April 16, 2020
Today’s guest is the master of copywriting, Ashlyn Carter!
Ashlyn Carter is a conversion copywriter, international speaker, and marketing strategist specializing in the wedding and creative industries. She’s the founder and CEO of Ashlyn Writes, a copywriting business and marketing curriculum source for creatives. 90 one on one clients, over 5,000+ students, and 7 figures in revenue later, she’s pinpointed what it is helps lock in half-a-million dollar launches for digital marketing campaigns. She traded Fortune 500 clients in corporate marketing for her own mega successful business helping women write words that sell, so they can work from a place of rest—not hustle.
Ashlyn is a new dear friend to us and she speaks from such a place of warmth and encouragement. In today’s interview we chatted all things copywriting with Ashlyn such as what copywriting REALLY means, the biggest mistakes she sees business owners making in their website and sales copy, tips and tricks for writing attention grabbing headlines and blog titles, and the art of prioritizing copy AND design when creating a web page. Prepare to have your earbuds blessed.
Ashlyn lives in Atlanta, GA and runs her business, Ashlyn Writes. Her team provides copywriting services and curriculum to creative women because she firmly believes that not knowing what to say in your company should NOT hold you back from making sales, walking into your calling, and working from a place of more rest, not hustle.
Strong, persuasive copy can really move the needle in your business and be a salesman when you can’t.
Ashlyn has been in business for four years and has a background in marketing communications. She worked in a PR agency in Atlanta and truly loved it. From there, she began to work in corporate marketing and found that she was a little too addicted to it. She loved being on with reporters, planning events, and working with customers, but at the same time she knew it wasn’t a good obsession. As a side gig she began offering wedding calligraphy for brides. In the midst of this chaotic and stressful season, her husband proposed. She knew she couldn’t manage everything well.
She began to measure the one thing that she could do well: what she ate. She started tracking the number of calories she was consuming and how much she was exerting in exercise. It became math and numbers that she could easily control. Ashlyn ended up developing an eating disorder and went in partial hospitalization for anorexia, depression, and anxiety. It was through all of this that her eyes were opened to a few things.
Through this season she found a whole world of women making an income doing what they loved. When Ashlyn got out of recovery, she really started to believe she could pursue writing. Over time, Ashlyn took note of just how many creative small businesses were not comfortable with the selling aspect. This was all Ashlyn had ever done in marketing so she began to offer this.
Copywriting is the art and the science of words that coach a conversion in your business. This is different from content marketing copy such as the words you use in your social media, but it can bleed into that. It is specifically the words that help a conversion or an action take place such as people getting on a booking call with you, ordering your products, clicking on the landing page, getting on your email list, etc. It’s the copy that gets them into your sales funnels and moves them along that customer journey. That is copywriting.
Often, we hear that if you aren’t good at something, you should outsource it. This is true to an extent but if you outsource your copy you can’t outsource your salesmanship. You need to understand the psychology behind the selling of your products and services as well as the process. Don’t outsource to get it off your plate just because you “aren’t a good writer”. Ashlyn has seen hundreds of “not good writers” come out on the other end and be able to really explain what they do. There are so many nuances to copywriting to explain things clearly that you can absolutely learn to be good enough.
Take a stand! Say who your product or service is for. Use those words. If your product or service is for photographers? Say that! Be specific. On your websites, landing pages, product pages, or bios put a stake in the ground and say who you are for and who you are not for. If you have different audiences, segment out your traffic.
Have someone check your blindspots. Don’t publish something without someone else checking over it.
Your headline is so important. Spend the most time writing this. Put a stake in the ground and don’t be apologetic about it because that is where the results come from.
Don’t start with a blank page. There are so many resources, including some by Ashlyn, out there to get inspiration. There are headlines out there that are working and that have been working for decades. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Use those as inspiration and figure out how you can apply and tweak it for your audience.
Look at what headline worked on you, especially it was outside of your market. Figure out how you can pull that and apply it to your audience. Tweak, repeat, use them in your own business.
Some keywords that work well in headlines are “mistakes” or “even if”
A lot of your imagery can pull the weight that your copy is not able to. Copy dictates your design and not the other way around. Visuals communicate quicker but we need the copy to dictate the design and the message.
Figuring out your brand message is where this has to start. There is no reason you should be grabbing a Showit template from your favorite shop, backspacing the Lorem Ipsum, and trying to type whatever is on your heart. You should come first from a place of understanding your message and your unique value proposition. You have to be able to tell someone why they should hire you above anyone else, even if they charge less than you. If you can’t tell someone that, you need to park and camp and figure that out.
Strip down your message to the studs. Then you can go from there to figure out the website pages and the copy that goes on each page. Don’t start with a blank page, use templates, and use guides.
The final step is to install your copy into the design and finesse it if the character count is too long. It comes from a place of having the message direct the entire brand process instead of the visuals directing the entire process.
If there is copy that you need the reader to ready in order to push them through the customer journey to allow them to book with you, this copy needs to be in a place on your website where the user will see it and understand it. Let your headlines and subheadlines help people know when they need to stop and pay attention to the copy.
Ashlyn started banking her words and phrases that she used and said all the time as well as her ideas, mission statement, and core values. She created a digital file of all these words which allowed her to piece together her own message.
Start creating a bank and resource file. Include your mission statement, your core values, your unique value proposition, words that you use commonly, and words you never use. Having this all in one place is so helpful for you to stay on track.
We all have mood boards, hex code color palettes, and design assets that align with our brand, but often we neglect to have these for our words.
Let this word bank be the driver for all your communication, especially as you grow a team.
If you don’t have your overall brand messaging down, your launch isn’t going to go as well.
In terms of sales funnels, don’t forget that people do not have a buying problem in society. People like to buy things that they want and that they think will get them closer to who they want to be. People do not like to be sold to. You have to make sure you are earning their trust and helping people understand that you are looking out for their best interest.
If you have earned their trust, they are not going to think you are coming across as hard selling. If it’s a fit for them they will feel okay with it.
If we have the tools, gifts, and callings that can actually help people, why are we freaking out about telling people about them?
There is someone out there that is worse at the craft that you do, has less of a heart for clients and customers than you do, but they are making more money, selling more, and making more impact because they are noisier than you. They are asking more and putting the offer out there more.
Sales funnels are a psychological way for people to understand and overcome their objections so they can get what they are after in life.
Sit down and write a hundred reasons why people will benefit from working with you. Don’t stop until you are at 100. Not only can it help their business but how can it benefit their life, marriage, relationships, family, and friendships. Walking through this can be a really powerful tool before you go to write some sales copy.
The majority of the work Ashlyn does is researching, and then comes the writing. 50% of the writing is headlines and subheads. At that point she has all the research and body of language and all she has to do is put together the final copy. Sales copy is so much more research driven than people realize.
You should never start with an empty cursor.
For example, as an inquiry response template, Ashlyn has little reminders in there such as “state the customers problem back to them”.
You can still include little sales hooks in your templates as you walk people through their customer journey.
Templates save you time and still allow you to tweak them for each client. Keep in mind that no matter what you are using a template for, you shouldn’t be able to tell it is a template. Use a template, but change it to reflect your brand, mission, and personality.
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WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
Whether you’re coming to an in-person workshop, joining our online course, or soaking up all the strategies via this blog or our podcast, we’re STOKED you’re here + can’t wait to see you out there kicking butt.
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