Finding Authenticity in Brand Voice

Brand voice is one of the "popular" ways to niche or differentiate yourself in the crowded world of copywriting. But what is it really? And how do you do it? We wanted to go deeper than the typical discussion on brand voice, so we asked the expert on the topic, Justin Blackman to join us for the 411th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And we think you're going to like what he shared about it as well as writing brand manifestos and achieving mastery. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: Join the Manifesto Maker program here Brand Voice Academy The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: One of the niches that I commonly hear a lot of copywriters talk about focusing on is brand voice. Often they don't use those words. Sometimes they say things like they help clients tell their story or that they help you sound like you. Or maybe it's something like they help bring out your personality or capture the words that resonate with your best customers. All of those are ways of saying pretty much the same thing, brand voice. But while many writers talk about doing this brand voice thing, not many talk about how you do it. In talking about brand voice, I wanted to go a little bit deeper than the typical things that you might read in a blog post about brand voice or things that you might've even heard on podcasts like this one before. So that's what this episode is all about.  Hi, I'm Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club, and on today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed copywriter and brand voice expert, Justin Blackman. We've actually had Justin on the podcast before, several times in fact, and we've even talked about brand voice with him before, but I wanted to go a little bit deeper this time to go beyond the typical frameworks and see what it really takes to identify your own brand voice or the brand voice of your clients. And I think you're gonna like our discussion, so stay tuned.  But before we jump in with Justin, you've heard me talk about The Copywriter Underground over and over and over. And I'm just going to remind you that the Underground is our community for copywriters who are actively investing in their businesses and in their writing skills. It includes monthly group coaching where we talk about the sticky challenges and problems that copywriters face in their business. It includes this massive library of training. There's more than 30 different templates. It's all focused on helping you grow your skills and get better at things like finding clients, conducting prospecting calls, writing hooks and leads, creating frameworks and processes for getting things done, and so much more. And each month we bring you a different business-focused training to help you grow your skills and grow your business. The next scheduled training is in a couple of weeks.  If you're listening to this, when the podcast releases, it's all about marketing on social media in a way that doesn't disappear in just a few seconds, a few minutes, or even a day or two. Like what happens to your posts on Twitter. Instagram, even LinkedIn. That's going to be with Heather Farris, who was a guest on our podcast a couple of weeks ago. We've asked Heather to customize what she's going to share so that it's really applicable to copywriters and content writers. And I think you're going to like what she will be teaching us this, uh, this in a couple of weeks in September.  And then in October, we're going to have last week's guest, Kennedy, come back and talk about creating the perfect lead magnet. If you listened to his episode last week, you're definitely going to want to join us for this training. So you're not just adding people to your list, but you're actually attracting people who buy and need the solutions that you have for the challenges that they face. That's just the next two guest trainings. We'll keep adding more and more to The Copywriter Underground, but the thing is they're for members only. So to get these behind the scenes secrets, you’ve got to join. And you know, you can do that at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. Do it today. So you can be there for these upcoming business changing trainings.  And with that, let's go to our interview with Justin.  Justin Blackman, welcome back to the podcast. Before we hit record, I think I mentioned this is like your fifth or sixth appearance. You have been on the podcast more than anyone besides Kira and myself. Justin Blackman: That's pretty cool, man. It's always fun being here. It's one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. And I can't say I've listened to every episode, but it's close. Rob Marsh: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. It's nice to have one listener. When my mom passed away, I lost my dedicated listener. It's nice to have you there as my, my other mom, Justin. So you've been here more than anyone else, I think. And, that's probably because you have been part of the copywriter club almost from day one. You know, you were part of the first accelerator group. You were part of the think tank we put together. You were part of the free Facebook group. I think within the first couple hundred members, if I'm not mistaken, like it's been a long time. Justin Blackman: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you guys have been there for me since day one. So, you guys came first. You guys literally helped me build my career and gave me the confidence and success. And more importantly, the platform and the structure to build my business. Cause I had tried before I actually had launched a business once before that in the course of six months made a total of $500. And that wasn't great. But then after going in-house for a while, when I had the opportunity to go out, I was like, I need to not make the same mistakes I made before. And that's where you guys came in and gave me the structure that I needed to do everything and become who I am. Rob Marsh: So for those people who maybe aren't like you and haven't listened to every single episode or almost every single episode, and maybe haven't heard your story before, Catch us up a little bit on that. You just told us some of the very basics of you getting started. We don't have to go in depth because like I said, they can go back and listen to some of the previous episodes. But yeah, where did you come from and how did you… Basically, you've become one of the leading brand voice people. I would say guy. You're maybe the only guy doing brand voice. There are a couple of women out there really pushing it as well, but you're one of the leaders talking brand voice. So, how did you get there? Justin Blackman: Yeah, so my original background was in sports marketing and field marketing. I worked for Red Bull, Puma, 5-Hour Energy, and I was doing a lot of consumer marketing, consumer messaging, literally getting out there with the people speaking to tens of thousands of people. Then I tried to transition to creating my own business that created the messaging for the sampling programs. And that's the one that failed miserably. I just didn't know how to run a business. I wound up working in house for a gigantic hotel conglomerate IHG, where I was working. I became a copywriter and I was writing for 14 different brands at the same time. So every message I created had to be adjusted and altered and changed. And I got pretty good at doing it intuitively, but my work kept getting watered down by all the stakeholders who had an opinion, I don't like this word, I don't like that word. And it just really, really frustrated me. And I didn't really know how to, how to change that. And it was actually at the first TCC IRL with Abbey Woodcock, where she taught me the brand voice framework of vocabulary, tone and cadence, which I then used to really stand up for my work and define it. And more importantly, redefine what each brand voice was. And that changed the game. And I was able to deliver better work. I was able to be confident in it, stand up for it, defend it. And then the work got better. And the results were better. The conversions improved. And I got more confident with it. I got a great opportunity after the headline project, which you guys helped me with, where I'd written 100 headlines every day for 100 days. resulting in a swipe file of 10,211 headlines. And that kind of grew my name as a freelancer. So I wasn't just in-house, I was starting to build up something on the side. that got big enough where I was able to leave. And I then wrote for an agency with Facebook ads. And they had a ridiculous amount of clients. Rob Marsh: And ofcourse that was an ad sweatshop—you were the guy you were the guy sweating. Justin Blackman: Yeah. They had this really unique style. It was kind of the direct response, short, choppy, one line paragraphs over and over, and it was long-form copy. And it looked kind of broken and weird, but knowing brand voice and knowing the vocabulary tone and cadence framework, I came in and I did a test project for them. And they said afterward, I was the first person in seven years ever to nail the test project on the first shot. And it was because of the brand voice. And I grew that. And over the course of two years, I think I wrote 329 ads. And it was all brand voice. I thought I was getting good at Facebook ads, but it was really making me really good at voice. When that ended, I started talking more about my process more. And that was actually at the Think Tank. It was the first time that I ever talked about being able to nail voice. And I remember I just sort of was in a hot seat. I actually just the words brand ventriloquist just sort of fell out of my mouth. And I was like, oh, all right. That's interesting. Ears perked up. So I leaned into that and kind of labeled myself as the brand ventriloquist,