little bit right now, but it’s basically it looks like it’s poetry. It looks like you’re writing haikus over and over and over, but it’s usually kind of scammy, a little sketchy type of copy that has a certain feel to it. That’s can be very off-putting for some people or it can be like hell yeah, this is for me, other people and it’s very much used in the bro marketing. It’s hell yeah, just sounded like johnny lawrence from.
Speaker 3:
We just finished watching cobra kai by the to other people and it was very much used in the bro marketing. It’s how we are just sounded like Johnny Lawrence from. We just finished watching Cobra Kai by the way Nice, you can fix it, you want to close it off.
Speaker 1:
super well, it was good.
Speaker 2:
So, but that’s actually a great example of Brand Boy’s gone too far. Like Johnny Lawrence is a great character who’s who’s there’s like ralph baccio, he’s or I just forgot his name, what’s the? Uh, daniel, yeah, daniel, yeah, daniel larusso was influenced by the 80s. Johnny lawrence is still stuck in the 80s. The he’s still listening to a walkman. He becomes a caricature of the 80s, whereas daniel larusso is a brand voice of the 80s. He’s someone that experienced some good things and not highlights and still has references. The show itself has some throwbacks and it has acknowledgements of the eighties, but it’s not stuck in the eighties.
Speaker 2:
Connie Lawrence is a caricature and that’s what happens when you go too far with brand voice. When you like when with a writer like picks up one certain element of it, like look, I’ve got Muppet references. I’m not. I’m not opening up every emails with, like you know, any type of like Jim Henson or a child that PBS references is not like hey, you guys, like I’m not doing that with every email. I’m not dropping Kermit gifts and Ms Peggy everywhere. I do it on occasion, but when you do it too much, it begins to get off voice and it’s like this has gone too far. This doesn’t sound like me Putting those boundaries on the feelings. The gross first net putting those boundaries around it allows it to scale. Okay, all right, yeah.
Speaker 1:
So I want to ask about some of the principles, the timeless principles that still apply, that you could share, that you picked up when you were writing ads for. In 18 months, you said over 230. What was the exact number? 239 people in 1839 different businesses, people that you were writing ads for, and you became an expert at writing. Or what was the other phrase? Throwing your voice. Throwing your voice?
Speaker 2:
Throwing your voice right.
Speaker 1:
So what are some principles that the listener could take away that still apply to writing ad copy today?
Speaker 2:
So social media? I heard this description of it a long time ago and it stuck with me. It’s basically they said we don’t go to social media to make decisions. We go to social media to avoid making decisions, and I love that line yeah.
Speaker 2:
The way I started writing ads was I would just scroll to my newsfeed and I’ll look at my friends and their copy to my newsfeed and I look at my friends and their copy and the stuff that got me like where. I kept reading it, like it. You have to train your brain to do this. But what are your friends writing? What looks like it belongs there anytime. I started with like you know, dear business owners, or attention, business owners, I’m like nobody wants that and know that like an ad can do that. It works well on the radio because it perks you up. But the stuff on social media if I see something that looks like an ad, I don’t want to interact with it unless it’s calling out a specific thing that I’m dealing with and like there’s.
Speaker 2:
I saw an ad that did really well recently about like how to learn Spanish, and it wasn’t like are you trying to learn Spanish? It would be like and it would start with all right, the hardest thing about learning Spanish is blank. And I’d be like ah, yeah, okay, it just looked natural. Here’s something they don’t tell you when you’re trying to learn Spanish. Ever try to like like you’re still hearing like talk about some of the problems that are there. Why is it that or the the? The simplest line to say in spanish is spell the word socks s-o-c-k-s, in which is.
Speaker 2:
This is what it’s about like just sort of learning these little hooks and tricks that get you and they interest you and they intrigue you because they look like they belong. They’re kind of offering something of value and even if it’s just straight up entertainment right off the bat, and me that was the most effective ad. Going back to some of the Gen X references, one of the best ads that I ever wrote was for a coach, that it was a female empowerment coach and she helps women own their voice. And I just started off that the opening line was nobody puts baby in a corner. That line killed Cause it was for, like, gen X women. It it had. It did so incredibly well to the point where, like, everyone was like holy hell, what did we do? It was that it was just this little point of connection. It wasn’t like dear quieted woman, you know, it wasn’t that, it wasn’t acknowledging a pain, it was acknowledging who they are and that, just to me, that’s what always worked best.
Speaker 1:
Okay, it wasn’t acknowledging a pain. It was acknowledging who they are. Look at your friend’s social media and write things that feel like they go there.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, some of my best hooks. I remember, like my friend who is a copywriter, is a great writer. He started with a post. He’s like, okay, this can’t be right. And then he was just like talking about, like his electric bill. And I remember I just copied that line Okay, this can’t be right. And I started an ad with it and it did gangbusters Because it just developed intrigue right off the bat. That can’t be right. This can’t be right, because when you’re trying to start a business and they tell you to put yourself into the brand, everything becomes content. And now I got to start talking about my kids rather than what I do, rather than my solutions, rather than my business. I don’t want to talk about my kids, I don’t want to talk about work, I want to talk about success and challenges and things like that. That’s a hook. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:
It is a hook. Yeah. I might have to steal that hook. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
I stole it from. I’ll give him credit. Jimmy Parent, my copywriter friend. I I stole it from. I’ll give him credit Jimmy Parent, my copywriter friend. I stole that hook from him and I used it dozens of times and it worked really, really well. Right, okay, this can’t be right.
Speaker 3:
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:
We’re suddenly going to see all these ads. What is?
Speaker 2:
two final thoughts that you would leave the listener with about being authentic, connecting with somebody over just trying to convert them and writing that sounds more like them. Sometimes being helpful is not always the way that we’re defining it, and what I mean by that it’s sometimes the connection is there. Sometimes you just need to give people a simple answer and that works. There is no best way universally. It looks different for everybody. It depends on your situation, it depends on your background, it depends on your audience and not just your background. It depends on your audience and not just I don’t mean your audience as a whole, I mean the specific person who you’re speaking to. So I’m not a big believer in best practices. I believe that they are completely subjective and all I want to say is Han shot first. So I don’t know man.
Speaker 1:
Right? No, that’s fine. When we meet up in maine, it’s gonna be cool to meet you in person. Thank you for sharing what you shared on this episode.
Speaker 3:
I’d rather enjoy that yeah, it was very, very yeah, yeah, man, I had a good time too yeah pretty, fly copy on instagram right, yep, where else can somebody connect with?
Speaker 2:
you, justinblackmancom is the easiest place to go, and then if you want to hear a little bit more about the whole feelings are gross thing just go to justinblackmancom.
Speaker 4:
Slash feelings okay, right on right well, it’s that time, dear listener.
Speaker 1:
Until the next time you see us or hear from us, take care, be blessed, and we’ll see you in the next episode take care bye.
