- The key to marketing to “Support Me” buyers (i.e how to market to marketers).
- Create a community and sense of belonging by getting rid of “head-trash”.
- Eliminate the suspicion of scams and alleviate the fears of the “Support Me” buyer
Kevin Rogers has a mission….
… and a dilemma.
A Man on a Mission
Kevin Rogers, the founder of Copy Chief, wasn’t born perched atop the pinnacle of success, king of the lucrative world of marketing and freelance copywriting. He toiled for years in obscurity, a circuit rider through the Big Thicket of stand-up comedy one night stands.
His first love jilted him, but his second love, copywriting, lavished him with all a man could want, wealth, fame, friends, confidence; the good life all around.
After ten years of all this glory, he then just said: “enough.”
Time for the mission.
Time to train other freelance copywriters and marketers. And not just that. Time to create a community of copywriters and marketers, newbies and experts alike, teaching each other, sharing their Jedi writing superpowers.
As iron sharpens iron, Kevin created a support community of razor-sharp wordsmiths, the best of the best, making each others’ word skills ever sharper and more cutting. And teaching each other how to turn those skills into profitable freelance businesses.
That’s why Kevin created Copy Chief.
But, therein lies the dilemma.
The market for Copy Chief is copywriters, many of whom already know the secrets of the trade.
How do you convince this crowd of skeptics to plunk down hard-earned cash to learn what so many of them think they already know?
What marketing strategies do you use to attract such a clientele? How do you market to marketers? How do you persuade persuaders?
The solution is simple and timeless. It’s Econ 101.
Give your customers what they want and need…
… support.
Copy Chief Supports Freelance Writers
Freelance writers are brave people.
They have forsaken the security of jobs hoping that through self-expression and a little pluck they can attain both financial success and personal freedom.
But being a “solopreneur” has its problems.
There’s a fine line between rugged individualism and loneliness. And the freelance writer is susceptible to all sorts of psychological maladies and doubts.
Including:
- Am I good enough?
- If I write what I feel, will I look like a fool?
- How can I write when I don’t feel inspired?
Or, as Kevin put it in a recent email, “Maybe I DO belong in a cubicle.”
So, it turns out that even these brash, renegade types known as freelancers want and need support. And that’s where Copy Chief comes in.
In other words, “Inside Copy Chief, nobody writes alone.”
Kevin realized that aspiring and even veteran copywriters need support. In creating Copy Chief, he created the model marketing campaign for targeting the Support Me Buyer.
Who is the Support Me Buyer?
The Support Me Buyer has one overarching hidden question: “Do I belong here?”
This doubt doesn’t come from traditional insecurity. Instead, it comes from this buyer’s exacting standards of excellence.
Because her standards are so close to perfection, she doubts her worthiness.
Tl;dr: She’s too hard on herself.
It’s probably what this famous comedian meant when he said:
The Support Me buyer needs to be reassured that she does belong…
That she deserves the best, or in the case of Copy Chief, that she really is elite…
That she really can be as great and as successful a writer as she can imagine herself to be.
But the Support Me Buyer tends to be a skeptic.
Because of her high standards, she is quickly disappointed. You’ll recognize the Support Me Buyer by these common objections: “I’ve been burned before,” or, “this is a scam.”
The marketer targeting this Buyer must acknowledge these negative experiences from the past and distinguish himself from these past “scammers.”
At a more profound, emotional level, the marketer must address the Support Me Buyer’s perfectionism.
She has the highest standards and wants only the best.
Confirm her suspicions about lesser products or services, but give her the support and confidence she needs to go for your product/service, the one that’s the best.
If Groucho Marx were alive today and an aspiring copywriter, Copy Chief would say to him: “Come join our club. We are the best, and with our mentoring and support, you can be too.” 🙂
How Copy Chief targets the Support Me Buyer
The Copy Chief website employs all these strategies targeting the Support Me Buyer. It starts with making you feel that Copy Chief is a community in which you belong. For example, you will find these testimonials:
Copy Chief is a community where you belong. With the love and support of that community you can achieve potential you only suspected you had.
Or this:
If you need help and support in your freelance writing career, join the Copy Chief community.
Or this:
The message is:
You want to be the best?
“Hang” with Copy Chief and be “one of us.”
Here you will be part of the “vibe of giving and sincere intent.”
Here you belong.
One of the main barriers to a sense of belonging that almost all writers must confront is psychological––a gnawing sense of not being as good as the other writers who have “made it.”
Copy Chief addresses this “imposter syndrome,” what Kevin Rogers calls “head-trash,” head-on.
How Copy Chief Addresses the Common Objections of the Support Me Buyer
Copy Chief’s marketing addresses the common objections of the Support Me Buyer in the two ways freelance writers have typically been burned:
- By the freelance writing market, in general
- By other freelance writing training programs which make crazy promises but don’t deliver
Copy Chief acknowledges these burns and addresses these objections directly.
Here are some other concerns that copywriters have:
1- Many people come to Copy Chief needing to escape the freelance rat-race where writers are often paid as commodities, sometimes for as little as a penny a word. Copy Chief can help the writer avoid the treadmill.
For example:
2- Another common objection is that other freelance training programs have burned the writer with unrealistic promises.
Copy Chief takes those claims head-on and then explains how Copy Chief tells the truth. You may have been disappointed before, but Copy Chief will not let you down.
How’s this for an email subject line (this one for the Copy Chief Live program)?
I’m spraying the room with douchebag-repellent…
And who are the douchebags?
This is the textbook approach to the Support Me Buyer. Acknowledge upfront the scammers, the “douchebags,” and assure the Buyer that what you offer is the real deal.
And not just the real deal… but the best of the best… because the Support Me Buyer holds to the highest standards and maintains lesser standards with contempt.
To Sell the Support Me Buyer, You Must Appeal to Her Elite Standards
You see it right on the front page of the Copy Chief website:
Here and throughout the Copy Chief website, the prospective member understands that Copy Chief is the elite copywriting community, your last stop if you want the best.
First, observe the background. Kevin jamming with musicians. Copy Chief is edgy. Here, you are with artists, bohemians even, the avant garde.
And of course, the copy. It’s all about excellence.
“Great copywriters…finding great clients.”
“Exclusive marketing…trainings, and opportunities to connect with true professionals.”
Taken as a whole, the overarching message is: If you are a creative genius, you have found your home.
Genius is a favorite word in the Copy Chief testimonials.
This Copy Chief member must have created the mold for the Support Me Buyer. She expects to be burned, but Copy Chief ultimately fulfills her exacting standards of perfection.
And another.
“Geeky” means perfectionistic. The message here is:
Geniuses with the highest standards gravitate to Copy Chief. Join us.
The Copy Chief Email Campaigns are Classic Examples of Targeting the Support Me Buyer
Copy Chief’s main marketing tool is the personal email. Let’s break down this one for the Copy Chief programs––Real Free Life––and see how it targets the Support Me Buyer.
It starts with this subject line:
“How to spot b*llsh*t claims about freelancing”
Like the ‘douchebag’ email, this one addresses the objections of the Support Me Buyer head-on. It acknowledges right off that you’ve been burned and scammed before.
Hi William,
I just saw another copywriter on Facebook bragging about how “easy” it is to earn ten grand a month freelancing, even if you’ve “never had a client before.”
Such bullshit.
Here’s the problem…
That number is completely unrealistic when you have no experience, and worse… the idea is toxic to the market where you and I earn a living.
That refrain of “ten grand a month with no experience” has become the freelance copywriting equivalent to “one weird trick to losing belly fat”…
Meant to clickbait you into buying their “easy fix” fantasy.
At this point in the email, Rogers debunks the scam, and then states his credentials, his success and reputation, thus establishing his authority. He then explains why he despises the phony promises made in the facebook ads:
The reason I get all twisted up over these Facebook fantasy freelancers talking crazy numbers is because it causes honest copywriters to suffer real problems like…
- Setting unrealistic expectations that can derail an otherwise healthy freelance career path…
- Attracting money-grubbing d-bags to the trade, who only want the “tricks” to siphoning as much money from clients as possible, with no intention of delivering real value…
- Clients getting burned by these cheats and becoming (understandably) angry at all copywriters, and very skittish about trusting or hiring any of us
Here, Kevin establishes that not only are there bad copywriting programs, but dishonest copywriters who are destroying the reputation of all copywriters.
But you––the Support Me Buyer––are not one of THOSE copywriters, because you have the highest professional and ethical standards. You are willing to invest the time and effort to serve clients the right way, the Copy Chief way.
So, let’s focus on the good part.
The good part is… YOU get to be the solution.
The HERO even, to high-quality clients who desperately need a good freelancer in their life.
You wanna know the #1 trait all successful freelancers have in common?
They CARE, a lot, about doing good work.
They’re also honest, professional, empathetic, and have unusually good instincts about people.
Because of all this, they understand that their reputation is the most valuable currency in their business.
And they grow comfortable advertising their hard-earned reputations, not with braggadocious Facebook posts, but by sharing actionable lessons that do a really good job of highlighting their wins.
In the rest of the email, Rogers explains in some detail how Real Free Life will provide the practical support you need to be the top-notch copywriter, both in terms of financial success and fidelity, that you already know yourself to be.
But the last question, the most persistent question, of the Support Me Buyer remains:
Do I belong?
In this email, Rogers does not answer that question. Instead, he leaves that up to the prospective Buyer to ponder further by inviting her to consider these criteria, many of which appeal to the reader’s high standards.
P.S. Wanna talk about it?
This month I’m looking to work with 30 pro freelance copywriters to help them level up and become in-demand freelancers.
Here’s what I’m looking for:
- You’ve been working as a professional freelance copywriter for at least 6 months…
- You want to level up your freelance career, start working with high-end clients, and achieve a new level of control over your career…
- You’re committed to becoming a top professional who does great work…
- You can commit at least 5 hours per week for 8 weeks from the 19th of August…
- You are friendly and coachable…
- You can keep a secret.
If that’s you, hit reply to this email, and let me know a little about where you’re at with your freelance career.
I’ll be choosing people in the next couple of weeks.
Rest assured, if you hit the reply button, it won’t be long before you, unlike Groucho Marx, will want to join the club that will have you as a member. After all, by then, you will have been chosen by the Chief himself, personally. And you will know you belong.
Key Takeaways
- The Support Me Buyer has high standards and is drawn to the best of the best.
- She tends to hold lesser products/services with contempt.
- Therefore, the Support Me Buyer is very suspicious of scams.
- Acknowledge her suspicions and alleviate her fears about being scammed right upfront.
- Most of all, make the Support Me Buyer know she belongs, or that she actually deserves that which her high standards require that she have.
