Podcast appearances and mentions of joel klettke

Ever notice how we're all drawn to a good story? That's especially true when it comes to marketing your business. This week on the Agents of Change, I'm chatting with Joel Klettke, founder of Case Study Buddy (now sold to Testimonial Hero). Joel breaks down exactly why customer stories are so valuable for businesses of all sizes and—more importantly—shares his repeatable process for creating them without the usual headaches. If you've been struggling to showcase your best work or convince prospects you're the right choice, this episode delivers the actionable tactics you need. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/582 Need help with your branding, website, or digital marketing? Reach out to me (Rich Brooks!) today at https://www.takeflyte.com/contact

In this episode, Sam Shepler, CEO of Testimonial Hero, steps in for Dustin and he's joined by Joel Klettke and Jen Enns, Founders of Case Study Buddy (acquired by Testimonial Hero in March 2024). They delve into the founding story and growth of Case Study Buddy, discuss the importance of customer storytelling, and share valuable tips from their experience as entrepreneurs. They also discuss overcoming early challenges, the significance of investing in quality talent, and strategic tips for creating impactful customer stories. If you have any questions or thoughts, you can reach out to Joel and Jen through LinkedIn.

In this episode of Create Like the Greats,  Ross delves into dynamic conversations with some of the best marketers in the industry — Bryan Casey, Rowan Tonkin, Joel Klettke, and Ronnie Higgins. Ross' conversations with these seasoned marketing experts are all about strategies, tips, and inspiration. Detailed Breakdown: Bryan Casey reflects on the challenge of maintaining quality while considering the integration of AI-generated content into their strategy. He begins by acknowledging a Twitter comment about ChatGPT responses, highlighting his company's commitment to crafting high-quality content through investment in skilled individuals. Bryan expresses skepticism about AI's potential impact on their brand integrity, particularly regarding trust, a core value associated with IBM. Despite initial reluctance, he considers Google's guidelines on helpful content creation, pondering how AI could enhance user experience without compromising quality. Finally, he evaluates the ROI of investing in content, questioning the role of AI compared to their skilled team members in delivering top-notch content. Rowan Tonkin emphasizes the necessity for marketing leaders to incorporate AI into their annual plans, warning that boards expect this integration for efficiency. He advises clear communication about AI's role and the need for agility in tech contracts and experimentation budgets to adapt to evolving technologies. Tonkin underscores the importance of fostering a culture of agility within the team through transparent communication and sharing insights from industry events to stay adaptable to change. Joel Klettke discusses the impact of AI on content creation, emphasizing the need to embrace change rather than deny it. He illustrates this with an analogy about shoveling snow, highlighting how AI can streamline processes without compromising quality. Klettke believes that while AI may not replace human creativity, it can significantly accelerate mundane tasks, freeing up time for more strategic work. He envisions AI tools being integrated into various marketing functions, such as analyzing sales calls, repurposing content, and optimizing advertising campaigns. Additionally, he encourages marketers to experiment with AI tools, maintain curiosity, and actively engage with the technology to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving landscape. Ronnie Higgins outlines his approach to annual initiatives, starting with assessing resources like team and budget. He emphasizes the importance of conducting a risk assessment and aligning strategies with product roadmaps. Gathering inputs from various departments ensures alignment and avoids content becoming a service organization. Keyword research extends beyond SEO tools to consider social value, and ongoing projects involve auditing and building topic clusters to establish topic authority. Overall, the focus is on strategic planning to build authority rather than just ranking. Resources: Listen to Bryan Casey's full episode - https://foundationinc.co/lab/bryan-casey Listen to Rowan Tonkin's full episode - https://foundationinc.co/lab/rowan-tonkin/ Listen to Joel Klettke's full episode - https://foundationinc.co/lab/joel-klettke/ Listen to Ronnie Higgins' full episode- https://foundationinc.co/lab/ronnie-higgins AI Marketing Console - https://ross.gumroad.com/l/ai-console Foundation Labs - https://foundationinc.co/lab/ ---

In this episode, I speak with Joel Klettke, Founder of Case Study Buddy. We had a great conversation on B2B case studies - namely, how to create ones that stand out from the usual legal-has-killed-all-joy-from-this-piece-of-content crap that fills our feeds. We also covered a topic near and dear to my heart - what can I do to convince a sceptical customer to sign off a case study? There are a bunch of different methods Joel shared, but the one that stood out to me was creating an 'anonymous' case study. Follow Joel here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke?originalSubdomain=ca

A lot of copywriters talk about building a "real" business, that is a business that isn't solely built on writing copy for clients. In the 382nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter Joel Klettke who used his writing and sales expertise, developed as a copywriter, to build a team and service business bigger than what he might have built on his own. And he shared what he's learned from the experience. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Over the past 7 years of publishing this podcast, it's pretty rare that we bring guests back for a second visit. And the guests that have been back three times? I could be wrong but by my count, that's only happened twice. Today's episode makes it three.  Hi, I'm Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today's episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, my co-founder, Kira Hug, and I interviewed copywriter and founder of Case Study Buddy, Joel Klettke to catch up on what he's been doing for the past couple of years. Joel has gone from being a top performing, in-demand copywriter to the founder of a million dollar business. And in our discussion, he shared some of the lessons he learned along the way. But first, this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. It is truly the membership for copywriters and content writers… where you can find the training, coaching, copy reviews, and community you need to build a successful copywriting business. To learn more visit thecopywriterclub.com/tcu And now let's jump into our interview with Joel... Kira Hug: All right, so Joel, I'm not going to ask you how you ended up as a copywriter because we already covered that in episode, Rob, which episode? I know you know. Rob Marsh: Episode 21 is the first time and maybe like 107, I think, is the second time. It's been a while though. It's been a while since we chatted on the podcast. Joel Klettke: Yeah. I like these, it's almost like a snapshot in time, like journal entry to go back and listen to myself on somebody's life. Rob Marsh: How much better life was back in episode 107? Kira Hug: Well, going back to 21, I think that was the one I was listening to and reading the transcript from. That's when you were, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's when you were just starting case study, buddy, right? That was the origin of it when you were getting into case studies. Or was that 107? Rob Marsh: I think it was even before that. Kira Hug: Yeah, it was before that. We were introducing it. You had that business running at that time. Joel Klettke: Yeah, like technically Case Study Buddy is almost eight years old. It was off the side of our desks initially. And then right before the pandemic, we kind of pivoted to focus full-time on that. So that became kind of a big transition point. And then it's continued to be the full-time focus since then. So we've only really been two years, maybe three now, full-time pushing this thing. Kira Hug: Okay, well, let's go back then to before pandemic when you went all in and just curious, like what, what triggered that decision for you and your business partner to go all in on this business? Joel Klettke: I think there are a whole bunch of different factors. I think, you know, at the time, the grass is always greener in life in general, you know, like you always want to be doing that new thing. The headspace I was in at that moment was I had done the freelance thing and I'd done it well, graduated to basically being in a position of consulting for some pretty great brands, some really great projects. You get to the point that you are now making what your heroes made.  I remember listening to Joanna Wiebe talk about charging $10,000 for a landing page and thinking,

Struggling to get the most from your customer case studies? A lot of companies create great stories only to leave them alone on their website. Join Justin as he talks with Joel Klettke about getting more from your case studies. Learn easy steps to use your stories better and reach more people. This quick episode is perfect for anyone who wants to share their customer stories in a smarter way. Follow this proven step-bt-step framework to maximize your case studies across every channel.If you like distribution and repurposing playbooks, you'll love my weekly newsletter (it's free). Join 2,500+ subscribers here: https://news.justinsimon.co/ In this episode, you'll learn:The "distribution first" mindset for planning case study contentHow to capture reusable assets during the interviewTactics for repurposing case studies across channelsWays to combine studies into powerful new formatsKey frameworks for long-term case study success***CONNECT

In episode 128, Joel Klettke of Case Study Buddy drops by to discuss the underrated value of the case study for SEO and beyond.Joel argues that a well-designed customer story is not a fluff piece. How do your buyers talk? Should you use jargon in your customer stories? Klettke shares his experience of creating a buffet of content from your customer story interviews.----------[0:00] Intro [2:57] How can B2B companies effectively integrate SEO strategies into their customer success stories to enhance their online visibility? [5:17] From an SEO and human perspective should you try to use jargon in the content of the customer story? [7:35] Don't limit the use cases and potential of your case studies. [10:50] Leveraging case study videos for SEO value. [12:45] Are SEOs involved in case study creation? Should they be? [15:10] Who should own case study creation? [17:45] Does the case study deliverable go according to plan? What's the output? [23:25] Rapid Fire RankingsRank your best SEO marketing win:Having multi-billion dollar enterprises come to us due to word of mouth/our niche specialization. Rank your top 3 SEO tools: My opinion on these is worthless lol. Honestly, I don't do SEO anymore; so pretty light here.AhrefsSemrushScreamingFrogRank your best SEO or trick or tactic:Have a repurposing plan that includes video. What's the biggest scam in SEO that you've recently seen?There was all the controversy around that brand generating a huge amount of AI content and 'stealing' market share from competitors.I had to laugh -- yes, the generating content part might be questionable with the tech, but SEOs have been ripping off each others' strategies for YEARS, so I'm not sure what made this so special other than the cockiness in the way it was shared.Rank what you love most about the SEO industry:Probably what I also hated most about it when it was my job: it is always changing.Rank your top 1-3 marketers:Sam WoodsAndy CrestodinaJohn-Henry ScherckJoanna WiebeStefan GeorgianWhat's your Generative AI hottake?My hot take on this is that generative AI can, in fact, generate creative content.There's this weird notion that since it was trained on other content, generative AI is unable to come up with original ideas. That's only somewhat true because we're missing half the equation: the human using it.I've seen how introducing creative prompts can drive wild, new ideas out of generative AI, especially when it comes to imagery. Yes, it's anchored in the past, but it can iterate toward the future. Rank your best SEO learning resource: I... honestly wouldn't even know where to go these days. Rank your top cause or charity:Ronald McDonald House -- meaningful to me because we've had friends make use of it; having a place to be close to your children in their worst and most heart-wrenching, uncertain moments is a HUGE blessing for those who need it.

Get ready for an enlightening conversation with Joel Klettke, a prominent case study specialist. In this episode, Joel unravels the numerous intricacies of creating effective case studies and how they hold the power to transform your marketing game. Joel shares invaluable insights on streamlining complex issues through the practical resources available on case study buddy.com, ranging from blogs to vlogs. He delves into the concept of utilizing case studies not just as testimonials, but as compelling narratives that drive success and create emotional connections with your audience. From identifying business goals to fast-tracking the production process, Joel offers a comprehensive guide to harnessing the true potential of case studies in your marketing endeavors. The podcast also unpacks the significance of tailoring case studies to different stages of the buyer's journey, utilizing customer voices, and creating a culture around case studies within your business. Listen to this latest episode to discover how you can leverage case studies to enhance your marketing strategy and build stronger, more meaningful connections with your audience. If you're a marketer looking to elevate your approach and reap the rewards of innovative storytelling, this episode is a must-listen. Links Mentioned: https://www.casestudybuddy.com/newsletter-sign-up

In this episode of the Customers First Podcast, your host, Tacey Atkinson, welcomes Joel Klettke to the boardroom. Joel is the Founder of Case Study Buddy, a company that helps you share your customers success stories with the world. Joel shares his background and how he ended up starting his own business. He explains that he initially worked as a freelancer focusing on content writing but later shifted his focus to conversion copywriting. He then talks about how he got into the case study business after being asked by a client to create customer success stories. Joel realized the opportunity to start a company specializing in case studies and testimonials for B2B companies. He started Case Study Buddy with his partner, Jen, and the business has been growing ever since. Joel emphasizes the importance of customer success stories that are warm, collaborative, and customer-centered. We discuss building trust with clients, creating a program rather than a one-time story, and authentically sharing customer experiences. The key takeaways are aligning internal teams, crafting specific asks, and focusing on the customer as the hero. The goal is to create a customer-centric culture and turn clients into brand champions.   Timestamps: 0:02:23 Joel's journey to starting Case Study Buddy 0:10:45 Tailoring Stories for Different Audiences and Platforms 0:13:18 Building Trust with Clients and Tips for Leaders 0:18:30 Turning Customers into Brand Champions 0:20:13 Tell a Story that Highlights Customer as the Hero 0:23:01 Overcoming Legal Hoops to Use Customer Stories   Joel's Contact Information: Website: https://casestudybuddy.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casestudybuddy/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/   Tacey's Contact Information: https://linktr.ee/taceyatkinson   Thank you for tuning in, and I look forward to having more valuable conversations together in the future. Remember: Customer-Centric Cultures Create Magical Customer Experiences. Now Go: Spread the Magic!  

Are you struggling to get customer buy-in for your B2B company? How do you present your requests in a way that resonates with your customers? Look no further! In this episode of the Predictable B2B Success podcast, host Vinay Koshy sits down with special guest Joel Klettke, a renowned copywriter and expert in customer success stories.  Joel dives deep into capturing customer stories and getting that all-important customer buy-in. He shares invaluable insights on the importance of context in communication, the power of customer storytelling throughout the buyer's journey, and the often-overlooked distribution process.  But it doesn't stop there. Joel also unveils his secrets to overcoming legal and PR restrictions, dispelling the myth that customer success stories are a one-time event. He emphasizes the need for intentional strategy, celebrating the company's and its customers' mutual impact, and even reveals how to make it easy for customers to share their stories for maximum impact. Get ready to unlock the potential of customer success stories and outpace your competitors in this captivating episode of Predictable B2B Success. Some areas we explore in this episode include: The challenge of getting customer buy-inThe importance of presenting requests in a specific and contextual mannerAssuring customers of control and the opportunity to review and reviseThe value of anonymity in sensitive industries like cybersecurityHow a request from a higher authority can overcome restrictionsCapturing and passing on context from customer interactionsThe process of creating a customer success storyThe importance of distribution and repurposing customer storiesThe benefits of storytelling for individuals and companiesThe steps and teamwork involved in creating case studiesAnd much, much more. 

In this episode of The Agency Accelerator, Rob is joined by guest Joel Klettke to discuss the hidden power of case studies in the sales process. Joel shares valuable insights on how customer stories can support your new business, the different formats to deploy them, and their importance in winning, upselling and retaining clients. We also delve into the value of creating compelling anonymous case studies, the key elements of a successful case study, and the strategic use of case studies throughout the buyer's journey.  Time Stamp [02:43] Case studies are critical for agencies as they demonstrate skills, differentiate themselves from competitors, and provide proof of value [08:12] How do get clients to agree to a case study and when should you ask for them? [14:12] Joel's view on anonymous case studies (if a client doesn't want you to use their name) [17:00] How can you get clients to share their ROI and metrics with you? [21:19] How do we drive the approval process and ensure things don't stall at this stage? [25:29] Different levels of content repurposing: nibble, bite, snack, meal & buffet [29:38] How many case studies should you aim for?  [32:16] What advice would Joel give his younger self, just starting out in business? Quotations “There are a few assets more powerful at demonstrating how you think, how you treat clients, how you work through problems than a case study. When everyone's making similar promises, it really comes down to your proof and your ability to show that thinking and value in action." — Joel Klettke “When considering how many case studies you need, look at it through the lens of who you're trying to appeal to and what stories will be most relatable for them." — Joel Klettke Rate, Review, & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts “I enjoy listening to The Agency Accelerator Podcast. I always learn something from every episode.” If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more people like you to move towards a Self-Running Agency. How to leave a review on Apple Podcasts Scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then, let me know what you loved most about the episode! Also, if you haven't done so already, subscribe to the podcast. I'm adding a bunch of bonus episodes to the feed and, if you're not subscribed, there's a good chance you'll miss out. Subscribe now! Useful links mentioned in this episode: Joel's LinkedIn profileJoel's website Register for the next Agency Accelerator LIVE FREE Workshop

In today's episode, we have Joel Klettke, joining our host, Ann Carden, to dive deep into the world of case studies and customer stories. Get ready to learn all about the power of relevance and expertise in creating impactful marketing pieces. Joel, an expert in repurposing customer stories, shares practical insights and ideas on how to captivate your audience and make your message resonate. But that's not all! We'll also explore the importance of storytelling, emotional connection, and leveraging your content to its fullest potential. So grab your headphones and get ready to embark on a journey to becoming an expert storyteller on this engaging episode of the Expert In You Podcast!Key Moments : [00:02:20] "Started agency focused on customer case studies."[00:06:35] Customer case studies show brand success journey.[00:10:57] Universal emotion drives action, not just metrics.[00:14:05] Case studies are a team sport, strategic and focused.[00:19:03] Leveraging content: repurpose for different audiences.[00:23:10] Average time for creating content: 40-60 days.About Joel Klettke : Joel Klettke began his career in SEO but quickly transitioned into content and copywriting, focusing on conversion copywriting. After completing a project for a company in the hosting space, he was approached to create a case study for another company called Pingboard. This experience opened his eyes to the complexity and value of customer stories. Recognizing the demand and premium that could be charged for such assets, Joel realized that there were no dedicated teams specializing in customer stories.He decided to seize this opportunity and build his own team and process around it. Starting as a side project, Joel eventually brought in a partner and grew the business quietly for the first year. Just before the pandemic hit, Joel made it his full-time focus, and now, after almost five years, his company has served over 300 clients and told over two thousand stories. Joel's story highlights the importance of being open to new opportunities and the potential for success in a niche market.Connect Joel:Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/Website : https://casestudybuddy.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoelKlettkeAbout the Host -Ann Carden is a highly sought-after Expert Business Growth Consultant, Marketing Strategist, three-time published Author, and a #1 Bestselling Author, and Professional Speaker for small businesses and entrepreneurs. How to Connect with Ann Carden:Website: https://anncardencoaching.comLinkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/business-consultant-coachYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/anncardenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ann-Carden-A-Carden-Inc-110882230558068/Grab Ann's free Masterclass at www.expertinyou.us

Joel Klettke, Founder of CaseStudyBuddy, knows a thing or two about the power of case studies.  He joined Collin Stewart for an episode of the Predictable Revenue Podcast, and in this blog post, we'll dive into the world of case studies, exploring why most companies underinvest in them and how you can build and repurpose them effectively to ensure your sales team actually uses them. Highlights include: Why don't companies invest more in case studies? (4:00), The different types of Case Studies (9:04), The process of crafting compelling case studies (14:20), Customer Interviews play a vital role in gathering valuable insights for case studies (32:00), It's essential to ask the right questions (35:10), and more. Are you looking to create repeatable, scalable, and predictable revenue? We can help! ► https://bit.ly/predictablerevenuecoaching Show notes https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/  https://casestudybuddy.com/customers/  https://www.mutinyhq.com/use-cases/increase-website-conversion   

- What's an efficient process for creating customer stories? - Can one scale the process? - Do you have a secret formula to get around this and still tell compelling stories? - How to tell stories when you can't share numbers - How to hook the visitor from the get-go? Tune in to hear from Joel Klettke, Founder at Case Study Buddy. About the show The SaaS Growth Hub podcast is powered by Growth Marketing Agency Advance B2B. We cover marketing strategy, sales and marketing alignment, content marketing, and brand marketing to help B2B marketers grow and scale up their companies.

- Why are customer stories so important? - Why is it so difficult to create and publish quality customer stories? - How to ensure customer stories serve business and revenue goals? - How should marketers measure the ROI of a case study? - How to ask a customer for a story? Tune in to hear from Joel Klettke, Founder at Case Study Buddy. About the show The SaaS Growth Hub podcast is powered by Growth Marketing Agency Advance B2B. We cover marketing strategy, sales and marketing alignment, content marketing, and brand marketing to help B2B marketers grow and scale up their companies.

If you like distribution and repurposing playbooks, you'll love my weekly newsletter (it's free). Join 1,800+ subscribers here: https://news.justinsimon.co/ In this episode of Distribution First, Justin is joined by Joel Klettke from Case Study Buddy to uncover the untapped potential of case studies and customer stories. Joel shares his insights to help businesses make the most of these often-overlooked resources. They debunk common myths surrounding case studies and shed light on the power of proactive planning, the versatility of case studies throughout the buyer's journey, the importance of cross-team collaboration, and the opportunity for creative storytelling.LinkedIn: @justincsimonTwitter @justincsimonEmail: hello@justinsimon.coThanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of my podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more.

One of the most powerful forms of stories for copywriters is the case study, and I think it's fair to say most of us don't use as many of them as we should. Today we're going to talk to an expert who has vast and successful experience in this kind of marketing. Our guest today, Joel Klettke, is the founder of Case Study Buddy, a business that helps companies like HubSpot and Loom to scale up their case study production and include it in every segment of their marketing—from lead generation and upsells to outreach and nurturing. Overall his company has done more than 2,000 case studies for more than 300 clients. Joel's also a copywriter and a proud dad of two. I believe his one regret in life is being a fan of the Calgary Flames hockey team. I don't blame him one bit. The last time the Flames won the Stanley cup was in 1989, and I suppose we should just leave that there. But lucky for us, Joel knows a lot about case studies and he's generously agreed to share some great tips and insights with us today. Here's what we asked Joel: 1. What are case studies, the way you look at them? 2. What are the different types of case studies? 3. Why do case studies work, and how do they work? 4. How did you get into specializing in case studies? 5. What does Case Study Buddy do for your clients? 6 . Could you give us an example of a good case study? 7. What would be an example of a bad case study? 8. What are your top tips for writing great case studies? Joel's company has a newsletter you can get for free: https://casestudybuddy.com/newsletter-sign-up/ Download.

In this episode of SaaS Marketing Superstars podcast, I spoke with Joel Klettke. Joel is the Founder of Case Study Buddy, a specialized team that help B2B brands like HubSpot, Loom, and Extensiv scale their customer stories and drive more ROI from each one. Episode Highlights: • Why Joel built an agency focused on Case Studies (0:57) • The unique insights case studies provide to SaaS companies (4:15) • How companies can tell engaging stories in their case studies (7:26) • The differences between case studies and success stories (9:54) • The biggest mistakes companies make in their case studies and how to avoid them (11:51) • Joel shares his thoughts on using case studies as a lead magnet (16:06) • Why companies should avoid gating case studies (18:20) • A creative way B2B SaaS companies can gate and ungate their case studies (20:39) • Favorite books and business leaders (21:40) Check out the show notes and get links to all the resources mentioned in this episode here: https://aaronzakowski.com/podcast-customer-success-stories-joel-klettke

“If I lose my curiosity in those things, if I stick my head in the sand, I will lose. If I refuse to evolve, I will lose. And to me, curiosity and evolution go hand in hand because you'll either be forced to evolve or you'll evolve because you're curious.” In Season 5, Episode 23 of the Boss Uncaged Podcast, S.A. Grant sits down with the Real Founder of Case Study Buddy, Joel Klettke.

Today on the show we bring on Joel Klettke to talk about his journey from copywriting/SEO to founding and managing Case Study Buddy. Joel talks about his successes and struggles launching and running his own company. LinkedIn: Joel KlettkeWebsite:  Case Buddy StudyTwitter:  @JoelKlettkeHire our agency: https://www.cavesocial.comTake our course on growing a service business: https://www.hyclass.co/six-figure-sales-pageJoin our newsletter: https://www.hyclass.co/think-forward

Welcome to another insightful episode of The Advocacy Channel! We're thrilled to have Joel Klettke, founder of Case Study Buddy and a renowned specialist in case study development, join us for today's episode. With years of experience under his belt, Joel is an expert in harnessing the power of storytelling, customer reviews, and case studies to drive business growth. In today's rapidly evolving marketing landscape, it's crucial to understand how to create persuasive stories and maximize the impact of customer advocacy. Joel's expertise sheds light on the best practices for leveraging these key components in your marketing and sales efforts. Listen in as we dive into a range of engaging topics, such as: The critical aspects of crafting captivating case studies How to make the most of customer reviews in your marketing strategy The role storytelling plays in fostering trust and credibility with your audience Proven methods to uncover and highlight your best customer success stories Overcoming common hurdles in collecting and managing valuable customer feedback Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from a seasoned industry expert and elevate your marketing game by embracing the full potential of storytelling and customer advocacy. Get more customer marketing insights and strategies at: https://www.saasquatch.com/blog/ Connect with host Will on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wifraser/  Connect with Joel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/  Check out the resource Joel mentioned to help you measure the ROI of your customer marketing and advocacy efforts: https://cmasoulmate.gumroad.com/l/cma-course  Check out Case Study Buddy blog posts to learn how to write effective case studies: https://casestudybuddy.com/blog  Have a question? Suggestion? Want to be a guest on the show? Email us at marketing@saasquatch.com 

As a business owner, you're probably juggling many things at any given moment. You're trying to keep up with the latest trends in your industry, keep your customers happy, and ensure that everyone on your team has what they need to do their job well.But too often, these tasks are competing for your attention and are all important. You can't afford to let any one of these things fall through the cracks. But if you want to succeed, you need to remember that there's always more work to do. That means ensuring you're not just doing what needs to be done today; you're also thinking about how your business will grow tomorrow.Case studies are focused on one specific client or customer. They explain how your company helped them reach their goals and how that has impacted their overall success as an organization or individual. If you want more clients but don't know where to start, then case studies are the perfect place for you! They show potential customers exactly what they'll get if they choose to work with your company, which makes it easier for them to decide whether or not they should hire someone like you.In this episode, one of the co-founders of Be Omniscient, Alex Birkett, is joined by Joel Klettke, the founder @ Case Study Buddy | End-to-end case studies and video testimonials that sell for B2B, who shares deeply about his experiences in business marketing in case studies and how to put best case studies practices into your business to nature it effectively as it grows.TopicsHow Joel's Mindset of Self-Reflection in Self-Management Has ShiftedHas Adding Constraints Forced the Idea of Being More Effective?Ignoring Small Problems To Focus on Bigger Stuff Ahead of YouThe Biggest Challenge in Making the Transition From Being Solo to a Business OwnerMaintaining the Path That Keeps the Business Fired UpHow To Get Successful Multiple BusinessesJoel's Point of Realization in His BusinessThe Importance of Having a Homogeneous ProcessWhy Large Companies Struggle To Produce Case StudiesWhat Case Studies Really Entail in BusinessHow To Identify a Good Case StudyImportance of Looking for Value Beyond the ResultsHolding On to Your BusinessAI Content in Business MarketingShow LinksVisit Omniscient Digital for more amazing podcast contentConnect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Joel Klettke on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Joel Klettke's websitePast guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more.Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEOShould You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?How Do Growth and Content Overlap?Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:Twitter: @beomniscientLinkedin: Be OmniscientListen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

Have you ever been curious about how to get more deals in your business? Or perhaps you've been curious about growing your team? For most people, it's a lot of trial and error. But if you listen to the advice of our guest today, you might just be able to skip past a lot of those trials.Today, we're welcoming Joel Klettke, founder of Case Study Buddy, a company that helps businesses create and scale case studies and video testimonies so they're able to close more deals. Joel is known for being an OG in the copywriting field.Tune in and listen to episode forty-one of The Entrepreneur's Ecosystem. Joel shares why he went full-time with Case Study Buddy, how to build a team of writers, and his thoughts about where copywriting AI will be in the next few years.In This Episode, You Will Learn:Joel tells us what Case Study Buddy is and does (9:11)How to build a team of writers (13:05)How having children changes your business (30:43)Why Joel got into running (35:04)Joel shares his thoughts on the use of AI in copywriting (46:02)Tell us what you want us to talk about:www.chantizak.com/feedbackFind Out Your Own Unfair Advantage:www.chantizak.com/unfairadvantageConnect with Joel:WebsiteLinkedInInteract:Interact blogInteract podcastQuiz CollectiveConnect with Chanti: WebsiteFacebookInstagramConnect with Dawn:WebsiteInstagramLinkedInSome of our quiz funnels:https://horizonfound.com/quizhttps://learn.kaysemorris.com/ceo-teacher-type-quizhttps://www.consciousconversion.com/quiz/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 3 of Grow and Convert Deep Dives, we took a question from Elliott Davidson, where he asked us: "What are your go to posts you know straight out of the gate will help you start lead generation for a new client engagement? Even better if they have no domain rating (DR) for the purposes of this conversation. i.e. founder story backed in with pain points etc." and answered it using 3 different company examples.In this episode we explained how we would think about forming a blog content strategy in the first few months of a client engagement, specifically what topics we'd go after, what keywords we'd target, and more!Sections of the episode:0:00 Intro4:35 How customer research ties into content strategy10:05 A High-level overview of our content strategy11:28 ParcelMaster content strategy20:07 Quick note about selling in blog posts23:33 Making SEO content interesting26:54 What are disruption stories? And how we use them36:25 Case Study Buddy Content Strategy48:55 Summarizing the first 3 posts we'd produce for Parcel Master 51:33 Devesh's “Rant” 54:03 Summarizing Case Study Buddy's first 3 pieces55:44 Testbox.com content strategy- rapid-fireWebsites we case studied:https://parcelmaster.com/ https://casestudybuddy.com/https://www.testbox.com/Articles we sharedRainforest QA disruption story: https://www.rainforestqa.com/blog/acc...Work with our content marketing agencyhttps://www.growandconvert.com/conten...Take our content marketing coursehttps://www.growandconvert.com/top-co...

Most customers watch videos before buying products. It helps sell a lot more and saves so much with customer service. Videos should look professional because most users bounce for a few seconds and choose your competitors. Joel Klettke shares a lot of valuable insights and replies to the following questions: – How to get video…

Jim is joined by 4 impressive thought leaders in the productized services space to really break down and demystify this lucrative business sector. Members of the roundtable include John Doherty, CEO of Editor Ninja: Sam Shepler, CEO of Testimonial Hero: Karl L Hughes, CEO of Draft Dev: and Joel Klettke, CEO of CaseStudyBuddy. TOPICS DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S EPISODE What is a productized service How far should you niche downWait, how do you pronounce niche? How do determine when to expand the niche How to price services out Should you be flexible with your service? Training sales teams How to get business / lead generation  Resources: John Doherty, CEO of Editor Ninja Sam Shepler, CEO of Testimonial Hero Karl L Hughes, CEO of Draft Dev Joel Klettke, CEO of Case Study Buddy Jim Huffman website Jim's Twitter GrowthHit The Growth Marketer's Playbook Additional episodes you might enjoy: Startup Ideas by Paul Graham (#45) Nathan Barry: How to Bootstrap a Company to $30M in a Crowded Market (#41) How I Met My Biz Partner and Less Learned Hitting $2M ARR (#44) Ryan Hamilton on his Netflix special, touring with Jerry Seinfeld, & how to write a joke (#10) How We're Validating Startup Ideas (#51)

Topics discussed in the episode: Tips for Creating an Effective Agency Case Study The Benefits of a Great Agency Case Study What is an Ideal Agency Case Study Tips for Conversion Copywriting What Makes A Great Case Study Presenting Sponsor: ZenPilotZenPilot helps agencies build more productive, profitable, and healthy teams by streamlining their operations in ClickUp.As ClickUp's largest implementation partner, we've served over 2,300 agencies and would love to help you scale operations.Learn more about our agency solutions.Resources mentioned in this episode: Joel Klettke on LinkedIn Joel Klettke on Twitter Case Study Buddy Website Joanna Wiebe on LinkedIn Jonathan Dane's Agency Journey Episode Joel Klettke's Newsletter KlientBoost Website Gray MacKenzie on LinkedIn Andrew Dymski on LinkedIn ZenPilot

My guest on this week's episode of Suds & Search is Joel Klettke, founder of Case Study Buddy and Business Casual Copywriting. In my humble opinion, Joel is one the very best copywriters in the industry. He frequently presents at conferences on topics related to copywriting and case study creation. A few places you may have heard Joel present include Content Jam, Learn Inbound, the Unbounce CTA Conference, and the Utah DMC conference. Case Study Buddy has become the go-to resource for creating case studies. Joel and his talented team handle all of the nettlesome but important work of creating compelling case studies. They work with businesses of all sizes. I'm going to spend a lot of our conversation talking about case studies and how to effectively use them as a multi-purpose asset, And of course we'll chat about copywriting. Joel is described as a “conversion” copywriter. I'm going to ask him what differentiates conversion copywriting from more traditional copywriting. Grab something cold to drink and join me for a conversation with Joel Klettke, one the top copywriters in the world. We'll talk about what mistakes businesses make with their case studies, how case studies can help improve CRO and increase inbound traffic, and I'll ask him a little bit about a trip he took to New Zealand. Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9teXNvdW5kd2lzZS5jb20vcnNzLzE1OTUzNTQ3MjgwNTZz Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suds-search-interviews-todays-search-marketing-experts/id1526688363 Spotify Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ALxRpeDgIvg63bK6eoUTe Catch SearchLab on these platforms: https://www.linkedin.com/company/searchlabdigital/ https://www.facebook.com/SearchLabDigital https://twitter.com/SearchLabAgency https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3kf-yP3bwhI6YvFFeKfegA Suds and Search Video Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqSrUsIw8Jit8A6IwPpFw7IPKuuyGF0Ii Local Search Tuesdays Video Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqSrUsIw8JiuxY0eDWZr7Us_WgNNP-GDnSubscribe to Suds & Search | Interviews With Today's Search Marketing Experts on Soundwise

My guest on this week's episode of Suds & Search is Joel Klettke, founder of Case Study Buddy and Business Casual Copywriting. In my humble opinion, Joel is one the very best copywriters in the industry. He frequently presents at conferences on topics related to copywriting and case study creation. A few places you may have heard Joel present include Content Jam, Learn Inbound, the Unbounce CTA Conference, and the Utah DMC conference. Case Study Buddy has become the go-to resource for creating case studies. Joel and his talented team handle all of the nettlesome but important work of creating compelling case studies. They work with businesses of all sizes. I'm going to spend a lot of our conversation talking about case studies and how to effectively use them as a multi-purpose asset, And of course we'll chat about copywriting. Joel is described as a “conversion” copywriter. I'm going to ask him what differentiates conversion copywriting from more traditional copywriting. Grab something cold to drink and join me for a conversation with Joel Klettke, one the top copywriters in the world. We'll talk about what mistakes businesses make with their case studies, how case studies can help improve CRO and increase inbound traffic, and I'll ask him a little bit about a trip he took to New Zealand. Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9teXNvdW5kd2lzZS5jb20vcnNzLzE1OTUzNTQ3MjgwNTZz Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suds-search-interviews-todays-search-marketing-experts/id1526688363 Spotify Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ALxRpeDgIvg63bK6eoUTe SearchLab 1801 W Belle Plaine Suite 107 Chicago, IL 60613 (312) 256-1574 Catch SearchLab on these platforms: https://www.linkedin.com/company/searchlabdigital/ https://www.facebook.com/SearchLabDigital https://twitter.com/SearchLabAgency https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3kf-yP3bwhI6YvFFeKfegA Suds and Search Video Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqSrUsIw8Jit8A6IwPpFw7IPKuuyGF0Ii Local Search Tuesdays Video Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqSrUsIw8JiuxY0eDWZr7Us_WgNNP-GDnSubscribe to Suds & Search | Interviews With Today's Search Marketing Experts on Soundwise

Discover why identifying the missing processes for other businesses is an opportunity that service-based business owners can miss and how Joel invested his time to build a delivery process that set him and his team up as the go to experts in an uncontended niche. Joel Klettke is the Founder of Case Study Buddy a specialized team who help B2B brands capture, share and cash in on customer success stories. He is  also a sought after conversion copywriter for SaaS and B2B, having served clients like Hubspot, WP Engine and Scott's Cheap Flights. On this episode of Small But Mighty Agency: 10:08: What is the the value of being in a deep niche and why it's the opposite of limiting14:46: Using one simple marketing strategy to grow both his businesses 16:44: The power of defining and articulating his process to exponential growth19:53: Why he thinks of his company as a powerful process masquerading as a company 20:43: How he went through “the muck” to figure out what works30:13: The catastrophic failure of hiring 10 people into his business and why it failed32:10: Why people who are good at their craft have a difficult time stepping into the manager role and building a team for their business 34:57: How he decided on the right partner for his business and perspectives on partnerships Show Links:Case Study Buddy WebsiteLinkedIn: Joel KlettkeTwitter: Joel KlettkeThis episode is brought to you by the FREE Strategic Connections RoundtableJoin the free Strategic Connections Roundtable where creatives, consultants and service-based business owners can meet new business connections without the awkwardness of traditional networking. It's a curated experience where the group fit is curated so that connections and conversations thrive.That means that every month, a strategic connections roundtable will bring together a group of service based business owners in similar stages of business who can benefit from knowing each other SO that you canMake connections easierShare what your business offersDiscover new resourcesAnd have an opportunity to mastermind a challengeSave your free seat right hereNow it's time to build your Small But Mighty AgencyThanks for tuning into the Small But Mighty Agency Podcast! If you enjoyed today's episode, head over to Apple Podcast to subscribe, rate, and leave your honest review. Connect with me on Instagram, LinkedIn or visit my website for even more detailed strategies, and be sure to share your favorite episodes on social media.Listen on AppleListen on Spotify

On the 232nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’ve got Marcus McNiell. Marcus is the co-founder and CEO of Magic based in Boulder, Colorado. He works with purpose-driven companies who seek global impact and change around both the country and world. He’s helped leaders such as Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra spread their missions and messages across the globe. You may want to grab a notepad right away because this episode is full of insights you won’t want to miss. In this episode, we discussed: •  How a conscious-based life can radically shift perspective. •  Why learning from Deepak Chopra became the greatest catalyst to vulnerability and openness. •  The secret to going from monkey mind to observing thoughts with confidence •  How an agency helped in decriminalizing magic mushrooms. - and the key marketing components needed to make such an impact. •  How to create multiple avatars for one campaign and nail their personal values to make an impact. •  The ingredients behind asking people to change their buyer behavior and trust a new brand. Is it possible? •  Where copywriters are getting their customer avatars wrong and why they should spend more time in the research. •  How copywriters have the power to truly make an impact and difference around the world. •  What you need to know before starting an agency and what should come first. •  The reality of growing a business - why it’s okay to take a step back, so you can take two steps forward. •  3 ways you can gain clients and close sales like it’s nothin’. •  How to maximize customer experience and become a partner with your client. •  The client comes first, right? Think again, when your team is connected and nurtured, great work follows. •  The truth about combining business and wellness. Can the two coexist? •  Why small impact matters and how it can be the first magic step. This episode might leave you thinking about impact and copywriting in a whole new light. To hear it, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. And of course, you should subscribe with your favorite podcast app to ensure you never miss an episode.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Our Event for Copywriters Marianne Williamson The E-myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Jonny Stellar Magic Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob:  If you're a longtime fan of this podcast, or I guess any other podcast, you've probably had the experience of listening to a guest share their story and what they learned, and then had to reach for a pen and paper to capture the ideas that they're sharing, so that they don't get lost, or so that you don't forget them. Maybe you've even had to pull off the road as you were driving, or tell your kids to be quiet so that you don't miss something that you could use in your business.  That's exactly how we felt more than a handful of times in this interview. Our guest for the 232nd episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast is Marcus McNeill, the founder of Magic. And as we spoke to Marcus, we found ourselves taking more notes than usual, trying to capture the wisdom that he shared about building his business. Fair warning, you might want to grab a pen and a notebook, or pull off to the side of the road, as you listen to this episode.  Kira:  Before we share our interview with Marcus, this is the last week for a while that this podcast is brought to you by TCC, Not in Real Life, our event for copywriters and other smart marketers. And the reason for that? Well, it's just about the last week you can get a ticket for our event, which happens April 7th through the 9th. If you want to learn firsthand from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Eman Ishmael, and so many more. You need to get your ticket today. To do that, visit thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl-1.

On the 230th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Rob and Kira are going guestless. They’re sitting back and answering some questions they get frequently among our community. They’re giving their best advice and tips for new and established copywriters who are looking to level up and sustain what they’re building. In this episode, we dive into: •   when you’ll get the chance to build the foundations of your business with us in just 3 months •   the truth about working for free - should you do it? •   how to hire a VA that will pay for themselves. •   9 books we’re reading right now - one genre? Never. •   the #1 question we get asked every. single. day. •   the 3 biggest levers when it comes to pricing your offers. •   how to choose the most profitable niches in copywriting. •   the good and the bad of Clubhouse. (Note: We will be on Clubhouse on Tuesdays at 5PM EST.) •   if you don’t have copywriting samples for a particular project, here’s what you should do. •   the secret to building trust with potential clients. •   what Rob & Kira would do differently if they were beginners. •   success as a copywriter - how we define success •   how to maintain your business as you’re helping scale others. Tune in and listen as we give candid advice on your most asked questions. Hit the play button below or check out the transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Club Annual Event - Early Bird Sale Ends March 22nd Done by Noon by Dave Ruel Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson & Mark Ford Yes to Life by Viktor Frankl Man Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt Facing the Climate Emergency by Margaret Salamon Fair Play by Eve Rodsky The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday The Copywriter’s Ultimate Guide to Using Clubhouse Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh:   If you've been listening to the show for the last three plus years, you no doubt have heard us ask hundreds, maybe even thousands of questions to the amazing copywriters and experts who have been on the show. We've even asked a few people to join us and turn the tables to ask us questions. Today we're going guestless for the 230th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, and we're answering the questions that get asked the most often in our free Facebook group, as well as some questions that are asked in our paid programs, like The Copywriter Accelerator and The Copywriter Underground. Kira Hug:   When you say guestless, it makes it sound like we're naked. Rob Marsh:   Does it? Kira Hug:   Like we're missing something. Yeah, it sounds like we're shedding all the layers today and it's just us. Rob Marsh:   Nice. I would hate to think that people would think that we're not clothed here, but yeah, that's ... How embarrassing. Kira Hug:   It's just us today, naked and we're going to answer your questions. Before we do that, this podcast episode is brought to you by TCC(N)IRL, of course it's The Copywriter Club (Not) In Real Life, our event for copywriters and other smart marketers who want to learn from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Carline Anglade-Cole, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Eman Ismail and more than a dozen others. But this event is not just about great presentations, it's not just about sitting at your computer and staring at Zoom all day. It's really about connecting with other copywriters in intimate virtual spaces so you can build real relationships, even possibly friendships, partnerships, and also get a lot of work done while you're with us over the three days. So we're really focused on doing, not just learning, and we're focused on implementation through workshops. So you're not just sitting through a presentation and then going back to your work with nothing to show for it.

On the 229th episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, Selena Soo shares it all when it comes to publicity. During a difficult period, Selena began seeking information but found inspiration. Selena became a publicity strategist after stepping into the power of connecting others and helping people share their message with the world. If publicity isn’t something on your mind, it will be after listening in on this episode. In this episode, we cover: •   how to get your ideal client to find you •   why investing in yourself can change the game for your business and life •   the impact of hustle culture and seeking a balance •   when you include publicity, more eyes are on your core message •   the secret to building a strong body of work •   how to use being an introvert to your advantage •   why you need to clear on what you want to be known for •   what kind of media you should be in front of, plus how to decide on mainstream topics •   two techniques you can use to pitch yourself •   when and how to join the right mastermind programs •   why your body of work matters no matter the size •   the quickest, easiest way to amplify your message •   5 things you need to realize when it comes to mindset and pitching •   the truth behind being vulnerable online •   why sharing what’s important to you matters online •   if you’re showing up in any form of media, Selena shares what you need to have prepared New to publicity or maybe you never thought it was THAT important? Think again. You’re about to learn a thing or two from an expert connector. Hit play below! The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: TCC(N)IRL Event 2021 Free Video Series - Impacting Millions Program Selena's blog post about abuse Selena's free calendar Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat Pray Love Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Kira:   Getting noticed by the right people is a talent. And while we've talked a lot about pitching on this podcast lately, I think we can all agree that life is so much easier when your ideal client finds you rather than the other way around. To get to that place in your business, it sure helps to have publicity, AKA other people sharing your thoughts and ideas on their platforms. That's something we can all use more of, right? Our guest for the 229th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is publicity strategist, Selena Soo. She didn't waste any time helping us figure out what we should be doing to get more publicity for our business. And we think you'll get a ton out of this interview too. Rob:   We'll get back to our interview with Selena in a moment. But first, this podcast episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club (Not) In Real Life, or TCC(N)IRL. That's our event for copywriters and other smart marketers who want to learn more from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Carline Anglade-Cole, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Eman Ismail, and more than a dozen others. But TCC(N)IRL is about more than just presentations, it's about connecting with other copywriters, helping you to form real relationships, true friendships, and maybe even a successful partnership with another copywriter. To learn more, visit TheCopywriterClub.com/TCCNIRL-2021. And if you don't remember that link, you can find it in the show notes of this episode on The Copywriter Club website. Kira:   Now, let's jump into our conversation with Selena. So why don't you kick off your story just, how did you end up as a publicity and marketing strategist? Salena Soo:   Absolutely. It actually started in my mid 20s when I had a quarter life crisis. I was clinically depressed, I was having trouble eating and getting out of that in the mornings. I reached such a low point that my mom flew from Vancouver, Canada to New York at the time, just to be by my side to help me get through life. And she would get on the subway and take me to wo...

On the 228th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we’re joined by Eddie Biroun. Eddie is a conversion copywriter for e-comm and education brands and a forever learner of his craft. After fumbling into copywriting, he knew it was something he wanted to commit to for the long run. He became intrigued with understanding branding and what truly makes a brand stand the test of time. During our conversation, we talked about going from professional student to professional copywriter and how you can make the same leap. We also talked about: •   why stages of awareness are important and why buzzwords don’t create a connection •   failing and how you can (and should) make it work to your advantage •   how expecting a perfect first draft is like looking for a unicorn •   going from obtaining knowledge and skills in copywriting to putting it into action •   Eddie’s process in downloading the voice of a new client and why it’s important to effective copy •   how your creative artist and managerial side have to be separate when writing the first draft •   why feedback (even negative feedback) is essential to becoming a better copywriter •   choosing projects and people who empower you and respect your craft •   how learning and improving will always be a part of copywriting and it doesn’t need to be something you learn in a day •   how having a mentor speeds up the process because direct feedback is readily available •   where to look for red flags and how using your gut can save you a lot of headaches •   why building a better relationship with your mind will help you tackle imposter syndrome when it comes up (because it does for all of us) •   why taking care of your life side of things is vital to take care of the work side of things •   how copywriters have the power to make other people’s dreams come true (we are wizards after all) •   copywriting isn’t just a flippant task, it’s the infrastructure for long-term success •   why having a morning routine will keep you focused when in the copy cave (did we mention this includes reading?) •   how to navigate through writer’s block when perfectionism or ideas need to be uncovered Need a dose of motivation to stop going into information overload and start applying what you’re learning? This episode with Eddie might do just the trick. Hit the play button below (or read the transcript below!) The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Almanack of Naval How to Create Your Copywriter Website (written by Eddie) Eddie's Instagram Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob:   Getting better at copywriting, this thing that we all do, isn't easy. And sometimes we get stuck in a project, we get stuck getting started or we get stuck struggling to find clients. Our guest for the 228th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Eddie Biroun. Eddie is the kind of copywriter who hates getting stuck and he's figured out what it takes to get moving again when he has gotten stuck. In fact, he's made dramatic improvements over the past year or two in how fast he writes, in the quality of his writing and the kinds of clients that he's working with. We think that you're going to get quite a bit from the experiences that Eddie shares in this interview. Kira:   Before we share our interview with Eddie, this podcast episode is brought to you by TCC (Not) In Real Life, our event for copywriters and other smart marketers who want to learn from experts like Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Jereshia Hawk, Joel Klettke, Momo Price, and so many others like them. But it's not just about speakers and presentations and sitting through more Zoom calls because you don't need that. TCC IRL is really famous for connecting copywriters with each other and helping you to form real relationships, even friendships, potentially partnerships with other copywriters and marketers. To learn more,

'SEO Copywriting" is a term that gets thrown around quite a bit.   Is it SEO? Is it copywriting?   Can the two ever coexist? Joel Klettke and I discuss this in today's conversation. Quick Links: 00:00 Introduction 01:40 What is SEO copywriting? 05:22 Beginner copywriting and SEO mistakes 08:00 Why CTR is the most important metric in Page 1 SEO rankings 10:15 SEO vs. Content Marketing 11:00 SEO research and Copywriting research ---- What SEO copywriting means really depends on who you ask. Some live and die by it and some swear it is it's own full-blown skillset. Copywriters who also know SEO and understand the impact of rankings and title tags are awesome. Joel, and I, both hate the phrase SEO copywriting because typically when you're writing copy for the web you're writing for the intent of engaging a human being SEO copywriting, on the other hand, is a phase used by companies on Upwork who want spammy articles they hope will bring in search traffic but also covert people to an offer. It becomes this less awesome game of keyword density and other nonsense. If you're doing copywriting and it's hurting your SEO, it shows you really don't know how to do copywriting. SEO is writing for people. Copywriting is writing for people. It's the same thing if you're doing it right. It's NOT finding 100 different ways to say why the pizza at your 100 locations in and around Tallahassee is awesome. If you're writing great, compelling copy, you're going to tick a lot of boxes for SEO anyhow. SEO should be a consideration and it should be baked in, not the end goal. The end goal is not to show up, or to rank for a thing, it's to deliver a message and communicate a value. If all you care about is ranking, you've got some misaligned goals in your business to rethink. One of the biggest seo copywriting mistakes that people make is thinking that the pages have to be a certain length. When that's the focus for your SEO, you put the word count ahead of the conversion and message of the copy. Every word on the page should serve your readers. Copy does have a place in SEO, but the mistaken belief that the H1 tag or title tag has to be a certain way, is wrong. When you have a stronger link profile, you can be a bit more playful in your copy. When you rank third in the search results, but your title tag is more compelling, you'll start getting a lot more clicks which will quickly boost you up in rankings. It doesn't matter if you do everything right with SEO and show up on page one, but when you can't convert that traffic, it's mostly worthless. Yes, get informed on SEO and understand ranking factors, but that is just one more tool in your SEO copywriting toolkit. What we're doing with words is having conversations and (hopefully) communicating something of value. That's way too important a thing to hand over from a true copywriter to an SEO department.

Joel Klette is a well-known copywriter and entrepreneur. He currently runs two businesses. He's also a prolific writer and educator. I don't know anyone who has shared as much knowledge on copywriting as Joel. Check out Joel's businesses, Business Casual Copywriting and Case Study Buddy, as well as his fantastic Twitter account. This is a preview of Superpath Pro. If you want a whole lot more of this, check out https://pro.superpath.co/membership.

Case studies are a killer way to show off how you've changed the lives of your customers. But many businesses don't write them in a way that's useful to the prospective customer. Conversion Copywriter & Founder of Case Study Buddy Joel Klettke joins Katelyn Bourgoing to explain: How To Get New Customers To Take Action Through Conversion Copywriting The Formula For Deal-Closing Case Studies How To Use Customer Concerns As A Lense To Look At Your Marketing And So Much More Joel Klettke is the founder of Case Study Buddy, a done-for-you service for high converting case studies and testimonials. Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoelKlettke Case Study Buddy: https://casestudybuddy.com/ ---- Follow Katelyn Bourgoin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KateBour Get your free Customer Ranking Calculator: https://www.subscribepage.com/newcalculator

How customer data should shape everything from your UVP and copy, through the way your team will speak to your customers?A great chat with Helen Peatfield.Here are some of the resources she mentioned:Justin Blackman: https://prettyflycopy.com/Joel Klettke's newsletter: https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/5 Stages of Awareness (overview for people who can't get hold of Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz): https://copyblogger.com/blog-selling/Find Helen on:https://app.growthmentor.com/helen-peatfieldhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/helenpeatfield/https://www.theproductonboarders.com/

Case studies and marketers in the manufacturing space have a love/hate relationship. We love to get them, but too often find ourselves not in love with the end result. But what if the success of your case study had more to do with preparation than the actual interview? Matt and MJ talked with Joel Klettke, who outlines an absolutely masterful method for designing the perfect industrial case study. He walks through identifying candidates to designing the right questions to the proper Case Study format and finally proves that you can even make an impactful Case Study from the dreaded "anonymous" customer. This is 41 minutes of pure gold. Grab your notebook.

Joel is a conversion copywriter for B2B and SaaS at business casual copywriting and the founder of CaseStudyBuddy, a done-for-you case studies service we're they help agencies, SaaS companies and B2B businesses like Moz, Unbounce, GatherUp, and  Hotjar capture and share persuasive customer success stories. Apart from being a conversion-focused copywriter and strategist, Joel is a  BComm holder who runs his company like a business – and a digital marketer with 5+ years of experience agency-side. Joel loves deadlines, strategy documents, clear communication  and helping you figure out what content you actually need to reach, nurture and convert your audience.  During this interview we cover: 00:00 - Intro 01:06 -   Launching Case Study buddy, the Problem to Solve & Opportunity 04:27 - Creating More Case Studies VS Creating Top Of The Funnel Content 07:36 - Ways of Leveraging Customer Success Stories You May Weren't Aware  10:39 - Best Formats For Effective & Engaging Case Studies 13:30 - Generate Authority In the Early Stages of your SaaS Company 16:37 - Best Structure the Case Study from the Planning Phase 19:54 - How To Measure ROI When Using Marketing Efforts on Case Studies 24:14 - How To Repurpose Your Customer Success Stories 26:21 - Maximize Your Case Study Conversions & Effectiveness 29:02 - Resources & Mentors From Joel 31:39 - Get In Touch With Joel Mentions: https://casestudybuddy.com/ (CaseStudyBuddy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3 (GPT-3) https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/ (Business Casual) https://copyhackers.com/ (Copyhackers) People: https://copyhackers.com/author/admin/ (Joanna Wiebe) https://twitter.com/lovevalgeisler?lang=es (Vel Geisler) https://www.aprildunford.com/obviously-awesome (April Dunford) Books: https://www.aprildunford.com/obviously-awesome (Obviously awesome) Get in touch with Joel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/?originalSubdomain=ca (Joel's Linkedin) Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook) https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn) https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYvpqdVVSlSMunWiEwlMjzw (YouTube) More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast)

It's time to break down real SaaS marketing problems - with a sour twist. This week's guest...the king of copy himself, Joel Klettke!

Partners: Convert: convert.com/features Online Dialogue: onlinedialogue.nl SiteSpect: sitespect.com Contentsquare: contentsquare.com Online Invloed: onlineinvloed.nl

Does it seem like Joel Klettke was born with a case study project map in his hand? In this episode of B2B Craftworks, you'll hear how Joel got started with case studies and his advice for aspiring case study writers. Support the show (http://www.B2BWritingInstitute.com)

What’s up everyone! We’re back this week with Joel Klettke, the founder of Business Casual Copywriting and Case Study Buddy. Joel has created very successful workshops and courses and he’s here to talk copywriting, course creation, and growing a client base. Joel launched Business Casual Copywriting in 2013, focusing on content marketing assets and website copy. He’s worked with clients like HubSpot, WP Engine, Safelite, and Ion Interactive. Two years later, he started helping clients understand their customers better and improve their conversion rates with conversion copywriting. Tune in to hear Joel’s copywriting journey, how he created Case Study Buddy, his copywriting advice, and how you can write effective case studies. Enjoy!  Episode Quotes"The best way to grow your client base is to network and make connections.""My strategy has always been to solve problems in public, be useful first, worry about selling later.""It's not about genius, it's about discipline and repetition.""Confidence is a byproduct of a solid process - when you know what you are doing and why you are doing it.""I don’t want to work to make a living. I want to work to build a life." Listen to Learn00:21 - Rapid 5 Questions04:45 - How Joel got into copywriting09:41 - Going freelance growing a client base13:14 - The shift to course creation  18:17 - Marketing as a service-based business24:23 - How Joel started Case Study Buddy32:51 - Copywriting best practices & pitfalls40:36 - Leveraging audience feedback 45:39 - Tips on copywriting for course creators   47:52 - Exciting things coming up from Joel Connect with JoelBusinessCasualCopywriting.comCaseStudyBuddy.comFollow Joel on Twitter!  Looking for the Transcript?Episode 130

Power Quote: “Copy is not written. Copy is assembled.” – Eugene Schwartz Personal Story and Lessons: It's tempting to stop at a single data point instead dig, empathize and get to know the people behind the metrics. That's where the real insight lies! Joel goes behind the scenes of how he helped an online business in UK realize additional $165,000 in revenue with less than 15 minutes of copywriting work. Closing Takeaway: 90% of copywriting has nothing to do with writing. It's about researching, listening, doing what it takes to empathize with your customer. Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/winningcombo/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Winning-Combo-105826354160436/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ComboPodcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/winning-combo/message

In this episode we talk to Joel Klettke, Founder of Case Study Buddy. Now you can more easily search & share your audio content, while getting greater visibility into the impact of your podcast. Check out Casted in action at casted.us/growth Are you getting every B2B Growth episode in your favorite podcast player? If not, you can easily subscribe & search past episodes here. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Tired of just hearing our voices? Now you can watch every episode of B2B Growth on YouTube.

My guest, Joel Klettke is a full-time freelance conversion-focused copywriter and marketing strategist who’s worked with big-name clients, such as HubSpot, WP Engine, Safelite, and Ion Interactive.  Now, I think it’s necessary to first provide a little background information to my listeners so that we don’t get lost in buzz-words or fancy business jargon. When I say Joel is a copywriter, I want you to understand exactly what that means. No, that doesn’t mean he’s a lawyer. Copywriting has nothing to do with law. For those who don’t know, a copywriter is someone who writes the text for advertisements and other marketing content such as a corporate About Us on a company website, product descriptions, the captions for social media posts, slogans, flyers, banner ads, brochures, newsletters, and more. While design attracts, the copy is what usually creates the emotional connection and ultimately convinces a person to take a desired action such as hitting the like or subscribe button, opening the email, filling out the lead contact form, or placing the order. Joel Klettke’s writing helps businesses get more clicks, traffic, adds to cart, and sales.  I myself have a copywriting background and started out as a copywriter before expanding into other areas of marketing such as social media management and brand strategy consulting. If you’ve ever watched the popular TV series, Mad Men, then you’re familiar with the show’s protagonist, a whiskey-drinking, womanizing Madison Avenue agency copywriter named Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm. I can assure you the real life of most of today’s copywriters is not nearly as exciting and hopefully far less dysfunctional than that of Don Draper.  This interview turned into a really interesting discussion between two marketers. In this interview, Joel Klettke spills the tea on freelancing, copywriting, and how his work helps his clients and their businesses succeed. Click the links below learn more about Joel Klettke and his work: https://joelklettke.com/ https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/ Twitter: @JoelKlettke (over 11,700 followers at the time of this recording)

Want to get free tickets to SaaStock Remote Conference happening June 10-11 ($129 value)? I'm writing a book about how other successful founders got their first few paying, please consider helping other founders by taking part in the creation of this book and fill out this 5-minute survey here: https://s.surveyanyplace.com/grow_your_saas On this episode of SaaS Boss show I interview Joel Klettke of Case Study Buddy about how SaaS can capture, share, and cash in on customer success stories. Joel is the founder of Case Study Buddy, a team of case studies specialists who help companies capture, share and cash in on customer success stories He is a sought after conversion copywriter for SaaS and B2B companies where he has helped clients like Hubspot and WP engine turn more visitors into customers. On this episode we discuss: Laying the foundation to creating case studiesCreating the study/success story and conducting an interviewPromoting the customer success story

What are your thoughts on customer research? Do you think it takes too long and is a dirty word? Or do you rely on it for your business? My guest is Joel Klettke, owner of Case Study Buddy, a company that helps you to create case studies. In this episode, he explains how your research and analysis will not only produce killer copy but will inform many aspects of your business - from branding to landing pages and everything in between. We Covered: How good customer research is not just research for research sake The benefits of review and testimonial mining The consequences of not doing effective customer research How changing just a few words can make your copy more vivid What to look for in negative competitor reviews How to translate all the data you collect into one page of copy Why focusing purely on current customers is a big mistake The principles and practicalities of writing good copy How all writers are different and there’s no one way of writing The questions to ask yourself as you read through your copy Resources: Case Study Buddy Hubspot WP Engine Scott’s Cheap Flights Benevity Traffic Think Tank Deputy Clockspot G2 Capterra Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - Chip Heath Never Lose a Customer Again - Joey Coleman The Ultimate Sales Letter - Dan Kennedy

In this episode, we talk about all things positioning, copywriting, and conversion rate optimization with expert Joel Klettke. We talk to Joel about the most common mistakes when creating website copy that is costing them millions of dollars in lost revenue. We get into the differences between positioning, copywriting, and CRO, before getting in a real example where Joel walks us through the processes he uses to optimize a brand's website resulting in $165k in additional revenue from changes that took less than 30 minutes to implement.

Today I chat with Joel Klettke, Author at Case Study Buddy. Joel and I talk about seeking and leveraging customer testimonials to best grow your business as well as approaching your audience amidst Covid-19.  We also discuss:  - How hiring a professional copywriter has impacted growth - Making effective use of your customer's time - Scaling for growth with your supporting talent - Best tactics for utilizing case studies in growing your online business  https://casestudybuddy.com/ Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!  Free Mini-Course! How to Write an Engaging Email Sequence:  http://onlinesuccesscollaborative.com/welcomeseries Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/success_collab/ Facebook Group: http://bit.ly/2I2yUVg 

This week on Awkward Silences, Erin and JH chatted with Joel Klettke, who has 6+ years of experience writing killer conversion copy for clients like Hubspot, Scott's Cheap Flights, and WP Engine. His first piece of advice? "All the best copy [is] words you've stolen from the customers themselves." He also stressed the importance of meeting your customers where they are, involving copy from the start of any new project, and structuring your user research so it's easy to pull out the best insights. He walked us through how he used research to make changes at Hubspot that resulted in a 35% increase in demo requests and a 27% increase in inbound call volume. He also outlined how he used chatbot data to help an online divorce startup net an extra 165k in revenue by answering questions their users needed answers to. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/awkwardsilences/message

w/ Joel Klettke The post Talking Conversion Copy-Writing & Homebrewing Disasters w/ Joel Klettke – S5Ep24 appeared first on Beer, Beats, & Business.

Join Johnathan as he interviews Dave Rogenmoser from Proof, Joel Klettke from Business Casual Copywriting, and Talia Wolf from GetUplift to discuss all things Social proof. Don't forget to leave us a review and let us know what you love about BoostSauce! Don't have time to listen to the full episode? Check out the transcript here: https://klientboost.com/boost-sauce/social-proof-mastery Questions, or want us to cover a specific topic? Let us know at boostsauce@klientboost.com

Joel Klettke stopped by The Blueprint Live to talk all things copywriting. We went off on a nice tangent talking about different ways to approach cold outreach emails, specifically for link building, sales and networking.Support the show (https://ryanwashere.com)

Testimonials and case studies hold enormous marketing potential (without coming off as salesy). Our guest today is Joel Klettke, the founder of Case Study Buddy. You'll learn what makes a powerful case study, how to produce one yourself, and how to use them in your sales & marketing process.Podcast feed: subscribe to https://feeds.simplecast.com/4MvgQ73R in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music.Show NotesCase Study Buddy — Joel's service we're talking aboutSome of their case study samplesPingboard, Varonis, Buffer — some of the companies that do great case studiesCrisp Video — a company producing amazing video testimonials for lawyers (see one of the samples)Get your free copy of The Complete Guide to Growing Your Revenue with Case StudiesFollow Joel on Twitter: @JoelKlettkeToday's SponsorThis episode is brought to you by Lightmatter. Lightmatter helps some of the world’s fastest growing companies design and develop their software applications. Whether you don’t yet need an in-house engineering team, or you’re busy growing the next unicorn and can’t hire fast enough, there’s an immense value in working with a group of experts like Lightmatter. Check them out at lightmatter.com/uibreakfast to learn more.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

In this episode you'll learn about some time and cost effective ways to do proper user research inspired by the world of copywriting. Successful conversion copywriter Joel Klettke takes you along his process to craft copy which deeply resonates with readers. As you'll hear that process evolves for a large part on conducting user research in order to understand the people you're going to write for. The similarities between how Joel does research and the way we do it as service designers is sometimes uncanny. There's just so much overlap that you wonder why our paths haven't crossed before. We also talk about how Joel is able to convince clients to do user research. Even when they think they know everything there is about their customers. Stepping outside the world of service design is sometimes the best way to improve our practice and this episode is I think a great example. If enjoyed this episode and found it helpful please consider sharing it with just 1 other person you know. Every. Share. Counts. :) ----- [ GUIDE ] ----- 03:10 - The first encounter with Service Design. 04:10 - Why should Service Designers care about what a copywriting can teach them about customer research? 12:25 - How much do you need to know about a customer? 21:25 - How can we go and get this information in a cost and time effective way? 33:55 - Big question: Which research tools could we use from the copywriters toolkit? ----- [ LINKS ] -------- * https://twitter.com/JoelKlettke * https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/ * https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/ * https://www.typeform.com/ * https://copyhackers.com/about-copy-hackers/ * https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/ * https://www.hotjar.com/ * ----- [ MORE ] ----- Enjoyed the show? Take a look at some of the other episodes. https://go.servicedesignshow.com/spotify YOUTUBE Every episode of the Service Design Show is also available as via the official YouTube channel. https://go.servicedesignshow.com/youtube FACEBOOK Check the Facebook page where you'll find more content and can discuss the episodes. https://go.servicedesignshow.com/facebook INSTAGRAM Get an exclusive behind the scenes look of the Show. https://go.servicedesignshow.com/instagram ----- [ FREE COURSE ] ----- HOW TO EXPLAIN SERVICE DESIGN Learn what it takes to get your clients, colleagues, managers, CEOs and even grandmas as excited about service design as you are! https://servicedesignshow.com/free-course

“There’s always going to be a risk or a reason not to. If you wait for the perfect moment it’s not going to come.” Joel Klettke is a conversion-focused copywriter and specialist. He always knew he loved writing, but had never imagined he would be able to make a career of it. After working at an SEO company, Joel realized that content is more important than ever and that’s when started his own business. After taking some time to find his niche, Joel is now he is able to combine all of his passions into a career. “You’re not in the business of providing a service, you’re in the business of solving a problem” Joel understands the importance of taking the leap. A lot of people are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, but stop there. There will never be a right time or perfect time. He discusses taking risks as an entrepreneur as well as: -Tips to becoming a successful entrepreneur -Learning from mistakes as an entrepreneur -Implementing processes -Learning when to say no -Tips on running a businesses -Giving back to build your business If you want to learn more about Joel or his copywriting services, click the links below! Website: https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/joelklettke LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Joel Klettke, conversion copywriter, founder and Case Study King of Case Study Buddy, a done-for-you case study writing service that gives B2B businesses (like SaaS and agencies) an easy way to capture and share customer success stories. Their case study specialists take care of everything, from interviewing your customer to writing the study and managing revisions.  As Joel points out in the interview, case studies are an asset whose value is enormous, yet often overlooked. Case studies can be used in all parts of the customer marketing journey. In our discussion, Joel talked to me about: What makes a good case study - it's about human connection and the story He pointed out that "the story you tell will be the story you attract" Transformation - the before, during, and after, framework of the case study process Joel and his team use Listen to the podcast to find out more. Show Notes and Blog The Podcasts

Joel Klettke is is on the show today to share his approach to conversion copywriting and tactics you can use to improve conversion rates.

Today we're chatting with Joel Klettke, who is a sought-after conversion copywriter and consultant.   With a background in entrepreneurship, Joel brings a strategic approach to building and scaling a writing business. He's also great at teaching freelancers how to confidently sell their services and scale their business.   Today he runs Business Casual Copywriting where he's helped clients like WP Engine and HubSpot double their conversions. He's also the founder of Case Study Buddy, a done-for-you case studies service that helps companies capture, share, and cash in on customer success stories.   Building and scaling companies of this size is notoriously difficult, so today we're asking Joel how he's gone from profitable side-project to full-fledged company in a strategic way.   And stay tuned until the end for a hilarious side tangent about the evil nature of red tailed hawks.   Let's dive in so Joel can tell you all about it.   Episode Highlights   How to avoid having an employee mindset as a freelancer so you can take charge of client relationships Why "solving problems" is the unconventionally simple way to close clients confidently How Joel built up his sales confidence to pitch clients from a position of strength Ways to leverage an 'in house' job to jump start your freelance career How Joel identified a big hole in the market and used it to start a specialized conversions business Joel's secret to developing processes that help you scale your writing business The biggest flubs of his early days that taught him some of his most important lessons How to show clients what it's like to work with you before you ever get on a sales call The questions Joel always asks before hiring or partnering with someone on his team Why 'looking expensive' could be the best thing you do for your business growth How to give yourself an edge over other freelancers  

Today’s co-host is Joel Klettke. Joel is a conversion copywriter and the co-founder of Case Study Buddy. Joel is a sought-after consultant, having worked with companies like Hubspot and WP Engine, among others. Today, Joel is talking with us about his strategies around conversion copywriting.

The Inbound Success Podcast launched on August 28, 2017 and today marks the 100th episode, and 100 straight weeks of publishing interviews with high performing marketers. On this week's Inbound Success Podcast, I'm taking a break from interviewing guests to share with you 13 trends that I've observed from the 99 interviews I did throughout the last two years. Listen to the podcast to learn more about the 13 things that the world's top-performing inbound marketers are doing, and get links to the specific episodes where you can dive deeper into each topic. Transcript Welcome back to the Inbound Success podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth. I'm your host, and this is the 100th episode of the podcast. I thought this was a great opportunity for me to take a break from the usual routine of interviewing some of the incredible marketers that I get to speak to every week and look back on the last 99 episodes and try and digest some lessons learned. I've had the incredible good fortune of speaking to some really amazing marketers in the last two years as I've done this podcast. It's given me an opportunity to meet people I otherwise never would have met, to learn some things that have really kind of made a difference for me in the way I think about marketing, and have prompted me to take a second look and reevaluate the way I've been doing some things. So, thought it was a great opportunity to share some of those lessons learned with all of you. How The Inbound Success Podcast Got Started But first, I wanted to just take a moment and tell a story about why I started the podcast. It was about two and a half years ago that I had my own marketing agency, Quintain Marketing. I had had the agency for 11 years. I'd gone to a lot of marketing conferences and listened to tons of podcasts, and watched webinars, always looking to make myself a better marketer. I had a lot of clients that I wanted to help. I also wanted to market my own agency and do better every day. I always would listen to these folks talk about the marketing work they were doing and the incredible results they were getting, and so infrequently felt that there was anything really tangible that I could take away from it and immediately use to improve my own marketing. This podcast was really an attempt to solve for that. It was me trying to scratch my own itch, and in doing so hopefully helping some of you. The interesting thing about this has been that it has certainly done that for me, and it has also done so much more. I already mentioned that it's enabled me to meet so many people I otherwise would never have met. There are a lot of people in the marketing world that I really admire and respect. And having the excuse of saying, "Hey, would you like to come on a podcast?" is a great way to meet someone new and to meet and to form that relationship, so that's been great. I've also met some really incredible people that I didn't know about through my guests when I ask them who else is doing a really great job with inbound marketing. And those relationships have been amazing. One of the most amazing and incredible things about this is that it changed the entire course of my career. One of first people I interviewed when I started the podcast was Bob Ruffolo, who is the founder and CEO of IMPACT. Now, I work at IMPACT. The reason is that before we started to hit the record button for the podcast interview, we were just talking about how things were going. I was telling him that I thought I might be ready to make a change, and that led to me selling part of my company to IMPACT and joining the team. That's been a really major shift in my life and a great one. I've learned so much. I get to work with some really smart people every day and do very, very interesting work. All this has come out of this little podcast. And most importantly, I've learned a lot about marketing. As I said, that was my original goal. 13 Lessons From Interviewing 99 High Performing Marketers So without further ado, I looked back through the 99 episodes I've done before today and really saw 13 themes emerge. That's what I'm going to share with you today. 1. There Is No "Secret Sauce" The first one ... And some of these, by the way, are going to seem like no-brainers, but they're important because it's important to remind ourselves of the things that we kind of already know. First one is, in most cases there really is no secret sauce to being an amazing marketer. The folks that I interviewed who were the most successful have a few things in common. Number one, they are voracious learners. They're always trying to improve their knowledge. They're always hungry for more. And they're consistent. That's huge, the consistency. A great example of that is Goldie Chan. I interviewed her. She's often referred to as the green-haired Oprah of LinkedIn. She has the longest running daily channel on LinkedIn. She's posted a new LinkedIn video every day for I think it's about two years. It's incredible. It doesn't matter where she is, what's happening, whether she's feeling well, whether she's traveling, what her access to Wifi is, she finds a way to do it because consistency is so important for her. And it's really paid off. They also do a few things and do them really well. A great example of that is Rev Ciancio who I talked with about Instagram marketing. Rev has an incredible Instagram presence. Which by the way, do not look at it when you're hungry because his pictures are all of mouthwatering hamburgers, french fries, pizzas, chicken wings, nachos, essentially everything that's bad for you, but that tastes so good. But, Rev has a fascinating strategy for how he approaches Instagram and has built an entire business around it. He does one thing, and he does it really well. Alex Nerney talked about Pinterest similarly, just a platform a lot of inbound marketers overlook, but he's really figured out a way to make it sing for him. The hungry learners who are consistent and who pick a few things and do them really well, that's really the secret sauce, which essentially isn't so secret. That's number one. 2. Listen To Your Customers And Prospects And Use What You Learn in Your Marketing Number two is they really listen to customers and prospects and use that in their marketing. Again, sounds like a no-brainer. We always talk about the need to do persona research and to build buyer personas, but I think what happens is we get very often so caught up in building the actual persona that we forget the big picture, that it's not about having this fictional profile of a person. It's really about understanding the way our audience thinks, what their real pain points and needs are, and the language they use to talk about that. A couple of the interviews I did were great examples of this. Barron Caster at rev.com who uses their own transcription product to transcribe all of the conversations they have with customers and then pull actual words that customers have used out and feed that into the copy on their website and landing pages, and that's gotten them amazing results. Val Geisler and Joel Klettke, two of the most accomplished conversion copywriters out there, both also talked about this type of research and understanding deeply, deeply the needs of customers and prospects. Paul Blamire at Atomic Reach, who is head of customer success and makes it a point to speak to new customers shortly after they've onboarded and really understand what brought them to the company and how the product is solving their needs. And he feeds that back in not only to marketing but to product development, to every aspect of the business to deliver a better customer experience from first touch in the marketing process all the way through the experience of using the company's product. 3. You Don't Need Fancy Tools Or A Big Budget Number three, you don't necessarily need fancy tools or a big budget to get incredible results. There are some really great examples of this. Oli Billson who I recently interviewed about the small events he's doing that are delivering tremendous amounts of revenue to his business. Chris Handy who talked about marketing for a Pre-K school, really small campaigns, but they just really ... They understood their audience, and they used the available tools that they had and got terrific results for the school. Adam Sand, who's using direct mail in conjunction with inbound marketing, super old school, but very effective for him. And Harry Campbell, who's The Rideshare Guy, and he's probably the top content creator in the ridesharing space. So think Uber, Lyft, Lime, Bird. He just started blogging and has created some great content and a big following. You really don't need fancy tools or a big budget. You can do it on your own with what you've got, if I go back to the first thing, if you're consistent, if you pick a few things and do them really well, and if you're a hungry learner who is willing to roll your sleeves up and apply what you're learning. 4. Connect With Your Audience On An Emotional Level Number four, the best marketers connect with their audiences on an emotional level, another thing that might seem obvious but that I think a lot of marketers get wrong. We tend to put our marketing hats on and make our marketing all about ourselves or we fall back into that comfortable place of corporate jargon, and kind of robotic speech, and use words like leverage and synergy. Nobody talks like that in real life, or not at least the people that you want to hang out with. The people who talked about this were Kieran Flanigan of HubSpot who shared their hearts and minds strategy for creating content with two types of content, content that solves a person's problems and tells them how to do something, that's really that mind's content, and then the heart's content, which taps into a pain and emotional need that the audience has. Then, Katie Stavely from Mautic. This is ironic that these are the two examples I'm giving for this one because HubSpot and Mautic could be considered two different sides of the same coin, HubSpot being a paid marketing automation, CRM, customer service platform, and Mautic being a completely free open source alternative to it. Katie talked about how important it was to be authentic in your marketing, especially with their audience, which it's all about community. It's opensource software, so your community is helping you develop your product. But regardless, the idea is to really make that emotional connection. 5. Sometimes The Biggest Wins Come From Content That Is Not Related To Your Products Or Services Number five, with content marketing, sometimes the biggest wins happen when you don't create content about your products or services. We as marketers, as inbound marketers, think a lot about top-, middle-, and bottom-of-the funnel strategies. We're always brainstorming what are the questions that our audience is asking as relates to our product or service. That often leads us to create content that is very much about us and not so much about our audience. But, I had two interviews that I thought really highlighted how successful you can be if you flip that script and talk nothing about yourself. What I mean by that is ... I'll start with Stephanie Baiocchi, who was actually Stephanie Casstevens at the time I interviewed her. She hadn't been married yet. And funny enough, she was not working at IMPACT. That's another great outcome of the podcast. Now she is. But, she talked about a campaign that she was running for a client that sold solutions for medical waste from physicians' practices. Originally, they were creating a ton of content around medical waste, and it just wasn't working. The reason is that their audience, which is really the office managers for physicians' practices, already has a medical waste solution. You can't be in business if you don't, so they weren't out there searching for any information about medical waste. They didn't even realize they needed to switch providers or that they had a problem. It was when she kind of took a step back and thought, "What are the biggest problems that office managers have? It doesn't need to have anything to do with medical waste," and she realized it was patient no-shows. They created a patient no-show policy template that office managers could use. That was a total home run. What it did was it opened up the conversation with their audience so that eventually they could begin talking about medical waste. But at that top-of-the-funnel level, they needed first to really open that conversation, and product- and service-related content wasn't going to cut it. Another person who did that really well was Ryan Bonnici, who is now the CMO of G2 Crowd, but at the time was working at HubSpot. HubSpot's a company that has a huge audience. Of course, trying to broaden the top of the funnel at a company like HubSpot is challenging. All the low-hanging fruit is gone, and so you really have to get creative. He was trying to target a small business audience. He really asked himself, "What are the problems that small businesses have?" And, again, doesn't have to have anything to do with HubSpot. He realized when you're starting your business or when you come to work at a small business, one of the first things you have to do is come up with an email signature. You're usually either copying one that somebody else in the company has created or you have to create it from scratch, and it's kind of a pain. He built an email signature generator, an online tool where you could type in some information about yourself and it would spit out a really nice-looking email signature. That tool generated a ton of traffic, leads, and revenues for HubSpot, and it cost them only $6,000 to build it, but the impact was enormous. So, great lesson learned about getting out of the habit of creating only product- and service-related content and thinking bigger. 6. Paid Ads Are An Essential Part Of Any Inbound Marketing Strategy Number six, the old myth that paid ads are not inboundy is dead, or it should be dead. This one was woven throughout almost every interview I did. It's funny because when I first started working with inbound marketing, it was back with my old agency. I had discovered HubSpot. We were following their original methodology of attract, convert, close, delights, for those of you who've been in the HubSpot world for a long time and all. I remember many times going to INBOUND and seeing Brian Halligan stand on stage and talk about how the old way, the old interruptive way of marketing was paid ads, and people didn't like being interrupted. I think we all read that as, well, paid ads are not acceptable if you're an inbound marketer. That myth started dying, I think, several years ago, but it's worth repeating that paid ads are, I would say, not even just inboundy, they're essential to an inbound strategy in this day and age. I'll just list off a bunch of names of my guests who've talked about it. This isn't even a complete list, but Mark Rogers, who at the time was with Carney and grew The Daily Carnage newsletter using Facebook ads; Sterling Snow from Divvy who's used ads to drive leads for their platform; Moby Siddique who has his own inbound agency and does some incredible Facebook ads work with Messenger bots; AJ Wilcox, who is a LinkedIn ads expert; Ali Parmelee, who's one of my coworkers here at IMPACT who does incredible things with Facebook ads; Anthony Sarandrea; Rick Kranz. The list goes on and on. All of them attribute the success that they're getting and the incredible results to some form of paid ads. Let that be the final nail in the coffin of that old myth. Let's really embrace ads, and not just checking the box with ads and promoting our posts, but really taking a full funnel approach to advertising. Because that's the other thing that these folks talked about is it's not about boosting something on Facebook. This is about really digging in and getting good at ads and thinking how ads can be used at every stage of the funnel. 7. Content Distribution Is Critical Number seven, it's not enough to create and publish your content on your website. You've got to promote it and distribute it. This is one that I've heard time and time again. A lot of the best marketers I've spoken to say you should spend twice as much time promoting and distributing your content as you do creating it. I think for a lot of us that equation is backwards. One person who talked about that was Kipp Bodnar who is the CMO of HubSpot, probably one of the companies that is the best at inbound marketing. He talked about what a game changer it was in the last year when HubSpot really threw some muscle behind content distribution and how that impacted their traffic. This is a company that already had amazing traffic, by the way. Then, Phil Singleton. I loved my interview with Phil who is an SEO expert and an author. Phil talked about this great strategy he uses for clients where he's creating e-books, just like lots of inbound marketing agencies do. But then he takes the e-books that he makes for clients, or he takes a collection of blogs, for example, and compiles them into any book, and he publishes them as Kindle e-books on amazon.com, and also in some cases as hard copy books through Amazon direct publishing. It is so simple, and straightforward, and inexpensive. It blows my mind that more marketers are not doing this. It was a cool episode, so definitely check that out. But yeah, the lesson is don't just like write those blogs, create those e-books. Think about what are you going to do with them once they're published. How are you going to get them out in front of the world? 8. Original Research Can Drive Tremendous Results Number eight, original research can have amazing results. I had several interviews where people touched on what has come of original research. One of the people I think that that is most famous in the marketing world for doing this is Andy Crestodina. He has been doing a blogging survey for several years and really credits that with bringing a lot of attention to his agency, Orbit Media, out of Chicago, giving him a ton of backlinks and press. It's a pretty simple survey. He does put quite a bit of effort into promoting the survey itself so he can get a lot of responses, and then once he gets those responses into packaging that content so that he can turn it into things like infographics and articles, et cetera. But, it's not just Andy. Michele Aymold from Parker Dewey uses original research and data to boost her marketing results. Clare Carr from Parse.ly, they actually don't even have to do that much research because simply by the nature of the product that they sell they have access to a lot of proprietary data. She's really productized that and used it to get a tremendous amount of press. In fact, she was able to dramatically cut back the amount of content she was creating while getting better results because the data itself was so attractive to their audience, and it also helped her reduce their PR spend. Then, Rebecca Corliss at Owl Labs. They produced the state of remote work, and that's gotten them quite a bit of traction. 9. Community Is A Powerful Tool To Fuel Growth Number nine, community is such a powerful tool for marketing. This is an interesting one because here at IMPACT we've been working really hard over the course of the last two years to build our own community called IMPACT Elite, which is on Facebook. We've learned a lot about community in the course of doing that. I would say it has been a game changer for our business, certainly. We now have over 5,000 people in that community. It's a delicate balance how you run it. You can't make it all about yourself. It has to truly be about helping the members of the community and getting them to the point where they're almost running it, if you will. I spoke to several other people who have built communities and had similar experiences in terms of the community being a fundamental tool in the growth of their business. One was Bill Faeth who is a marketer who specializes in the limousine and transport business. He has Limo University, and he has a big community around that of limousine companies. Frank Gruber, who started Tech Cocktail in the beginning and turn it into Tech.co, which was then acquired, he now has a company called Established. But, he began this grassroots community all over the country of startups and people interested in the startup ecosystem and wound up building a tremendous media business from that. Nikki Nixon who at the time I interviewed her was running the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. Ameer Rosic who has a community focused on blockchain called Blockgeeks. And Mark Graham, who is an old friend of mine doing amazing things, he's up in Canada and has a software platform called Commonsku and has built a great community around that. All of these folks doing incredible things with communities in very different niches, I should say. For Bill, it was limo companies. For Frank, it was startups. For Nikki, it's people who are ABM practitioners. For Ameer, it's folks in the blockchain community. And for Mark Graham, it's people in the promotional products world. All of these different niches need communities and people are hungry to connect with others who have similar interests as they do. 10. The Quality Of Your Content REALLY Matters Content quality. I had a couple of great interviews on this. This is one that I'd love to talk with more people who are focused on this. In this day and age, you can't just be creating content and checking the box. You have to really create great content that is better than anything else out there if you really want to get amazing results. One person who talked a lot about this was Oli Gardner and how he is putting a lot of effort into really making the content that they create be the best that's available on the Internet. Emily Maxie from Very talked about this, too, really digging deep and creating unbelievable resources for your audience. Both of these folks are getting great results in terms of traffic, and that traffic ultimately turning into leads, because they took the time to create in-depth pieces that really added value for their audience. Seems like it should be obvious, it's another one of these, but it's really not too a lot of us. I mean, you might think your content's really good, but is it the best? When you Google that topic that you created content about, is your piece the best thing that you can find in the search results? If not, go back and spend the time and make it better. I think one of the lessons I've learned is it's better to make less content that's better content than it is to create a high volume. 11. Creating A Podcast - Or Being A Guest On One - Is A Good Way To Build Your Brand Another theme that came out was podcasting. It's sort of ironic because we're on a podcast talking about podcasting. But a lot of my interviews, as I went back and reviewed, had to do with podcasting, beginning with George B Thomas, who I've had the privilege to work with over the years here at IMPACT. He's now at Impulse Creative. George is a prolific podcaster, and he's ... It might seem easy when you listen to him. It just seems like, "Oh, there's a guy that just has a great rapport with his audience," but he puts a ton of thought into how he does these podcasts, how he structured them so that they not only deliver value for the audience, but that they have naturally built-in incentives for people to share them and to grow his audience. That's really worth listening to if you're somebody who wants to start a podcast. Andrew Dymski is another person who's been podcasting for a long time and who I've been a guest on his podcast. He's been a guest on mine. He's got some great insights. Ryan Hawke, who has The Learning Leader podcast, Ryan blew my mind just with how prepared he comes to everything. He talked about this, too, how before he does an interview the amount of preparation he does, the amount of preparation he does when he even just invites somebody to come on his podcast. This guy is serious business, and that's why he's so successful. He really has put the thought into it and turned his podcast into a business. Dan Moyle came on the show and talked about podcast guest interviews. So not necessarily starting a podcast, but if you want to get the word out, going on other podcasts as a guest. At the time, he was with a company called Interview Valet. What's been really cool for me is seeing the other side of that. I get pitched a lot by companies like Interview Valet, and there are certainly other ones as well. They'll send me an email and say, "Listened to your show. Thought it was great. Here's a guest that I think would be really good for you." That's how I've gotten a lot of my more interesting guests. There's something to that podcast guesting strategy that really I think can help you get traction and raise your profile if you're trying to build a personal brand or trying to get the word out about a product or a service. There are plenty of companies like Interview Valet that, for a fee, will take care of that for you. It's kind of like having a talent agent. I also talked to Jay Acunzo about podcasting. He is actually a consultant to other companies and helps them create, produce, and get the best results out of their podcasts. One of his clients is Drift, which comes up a lot on my show. People love Drift, always cited as one of the best examples of a company doing inbound marketing really well, and they have a couple of podcasts. Then, Jeff Large of Come Alive Creative. Lots of folks talking about podcasting. It really stuck out to me that it's not just about, hey, everybody should have a podcast, and I don't think everyone should. It's not right for everybody. But, podcasting can play a role in almost everybody's marketing strategy for sure. 12. Video, Video, Video Number 12, video. Can't have a list of trends and things that are important in marketing without talking about video these days. Some of the guests that I've had that have spoken about this are some of the more impressive people that have been on this podcast. In 2019, I opted to kick the year off with an interview with Marcus Sheridan, who is an amazing man that is a big role model for me. I currently get to work with him at IMPACT. But, he's somebody that I followed for years and I have so much respect for because he sees things about marketing and about customer behavior that a lot of other people don't, even though they're staring us in the face. One of the things that he has really seen and committed to is that when it comes to marketing and selling, we can't just tell people something. We have to show it to them, too, and we show it to them using video. He talked about how important video was going to be in 2019. I know that he's out speaking at conferences and talking about video all over the world. Also, Eric Siu. I kicked off 2018 with Eric Siu doing predictions for last year. He talked about video as well and was like, "Video's going to be huge in 2018." So in both of my kind of yearly prediction episodes, the guests that I've had have cited video as one of the biggest things we should be paying attention to. And then, of course, I already mentioned her, but Goldie Chan, who is a LinkedIn influencer and creates a new LinkedIn video every single day, has made a career around those videos. She's amazing. She travels all over the world and is sought after as a speaker because of the LinkedIn video she creates. And Dennis Yu who has turned video into a formula for building people's personal brands. It's really impressive what he does. They're these short little videos that he films. Using that medium has helped countless people create brands for themselves. 13. Lead With Brand Which brings me to my 13th and last lesson learned from 99 interviews with incredible marketers, and that is that all of these strategies, and tactics, and approaches are powerful. But at the end of the day, the most important thing in marketing is brand. Brand is paramount. Without it, you can have some quick wins but you'll never have a true success that will last over the long term. I'm only going to cite one example here because it's the one that comes up the most. And if you listen to this podcast with any degree of regularity, you know that at the end I always, always ask my guests, "Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?" There is one company/individual, the company and the marketer who's spearheading it for them, that by far comes up more than anybody else, and that is Drift and Dave Gerhardt, who I was very fortunate to have as a guest early on. I can't tell you the number of times people have mentioned Drift, and it's not just people from the marketing world. It's folks that have come onto this podcast from all different industries, and they all cite Dave Gerhart and his work building a brand at Drift as the one succeeding the most with inbound marketing. It's not for me to say what that brand is or to really try to encapsulate what Dave has done, but I think it's fair to say that they've built a brand that's incredibly authentic. There's no artifice. There's no fancy tricks about it. They, of everybody, really reflect everything I've said about the past, you know, this list of 12 to 13 trends I just spoke about today. When I look back through this list, they are doing a few things and doing them really well. They really listen to their customers. It's not about fancy tools or a big budget. The things that make them successful don't have anything to do with that. It's about connecting on emotional level. It's about creating content that sometimes doesn't have anything to do with your products or services. They do paid ads. And it's not enough to create and publish your content, you've got to promote it. They are so good at that. They've got a tremendous community, really high-quality content, a bunch of podcasts. They use video better than almost anybody else, especially on LinkedIn. Checkout Dave Gerhart's LinkedIn presence. And they just have a really strong brand. So my hat is off to Dave Gerhart and the team at Drift for ... If I had to give out an award for top inbound marketers, I think it would go to them. Thank YOU For Listening But really, everybody that I've interviewed over the course of the last two years has been so impressive. It is just my absolute privilege to get to do this every single week. I also wanted to say thank you to you for listening. Podcasting is a funny exercise. As I record this, it's Sunday morning, and I'm sitting in my home office, which is a tiny little room that actually had to be permitted as a closet because it's so small. There's chaos happening around me in my house. I'm by myself talking into a microphone. I'll go away, and I'll turn this into an episode. It'll go live tomorrow. You'll be hearing this Monday, if you get the episode right when it comes out or sometime after, and you're out there listening. But when I create these things, it's just me in a room. To know that there are people who choose to listen to this every week is just an unbelievable honor and a privilege to me. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to this content. I hope so much that you've learned something from it and that, even if it's in a small way, it's helped you get better results from your marketing and feel like a smarter marketer. If that has happened, then I feel like I've succeeded. With that, I will say I would love to hear from you. It's been a hundred episodes. If you are a regular listener, please take a moment and contact me. I always say at the end you can tweet me @workmommywork, which is my Twitter handle, but you can also message me on LinkedIn. You can email me at kbooth@impactbnd.com. You can send a carrier pigeon. However you want to do it, I would love it if you would get in touch and let me know what you like about the podcast and what's something that I can improve because I'd love to make the next hundred episodes even better. With that, I won't belabor it. Thank you again for listening, and I'll see you next week. Or not see you, I'll be talking to you next week for episode 101.  

Joel Klettke, B2B SaaS copywriter extraordinaire and CRO consultant, shares with use his process for creating copy that multiplies conversion rates and sells. He’s done some amazing work, including doubling the conversion rate of Hubspot. As a sign of how funny and great Joel’s copy is, check out his twitter bio - Pray for your competitors: after you hire me, they’ll need it. For the show notes, tweetable quotes from Joel and more, go to https://growthmarketing.today/036.

On this episode, we chat with Joel Klettke, the founder of Business Casual Copywriting and Case Study Buddy.We discuss copywriting, especially for B2B companies, and how to create high-converting content on your site.Please subscribe to YIM at http://bit.ly/yours-in-marketing.

Writing case studies are hard to do well. They take a lot of time, you have to interview clients and if you don't do it right, you've completely wasted everyone's time. What's the right way to write a case study and how do you market them afterward? Joel Klettke is the Founder of Case Study Buddy and he's on the mission to help companies unleash the power of case studies. When done right, a case study can not only be a content piece to use on your website or sales, it can be that unique differentiator that closes a potential deal. We're going to learn the process of writing an effective case study and learn all the different ways a case study can be used. All this and more, today on the EDGE!

Conversion optimization is the new SEO. It’s a hot topic right now. Why? Because it’s crucial. You’re spending tons of money on driving customers to your site. But what good is that if they don’t convert? Joel Klettke is a conversion expert. He’s a conversion copywriter to B2B and SaaS companies. He’s also the founder of Case Study Buddy, a done for you case study service that helps companies capture, share, and cash in on customer success stories. Joel recently came on the 1 to 10 podcast to talk about creating copy that converts Here’s what he had to say.

Joel Klettke is a conversion copywriter by trade, helping SaaS companies like HubSpot (ever heard of ‘em?) drive sales through the roof. But this work also lead him to create Case Study Buddy, a productized company focused exclusively on… you guessed it: case studies. Here’s where Case Study Buddy came from, how they structure interviews to get exactly what they need to produce revenue-generating case studies every time, and where to use case studies to produce the best ROI.Support the show (https://copyweekly.com/)

Vandaag het gesprek met Joel Klettke. Joel is a conversion-focused copywriter and strategist who's worked and delivered results for clients like HubSpot, WP Engine, Safelite and Ion Interactive. He runs his company like a business – not a creative divahood. He loves deadlines, strategy documents, and clear communication. Joel is a digital marketer with 5+ years of experience agency-side. He helps you to figure out what content you actually need to reach, nurture and convert your audience. In this conversation with Joel we are not talking about copywriting techniques. We are talking business. This conversation was sparked by an article of how sad the freelancers life is because of the low income. Joel knows lots of freelancers and solopreneurs that earn more than 100k or 200k. He shares how he earned in his first year almost six figures. The revenue in the years after that just kept increasing.   We dive into things that any freelancer or solopreneur can do to earn more money. Use the actions that Joel used to improve your business even when your business is more people than just you. Enjoy the insights with Joel. Show Notes Episode 171 https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/ https://twitter.com/JoelKlettke www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/ casestudybuddy.com Links uit de podcast   Transcriptie: Erno: Hello and welcome Today I'm having a chat with Joel and and we came in contact about this conversation because you said not a tweet. Joe welcome to the podcast by the way. Yeah thanks for having me.   You sent out a tweet about a research or an article about how little freelancers or earning or how much they were suffering on suffering on how much they were earning and you mentioned that you know plenty of freelancers.   That a great paycheck.   Yeah. No it was this article on NPR that my friend Emma had shared and it really painted this grim and sad and pathetic picture of freelancing. And when I saw it really hit a chord with me because as you mentioned you know I know lots of freelancers who are doing more money than they ever made in-house set you know fully employed quote unquote positions. And so I felt like the author just really missed the real story really missed you know a side of freelancing and entrepreneurship and chose to focus on the negative.   That bothered me and I I'm not sure how this is in Canada on us because you've also connected with some other freelancers or printers that also have a great business and I'm going to talk to them in other episodes as well.   But when I look at the Netherlands there's a lot of freelancers or solo printers that are living really at a low level with their income so they don't make a lot of money from the business so they sometimes under the welfare level. So.   So there is of course a site of entrepreneurship when you don't do well. It really doesn't do well for you as a person and earning money. So I think the story is of course a vision of a part of the freelance world but you bring a lot of vision   Yeah. And you know I agree.   I interact with lots and lots of people who don't do well and as you mentioned you know even in Canada and the U.S. they really struggle and you know a lot of my interaction like I'm part of a group called the corporate or club and there's some people in there who do very well. There's loads of people who do very very poorly. But I think the bigger thing is the realisation that hey it doesn't have to be that way the whole trope the whole you know cliche of the starving artist or the starving copywriter the starving freelancer that doesn't have to be the way that it goes. And it's not some you know woo woo magical thinking nonsense that changes that. It's just picking up the business skills and changing the way you approach it and changing the way you have conversations. And I think you'll find as you talked more and more of these peop...

Vandaag het gesprek met Joel Klettke. Joel is a conversion-focused copywriter and strategist who's worked and delivered results for clients like HubSpot, WP Engine, Safelite and Ion Interactive. He runs his company like a business – not a creative divahood. He loves deadlines, strategy documents, and clear communication. Joel is a digital marketer with 5+ years of experience agency-side. He helps you to figure out what content you actually need to reach, nurture and convert your audience. In this conversation with Joel we are not talking about copywriting techniques. We are talking business. This conversation was sparked by an article of how sad the freelancers life is because of the low income. Joel knows lots of freelancers and solopreneurs that earn more than 100k or 200k. He shares how he earned in his first year almost six figures. The revenue in the years after that just kept increasing.   We dive into things that any freelancer or solopreneur can do to earn more money. Use the actions that Joel used to improve your business even when your business is more people than just you. Enjoy the insights with Joel. Show Notes Episode 171 https://businesscasualcopywriting.com/ https://twitter.com/JoelKlettke www.linkedin.com/in/joelklettke/ casestudybuddy.com Links uit de podcast   Transcriptie: Erno: Hello and welcome Today I'm having a chat with Joel and and we came in contact about this conversation because you said not a tweet. Joe welcome to the podcast by the way. Yeah thanks for having me.   You sent out a tweet about a research or an article about how little freelancers or earning or how much they were suffering on suffering on how much they were earning and you mentioned that you know plenty of freelancers.   That a great paycheck.   Yeah. No it was this article on NPR that my friend Emma had shared and it really painted this grim and sad and pathetic picture of freelancing. And when I saw it really hit a chord with me because as you mentioned you know I know lots of freelancers who are doing more money than they ever made in-house set you know fully employed quote unquote positions. And so I felt like the author just really missed the real story really missed you know a side of freelancing and entrepreneurship and chose to focus on the negative.   That bothered me and I I'm not sure how this is in Canada on us because you've also connected with some other freelancers or printers that also have a great business and I'm going to talk to them in other episodes as well.   But when I look at the Netherlands there's a lot of freelancers or solo printers that are living really at a low level with their income so they don't make a lot of money from the business so they sometimes under the welfare level. So.   So there is of course a site of entrepreneurship when you don't do well. It really doesn't do well for you as a person and earning money. So I think the story is of course a vision of a part of the freelance world but you bring a lot of vision   Yeah. And you know I agree.   I interact with lots and lots of people who don't do well and as you mentioned you know even in Canada and the U.S. they really struggle and you know a lot of my interaction like I'm part of a group called the corporate or club and there's some people in there who do very well. There's loads of people who do very very poorly. But I think the bigger thing is the realisation that hey it doesn't have to be that way the whole trope the whole you know cliche of the starving artist or the starving copywriter the starving freelancer that doesn't have to be the way that it goes. And it's not some you know woo woo magical thinking nonsense that changes that. It's just picking up the business skills and changing the way you approach it and changing the way you have conversations. And I think you'll find as you talked more and more of these peop...

Copywriter Joel Klettke shares his thoughts with Kira and Rob about how copywriters like to show off only the best parts of their business and how that affects other writers struggling to make things work. It’s a great discussion, but we covered a lot more than that. Here’s a look at what you'll hear in this 107th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast: •  what he’s doing and how his business (and life) has changed in the past year •  how audits and research have impacted his business •  what Joel does in an audit and how he prices them for his clients •  how he sells the audit and then hands it off to the client or another writer •  why he’s taking on fewer projects and the season of “no” •  the instagram-ification of some copywriter’s businesses—and why it hurts •  why we end up chasing the wrong goals (and maybe what to do instead) •  what to do if you aren’t performing as well as you think you should •  what is “enough” •  a few ideas for building confidence and the impact on your business •  the biggest mistakes copywriters make that ruin your conversion rates •  his advice to new dads and why you might need “guilt cancelling headphones” To get the low-down on how Joel’s business has changed since the first time we talked to him more than a year ago, click the play button below. Or if you’re the reading type (and lots of copywriters are) scroll down for a full transcript. And you should be able to find it on your favorite podcast app as well.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Joel’s first interview Joanna Wiebe Case Study Buddy Chantelle Zakarisian Val Geisler Laura Belgray Joels’ Conversion Killers Presentation 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 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 a club for Episode 107 as we chat for a second time with freelance copywriter and case study specialist Joel Klettke about what he's accomplished in the year since we last talked. What it really takes to grown and run a six figure business, balancing copywriting with building a second business and being a new dad, and the biggest conversion killing mistakes copywriters make. Kira:   Welcome Joel. Rob:   Hey Joel. Joel:   Hey guys, thanks so much for having me. Kira:   Yeah it's great to have you back. All right, so let's kick this off Joel with what you've been working on over the last year. What's changed for you? We know quite a bit has changed for you, but what's changed since the last time that we had you on the show? Joel:   I kind of started off the year, I made the promise to myself I said, ‘I'm going to step back from the copy projects, and I'm going to press into the case study business, and focus on growing that.’ And so, that was kind of my mental goal. I thought, ‘Yeah I need to see what I've got in that.’ And that went well for all of like 10 minutes, and then projects cross your desk, and it's difficult to say no. But, I have kind of stepped back a little bit from writing. I'm taking on fewer but bigger projects now, which was a big goal of mine. But I think obviously the most significant change is now I'm a dad, so I've got a little guy in the house, and learning to work, and live, and adjust my sleep schedules and life in general around this little person, which is pretty interesting. And then the other side of it on a totally different side of things, I looked up kind of midway through the year and realized outside of case studies, and outside of my writing projects I've actually made more money, and had more work on the audits and review side of things,

What does it take for a company like HubSpot to double its website conversions and inbound call volume, increase demo requests by 35%, and increase product sign ups by 27% This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, conversion copywriting expert Joel Klettke shares the process he used, along with a team from HubSpot, to achieve such remarkable results. Known as "the guy who 2x'd HubSpot's conversions," Joel is a world renowned conversion copywriting expert and the founder of Case Study Buddy. Listen to the podcast to learn exactly what Joel and the team from HubSpot did and get specific takeaways you can use to improve the copy on your site and increase conversions. Transcript Kathleen Booth (host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success podcast. My name's Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. This week, my guest is Joel Klettke. Joel came to the podcast via a casual mention at first by Ian Cleary who was on a few episodes ago. And Ian, for those of you who don't know, is the founder of RazorSocial and OutreachPlus, and a well known marketer and keynote speaker. He happened to mention the great work that Joel did at HubSpot and then lo and behold, Andy Crestodina, one of our past guests as well, commented, "Joel, you should come on the podcast." I love when this happens! So Joel, I'm so excited to have you on and I love that you came via Andy and Ian. Welcome to the podcast. Joel Klettke (guest): Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm really pumped to get a chance to chat with you. Kathleen: For my listeners, Joel is a conversion copywriter who has worked with some incredible brands and gotten really great results. I already mentioned that he did some work for HubSpot. He's also worked for WP Engine, which is a platform that we love here at IMPACT, InsightSquared and others. He is also the founder of Case Study Buddy. So Joel, I could probably talk a lot about you - you've got a long and interesting resume - but I'm going to ask you to tell the audience a little bit about yourself. Joel: Yeah. I mean, the quick and interesting, hopefully interesting version, is that I got my start kind of fresh out of business school. I knew more about the type of place I wanted to be than what I wanted to do. I sort of randomly found my way working agency side doing search engine optimization (SEO) and that was my whole world for about five years. I really enjoyed the analytical side of it, but always had this sort of passion for writing. I just never thought there was a job in it for me. I didn't want to be an author and that whole world of kind of writing websites and landing pages wasn't on my radar until I started working on them for SEO and went, "You know what? Someone's got to write these. And it's not enough that they get found, they probably have to convert people." And so little by little, over time, I got to pick up more of those types of projects. And in 2013 I went out on my own focusing mostly on the content pieces at that point - so blogs and E-books - and then kept getting deeper into this conversion stuff and it finally became my whole focus by 2015. So I've been doing it since then working with a lot of cool companies like you mentioned - HubSpot and WP Engine and InsightSquared - to get more customers to convert. And then about two years ago, I saw an opportunity to build a business product. I was kind of working on making case studies available to these awesome agencies and software companies. This was an area I saw them really struggling in, struggling to capture these stories, share them, how do you use them. And so I saw an opportunity and created Case Study Buddy. I've got a team and we've been kind of stealthily moving along and this year it's becoming increasingly part of my focus. Kathleen: I think it's really interesting what you're doing with Case Study Buddy, because having been in this business for a long time and owned an agency and worked with just a ton of different companies, case studies seem to be one of those areas where we as marketers really phone it in. Like, there's this formula like "This was the challenge. This was the solution. They came to us, and here's what we did, and here's the results." It's that three part formula and I think we feel like as long as we're following the formula we can say, "Check! I did a case study." I have to believe tremendous opportunity to innovate in that area because we know from experience that case studies are of huge interest to different audiences. Everybody wants to see examples of your experience. They want to see the proof that you know what you're talking about. But for something that that is so valued by the consuming audience, it's amazing how little effort we put into them. Joel: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's funny too, because it is formulated. People always say "Well how hard can it really be?" and they go off and they slap these things together, but they don't realize that there's so much to capturing a story worth telling. And then telling it in a way that's worth reading. Even though the "problem - solution - results," yes, that's always going to be the heart and soul of it. But what's different, what's interesting, is how you tell that story and how you bring in the customer and how you weave it all together. And then increasingly too, how you use it. Where and how you wield that proof to make it useful. So a lot of companies, the big problem, once they have a case study is it gets relegated to a little resources section. And maybe sales pulls it out once in a while, but they don't have a plan for it. Both in the creation side of things it kind of gets overlooked or neglected or slapdash, and then in the actual using it, we're kind of like, "Well, okay. We'll email it out." Then we're yelling, "We have it and resources section, good work for us." And that makes me sad, because case studies are the one content asset that can play across the entire funnel. From acquisition, to nurturing, to upsells, to retention -- you can use them everywhere, but we don't. And so that's why I'm so excited about that space. Kathleen: Oh, I love it. Well before we dive too deeply into case studies, I really want to talk about the work that you did with HubSpot. Because as I mentioned, this came up when I had Ian Cleary on as a guest and I don't remember the context of exactly what we were talking about, but he was like ... he didn't even mention your name. He said, "There's this guy who was at HubSpot and he 2X'd their conversions." And it was so funny because HubSpot is a company that is known for being good at maximizing conversions. Like that's what they're all about is lead generation. And so, to know that there was an outside expert who came in and helped HubSpot take it to the next level - that immediately caught my attention and I was like, "Ooh, who is this guy?" And that was when I think it was Andy who chimed in and said, "That guy happens to be Joel." So, I would love to hear this story of what you did at HubSpot. We could start with what was it? Problem-solution-results or you tell a story that makes it interesting. Joel: Yeah. Well, before I dive into that piece, I want to make one thing really clear, because I love the fact that people are talking about it. This was such a rare opportunity to come into a situation and work with a company who is known for their lead gen. I want to make sure people understand that this is not something that I did alone. There's a great team there. People like Pam Vaughan were really instrumental. Austin Knight who was doing their design at the time was so instrumental. So this was definitely a team effort and I couldn't have done it alone. And it was a fantastic kind of case study, I guess, as we'll dive into here, in what can happen when you've got a whole team of people committed to doing this and committing to getting it right. So with that as the backstory, I want to kind of lead up into how this happened. So I had known Matt Barby for some time outside of that context before he was even at HubSpot. And so Matt and I had kind of chatted on Twitter during my agency days and we just continued to have a casual friend relationship. When Matt went into HubSpot, something he identified really quickly was despite the fact that yes, they are known for lead acquisition and they're quite good at this whole inbound mentality, he saw opportunity for them to grow. Opportunity for someone else to come in and objectively look at what they were doing and make some recommendations. And so because he'd followed me along, he knew where I was at in my career, which was I was working with one or more software companies on this type of thing. And so we decided, "Okay, well, we don't have buy in for the full project from the outset." You can imagine that for a company like HubSpot, they've got this brilliant team and there's a lot of moving pieces. So we thought, let's just focus on doing one section at the beginning. So originally, I got to work with Matt on revamping the CRM page. So just that product. What I introduced there with Matt was a very customer driven approach to writing copy. Customer driven research. So we were doing things like running a customer survey. And we were looking at things like, when people talk about the CRM out in the wild, what are they saying? What benefits are they mentioning? What pain points are they saying that it solved? And how does that stack up against how the company itself is talking about things on this CRM page? And so as we dug into this customer research, and as we pulled in the data from these surveys, we learned a lot of things. We learned, for example, that there was some language customers were using about the outcomes they achieved that we could pull in and we could put into the headlines. We learned that the things that the company thought was really important as far as features to be emphasizing, didn't necessarily align with what customers thought was important and the features they wanted emphasized. So, we revamped that landing page, saw positive uptake and that was the buy in that Matt needed. So, from there, I got a chance to be brought in for the whole big website project, which as you can imagine was a big endeavor with a short timeline. HubSpot wanted to have a brand new site ready for their INBOUND Conference. So our timeline was about 2.5 to three months to do the whole thing. Kathleen: What? Joel: Yeah. Kathleen: Oh, my God. Joel: Yeah. And that's why I say, you can imagine it took a village. I cannot pretend like I just was the hero riding in on the white horse. It took everybody being committed, and Kieran Flannigan and all those guys were there and present and so instrumental. I want to break down the process we used a little bit more to get the result that we got and how we did this on a scale. We took what we did with the CRM page, but we took it some steps further. So what we want to do when we're working on conversion copy, you can only sell to a customer you really understand. Everyone talks about understanding your customer but hardly any companies actually put the rubber to the road and do what it takes to do that. So again, we had a tight timeline, but thankfully HubSpot has got a huge customer base. So we ran some surveys to learn about how people were using it, whether or not they understood what the products could do for them and what the role of each was. HubSpot had recently split into these three products and the historical perception was that it was one thing. It was just HubSpot Marketing, but now they had HubSpot Sales and HubSpot Marketing and HubSpot CRM. And these are just different products. So we looked at customer surveys, and we asked questions like "What was going on in your life that led you to look for this solution?" And then we asked "How do you use this solution day to day?" to get them talking about the problems they solve with it. And then we got them to force rank the different features of the products they used by what was most important to them, again giving us a hierarchy for how we organize the page so people see that. The second kind of interesting thing we did that I always, whenever I give a talk on this, I always recommend companies do because it's so easy and it can be free, is we made sure that we went and looked at their chat logs. You can launch chat on your site tomorrow. It's dead simple. A lot of people are hesitant, because they're like, "Well, I can't monitor it 24 hours." You don't have to. Just make yourself commit to making yourself or your team available to do chat for a two week period and I promise you're going to be tempted to continue. After that point, you're going to want to make it a priority. But we looked at their chat logs, and we were looking for questions that came up again and again. Because those questions would be the things that the copy of their website wasn't doing a great job of answering. So if people are constantly asking questions like, "Which of the three products do I need to accomplish X?" Kathleen: Yeah. Joel: We found out really quickly that there was some confusion in the market about which product was right for each and how they interplayed and that sort of thing. So we started getting some insight into where people are at, what awareness level they're at, and what they're struggling with. We took all that information, combined it with the survey data and then worked closely with the internal HubSpot team and Austin -- as I mentioned, just probably the best UX designer I've ever had the privilege to work with -- and we started revamping the pages around addressing customer questions, around addressing features and benefits in a hierarchical way that met what the customer wanted to see and needed to see first. And then probably the most impactful thing we did, and I think it's still live on the site to this day (as you can imagine HubSpot's continually evolving) was we found some great language for talking about the way that their new tool suite worked. And so that's where the lines like "HubSpot tools are powerful on their own and even better together" come from. And we started being able to break down what each one was for and the benefits of each and then once you combine them, how they work well together. So clarity just went up and up and up. People started to finally get the picture of what HubSpot is today. Kathleen: That's really interesting. Let's go back to how you gather data because what I find interesting is you had a 2.5 to three month time frame for this massive website redesign. And having been through enough of these projects, I mean, I know that lots of people would hear that and it would feel like their hair was on fire and they just had to start writing and building pages from the day that the project began. But you guys stopped and slowed yourself down and did some homework. What I think is really interesting is not only did you do the surveys, which I feel like there's definitely people out there who do that, but I love the notion that your data already exists and you can find it by looking at the chat logs and looking specifically at the questions. Were there other existing sources of data that you drew upon? Joel: Yeah. Kathleen: And how long did this research process take? Because I can imagine you were under pressure to get it done pretty quickly. Joel: Yeah, really, really great question. I talked about surveys already and when you've got the customer base of a HubSpot, you can do that really quickly. But I should mention, you don't need 2,000 responses. Our threshold online is if we can get 1,000 or sorry, 100 really good responses. After that, you start seeing kind of diminishing returns. Chat logs were available to us, but other places that more companies who aren't at HubSpot's level can go are things like your testimonials, your reviews, and your case studies. We talked to sales. We interviewed their internal team. We asked sales and support, like, "What questions do you get all the time? What do you find yourself constantly having to explain that you wish you didn't have to constantly explain? So, myself and Josh Garofalo -- who I brought into the project to help me kind of cover the huge scope of it, because I couldn't possibly write all the pages alone -- interviewed that internal team. Often what our role becomes or what my role becomes in projects like this, is I'm unifying departments. Because they're all great at their own thing, and they all understand their own area, but sales might not have talked to customer support in a while. And marketing might not have talked to sales in a while. We can pull all these perspectives together, and then present to them and say, "Here's where you guys are actually at and where you're creating problems for the other side or where they're having an opportunity that you're not capitalizing on." So talking to your sales team, looking at existing reviews and testimonials to see what are these people already talking about, how are they talking about it -- those are existing data sources that are already there. One thing I want to drop as well. If you don't have a lot of these, go look at your competitors. And positive reviews are one thing for them, but go look at their negative reviews. Because those are things that you can exploit and position yourself against. So if, for example, people are saying, "Well, this solution is really slow and clunky." You can emphasize that you're agile and fast and easy to use. So by getting kind of a landscape of what your competitors struggle with, it also helps you understand how you can position yourself against them. Kathleen: That is a great idea. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of companies do the opposite, which is they look at the competitors but they look at the competitor websites. And they look at what the competitors are saying they do, as opposed to looking at what the customers feel that they don't do well. The result, when you look at your competitors and try to emulate them, is everybody starts to sound the same. Joel: Totally. Kathleen: And that actually suppresses conversions instead of improving them. Joel: There's this crazy fallacy that companies have that somehow their competitor knows what they're doing. They don't. I've written for the competitors. I've come into situations where I have written for both sides, the people being evaluated and the people being ... Often they're starting from the same point. Every company is just trying to figure it out. Just because someone launches a timer on their homepage, they didn't necessarily do that because it works. They're just trying stuff to see what works. Kathleen: They're throwing a bunch of darts at the wall to see what sticks. Joel: Completely. I would say more companies don't know what they're doing than really do, because why I'm so excited about conversion optimization and conversion copywriting as a whole, is I very much see what I'm doing now as in the same vain as where SEO was eight to ten years ago or inbound marketing was five to eight years ago or whatever it might be. It's still so young and so much opportunity and companies are waking up to the value of this. The tools are getting cheaper, the methodology is getting very defined. It's a fantastic time for companies to start thinking about this and to be moving ahead because we're getting to the point where if you're not, your competitor is. But there's still so much time to move and be the first to really measure and test and do this well. Kathleen: Oh, I couldn't agree more. CRO, conversion rate optimization, there's so much buzz and interest around it but there are so few people who really can claim to be experts in it, with true experience. One thing I want to talk about... so we start with all the homework you need to do before you can even sit down and put pen to paper or virtual pen to paper, however you decide to do it. Then there's really understanding the audience. There's the insights that come out of that. Obviously what you've talked about is to truly write for the audience but are there also certain universal truths or rules in terms of either how you structure copy on a page? I'm thinking of Joanna Wiebe who has her "problem-agitation-solution" formula or certain words that you should or should not use. Are there those universal truths out there that we should know about? Joel: Yeah. You know, everybody wants there to be this formula or this code. Plug in X, get out Y, but I think even Joanna would tell you the PAS, the problem agitation solution, that's a fantastic framework that can do brilliantly in some contexts and miserably in others. Joanna uses it all the time for emails and email series and that kind of thing. It works great. Let's put it in this context. There's different stages of awareness. So, if your customer already knows your brand and they already know they're sold on you, then a problem-agitation-solution format is just wasting their time because all they want to know is the deal. So, they just want to see okay, $50 off, boom. I know the deal. I know the value. I'm there. So, for that audience, a different formula entirely works. Whereas if someone is completely ... You know, they don't understand their pain even yet, they're still coming into the point where they realize that they've got a problem, then that pain can be addressed better. But there isn't just this sort of absolute truth. I think there's guidelines, there's best practices. For example, on language, there's some misconceptions. You can go read a bunch of blog posts that say never use jargon or never use a cliché or never use an acronym. Well, even in my work for InsightSquared, their audience uses and loves and understands acronyms. If we don't use acronyms, we're the weirdo. We're the ones who don't look like we understand the niche. If there is an absolute truth that I've found, if there are things that I can say every time, 100% of the time go and do this, it's you cannot be in the business of conversion without being in the business of talking to customers and having structured, documented conversations with them. You can't do it. You can guess, you can pull levers on a wall, you can change button color aimlessly, but you can't be in the business of writing conversion copy or optimizing your copy if you're trying to cut customers out of the equation and not spend time talking to them or researching them. It sounds so intuitive, but I guarantee there are companies listening to this where their methodology right now for how they come up with new copy is to huddle in a board room, copy up with a new tagline that they all feel is clever and represents management's vision, and never talk to a single customer until it launches. So, I wish I could tell you there are frameworks for these things, but there's best practices. It's more like a journey of well, if X, then Y. If you understand this piece then try this. But there's no one black and white this definitely works or this definitely doesn't work. Kathleen: So, when you develop that understanding of the customer, at some point you do have to sit down and write. The way you write and the volume of writing you do has to also be in alignment with the actual visual design of the page. Can you talk a little bit about how you think front end designers and content creators should work together on these projects? Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? Joel: Yeah. I'm so glad that you're asking about this because this honestly to me is what made the HubSpot project successful. When you've got a timeline like that, first, let's establish that if there is an absolute, its that copy should always lead design. You cannot just pop words into a pretty picture, otherwise you may be cramming a story into a frame it wasn't fit for. We knew that. We also knew we couldn't wait for copy to be done or design wouldn't have time to do it. So, the process that we used, and what made this successful, is that what you can do is you can iterate. So, when you understand the customer and when you've got a good understanding of "Okay, they're pain aware or solution aware or brand aware," then you know okay, you can define together with design. You can say, "We know these are the types of sections we're going to need to cover. We know this is the flow we're going to need to cover them in. We don't have specific copy yet but we know right now for example, we need a hero section. After that we need about a paragraph of narrative to agitate the pain. Then we're going to need this section on emphasizing particular features that solve that pain." So, when you've got an understanding of the customer you can sit down with design. What we did is we came up with a base framework, a base wire frame for the different types of pages on the site. In some cases you can template this a bit. So, one of the people that the project could never have been achieved without was Pamela Vaughan. Kathleen: I love her. Can I just say? I have to stop you for one second. I'm a huge fan girl of Pamela Vaughan's, because I've attended a number of her presentations and as a marketer, you can go to lots of conference presentations that are full of fluff and lots of "You should do this for this reason," but not a lot of "And here's how you actually do it." She gives the most detailed, useful, actionable information of ... Probably she's in the top three of anybody I've seen present. So, that's the end of my fan rant on Pam Vaughan. Joel: No, it's well earned. I mean, literally we could not have done it without her. She wrote a huge swath of the copy that ... You know, like the individual features pages. Those were Pam's. So, we worked together to define the template for common pages and then we were able to use that same template to kind of inform. So, we started with the base wire framed together with copy and design. Design was able to go away and mock something up while copy was working on our piece of the puzzle. Then we converged together, sent our wires to design and they would make our wire frames better and send it back. So, it was an iterative, collaborative process. That's the way it has to be. I love Unbounce and I love these companies that have these templated landing pages. They're great as a starting point, but if you're switching your brain off and not defining who the audience is or what they need to hear and just picking a template because "Oh I like the way that looks," you're missing the point. I think Unbounce does a good job of educating people there. Yeah, the design piece was a collaborative, iterative thing and for anyone listening who's thinking "I want to get into conversion copywriting" or "I want to hire a conversion copywriter," look for someone who's not just going to hand you a Word doc. Learn to wire frame. Josh and I both use Balsamiq. That was a common tool of communication so writing could be on the same page as design. It's a skill that I didn't anticipate ever having to learn as a writer, and it's one I'm loving exploring because the more I understand how the design interplays with the words that I write, the more effective I can be, and the more designers are going to like to work with me. So, the two are unbreakable, and actually Austin wrote a counter piece to my piece from design's perspective, so you can go read my piece on the HubSpot blog and you can read his. You can see where we both came from and how we made it work. Kathleen: That's great. I love that you mentioned Balsamiq because my next question was going to be are there certain tools that you find are really helpful through this process? It's funny, I'm not a designer either but I've had to create wire frames. There are many wire framing tools out there. We have one that our actual design team uses. I don't remember, I think it's called Moqups and it's super detailed. It's amazing, but it's too much for me. It would be like me going into InDesign and trying to create a webpage. I like Balsamiq because it's really streamlined and simple, and for a non-designer it's a great wire framing tool. Any other tools that you have used either in that project or in other projects that are really helpful for this kind of thing? Joel: Yeah. Basically, so for mock ups and wire frames Balsamiq has been the tool that I've found easiest to use, most versatile for me. I know the platform inside and out. I've also heard really good things about InFlow. So, inFlow is another one where you can experiment with that. I'm not an affiliate for any of the tools I'm about to mention, so none of this is a paid ad but I genuinely love them. Typeform is what we constantly use for surveys. Fantastic interface. Fantastic ability to use logic jumps to show different questions to different groups, which when you're segmenting information like we were was totally invaluable to be able to just naturally do that. So, Typeform is great. For chat, the one I always recommend to companies is Drift. Drift continues to innovate, continues to do really cool things and on their basic free plan you can get your feet wet, you can control manually the hours it's live and not live so you don't have to worry about being present at four in the morning. So, Typeform and Drift. Balsamiq is really helpful. These days I've been using Hotjar to look at both heat maps and recorded user sessions and I've been really pleased taht they just announced some innovations today where they can capture more in those recorded user sessions, so that's really exciting to me. We can get a deeper look at how people are actually interacting. So, those are kind of my old standbys. Then I'm increasingly looking at Google Analytics, which you know, it's kind of people are like ... It's been around forever but people still don't have a clue the fraction of the power you can get out of Analytics. One guy that I really admire in this space who is worth following and learning from is Michael Aagaard. He just knows the analytics piece really well. I think he would even tell you, he comes by it honestly, he's not necessarily like a numbers and analytics guy but he's found all these cool shortcuts and custom reports and ways to very quickly get at data that can highlight a problem so that you can respond quickly. So, that's kind of my stack. That's my toolkit. Occasionally you'll see things like FullStory or whatever, but I think that's one thing I want to communicate, is you don't need to have tens of thousands of dollars of budget to do this type of work. You just need to have the willingness to make the most of these free or basic plans for the period that you're using them. The barrier to entry to doing this stuff is only getting lower. The tools are only getting better. So, there's really no excuse for companies to just be turning a blind eye to this and saying well it's too complicated or too complex. No way. You can start doing this stuff tomorrow. Kathleen: Yeah, you could do it all probably in Google Docs too if you really had to. Joel: Totally. I used to wire frame in Word with like tables. I mean, it's not as pretty as Balsamiq. It's not as easy to communicate, but it gets the job done. If you're going to start there, start there. Just go with what you know and evolve, but just get started. Kathleen: Yeah. Absolutely. I love all the tools you mentioned. We use a lot of those. On my team we use Drift. We have Drift on our site, so I'm absolutely going to go back and look at the chat logs after we stop talking. You know, a number of those other tools ... One of the other ones that we're huge fans of, which if you haven't checked it out you might want to, is GatherContent. It's awesome. Our content manager has hacked it in a way that when we do website pages she's able to create blocks for the different content pieces that are needed and she can add in background on personas and guidance on how it should be written. It's really cool for content collaboration. Joel: Yeah. That actually ... Kathleen: That was my addition to the list. Joel: That reminds me, there's one more. It's funny I forgot. The tool that I'm really, really excited about I haven't had the chance to use it as much as I'd like but RightMessage. Brennan Dunn launched this tool. They continue to launch all these different sub tools, but RightMessage, if you believe in conversion optimization, if you believe that this is going to be important and integral for the future, RightMessage is what comes next. It's personalization. I have yet to see a tool working harder to make that easier, working harder to make it more intuitive, to make it more accessible. So, I'm really, really excited about what Brennan and his team are doing over there. I'm trying to bake it into my proposals more often because more people need to use this stuff. Kathleen: Oh, I'll definitely check that out. Now, circling back to the project at HubSpot. You somehow got this website rewritten, you and the other team of people in this two to three month time period. The new site launched. I've heard lots of different numbers thrown around about the results you guys got. Can you break it down for us? What was the change? Joel: Yeah. I'll pull those numbers up here, but the biggest change was we effectively doubled site wide conversions. So, on the biggest broadest level across all of their conversions, we saw a doubling there.  Then, to we break down some of the more specific conversions, HubSpot started seeing two times the inbound call volume. So, not just conversions on the site. Twice as many people phoning in. They saw a 35% increase in demo requests. They saw a 27% increase in product sign ups. For a company the size of HubSpot, with the traffic of HubSpot, those are some serious, serious numbers. So, the efficacy of having customer driven copy and really a design team who cares about conversion and about telling the story the right way, and then a support team and a sales team who are open about what's working for them and how to nail that down, it all comes together to create impacts like that. Kathleen: So, I have to ask. To what do you attribute that increase in inbound call volume? Because that's an interesting stat that I was not expecting you to mention. Joel: Yeah. That one was surprising to me too. You know, if you haven't ever had Matt Barby on the program, having him come in to talk about attribution and tracking and that sort of thing I think would be fascinating. Kathleen: Oh, I would love that. Matt, if you're listening, call me! Joel: Yeah. So, I mean, Matt. Matt would be the guy to really help pin that down. Not only did we change the site, and the copy, and the way we presented their products, during this time they also started playing around with kind of a freemium model and looking at some of these more freemium-type calls, so it's possible that maybe kind of having that angle correlated with more people being willing to check it out. I really do think, though, that it was the clarity, it was the ability for people to understand on their own very quickly how the different pieces of the tool connected to feel comfortable enough to make that call so they wouldn't feel like an idiot, or they wouldn't feel they'd have to spend all day trying to just sort up with sales, getting a sales pitch on everything, they could ask more direct questions about the things they actually needed. So, that's my hypothesis, that's what I would guess. But it would be fascinating for you to have somebody on the in-house side come in. And they continue to do some really cool and innovative things, and the site's changed and grown since then, so I'm sure they'll have even more stories. Kathleen: Yeah, there's so many very, very, very smart people on that team. Joel: Mm-hmm. Kathleen: I would take any one of them as a guest. So I assume that some of the lessons that came out of that particular project, or things you have applied in other places, fast forward to today and are there certain things that you're really excited about when it comes to conversion copyrighting, or conversion rate optimization? Joel: Yeah, two things in particular. So the first is that personalization piece. With RightMessage, like I mentioned, that's becoming more possible. What I'm really fascinated by is just before, if you wanted to have different conversations with individuals, it was clunky. You had to create a whole bunch of different stuff, just even pages upon pages, and you had to really do a ton of work to try to make it happen technically. So it wasn't always possible, and I love that the bar for that is coming down. I'm really having a fun time learning more and more about how to segment and identify the differences in user groups. So, that piece, I think, is so important. It is the future of this stuff, and I'm really excited about that. For me personally, where I'm seeing the most growth for myself, this year, interestingly, I've made more off of audits and reviews than any writing. So, I still continue to offer writing, but I'm doing more and more analysis and helping companies identify what's going wrong and how they can fix it with copywriting, and UX exchanges, and things like that. So for me, what I'm excited about and continue to grow in to, it's nothing sexy, but Google Analytics. Just unpacking the power available on Google Analytics, and how to deploy that properly, and the types of things you can learn. I want to share ... I'll make it quick, but I want to share a quick story, just kind of the stuff you can learn when you're paying attention. So, I was working with a client, and I was doing a review of their site. They offer divorce packages in the UK. One of those stats we found that was fascinating to us through Google Analytics that sent up a little red flag was men converted better than women, and we know that more women initiate divorce than men. So it was kind of like, that's an oddity. Something is amiss here. So, long story short, through Google Analytics, a combination of looking at Google Analytics, the times people were actually on the site, combined with chat logs to learn what challenges were unique to women, we were able to come up with a cool hypothesis that women are in more financially vulnerable situations, they're working multiple jobs, so they want to convert in later hours, but chat was off during those hours. Kathleen: Oh, interesting. Joel: So through that, we figured out well let's test extending chat hours and see what the impact is. So, stuff like that just gets me pumped up because it's ... The amount of stuff you can learn when you're paying attention is fascinating. Kathleen: Oh, I love it. I love ... I always say I'm a marketing nerd, and I feel a sense of kinship with you on this because when I discover the little nuggets like that, it does, it gets me super excited. And I'll admit, I definitely am not as much of an expert in Google Analytics as I would like to be. I feel like every time I start to get really proficient, it's like the grocery store when they reorganize it, and then you don't know where the milk is. Joel: Right. Kathleen: Google Analytics likes to do that to us sometimes, too, but it's like an ice berg, and we kind of see the tip, but there's so much there under the surface, so much power and so much data. But I think I agree, there is so much to be learned. Joel: Totally. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: So two questions that I ask all of my guests. I want to make sure I ask you before we wrap up today. One is, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Joel: The women are crushing it. All of the people that I- Kathleen: Yes. Joel: Most admire doing this right now are all women, and they're doing brilliant jobs in really different ways. So as an individual, someone who recently came on my radar and now I'm so excited to be able to collaborate with is a woman named Val Geisler. I'm not sure how you pronounce her last name. She does email onboarding series and optimizes those. What she's done, you know, she's a one woman shop, so she doesn't have the ability to publish thousands of things, but she does such targeted, relevant content. She does these really cool email tear downs of companies people know and respect. Her candor in those, you know, she's not rude or mean, but she's also very honest and very great at exposing it. "Here's what they're doing. Here's what they could do better." So Val is doing fantastic. Claire and Gia at Forget the Funnel, so they've launched this really ... Like, they are, to me, a lot of people ... we talk about blogs, we talk about e-books, but what we don't often talk about as much is building yourself a platform, giving people a reason to want to listen to you and come to you, and see you as an authority. That's what Claire and Gia have done. Two extremely bright, very talented women, who have launched this thing, and created this avenue to get exactly the right customers that they want to work with, exactly the right sets of people to listen to what they have to say. They do these great webinars, and they do these great interviews. So those would be two examples. Then one group of fellows, I think who is doing is good, is Grow and Convert, and they're putting out some really great case studies, and really great content, and really great pieces that are helping Mark [Rozano 00:38:06] and myself just stay relevant and level up what they're doing. Kathleen: Okay, what's really cool about what you just said is those are three groups of people, places, brands, etc. that are totally new to me. I love when I get answers like that, and I have new places to check out. I'm particular interested in these email onboarding series right now, because we're revamping ours, so I will definitely be checking that one out. Second question, and I'm going to narrow it down. I usually ask people, with digital marketing changing so quickly, how do you stay up to date. But I want to get a little bit more specific than that with you, because I'm intrigued that you're focused on conversion rate optimization. I want to ask you how you stay educated for yourself, and build your skills in the field of conversion rate optimization? Joel: Yeah. So there's some really important sources that I consult and I look to, just to see what they're publishing. So, Joanna Wiebe, obviously. Anytime she's publishing a case study, or puts out a course, that's relevant to me. I'm almost always going to buy it. I'm really tuned in with her, and she's got tons of free content, but even if you can find her legacy content. It's just as relevant as it was then. Conversion XL continues to publish really valuable things. So, that's been really helpful. To me, in particular, and Michael Aagaard, like I said, he's done some recent webinars and that sort of thing. Expanding beyond that though, what's been really important for me in this field, and I think anyone coming in to should know, is that it is still young, and there is so much bad information out there where's it's like we change a button color and things would- Kathleen: Yeah. Joel: You can really educate yourself the wrong way, or you can educate yourself into a corner where you're like, "Well here are the rules. And here's what worked well in this situation," and you can treat it like gospel and try to apply it everywhere. So what's been really valuable to me is I've got Mastermind, just a little group of people in the same space, and we compare notes. We talk about what's going on with each other, and what they're learning, what they're coming across. In this industry, I think in all industries, it's valuable. But in this niche in particular, being tuned into what's going on with others, and what they're learning, and the context they learn it in is really important. Then the last one I'll mention is a site called GoodUI.com. He publishes a lot of, kind of tests and examples of stuff that people are trying out. Actually, one more that I really want to mention, and I'm excited to mention because it's not going to be on hardly anybody's radar, but I guarantee it's about to be on everybody's radar- Kathleen: Ooh. Joel: There's a company called User Insights. They have launched just the best tool for user testing that I have ever seen. Small batch user testing, very targeted, way cheaper than the competition, just as good, faster, but that service aside, that's really exciting. But they are doing some very interesting stuff. They haven't launched it all yet, but they're doing some very interesting stuff with case studies and actually testing in context a lot of different things that I know people are like, "Well should I have this? Or should I have that?" They're doing a lot of that practically now with ... across multiple sites, and verifiable outcomes. So they will be on people's radar because they're doing it at a scale I don't think anybody else is yet. So, I'm learning a bit from the people running that quietly in the background, and they're about to blow up. I'm sure of it. Kathleen: I can't wait to check all of this out. I feel like that's going to keep me busy for a while. That's great. I assume that everything you've learned through all of these projects, these engagements that you've done, you are bringing to bear with Case Study Buddy to help people improve their case studies. And you have a team there, right? Joel: Yeah, so Case Study Buddy is a different kind of a venture for me. Like I said, what excites me are these content assets that are easy to get wrong, super valuable when done well, companies struggle with the process, the strategy, the ownership of it. And so I've brought kind of all this stuff I'm doing in conversion. I'm trying to bring into the elements of how do we write something that appeals to multiple different scanners and readers and user groups, and how do we educate our clients on how to use these? For example, something I learned recently that I found fascinating is lots of companies are doing cold outreach. They're sending these cold emails. I can't remember the name of the company who did this study, but they tested out what is the impact of mentioning a famous "customer", so just a known customer in these cold outreach emails. And they've tripled the number of interested responses. Kathleen: Wow. Joel: So, the power is there, and if you can imagine attaching a case study, the impact that would have. Yeah, it's a different adventure. I've gotten to build a team and work outside of myself, and all the joys and pains that come with that. Yeah, it's been really fun, and that's going to be, like I mentioned, I'm still going to be doing this conversion work and that will be my bread and butter, especially on the back half of this year, growing Case Study Buddy, and getting it in front of more people and growing that initiative is high on my priority list. Kathleen: I can't wait to see where you take it. It sounds like you're on to something here. Joel: Thank you. Kathleen: Well, I know I've had a million questions throughout this, and I've had the opportunity to have you answer many of them, but if somebody's listening, and they wanted to reach out to you and ask a question, or get more information on something you've talked about today, what's the best way for them to find you online? Joel: Yeah, so I'm very active on Twitter. I do my best to respond to everything that comes in, whether it's a DM or a Tweet, or whatever. You can find me @JoelKlettke. That's one way to get at me fast. You can also email me. You can check out my ancient and desperately-in-need-of-being-updated site at BusinessCasualCopyrighting.com. Don't judge me. I built in 2013. It's due for an upgrade, but you can email me through there. I'm happy to field questions and if there's something you're struggling with. Then surprisingly, I always kind of shun the platform, but the past two months I've gotten a ton of value out of having conversations on LinkedIn. So, another space that you can see. I publish more there, actually, these days than my own blog. I do little snippets, and pushes, and tips and tricks there. I always try to make sure I'm responding to people who come through that channel, too. Kathleen: Yeah, LinkedIn- Joel: Those are kind of the three places. Kathleen: LinkedIn's making a comeback big time. Joel: Oh, huge. Kathleen: A lot of people are mentioning that on this podcast. Joel: They went from being the platform nobody wanted to talk about, to the platform everybody's publishing on. Kathleen: Yeah. Joel: It's remarkable. Even begrudgingly, there's still the joke about wanting to connect on LinkedIn, and after the apocalypse, only those emails remain. But joke all you want, they've become a serious contender. It's amazing that that team has done. Kathleen: Definitely. I agree. Well, thank you. This has been fascinating. I've learned so much. I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot more when I go check out all those websites you mentioned. So I really appreciate you spending the time on the podcast. If you're listening and you liked what you heard, you learned something, I'm going to ask if you would please take a moment and go on iTunes, or Stitcher, or whatever platform you choose to listen to the podcast on, and leave a review. It would mean a lot. Finally, if you know someone doing kickass inbound marketing work, Tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, Joel. Joel: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.

Joel Klettke gave an awesome presentation at Mozcon 2017 covering how to structure and develop content using what your customers tell you. He says the usual path and layout can be great but can also lead to a boring, useless page. He started a task to create great content and with the understanding that every conversion is a conversation. He warns that we focus on demographics but too little on motivation.  Motivations guides us. If you want check out his presentation just click HERE

Joel Klettke gave an awesome presentation at Mozcon 2017 covering how to structure and develop content using what your customers tell you. He says the usual path and layout can be great but can also lead to a boring, useless page. He started a task to create great content and with the understanding that every conversion is a conversation. He warns that we focus on demographics but too little on motivation.  Motivations guides us. If you want check out his presentation just click HERE

On today’s episode of the podcast, we’re talking copywriting -- specifically how to write better more effective conversion-focused copy on your sales and landing pages, as well as your ads. And joining me to share his expertise is conversion copywriter, Joel Klettke. Joel is the founder of Business Casual Copywriting and he’s worked with clients like HubSpot, WP Engine, Safelite and others. Joel talks a lot about how we really don’t need to overthink things when it comes to writing copy, but to instead simply let our customers talk and know how to listen to (and interpret) what they’re telling us… A big part of what he uses is something I have done in the past as well - customer interviews. Joel gives us his recommendations on what group of people we should be approaching, and how to do it the right way, as well as how we can use other tools such as chat logs to identify existing gaps in our copy. As you’ll hear, a lot of people see copy as just words, but in the bigger context, there’s a promise that you’re making and an expectation that your client has. It’s all about finding the words to turn skeptics into advocates and prospects into paying customers -- and that’s what we dive into today. On the Show Today You’ll Learn: Why Google is a fantastic aggregator of information, but a miserable interpretation of the truth (Joel gives a great example he uses with his clients that proves this) How Joel uses his “Before-During-After” process to guide his copywriting Why following your competitors’ negative reviews will allow you to proactively solve customer issues His favorite questions to ask to get the best insights from your target market What Joel uses to track the feedback he’s receiving, how he compiles it and how he makes this information useful in his copywriting The most common mistakes that he is seeing as he is auditing online ads Joel’s top resources for upping your copywriting game, and more! Coming up next week, my good friend Jasmine Star is back to share a case study, where we’ll dive into the 3 components of a Facebook Video Ad that is giving her the best results in her business.

On today’s show, I’m sharing three Facebook ads updates that you need to know about, and I’ll be revealing how to solve two big challenges that local businesses are facing with their Facebook ads. Even if you’re not a local business, you’ll want to check out what I have to say about these challenges, as they’re still very much relevant and applicable to online businesses using Facebook to market products and services. On the Show Today You’ll Learn: What the new Facebook ads “Landing Page Views” optimization feature is all about and why it’s important to you A big time Facebook ads update that improves the performance of your “conversion” campaigns – and how you can use it to improve the performance of your Facebook ad campaigns How the improved Facebook ads algorithm is affecting Lookalike Audiences, and why you should definitely be testing 2-4% Lookalikes in addition to 1% ones How to reach MORE of your potential audience when retargeting warm and hot audiences, and also in smaller local markets. How to track conversions offline events when you can’t place the Facebook pixel, and much more! And sneak peek into next week’s episode… Joel Klettke of Business Casual Copywriting will be joining me to talk about improving your copywriting. Joel is a conversion-focused copywriter and strategist who’s worked with clients like HubSpot, WP Engine, Safelite and Ion Interactive. If you’re looking to write better copy (that converts) for your ads, landing pages, emails and more, then you’re not going to want to miss what Joel he has to share with listeners. Free Upcoming Online Training For Local Businesses How Local Businesses Can Increase Leads & Sales with Facebook Ads (While Cutting Your Marketing Budget) If you’re a Local Business looking for a more cost-effective way to CONSISTENTLY attract qualified leads & customers to your business, this free online training is for you! Here’s what you’ll be learning: I’m going to be teaching the exact 4-step formula for creating a CONSISTENT flow of leads and customers every week with Facebook ads. We’re going to talk about offers, targeting, and I’ve got lots of case studies for you that you can you learn from and model. Days/Times: I’ll be doing 3 live online training classes starting on Wednesday, July 26th... Wednesday, July 26th @ 9am PST Wednesday, July 26th @ 4pm PST Thursday, July 27th @ 12pm PST (Here’s a handy time zone converter) To register for a day/time that works best for you, click here: rickmulready.com/fbadslocal Or if you are in the US, you can text “localtraining” to 44222 and you can register right over your phone. See ya there!  

In this episode, James shares a recap of what he learned from Joel Klettke's session at CTAConf 2017.

Joel Klettke stops by The Copywriter Club Podcast studio to chat with Kira and Rob talk about how he launched his business as a highly paid copywriter, his process (and a roadmap for a roadmapping session), testing rates, working with other writers and relentlessly chasing down referrals to bring in new business. We asked Joel if anyone can learn copywriting and accomplish what he has, he didn’t sugar coat the answer (you’ll have to listen to hear what he said). And while we say this about a lot of our episodes, this one truly is stellar. The advice Joel shares should be a permanent part of every copywriter’s playbook. Check it out: Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Upwork ProBlogger Job Board HubSpot Insight Squared Joel’s Process Page Brennan Dunn MozCon Joanna Wiebe Kate Toon The Copywriter Club Facebook Page Business Casual Copywriting Case Study Buddy Neil Patel Joel at TedX ConversionXL SearchLove Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: Kira: 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 could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work process 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 21 as we chat with conversion copywriter Joel Klettke about leaving a guaranteed six figure job for the uncertainties of freelance, the power of case studies to grow a business, speaking to audiences like Conversion XL and SearchLove, and what he did to land a big client like HubSpot. Rob: Hey, Kira and Joel. Kira: Hey. Joel: Hey, how’s it going? Rob: Good, how are you doing? Joel: I’m good. It’s finally warm here, so I’m enjoying not shivering in my boots as I try to type things. Rob: That’s always a good thing, right? Joel: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob: So Joel, we should start off with your story, how you got to be where you are. I know there’s a lot of different things that we can cover as we talk about that, but you left a very good job in the SEO world to take on a job as a freelancer, and we’d love to hear more about that and how you were so successful so quickly. Joel: Sure, so the short story is that I’d been working for an agency for almost five years. I’d kind of just fallen into that job. I really enjoyed SEO, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to forever. I’d always loved to write, but I’d never seen a business case for it. I saw the whole digital industry turning its head towards content. Content marketing, the role of copy and landing pages. I thought, “Okay, well if ever there was a time to take what I feel like I’m good at and turn it into a business, the time is now.” I had told the company that I was working for, “This is it. I’m checking out. I’m going out on my own.” In my head, I had kind of made up my mind to say, “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do.” Shortly after I did that, I got an offer to go in house at quite a big firm with clients who are household names, big car companies and household brands, and it was a guaranteed six figure pay day. All of a sudden, these things that I’d thought I’d been so confident in kind of got thrown through a loop. Do I really want to go out on my own and be a writer? Everything I’ve read about this says I’m not going to make any money, I’m going to struggle to have clients, but do I really want to keep doing SEO and just have the same frustrations, and problems, and challenges on a bigger scale? Ultimately, I wrestled with it for a couple days, and thought, “No,

Canadian copywriter Joel Klettke is focused on results. When it works for his clients it's working for him. This chat has a crazy amount of useful freelance tips in it as Joel shares thoughts on using a personal name vs a company one, what makes his freelance site stand out, how he came to be a TEDx speaker, networking, growing the business... and all of this whilst being the best looking man in the world. Don't forget to subscribe via iTunes and the Podcast app for iPhone etc and also via Stitcher who have an Android app - If you like the podcast, please do leave a review if you get a chance. Thanks! Here’s some of the key takeaway points: Network before you go freelance: it’s much harder to make connections when you’re hungry for work, trying to survive; do it when you’re safely employed The only reason Joel shares his ‘minimum project cost’ on his site is to prevent people contacting him, not to encourage them If you look cheap, you’ll get cheap clients, you'll get cheap work You may dream of working with big companies, but actually profitable mid-size companies have good budgets but with far less red tape When you have a personal name to your business you feel very small, when you have company name it gives you a brand, a persona, the ability to scale over time “As soon as you figure what you love and what’s profitable and where those two things intersect, stop doing everything else" Joel likes to do work that can be traced back to a tangible outcomes, prove results If you want a client to measure results, help them - show them the tools with which to do it Joel now has a prerequisite: if he can’t use a client in a case study then he doesn’t want to work with them Share your ‘process’, your workflow on your site so clients know how you work; you look like a pro and it answers plenty of questions Working with clients overseas? Joel (in Canada) bills in US Dollars using Stripe, to a UDS bank account - he can then withdraw when the exchange rate is best You’ve got to be good at taking care of your finances; no one else is going to do it for you Have confidence in yourself: your clients are not doing you a favour, you’re doing them a favour by taking them on More from Joel Klettke Joel's site Joel on Twitter Joel's TEDx Talk - The Best Looking Man In The World (video) Useful Links Stripe Ptengine Optimizely Copyhackers Inbound.org Who the hell is Steve Folland? You know how everyone bangs on about how powerful video and audio content can be? Yeah, well Steve helps businesses make it and make the most of it. Find out more at www.stevefolland.com Track him down on Twitter @sfolland or lay a trail of cake and he'll eventually catch you up.