TCC Podcast #233: Finding Your Copywriting Lane with Mariah Phillips

For the 233rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Mariah Phillips shares the secret to building a copywriting business in the nonprofit sector. Mariah is a Digital Marketing Strategist and Copywriter based in Baltimore, Maryland. She teaches entrepreneurs how to market their businesses and tell their stories. If you’ve been looking for a way to make an impact in your copywriting career, give this episode a listen. (Or read.) Here's what we talked about in this interview: •  Mariah’s journey through brand story development and the secret to long standing brands. •  How to write for top nonprofits AND earn a living. •  The right way to build a local community event with the power of words. •  The brilliant way to pivot and share knowledge with others about your expertise. •  A day in the life of an agency writer: sampling 10’s of voices?! •  The truth about going down the rabbit whole. (Can it actually be a good thing?) •  What you need to know about working in fundraising. - and storytelling. •  The formula to learn when writing to people not directly receiving a benefit. •  The better way to navigate a conversation with agencies and their strategy. •  Why you should give more value than your client pays for. •  How to go from scrappy freelance mindset to empowered CEO mindset. •  The quickest, easiest way to NOT connect with your clients. •  Why it’s vital to connect with people where they’re at. •  5 ways you should use the same metaphor. - or shouldn’t. This is an interview you won't want to miss. To hear it, click the play button below. Or school down to read the full transcript below and while you’re reading… subscribe with your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Kira: Time and time again, guests on our podcast have told us they started copywriting without actually knowing that what they were doing was writing copy. They were just figuring out how to market a product or service and copy was a natural part of the process. That's also true of today's guests for the 233rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Mariah Phillips. Mariah jumped from PR to fundraising to SEO before figuring out that the thing she did best in all of those roles was copywriting.  Rob: Before we share our interview with Mariah, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank. The Think Tank is a private mastermind group for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their business, receive one on two coaching from the two of us and ultimately grow their businesses to six figures or more. If you've been looking for a mastermind to help you grow, email us at help@thecopywriterclub.com to set up an interview or go to copywriterthinktank.com.  Kira: Now let's jump into our conversation with Mariah.  Mariah: Somehow I've always been a copywriter and didn't know it. So as I worked... I started in corporate America, I worked in a boutique PR firm in then New York Metro area. And so while there, we had to do a lot of brand story development for clients. Some of our clients were global and longstanding brands, and since some of them were brand new and sold quirky things like monocles, like this was their first time ever stepping out. And so my responsibility was to write their brand story, write copy, and even write pitches which isn't necessarily copy, but pitches to the media are making a sale. So, I did that and then I transitioned to working for an ed tech company called 2U, Inc. And in the process there, I started off as a placement specialist for a clinical social work program. And if you don't know anything about 2U, Inc basically they power the biggest universities in the country, they power their online master's programs.  My goal there was to get into their digital marketing department, but at the time when I was moving from the New York regions back to Maryland, they didn't have any openings in that department, so I said, you know what, I'll start off with student placement and help these master's level social work students get their internships. And that was cool because in order to do that, the students had to take their social work program online, but they had to take their clinical programs in their hometown. And so I had to find clinical social work placements for students, working adults and places like Waukesha, Wisconsin. Places where there's like one person in a whole town. And I worked throughout different regions in the U.S. to do that, and that relates to copy because it was there that I realized that the team there who was pitching these different clinical social work partnerships and like agreements with health systems to get our schools in partnership with these health systems to make the clinical internship finding process easier, the pitches were very hard for people to understand. They just didn't have anyone who was like a wordsmith on the team pitching these opportunities to the major health systems and placement sites. And so when I joined, because I had come from the public relations background, I was just like, "Hey, these are some things that we need to say in the subject line to get people to open. You guys are asking people way too much, way too soon, and you're scaring them off with these emails."  And so I was able to, along with my team, of course, come up with copy for like, I guess you can kind of call it a sales funnel for how we acquired more national partnerships and legal agreements with these different healthcare systems across the country. And so when they started asking me like specifically to write emails for those sorts of things, I was like, okay, cool. I guess writing emails is a thing, but I still didn't know that it was called copy and I still didn't know that it was so valuable. And then I transitioned, I ended up applying for a role in their digital... On the marketing floor, so it was like a 12 storey building and everybody was like on the 11th floor is marketing. And if you reach... Nobody ever gets to marketing, so good luck you can apply, but we don't think you'll get it.  And I'm always the type of person who's like, well, you got to try. So, we had a few case studies that you had to do to get a role as a digital marketing specialist for their inbound marketing team. And I did the case studies, they picked me and the rest is history as far as how I got into search engine optimization and how [inaudible 00:05:26] later how that relates to how I write copy now, because a lot of people are like SEO and copy don't go together. And I totally agree, but the two worlds can merge at some point. So anyway, there I also had to start writing different sales type copy, and also we would have a lot of guest posts on a lot of website for those who are familiar with inbound marketing. And so in order to do those things, we would have to write different advertising copy and come up with like blog posts briefs which are a lot like copy briefs when you're working with freelance. I had to partner with freelance writers to help us write the amount of blog posts we did. And so it's kind of like writing copy briefs, and we can go into that later if you find it helpful to do so.  But I eventually ended up getting a job with Catholic Relief Services and they are one of the top global nonprofits in the world. And so I was on their digital fundraising team. It was just me and my manager fundraising millions of dollars a month. And I had to write the email copy for about 10 campaigns or more a year, as well as like product descriptions for what the website copy for donation forms and things like that, to get people to take action, to donate money without having something in return other than the satisfaction that they were making the world a better place. But again, nobody called the copy and it wasn't until I left that job... I did the thing that I would never recommend anyone do, leave your job thinking that you have it all together, but you don't really have a very well put together plan. I wanted more freedom to work with people like populations and help people who I knew needed my help outside of the guidelines of working for any sort of agency. And so I didn't really know how to do that. So I did the only thing I did know how to do was throw events. I didn't know how to do outside of traditionally working in the marketing field, I threw an event in Baltimore where we hosted Baltimoreans who just wanted to come and hang out and have a good place to hang and chill.  And through that event, I had to do like a lot of like off the ground and grassroots promotion. It was a live event called Sunday Dinner Baltimore it's still on Instagram and it will happen again at some point. But COVID happened, like I had the first event, it was successful, people loved it. People were like, "When are you releasing the next tickets for this cool event where we get to do trivia and eat good food and meet new people?" And I was like, "I don't know, because COVID is here now." And so that kind of like crushed my dream of having this wonderful community-centered event concept in Baltimore. So I had to pivot to doing something online to make money as I was no longer with my former employer and I was like, "I do know how to fundraise."  So I started putting out information a lot about my fundraising experience on LinkedIn and sharing different stories. And nothing about my story in the beginning ever matches so here we go. And Anti-nuclear Proliferation Think Tank in D.C. that focuses on women's education was like, "We need a fundraiser, can you come and help?" And they were like, "We'll pay you 2K to write four emails to help us fundraise for a particular campaign." And I was like, "Cool, I need the money.