TCC Podcast #242: The 28 Month Client with Jared Macdonald

Jared Macdonald is our guest for the 242nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast. Jared is a copywriter whose focus is on user experience and customer research. It’s more than just the words we write, it’s about getting inside the heads of our ideal clients, so we can provide a product or service they truly need and want. Jared has proved his expertise in the area of serving his clients because he works with his clients for an average of 2.5 years. Here’s what else we talked about: Combining copy research with user experience and creating magic. Taking a life-threatening situation and turning it into a positive. Being okay with not having everything figured out in your business journey. There is no tiering to struggles and understanding we don’t know what someone is battling. How doing tasks in your business that don’t scale can end up leading to immense growth. Why over-delivering and building lasting client relationships go hand in hand. The steps to create points of excitement through every phase of a funnel. How to lengthen client relationships while respecting your own boundaries. The secret to being seen as the consultant from the beginning. Voice of customer research questions you need to include in your interview process. How to elevate your customer journey and provide the highest of experiences for your clients. Tools that can help you streamline and save you time. Getting to a place where YOU selectively choose your clients and make sure they’re worthy of a sales call. The benefits of working with retainer clients as a new copywriter. Best practices for networking when it can feel awkward and overwhelming. Hit that play button below or read the transcript if you want to improve your client experience. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Think Tank Jared’s website Jared’s workshop  Full Transcript: Rob:  One of the big challenges of running a copywriting business is finding clients. And unless you have retainers, once you find a good client and do the work, you've got to go back out there and find another client and then another. But what if the great clients that you have could stick with you, offering project after project month after month so you don't have to spend your time prospecting and instead you can focus on problem solving. That's what Jared McDonald, our guest for the 242nd episode of the Copywriter Club podcast does. His average client relationship lasts almost two and a half years. And we asked him what he does that makes his clients so happy and he shared a few ideas that any copywriter can implement into their business. Kira:  Before we hear what Jared has to say, this podcast episode is brought to you by the Copywriter Think Tank mastermind, which Jared has participated in. The Think Tank is our private mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to challenge each other, create new revenue streams in their businesses, receive coaching from the two of us and ultimately grow to six figures or more. Up until last year, we only opened the Think Tank once a year, but today we invite a few new members each month. If you've been looking for a mastermind group to help you grow, visit copywriterthinktank.com to find out more. Rob:  Okay. Let's jump into our interview with Jared with this question about how he became a copywriter, a marketing consultant, and a UX strategist. Jared:  Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, from a story perspective, do you want the short version, long version? No. Rob:  I want a medium version. Sort of in the middle. Jared:  Medium, yeah? Medium details. Yeah. I mean, I started out in experiential marketing and doing sales as well. And then it really wasn't until I went to... Wanted to go to school to be a diplomat in foreign languages for some odd reason. And then, as you both know, my kind of cancer diagnosis and that whole journey kind of led me out of that path and it couldn't have been the best. It was literally the best thing because I managed to get a gig at a startup downtown Toronto, because I'm Canadian. And then started there, started content marketing, content strategy. And that's kind of where the words, coming from a sports journalism background. Rob, you know I'm a big baseball fan. So I was covering baseball and hockey for a long time on the side. It wasn't until I met you fine folks in the Copy Hackers mastermind where words can sell and the rest is kind of history. So moving from there, I loved the research side and I still do write copy periodically now, but not as much anymore. And I just love the research side. So at the same time, shortly after I met you both, I segued into user experience through the Nielsen Norman Group and really kind of saw a lot of overlaps with user experience and copy research. And then it kind of just blossomed from there. And since then, I've worked with e-commerce clients, financial startups as well and heavily on strategy right now, but used to write copy. Rob:  You started out with experiential marketing, you said. Tell us more about that. That may not be a term that everybody's heard. Obviously referring to the experience and marketing experience, but yeah, what is that and what were you doing? Jared:  Yeah, it's funny because I didn't even really know what experiential marketing is. In the world that we're in with list building and wanting to create a list and provide an experience, this was kind of doing that but in person. So it was at sporting events and essentially, maybe we can link a photo in the show notes, but essentially it was backpacks with full sound and laptops inside and there were screens over top of your head. You do outdoor. I know Kira is already picturing this is great. So you'd be outside at sporting events or tailgate parties and those kinds of things and brands at the time like Blackberry and stuff would hire us. And you're basically providing an in-person experience and you take photos of people with cameras and you'd have a wrist keyboard that you would enter in their email to email them photos of the event. Yeah, this was kind of list building. And obviously back then, I wouldn't have had any clue I'd even go into user experience or anything like that. So it's kind of funny how things, I've always been prioritizing the experience and now I'm doing it digitally instead of in person. Rob:  I was hoping that you were one of the guys in the president's costumes running around the track at like nationals game or whatever, but not like that. Jared:  Yeah. President or the big celery costume or a hot wing. Rob:  Exactly. Jared:  And then you fall down intentionally to let the other... Yeah. Oh, that's great. Kira:  When people walk up to you, what was on the screen above your head? Jared:  Yeah, I know, it's so mysterious. I mean, it was promos for kind of a Blackberry model or features or we had like a camera app. There were different apps because there was a laptop in the backpack. There was a lot of different apps and functionality that we could do with it. But the two most common ones were just kind of a video playing with full sound. And because the screen was over top of your head, you'd stick out and a crowd of people would come up to you. The people I was managing at the time, we hired really extroverted people who just loved going up and talking to others and just kind of breaking the ice. So it was a lot of fun. Rob:  This seems like a job you should have had, Kira. This is the perfect job for you. Kira:  I would be so bad at that. I would be like, "Don't talk to me. I don't want to talk to you." But I feel like Jared's friendly and that would be perfect. Like you're tall, so you stand out. People can see the screen. Jared:  Well, I was just going to say the same thing about you. I was going to say the same thing about you. People would ask you, "Wow, you're so tall." And you probably don't get that often, right Kira? Kira:  No, I don't get that enough. So that would have been a good job for me. What lessons did you learn from that experience of having that job where you're out there and you're taking photos of people and marketing that way? Lessons that could help freelance copywriters today. Jared:  It's interesting sometimes to apply in person experiences or even conferences now, but back then, I mean, I think really wanting to provide a unique kind of experience. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for copywriters like us to really go outside the norm and really create a unique experience, whether it's in your sales process or onboarding. There's so many opportunities to delight and that's really what this was about back then, was yes, you would take people's photos and be able to email them a photo of the event afterwards. And then obviously the brand would have the contact info and the same kinds of things. But I think it was just so much better to just be there with your friends. You didn't have a camera and you could get a photo emailed to you. That was just one kind of example. But I think really the main thing was just to look for opportunities to delight in the experiences that you're having, whether it's with clients or your students or members or however we want to call them. You hear customer experience right now and it's a buzz term, but what does that actually mean? And I think really just wanting to find opportunities to delight and over-deliver. Rob:  I know we're going to come back to this idea because it's something that you're focused on in your business today before we get to what you're doing today. You're I think the first almost diplomat we've ever had on the podcast too. Kira:  Yeah, I didn't know that about you. Rob:  What was the drill about? Yeah, what were you thinking?