The 4 Buyer Types and How to Sell to Each One with Courtney Fanning

Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Business First Creatives. Okay, so when I tell you guys that I have highly anticipated on this next guest, I first heard her in episode and y’all, I just wrote it down and now I can’t find it.

I think it’s 1 62 the, this can’t be that Hard podcast, but Courtney Fanning was on there and she was talking about buyer types and personas, and I was like. Oh my God, I am absolutely obsessed with this. Eventually I’m gonna have her on my podcast and I feel like it was every six months. I was like, I’m gonna invite her now.

And then I didn’t, and then I’m like, I’m gonna invite her now. So she’s finally here, you guys, and I am just so excited about today’s topic. Courtney, welcome to my podcast.

Courtney: Hello. I’m so excited you.

Colie: Ah, I mean, I should have just asked earlier. I mean, I don’t know. I think this is a good time because. absolutely obsessed with the way that people think, and right now I’m totally focused on how they make buying decisions because I know that my audience does not make buying decisions in the same way that I do. Like one of the things that I find so interesting right now is I’ve, I’ve recently had a new segment of people come onto my list from a particular visibility activity that I did. I ended up running a flash sale to them, and it was a small group. We’re talking about less than a hundred, and what I found absolutely fascinating was not that none of them bought the thing that I was trying to sell them, it’s that none of them were curious enough to click the link. And I was like, this just doesn’t make sense to me. Like I always curious, especially if I’m joining someone’s email list. For the first time, and I don’t quite know about their offer suite. I might know who they are, but not like the particulars. If they’re making me an offer, oh, I’m gonna click because I wanna devour the sales page and see if it’s something that I’m either immediately interested in or I kind of put it in my back pocket for, you know, when the time is right.

I’ll come back and give this a think again. But the fact that no one clicked, I was like, this is so strange because. What’s driving them? Like, I, I don’t know. I, I got a little stuck, so today I’m really excited to talk about why people make buying decisions, and to me, if you look at the bigger picture, it’s kind of about how people explore your offers as well.

Courtney: Yeah, spoken. I know we’re jumping the gun here, but what you’re just saying was spoken like a true relator, so we’ll get into that.

Colie: Okay, so we’re gonna kick the conversation off with this. Courtney’s got four buyer personas and she created a quiz. And so the moment that I heard her on Anime’s podcast, I of course went and took the quiz and it turns out that I’m a relator. But Courtney is going to break down the four types and then we’re really gonna hop into this conversation.

Courtney: Yes. So to back up for a second, give you some context of why this quiz came into being. I was watching Sarah Blakely’s masterclass, so it’s, you know, she’s the founder of Spanx. She’s a billionaire, but she, what’s so incredible about her story is that she basically walked into these stores that gave her a chance, like, okay, we’re gonna put like.

10 of your, your Spanx on our shelves, and we’ll see how it does. So she went into those stores and she would stand next to her, Spanx and she would basically like talk to people as they walked by. Like, Hey, have you tried this new product, or Let me tell you about it. And she did this over and over and over, and she started to realize that there was a pattern in the way that people were responding to her.

And she started to break it down into like there’s four different types of people and based on if I can suss out which one they are, then I know how to talk to them, to close the sale. To get them to say, yeah, I’ll give it a try, or, this sounds exactly like what I wanted, or. I really like you. I don’t really even know if I wanted like these Spanx, these things.

What are I, this is a weird name, but like, yeah, I like you, so I’m just gonna try it. And I found that really fascinating because of course I’m gonna hit pause and my little business brain is like, how do I make this work for my own business? So I was thinking when people come to your website. You have so many different and you don’t get to see them, you don’t get to stand next to ’em and say, Hey, come buy my product or service.

You kind of just like put some copy together and really hope that it resonates with them. So how in the world are you gonna try and create something that works for a million different people? ’cause people are coming to your sites with different life experiences, different expectations, different like levels of knowledge about what you do or what it is that you offer, or how a course actually works or how a product works or any of that.

So if I could then figure out how do I take these four buyer types and look at how I approach copywriting, how can I say, okay, for this buyer type, these are the elements of copy that I know is gonna work really well with them. For this buyer type, oh, we got, they’re gonna forget about this. ’cause this is just not, this type of a person is not gonna remember that and this copywriter’s gonna forget that because they think there’s, you know, we buy the way that we like to buy.

So I basically sat down and deconstructed like everything I knew about. Audience research personas, branding, copywriting, because I, my background is in marketing. I worked for publishing for a long time. I worked in media. I’ve worked for startups, so like. I wanna put all my knowledge into this and make this quiz work.

And then I ran it and I’ve been running this quiz for three years, collecting data to see, and I get tons of replies back of people being like, oh my gosh, this was spot on. Or, Hey, I like put this into practice and I feel like my sales page is so much stronger. So that’s why I put the quiz together is I saw Sarah Blakely break these down and I was like, I will, I will do this for copy.

So to break it down, the four buyer types that Sarah Blakely outlined were the director, the relator, the socializer, and the thinker. So we’ll start with actually the socializer, because I feel like it’s. Kind of misunderstood and it’s the, it’s the smallest chunk of my audience as well. So I’m always really interested in this.

I like to say this is the buyer who buys on, buys off of vibes. Like they will go to a sales page and they like the razzle dazzle. They’re really interested in who you are. Like who’s this person selling this thing to me? Do I like them? I think they tend to. Follow the same circle of business owners or product creators.

So like a copywriter will recommend a web designer and maybe they’ll do some promotional stuff together. That web designer will recommend a type designer that type, you know, like we kind of have these circles and so that type of person loves. Being a part of those circles and buying from the same group of people because you know, they really run decisions by their peer group.

They really like the social community really matters to them. It gives them like it, the validation that they need to say, buying from these people is safe. They also don’t like feeling like one in a million though. So if you want a brand ambassador, someone’s gonna buy from you over and over. You can’t just deliver the product and like give them this really blank, like, thanks for your purchase email.

They wanna feel like you reached out to them. You’re like, Hey, thanks for buying this thing for trusting me. If you have any feedback, they really want that one-on-one. Feel in their copy. Mm-hmm. And then it’s kind of like the, I could grab a beer with them. Test that we kind of do with politicians. It’s the same for the socializer.

So then some copy tactics you can use for the socializer is to really focus on your brand story. So. Whether that’s you have an origin story, like your superhero origin story, you have an adversity story or you have this like big picture purpose that led you to where you are today. Tell that story even on a sales page for toilet paper.

I don’t care. Like tell that story ’cause that actually is a connection point for them. That’s really important. You want your personality to come through. And this isn’t just for solopreneurs, this is for businesses that maybe they’re operating under a brand name, like maybe they’re not founder led. You still need to show personality because we do personify brands.

Even if it’s like Chapstick, like the, the design, the copy, the voice we’re personifying that brand, like Vaseline is different than the eos eos, I don’t know, they’re like little round balls. It’s a different personality and that matters to us when we’re buying. They also really like photography and illustrations that show, like groups of people or pictures of people or you if you’re the founder, because again, it’s that validation that face.

And startups don’t do this a lot of times too ’cause they love illustrations and like cutesy things, but they don’t show real people ’cause they like probably can’t afford stock photography. Um, but it drives me, it drives me insane. So when I do work with startups, I’m like, can we have some pictures of real people, uh, using your product?

Thanks. And then what else? What else? Oh, and also personal testimonials about your experience and how, you know, your experience has led to this product’s validity. Okay, so that’s a socializer. Now let’s go to the director. I think the director is the easiest for people to understand because this is the no fluff, ROI driven person who’s a big picture thinker.

They consume information quickly and they will generally decide yes or no, like instinctually yes or no to whatever your offer is. By the first half of the page or what we call the top of the fold, um, which doesn’t really work anymore, even though we still call it top of fold. ’cause it used to be like when newspapers were folded and you would only read the top.

I don’t know, maybe your audience needs to know. That’s why we call it top of the fold. It’s just like the stuff you can see right off the bat. They really focus on. What the product is or the offer is. Does it have the features and benefits that I’m actually interested in? And can you validate yourself?

Are you legit? What’s your experience? Why should I trust you? And that’s kind of it. They’ll then use the rest of your website or your sales page, which sales pages can get kind of long just to validate that emotional reaction that they have to you. And they think it’s a logical reaction. ’cause they’re looking at like the qualitative testimonials and, oh, 200% growth or whatever.

But that’s actually still an emotional reaction. And so now they’re just looking, skimming the page for more points of validation to be like, yes, see, I should definitely make this decision. Yeah. Or like, oh, see, this is, this is terrible. This is, this is why I’m not gonna buy it. So copy tactics for the director are actually just really good basic principles for copywriting.

So especially at the top of any page, you wanna keep your paragraph shorter, two to three sentences max. You wanna make things really easy to skim, so use bold, use bullet points, you know, use italics or underlines sparingly. Gotta work with your designer to figure out what’s too much. And then you really want to highlight your expertise.

Why should I trust you? And just kind of lay things out in a way that is visually organized so they can just kinda go, bop, bop, bop. Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, no fluff. They don’t really care about your brand photography. It’s nice, but it’s probably not the top of their list. Okay, so that was number two, the relator.

So you, and I’m so curious to know what things pop out at you for the relator. So this person is really highly empathetic and intuitive. So they are really focused on what’s the emotional cost of their problems and their business life and their personal life. So if you are actually working with people who are solopreneurs, their business life and their personal life is kind of inexorably, inex, inex.

You know what I mean? It’s really intertwined. They really want a high touch, unique solutions. So the problem here is when it comes to service based businesses, you can kind of customize our services, but sometimes solopreneurs especially, they get really rigid with like, but this is my signature offer.

This is what I do and I don’t wanna stray from it. But the relator might be saying, I like seven out of eight of those deliverables, but could we do X, Y, Z instead? And instead of saying like, absolutely not, this is my offer. Take a moment and think like, if this is actually the right fit client, could you adjust here or there to make an offer fit their their needs?

Could you customize it? Because that’s really all they’re asking is, is a very small thing to feel like this is going to absolutely fix their problems and meet them where they’re at. Other copy tactics with this person is they. Really want to feel like you have exceptional customer experience, so you’re onboarding for services, or when you deliver a product, if, especially if it’s a digital product, don’t just be like, here’s your product.

Like they actually would like some custom copy again that says. Hey, here’s your product. Thanks for trusting me. Here’s, you know, give me a star rating and then follow up with them if possible. Like, automated emails. It just makes them feel like, and reiterate the problems, like, Hey, you bought this product and you’re probably suffering from X, Y, Z.

Like, I hope this really helped you. It’s ways of just connecting with that relator. They also really want quality of life testimonials. If it’s a product that you know, isn’t just gonna solve like a really simple off the shelf issue, but if it’s gonna affect their business life. Show them how? How do you have testimonials that proves that like other people have experienced a really big benefit to their life or their loved one’s lives or their business, ’cause that’s part of their life, et cetera, et cetera.

And then the last one is the Thinker. So the thinker was. What I used to get as my result over and over, and that has changed. Um, but the thinker, basically, they’re the person that’s gonna read every single detail of the page. They’re gonna read the FAQs, they’re gonna read the return policy, and they’re gonna come back to your page multiple times because.

Their biggest fear is buyer’s remorse, and so they just wanna be so certain that every element that you are promising or delivering hits the mark. So you really wanna have like a dedicated marketing receipt, we call that. That’s the part on your page or your offers where you’re saying like. You get all these things, you’re gonna get all of these classes, there’s gonna be this amount of, you know, q and as or check-ins, we’re gonna have meetings, or hey, you’re gonna get these, that your product comes with these six things.

And also some sort of a guarantee or a warranty. So they really want that stuff called out. And I think it’s really important for the thinker because they’re not skimming necessarily. They’re not bopping around looking for like just little bits and pieces. They’re literally looking at everything. That’s where copy organization is really important.

So I’m a big fan of copywriting templates because they tell you where to put what on the page. ’cause there is a method to the madness. It’s not like we’re like, this sounds good here and this sounds good here. It’s like, actually no do this because the next thing that’s gonna pop into their mind, just ’cause we’re all monkeys and the all monkeys do this is this.

And so I think that’s really important. And so if you follow, if you can follow some sort of a template or a guide, it’s really gonna help you reach those thinkers.

Colie: So I’m absolutely fascinated, and here’s why. As you said the director, I was like, oh, that sounds more like me now. And then you said some things in the relator and I was like, yeah, and then when you just did the thinker, I’m like, no, that’s me, I really think I’m a blend of, of the last three. what does that mean?

Like. here’s, here’s the parts that jumped out at me for each one. So when it came to the thinker and reading the entire page, I do do that, but I’m also like the director in that. Most of the time after I’ve clicked on a sales page, I have decided yes or no if I’m gonna buy your product. Now, sometimes as I’m scrolling, there is something that I didn’t expect and I’m like, oh, no. That would make me buy this product. But then when you said the re when you said the negotiation, I was, I was trying not to laugh because that would’ve interrupted your, your talking. But I was like, no. I mean, I have come across so many offers where I was like, okay, no. If they would just do this and this instead of this, I would buy it. I don’t know that I’ve ever reached out to someone and been like, can you, at least not for something that wasn’t one-to-one, like for a course or whatever, but, I mean, I can see different parts of everything that you just said. That is me. And so I think that’s why it’s important that you do a mixture of all of them on your sales page so that you can get people with, you know, all four buyer types.

But you tell me if anybody else has ever said no. Like I can see myself in multiple buyer types.

Courtney: Oh, totally. I can see there are, there are bullet points in this quiz that I’m like, yeah, that’s definitely important to me too. But there’s also a lot of bullet points and I’m like, oh, well that doesn’t matter as much. So you just kind of, you are gonna over index in one of the four and it’s, I would say it’s super common, so I use.

For this quiz, I use interact quizzes, and you can kind of see where people start to go. And it’s very common for people to be like, right, borderline. And it’s like, the final question is what breaks it? It the, you know, I’m trying, this isn’t a perfect science, but it’s definitely better than co, better than Cosmo quizzes.

You know? It was like all A’s all.

Colie: Oh, I like, yes. The ones that used to take in the magazines. I mean, I took a lot of those when I was little. It’s funny. I recently interviewed Enneagram Ashton, and she was telling me about tests in general, like taking the Enneagram test and that, you know, it tries to classify you, but that that classification is not always. You know, the best indicator of what type you are, or that it’s not a hundred percent accurate, because sometimes I don’t wanna, she didn’t say lying to yourselves. I will say that I’m putting words in my own mouth, not hers. But sometimes you answer questions in a way that you want other people to perceive you as, or that you want to, like, it’s like your idealized version of yourself.

And so it’s not always accurate when it gives you the response because you didn’t answer the question honestly.

Courtney: Yeah, I see this a lot. This is why I think the socializer is so interesting to me because I do think, and I’ve thought about going back and like. Should I change the wording and the questions? Because I do think that people, when they start to notice that they’re starting to be lumped into like, oh, you care a lot about what other people think.

No one wants to say yes to that, you know? But at the same, but it does, like with, especially I think now, um, when we’re buying, habits are starting to change. Like we’re not necessarily buying from people. We don’t. Know anymore. A lot of times we’re buying from people that have been recommended to us or people, you know, someone recommended us and we follow ’em for a while, but they’re not strangers.

Um, something else you said that I think. Is important is you said, you know, I see a bit of myself in this, and I said, well, I started as one and I think I’m another. And I think I started as a thinker. And it’s because in the early days of building my business, I, I mean, I was like hyper DIY, I’m doing everything.

I’m writing every automation. I am a tech guru beyond my wildest dreams. Like who knew that I was also gonna be. You know, setting up literally everything in the background for my business so I know how my business runs. And then when I’m looking to buy something or I’m, you know, venturing out to, to hire somebody, it has to be the right decision because like, I’m just a solopreneur.

Anything I spend. Uh, like a business expense is less money in my family’s pocket, basically. So now that I’ve been in business for five, going on six years, and I have hired a lot of contractors, I have also hired contractors that weren’t a great choice. I bought a lot of programs. I’ve taken programs. I bought digital products.

Like I have a pretty good sense of what I think is gonna work for me or who I think I can kind of trust. And also ’cause I’m a copywriter, I’m like judging their copy. Yeah, it takes me to the director. Exactly. So I’m just like, I know I’m gonna scan this. I have, I’ve already looked for all the reasons that are important to me, so how can now the rest of this page just validate my own decision making?

Colie: I mean, but I think that’s a great follow up, Courtney, because I mean, I’ve had quite a few episodes on this podcast where I’ve been talking about like the decisions that you make based on the business stage that you’re in, and this is just a prime example that how you made business decisions. While you were early, like 1, 2, 3 years is not really the same decisions that you make in what we call the messy middle.

And it’s definitely not the same buying decisions that you make, you know when you are seven, 10 years in, because. As you change and as your needs change, I think that what you perceive to be the ROI of anything that you buy also changes because early when none of us have any money and we’re trying to bootstrap everything, we need that ROI to be incredibly high because as you said, every.

Dollar that you spend is a dollar that’s not going to your family. And so, dare I say stingy, I think that we’re all very stingy in the early years in how we, how we spend our money. And also in that decision of, well, do I need something so that I can DIY it or am I actually looking for someone to help me?

And then there’s like what I call the messy middle. And I feel like that’s where you’re kind of venturing from DIY into. Maybe a done with you. Okay, you, you know now that people have expertise that you don’t have, but you probably still don’t have the budget for like a super high ticket done for you.

But then seven, 10 years in something flips in your brain and when you want to bring something new into your business, you are no longer thinking in any capacity. Oh no, I need to figure out how to do this. It’s like, no, who can I hire to do this? Fastest and the most on Brandand way. So I can totally see buyer types shifting as your business stage changes.

Courtney: Agreed. Mm-hmm.

Colie: I mean, and I think that that’s, that’s what I’m currently struggling with because, for, I would say the last four or five years I have had done with, uh, done, I have had DIY and I’ve also had done for you. But now I am trying to lessen the done for you and really go into like, I want D-I-Y-D-I-Y-D-I-Y, and for some people.

I want it to be a done with you. And so I think I am struggling in that. My sales messaging is like, like, no, I really need to shift from like, I will do it for you. I will take this off your plate to know I will teach you how to do it, and you are totally capable of doing it yourself. Do you find that a lot of people struggle and I, I know that I’m. I don’t wanna say a special snowflake, but I’m going from like top tier, back down, versus most people start like on the lower tiers and they’re trying to ramp it up. But regardless of the direction that you go, do you find that people really struggle with their sales messaging as you’re shifting from like one type of audience member or buying type to another?

Courtney: Oh man. Like I’m a case study of that. So I started actually, well first of all, my business used to be called something else, so that was a whole thing. But I actually. Started with just brand strategy, not copywriting. ’cause that was a little bit more of what I thought my wheelhouse was, based on my background.

And I did tons of copywriting, but I didn’t, I I I almost thought you had to go to school. Yeah. Because I thought you had to like, go to school for copyright. I was so confused. I didn’t realize that this was a thing. Or you had to be mad men. Like, I needed to be Don Draper, like creating ads like for soap.

I had no, I just didn’t know. So I would go through the brand strategy for my one-on-one clients and they’re like, this is awesome. Love the messaging. We have voice, we have personality. Can you now execute on it? And I was like, uh, yeah, I guess I can. I mean, I’ve done this so many times, but I also, I came from a corporate background where everything is approved by committee and copy by committee is where copy goes to die.

So, so I was like, okay, I guess. But, because on my. I kind of didn’t, but because then I started to just put my own processes into place, which felt so intuitive and I was my own boss and my clients really trusted my expertise ’cause they were hiring me to be the expert. It was just seamless. So I started with the one-on-one clients for a totally different offer and then I had to like slowly fold in messaging.

It was like, and I do this now. Copywriting is what’s out. People do not come to me for brand strategy. I have to down, I have to not downsell, I have to basically. Say, yeah, absolutely. I’ll write your copy, but first we’re gonna do this brand strategy piece, this messaging piece. ’cause otherwise we don’t know what we’re writing.

But then I have also then built out, like in the post covid age as so many people, I built out a DIY side of my audience and I built that up and that was really lovely. And I had, you know, I had my. My DIY course and I have all of my products, but I actually feel like I’m starting to move back towards my one-on-ones again and my own website and slightly different client set because I think for so many this is a tale as old as time for a lot of people in the online business world.

Came up in 20 20, 21 to 2023, is that a lot of us were marketing to other online businesses because there were so many, and now that’s kind of changed. And so I think a lot of people are, pivoting back to working for B two Bs or they’re working for startups or, or other, you know, and so their messaging is kind of also in this weird, messy middle of like.

What, who am I actually serving? How am I saying it? And also, how do I continue to say it in this like way that I used to talk to other online businesses? Because like I think online business owners talk with a lot more personality and pizazz than like a corporate entity.

Colie: Yes, agreed.

Courtney: So, I mean, all this is to say is like I empathize with you.

I think that all of us, it’s just a process. And I do think too that if you think, okay, I gotta scrap all my messaging and I have to start from zero, don’t do not just think about what’s one or two things I could maybe change on my website right now or in my messaging or my copy or an email sequence.

Like if you have a welcome sequence that kind of like lays out your offers, is there one or two things I could change that would might make that more clear for me? It was basically. At the top of my page, not saying I work with creative entrepreneurs, but saying I work for startups, founders, and growing businesses, and that’s the only change I made.

And then I started to weave that into my copy, and then I started to introduce myself with that line and then.

Colie: don’t want DIY.

Courtney: Well, and what’s interesting about that, so I’m now also going into this big like relationship marketing journey. This is my new thing that I think everyone needs to really double down on because again, we’re starting to buy from people we know now.

’cause money’s tight right now. Is that maybe startups aren’t buying, but the marketing director who is a team of one, they’re hiring contractors and they need someone they can trust. And so it’s like finding those right people to have those conversations and then just learning like, oh, they referred to me as this way, or they said they would be interested in a done for you, but they don’t have the budget for a one-on-one.

Okay, this is perfect. I’m gonna test out my messaging on them and it’s just a good way to kind of figure out when you’re in that messy middle of like, how not to make a gut reaction to change everything, but to test things out slowly and just make sure they’re gonna stick before you redo your website.

Colie: Well, and I think that for you and I, even though we’ve talked about DIY, done with you and done for you, I’m offering the exact same transformation. Are you?

Courtney: Yeah.

Colie: In my case, everybody ends up with systems that save them time so that they can spend less time doing admin work that a robot could do. Like, that’s my basic pitch, but it doesn’t matter if I did it for you, if you’re doing it with me in this new, container that I have, or if you bought one of my templates or my DIY course, like regardless at the end, you have systems that work for you.

And so I think that. We’re kind of lucky in a way in that the transformation didn’t change just who we’re targeting, and so that is a little less of like an, oh my God, I can never get this done. My messaging needs to completely change, to allowing us to make those tiny tweaks to make sure that we are like zeroing in on those people that we really wanna work with in this new stage of what we’re doing.

Courtney: Yeah, because there are problem sets are, can be tweaked a little bit. Like how much time you need to dedicate to something to make a done with you work. It’s probably more than people think. So kind of like addressing like how does this work if you have only X amount a week or you thought you wanted , DIY, but like.

You just aren’t getting it done here, but you can’t afford one. Here’s why. This is the perfect marriage between both. You know, like stuff like that can be really helpful.

Colie: Okay, so buying personas. Let’s get back to like what we’re actually talking about, Courtney. So as we’re shifting what it is that we want to sell, how does that change for when we’re looking at the messaging on our actual sales page? So actually let me ask you what my real question is. You’ve gotta sales page and you and I will agree they’re very long. A lot of times how much of the page. Do we dedicate to each one? I think, I think that’s my question. Do you know what I’m asking? Without me articulating it very well?

Courtney: Yeah, and I wish I had a mathematical answer that was like 25% across the board. I guess that would probably, you could try that. But because I think there is a lot of overlap, again, like it’s not like the director is not gonna resonate with anything. You say it to the thinker. I think that would be a little hard to map.

What I do think is taking the copy sweeps approach, so this is a term coined by, um, copy hackers, where you have different things that you’re trying to layer into your copy. So you’re sweeping for your copy and you’re sweeping for SEO, you’re sweeping for the so what, like, okay, I wrote all this copy. Like, so what, who cares Do I address?

Why this is important, why this person? What would they say if I said That’s a cool offer, but like, so what? You can sweep for the four buyer types and you can say to yourself, okay, let’s look at the director. Go through your page. Okay. I think I have brought up enough things that are gonna resonate with the director, like these, go through this checklist and do that for all four.

The one good thing about, so when you take this quiz, you, I send you an actual. Like checklist for your buyer type that says, here’s where you overindex. Here’s the copy tactics you need to focus on. And that can be really helpful for you if you’re trying to figure out like, what have I, what’s my blind spot?

What did I just forget to write about?

Colie: No, I love it. And I’m looking at my copywriting checklist from the director. Oh no, I’m looking at the one from the director. And the first thing that you say is, focus your top header on the what and not the why.

Courtney: I.

Colie: so would that be D? Who would want the why and not the what? Like which one of the four buyer types would that work for?

And the thing is though. How do you write like a really good sales page using a checklist to make sure that you’re hitting what they need? If you’re not quite sure who’s in your audience

Courtney: Ooh, then stop. Do not pass. Go. Do not collect $200. You gotta know. So this is why again, when people say, Hey, yeah, I, I want you to hire you to write my copy. And I’m like, that’s cool, but we need you the brand strategy messaging first. ’cause we actually then need to look at. Your, your audience personas and then map messaging to each persona.

So this is another thing that I teach and that I am obsessed with, and this came from what I do with my clients. This is why I started teaching it, is I was like, this is so important and everyone steps this skips this step. They skip it. You have to know who your audience is. Or even if you don’t have concrete data, if you’re in the early days, you can make assumptions and then build it out from there.

And then, you know, as your business grows, you can then be like, I actually have evidence this person is this. They think this way. This is, I made some assumptions and they’re wrong. Everybody does that. So don’t be afraid to try. But to your original question of like, how do you write the copy with like a checklist, this is where templates are so helpful.

I mean, even for me, I don’t write a single. Sales page, website page, email to everything is a template first. And for me, I no longer have the templates where I have like, here’s this section, and I have prompts like, here’s what this section’s goal is. Here’s what you need to answer. Talk about X, Y, Z.

’cause now I know, but I kind of have my own little templates for my own business where I’m like, oh yeah, this section next. Oh yeah. And then you can also feel free to break a template. So if you’re like, you know, this just isn’t working for me, I feel like I wanna talk about this thing first and then switch it.

Go with your gut, because at the end of the day, you want it to sound like you, you want it to resonate in the way that you want it to resonate. It’s okay. And if you then go in and layer in, do those copy sweeps be like, Hmm, I don’t think I actually gave enough details for the thinker. Or, oh, I totally like felt embarrassed to like talk about myself in my bio.

The relator is gonna be like, peace out, you know? Or the socializer.

Colie: to get to know you.

Courtney: Yeah, then I think that helps. But it’s like anything, it’s a practice, but templates, ugh. They are a game changer.

Colie: I mean, I’m a big fan of templates. I love templates for everything. I think that it’s an easy button, but I do think that you have to make sure that you don’t take templates at face value. Like you do have to put the personality in there. And like you said, if it doesn’t feel good to you and you wanna break it, go ahead.

And I would just take it one step further and be like, and then see how it works for three to six months. And if you feel like you’re not getting the traction, maybe you go back to the way that the template was originally and try that for three to six months and see if that gets the job done. So there’s nothing wrong with taking it upon yourself to like make changes from something that someone has specifically prescribed to you in a template like you’re the business owner.

You get to put your big girl pants on and make that decision. But then you also need to know that if it’s not working and it’s not working and it’s not working, come back and reevaluate.

Courtney: Yeah. And is it an issue with structure or is it the actual copy like you, or is it that you’re just like not marketing it enough? I think that’s also a big thing is like some people are like, eh, it didn’t work. It’s like, I even do that. I’m like, oh, this this Evergreen thing I did. It’s not really performing the way.

I’m like, well, that’s because I don’t talk about it.

Colie: So how into chat, GPT Are you, Courtney?

Courtney: That’s a great question. So I love to use Claude to get, so I prefer Claude because it’s self-contained.

Colie: writer.

Courtney: But it’s, and it’s not just that it’s a better writer, I feel like it connects ideas a lot better. ’cause it’s almost like less noisy. I don’t know, maybe ’cause it’s not like, I think it is, it is connected to the internet now, but like for a while it was very self-contained.

But what I like to use it for is not writing the copy. What I love to use it for is I collect so many assets from my clients before we start a project. So like right now I have a client and I have. Seasonal catalogs. I have, you know, like a hundred plus like products that I have to know all of the things for.

we did the brand messaging and brand strategy engagement first, so I have written out all of their guidelines. I have swipe copy. I have like a brand bible, like I have all this information that I built out for them. I have brand words and phrases that are appropriate. That I know I wanna pull, like these are the words that will elicit the feeling I want.

So I, I have all that information and then I have surveys because I do audience surveys for my clients. Sometimes I have testimonials. So I love that you can put those in a project file. And then I ask Claude to recall it. I’m like, okay, I’m trying to write.

Colie: a search engine.

Courtney: Oh, completely. It’s like my own internal, like it’s a, it’s what I would assign a junior copywriter.

Honestly. Like if when back in the day when I was writing things, people would just basically leave a cropped ton of files on your desk or a bunch of emails with a bunch of information about, so at the time for publishing these books. And this author and this series, and I would have to manually, I would’ve to read all of the books, I would have to go through like their sales catalog.

I would have to look at, okay, what are the different themes? Who’s the audience? What are the, I would have to go through all of this stuff and compile it, which is fine, but it also would’ve been nice to have an assistant to be like, Hey, can you create a bullet point list of what were all the themes? Who were the main audiences and can you tell me all the books they published in the last 10 years?

Like that’s, it’s, it’s an informational tool more than a writing tool for me, however. Here’s where it’s a great tool for writing. When you get stuck and you’re like, I have cur, I want to say essentially this thing. And I’m stuck. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Help, help me make it better. It will get you a, like another percentage point there.

It will help you. And a lot of times what I’ve found too is like, I’m like, oh, this paragraph is so annoying. I can’t figure out the, so what? I’m like just, I’m just word salad it up right now. Like, what am I even saying? I’ll paste it in there and then I’ll be like. Here’s what I wanna do with this section.

And I keep describing like, and I want it to hit this point and this point, but I don’t wanna do too this, and I don’t wanna be too much that in that process. I figure out what’s wrong with what I did, and I don’t even hit enter. I just go back to my doc and I’ve figured it out. It’s like my, it’s a therapist, it’s a writing therapist.

Colie: I’m you, you think about it in the exact same way that I do. So when I’m doing Done For You setups, we have these, I mean, very extensive strategy calls. They’re like three to four hours, and people have said that it feels like business therapy because I am asking you all of the questions about you, your offers, how you like to run your business, because your systems should be an extension of yourself.

But they should also make sure that they’re guiding your, you know, your client, your lead through the process. And as I get older, ’cause I’m actually quite old now, as I get older, I am having trouble recalling the information like I used to like two years ago, if we had a strategy call, Courtney, I could tell you almost everything that you said in there.

From memory, I can’t do that anymore. But what I love about chat GPT is I created a custom GPT just for me and it’s based on the ways. I do the strategy call and the questions that I ask, and so now at the end of every strategy call, after the transcript is done, I feed it into the GPT and it does its things automatically.

It writes me a summary. It tells me every task that I said my client needed to do, or me. It ideate every email that I word vomited out loud while we were on the call. And then because we’re building customer journeys, it spits out the entire customer journey. That’s one piece. But what I recently discovered is sometimes if I am a little confused and I can’t quite remember something, and I don’t see it exactly in like the transcript or rewatching the video, I would ask my client, I. you know, I’m in the middle of this. Can you just answer this one quick question for me? And what I finally realized was, no, I can just go ask chat GPT. Like it has the, the, I’m like, Hey, I need to ask Courtney this before I send her an email. Did we talk about this? And what did we say? And then it will spit it out.

And I will tell you right now it is about seven outta 10 where it gives me the answer from the call so that I don’t even have to email the client.

Courtney: Yeah, and it’s really good. If you then put in your copy draft, and I would say I would have to feed it information to tell what the heck the four biotypes are and the do’s and don’ts. But you could probably stick it in there and be like, what can I add to this page? And where, where specifically, which con, which section to.

You know, appeal to whatever buyer type or to more, better appeal to all of them. And it will give you, I haven’t done that, but I know I’ve done it enough. Oh yeah,

Colie: you’ll get an email from me. I’m totally gonna te now that I found, now

Courtney: yeah.

Colie: my PDF that you said, I’m gonna feed it in and I’m gonna, yeah, I love figuring out GPTs. I don’t even remember why I asked you that question.

Courtney: And you know, I’ll send you.

Colie: for the ai, and I don’t remember why I asked you that, but this has gone off on an entire tangent.

That is amazing.

Courtney: Well, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll sum it back or I’ll wrap it back up with a bow. I will give you the link that you can put in the show notes for the blog post I did on the four buyer types that lists them all out for you so that it’s that way. It’s not just your, your quiz results, but it’s really easy for you to probably just take that blog post and be like, read this.

Tell me what I’m missing.

Colie: Yes. And like I said, I’m gonna do that this afternoon. You should expect an email from me tomorrow, although it’s late for you. I mean, I think you’re eight hours ahead of me right now. Um, Courtney, is there anything else? ’cause like, again, like I first discovered you in 2023 and you made this quiz and you, you know, went into the world of DIY and now you’re kind of going back to done for you what? ’cause I’m curious, what are you going to do with your Done With You program? Because that has a six week container and you are working, you know, one-on-one with people as they’re crafting their sales pages. So now that you’re kind of going more into done for you, are you gonna do with your program?

Courtney: Great question. I’ll let you know what I know. No, uh, no. What I’ve done right now, and it’s because of my capacity, because I am currently, my husband’s on sabbatical, so I’m currently living in a different country. I have two small. All kids and time zones are I underestimated how disruptive being in a different time zone than most of my clients and students is.

So I turned my, my Done With You program into an Evergreen product. Now it’s the DIY copy kit. So essentially what you still get is you get all of the video tutorials that all of my students would watch before a session, and that basically breaks down every page and then I go, every tutorial also goes literally section by copy section of the page, me talking about it and the done with you part.

When it was a live program was that then they could turn in the copy drafts and I would red line those up. So the DIY copy kit, you still get all of that without me redlining things. However, I still offer copy audits and copy tuneups so they can access me if if necessary. But for now, I had to make it a product just ’cause of capacity issues.

But then I still have all my DIY stuff and then I still do my one-on-one, and that’s where I am for now. In this season of life, as you mentioned, as our business changes, as our families and our personal lives change, I think I’m, I’m being a lot less, thinker, buyer type of me of being like super perfectionist in every line.

And I’m like, you know what? We’re gonna, we’re gonna take this one day at a time.

Colie: No, and I think I kind of asked you that, that question very selfishly because my CRM blueprint used to be what your done with you what or your. DIY. But with you, my program used to be that, and then for a lot of reasons, I made it self-paced. I turned it into a digital product that you could buy, and I was doing way more done for you.

And now that I’m kind of sliding back, I have started to, you know, integrate more things into the digital product. I’m. Expanding it more, but then I also created this brand new Done with You, which is kind of like a guided how you do it from beginning to end. So selfishly, I just wanted to ask that question because your program has been something that I have always looked at and I’m like, yeah, I mean like pages are like my nemesis.

I feel like I have a good one, and then I’m like, I, you know, I, there’s just so much that goes into writing your sales copy and I have often said. I think the thing that we didn’t know that we were gonna have to do the most was writing emails, whether it’s email marketing or writing, actual client experience emails, like writing emails is, communication in general is the thing that I think none of us thought we were gonna have to do so much of when we became, business owners.

But after having a conversation with you and just thinking about this. Bigger picture. I think that selling is probably something that we thought even more we wouldn’t have to do to the same degree. And writing your sales copy is a beast.

Courtney: It really is, and I think done with you is also, it’s a weird thing to sell. So if it does feel like you don’t it, it’s not quite hitting right or you’re just not quite sure how to build programs out that are satisfying everyone’s needs as well as your own. I think it’s just because it’s done with you is just a little bit.

Difficult because especially for people who want to share their expertise, it’s so hard not to wanna just like give it all. Yeah. And want to help people and like, you know so much and it’s impossible to hold back. And so it takes a lot of, of structure and an offer and a in a done with you. And I think.

Colie: Courtney? Yes.

Courtney: I think there are a lot of people who do it a lot better than I do.

And I think that’s why I also paused it is because I know for myself, I, I can’t, I can’t hold back and I don’t wanna hold back. So if I bring the program back as a live done with you program, like I’m gonna go all out, but now’s just not the time.

Colie: now’s not the time. Well, I give you kudos and a big virtual hug from this side of the pond for kind of doing what you needed to do in the season of life, because isn’t that why we all have our own businesses to

Courtney: Exactly. Exactly.

Colie: All right, Courtney, is there anything else that you want to make sure that everyone who listens to this conversation walks away with in relation to their buying personas?

Courtney: The best place to start would be knowing your buyer persona. So if you go to big picture copywriting.com/quiz, it’s the only quiz I got. Go there, you can take the quiz and then I will then follow up with an automated ’cause, you know, gotta have that follow up. A little automated, uh, email sequence that actually will speak to your buyer type and you’ll get your checklist and you can also peek at what the other buyer results are too.

Like I’m not gonna gate keep that. So start there. That’s a great place to start. And then if you are just interested in more sort of copywriting tips, ’cause I don’t think copywriting is just for copywriters, as you said, we.

Colie: amazing,

Courtney: Oh, thank you. I sometimes I have existential crises about them, but no big deal. But my newsletter is letters from your editor.

You can join along for the ride.

Colie: No guys, Courtney is one. I mean, I, I think that you guys as a listening audience know that sometimes I get so interested that I just reply to people’s newsletters. I think Courtney is one that in the two years that I have been on her newsletter, I have responded personally to at least six or seven.

Like I read it and I send her a little note and sometimes it’s really short and other times it’s like, oh my God, I hadn’t thought about this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But definitely join her email list because I love not only the storytelling that she does in there, but like her copywriting tips are like top tier.

So go join

Courtney: Thanks.

Colie: Courtney. I loved having you on the podcast. I am so sorry that it took me so long to reach out and have you on here, but I’m gonna have you back, so don’t you worry.

Courtney: Yay. I’m so glad you did.

Colie: Okay. Everyone, I hope that this episode has been super insightful and I really do think that even though I have had a bazillion copywriters on here, ’cause you guys know I love my copywriters. I really do think that this conversation was super unique in that we haven’t really talked about the buying journey and what it means to write copy for the buyers who are actually in your audience. And so I really do encourage each of you to listen to this episode and then take action, which as Courtney said, the first stop is to take her quiz. All right. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.