TCC Podcast #61: Creating customer personas with Alaura Weaver

Welcome to episode 61 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Today Kira Hug and Rob Marsh talk with freelance copywriter Alaura Weaver about how she’s grown her business, often working at night to get things done. During our discussion, we covered: •  how she went from acting to sales to copywriting •  how theater and acting has made her a better copywriter •  what she did early on to get her first clients and her advice to new copywriters •  how she saw herself as a business owner, not a freelancer •  her thoughts about seeing customers as humans, not consumers and living your message •  how copywriters can live their own message and values •  how to develop buyer personas and why you should use them •  how she gets to know the customers she is profiling •  the trap of writing for everybody and reaching nobody •  how she sells her clients on creating Avatars as part of her projects Plus we also asked Alaura about how often you should create new customer profile, what she’s doing to share how you can define your own customer personas and how she juggles family, course creation, and business and makes it all work. Want this one in your ear buds? Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Textbroker Neil Patel Joanna Wiebe The storytelling post on CH Hillary’s coaching post Xtensio Alaura’s website @wordweaverfree Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Rob: What if you can hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits. Then steal an idea or two 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 61 as we chat with freelance copywriter and storyteller, Alaura Weaver, about how she became a copywriter, creating customer personas, and her course about them, juggling work and family, and various other products, and making business personal. Welcome Alaura. Rob: Welcome Alaura! Alaura: Hi! Thank you! Kira: Great to have you here, so I think a great place to start is with your story. As a storyteller, can you tell us your story? Alaura: So, it’s really ironic is that my verbal, like, speaking storytelling skills are a little bit off, which is why I like writing. But, I’ll tell you how I started. I’ve actually started in the theater. I was a child actress and, that’s what I thought I was going to do my entire life. I was on the stage, I literally grew up on the stage. Kira: Wow. Alaura: And I went to the Baltimore School for the Arts for high school. I majored in theater in undergrad and got my graduate degree in acting. So, it was kind of like, that was my path; I was going to be a professional actress. I focused on the creation of original works, so I did have that writing element in there. But, life is a lot harder—laugh—than your dreams, right? You know, the reality is most actors are unemployed for the majority of their careers, and I had to find a way to pay back those student loans and pay bills and be an adult. And so I got into sales. I got into business-to-business sales. One of my first jobs was actually on inside sales for a start-up, and I liked that environment a lot, of that small team, that kind of feisty, scrappy team, building and growing that business, and it felt like a good place to be. But then I got an offer to start selling, advertising for the Yellow Book.—Laughs—If you remember...do you remember the Yellow Book? Rob: Let your fingers do the walking, absolutely. Alaura: So you can guess how,