TCC Podcast #63: Learning the stuff that isn’t written down with Margo Aaron

This one is a bit of a holiday gift for you all... so many good ideas and a fantastic guest! For the 63rd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with Margo Aaron, a copywriter and psychological researcher with an impressive range of experience and know-how. During our conversation, Margo shared: •  how she went from academic researcher to copywriter •  the importance of psychology in copywriting (and life) •  why you need to listen to people don’t say in addition to what they do say •  what to ask for to get good feedback •  how copywriters can use the skill of listening and use it to their advantage •  how she built a business that she hated—and stopped taking clients •  Product Founder Fit—what it is and why it’s important •  how to learn the stuff that isn’t written down •  why we are all so scarred of breaking the copywriting rules •  what copywriters do that drive her crazy •  where the money is in marketing (the answer isn’t your list) We also asked her about what goes on in the altMBA, but while most of the content and assignments are secret, she shares just enough to whet our appetites. She also talks a bit about how to write an email that people actually want to read, the future of copywriting—it will become more important than ever—and a few strategies for communicating more clearly with your clients. Want to hear it (or read it)? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Margo’s website Honest Selling Secrets for a Dishonest Man The Arena Work Week Lunch Jeff Walker altMBA Hillary’s Post on What’s Not Working @margoarron Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Kira and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode sixty three as we chat with psychological researcher, strategic planner and copywriter Margo Aaron, about changing the world and making a profit, what copywriter’s absolutely must know about psychology, what it’s like to hang out with Seth Godin in his altMBA program and how to learn the stuff that isn’t written down. Kira: Welcome, Margo! Rob: Welcome. Margo: Thanks you guys, happy to be here. Kira: Great to have you here! Rob: We are so excited! Kira: I secretly want to be friends with you, so by the end of this need to be friends. Margo: I’m in. I’m in. Kira: When are we getting coffee? Or tequila? Rob: Margo, you came to our attention because somebody posted your website in The Copywriter Club Facebook group and immediately there were like forty comments about how great your website was. And literally within a couple minutes people were saying we’ve got to have Margo on the podcast! Got to have Margo on the podcast! So we reached out and made it happen. Tell us how you got to the point where everybody wants to know about you! Where did you come from? Margo: (laughs) Honestly, when you find that out let me know. I have you all deceived! The short version is I sort of fell into marketing and copywriting by accident. I started my career as you said as a psychological researcher: I was working in a lab for depression-anxiety patients and you guys, had I known then what I know now the amount of people we could have helped—you can’t even imagine. I didn’t know it at the time but it was kind of my first introduction to funnels because I was the person on the phone... like, I was in charge of what’s called recruitment and screening so it’s effectively tofu and mofu, like I have to get people in the door and then I had to qualify them for different studies and around that time I realised how there was a huge disconnect between what we know and what we do. And I was frustrated with how limited our exposure was as a clinic, like we weren’t really able to help people the way I wanted to be able to help people and I was really really obsessed with this question of how do you get people to care? And I went to graduate school and in the middle of graduate school I realized that the academic life really wasn’t for me and I got introduced to this world of online business, which I’d never heard about before and in fact would have been very embarrassing for an academic to even associate themselves with... but I was fascinated by how effective  it was and you guys know as copywriters, I mean, it’s effectively just psychology and so I sort of went down this dark hole of learning about direct response copywriting. And a mentor at the time told me that I had skills and whatever was called market research and I’d never heard of that before and so I took a job as a market researcher... Ended up working in-house in a marketing agency for a few years before jumping off to start my own consultancy and the rest is history. Rob: That’s great history. I love like, the psychological background, which is critical for everything, certainly in the direct response copywriting area but even in content creation, just knowing and understanding how clients react. It feels like every copywriter could benefit from a course, or even a degree in psychology. Margo: Absolutely. I worry about telling people to learn psychology because I think a lot of it is ingrained in who you are and how you interact with the world. Like, the more you learn to pay attention to the people around you, what they are not saying is arguably a more important skill than learning the science. I know a lot of copywriters who tend to be perfectionists; we get obsessed with funnels, we get obsessed with systems and optimization and automation, and we forget about the human being that’s on the other side of our copy and I think that’s the piece that’s most powerful and when you say psychology a lot of people go to the academic version of it, the testing and the studies and the rules and I think for copy especially, the more important piece is recognizing that there’s a human who is driven by emotion behind the scenes, and tapping into that, which you can do when, I mean, if you guys are married... Rob, you say you have a kid; you’re using that psychology every single day as you negotiate, you know, how to get them to eat vegetables or why they shouldn’t come home late. All of that is using the same kind of persuasion techniques and psychology that you would use in, say, a sales letter. Rob: Yeah, yeah. So I’m really intrigued with this idea of the things that people aren’t saying. I mean, in addition to sort of just, you know, the life skills and psychology, what do you mean by that? Margo: So this is something I learned in the clinic and, funny enough, from my father. So in the clinic one of the things we had to assess for was demeanor, and so you would listen to people’s faces. So some of this is body language, but some of this is also learning how to hear rationalizations, and learning how to hear social norms, and learning how to hear when people aren’t just lying to you—but lying to themselves. So when I say listening to what people don’t say, it’s kind of like asking someone, “what did you think of my essay?” and if I’m your friend I might say oh, it was great - you did great. And what you’re listening for is their tone - the context in which they said it. Did you ask the question in a way that actually lends itself to an answer? Because what you’re really hearing when you say it was great is, “I don’t want to fight with you.” That’s the actual answer. Because a real compliment sounds different. A real compliment sounds like, “wow, this argument you made in paragraph seven was really strong because what you said about trees and snails really compelled and changed my view on this, this, and this. That’s a real compliment. Someone saying, wow, it was great - I liked it - that’s your friend trying not to hurt your feelings. Rob: This sounds like every conversation with a client. Margo: Yes! Rob: You know, yeah I like your copy, you know, or yeah, the copy is great, or even worse: I don’t like it, you know, it’s not right, you know, without that in-depth feedback. Margo: Oh yeah. I always tell future freelancers and consultants to never ask a client what they like, because what they like is irrelevant. It’s, “did it work?” Is this effective? Did we achieve our objective? If you start asking what someone likes you’re going to get twenty five thousand opinions and they’re not qualified to give them to you. You’re the expert. Kira: So how does this come into play as copywriters? How can we use this? Is it just getting, you know, as we’re interviewing customers and doing research, is it getting people on video calls so that we can kind of read their face? How can we use this to our advantage? Margo: That’s a great question. Developing the skill of listening takes time. I think it starts with—this is going to sound silly—but it starts with actually shutting up. So oftentimes, when we sit down—I certainly I’m guilty of this—when I first sat down with clients, I would ask them maybe one or two questions and then I’d verbal vomit all over them about why I could solve all their problems. And I never closed any sales that way and it wasn’t until I would learn to how to ask questions and really listen and just get comfortable with the silence and get comfortable with letting them talk without necessarily expressing my views, or having known what I think, that starts to develop that muscle of being able to listen well. That’s step one, is sort of silencing your inner voice and stop thinking about like, how am I going to respond? And it doesn’t have to just be in a client interaction.