Episode 81: How to NOT be Gross with Marketing in 2023 and What to Do Instead with Copywriter Brittany McBean
Small business founders, it’s time to say goodbye to being gross with your marketing and welcome empowered and clear messaging when doing PR and marketing.
I know you’ve seen the unethical sides of toxic marketing. There’s fake scarcity, impersonal urgency, and all sorts of gimmicks.
That’s because these manipulative practices have been so ingrained in many of our purchasing decisions and even our marketing efforts.
Fortunately, we can shift the pendulum of PR and marketing to swing towards more genuine practices.
As small business heroes, that’s what we’re after with our PR and marketing efforts—to empower our audience with the right information, so they can make a confident ‘Yes’ or ‘No!’ decision.
We can practice ethical marketing through clear messaging, respecting our audience, and boosting our services with the help of PR.
It’s this exact approach that has shifted the messaging and marketing practices of Small Business PR to truly connect with diverse industry experts and business founders.
And I hope that your business does the same too—stop being gross with your marketing and shift to ethical PR and marketing that serves people in their best interests.
That’s why I’ve invited Brittany McBean, my personal copywriter, to join my advocacy to stop being gross in marketing. Most importantly, we’ll break down for you what you can do instead to demonstrate ethical marketing.
“What I want to do with our marketing is give our readers the information that they need to make a confident yes or no decision. That is the goal! The messaging should be so powerful, and so strong that that should create the desire to buy. What if we can just speak to someone in a way that gives them the information that they need to make that emotional connection, so they have so much autonomy.”
-Brittany McBean
Brittany McBean is a launch strategist & conversion copywriter who specializes in anti-sleazy, audience-focused, high-converting copy for online entrepreneurs & educators. She believes that Black Lives Matter now and always, marketing needs to help, not harm and that it's our responsibility to use our voice to build up, magnify, and support historically and systemically marginalized people. Through her research-based strategy and copy, she helps industry leaders like Rick Mulready, Brandi Mowles, and Lattice Hudson run multi 6 & 7-figure launches and funnels through clear messaging and anti-manipulative marketing practices.
It’s time to stop being gross with your marketing and focus on what you can do instead. Join me in this episode to discover ethical PR and marketing strategies that will make you a credible and relevant small business hero that serves people in their best interests.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
What unethical marketing looks and sounds like
Expert tips on how to present and discern social proof
Research insights on the buying decisions of people
The importance of giving people more autonomy to decide to buy
How our marketing should speak to the people we serve
The process by which organic PR can help boost any business
If you want to land your first feature for free without any connections, I want to invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought-after industry expert. Register now at www.gloriachou.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community: Small Biz Pros: By Gloria Chou
Know more about Brittany McBean: brittanymcbean.com
Subscribe to Brittany McBean’s YouTube Channel: Brittany McBean
Connect with Brittany McBean: brittany@brittanymcbean.com
Additional Resources:
Join the Small Biz PR Pros FB group
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Here’s a glance at this episode…
[06:08] Unethical marketing is marketing that uses manipulation, dishonesty, and anxiety to trigger a buying decision that is not rooted in someone's best interest.
[15:50] I highly suggest you start respecting your audience's intelligence and start speaking to them the way you'd like to be spoken to in marketing.
[23:33] We are asking them to bring their ideas to the conversation, to give them autonomy, and to have them make a decision that is in their best interest rather than us saying, ‘The time is running out, the pressure is on it's now or never.’
[27:28] In terms of messaging, the purpose of social proof is proof of evidence. You are backing up a claim. When you make a claim, you use social proof to prove the claim you just made.
[42:11] We just need to have something that we know that matters right now, that we can be like that relevancy, that point of view that we can bring to the table.
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Brittany McBean 00:00
But what made your project so powerful and what made it so effective is there's Seth Godin said, don't make customers for your products, make products for your customers.
Gloria Chou 00:12
Hey, friends, I'm Gloria Chou, small business PR expert, award winning pitch writer and your unofficial hype woman. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people get the recognition they deserve. And that starts with feeling more confident to go bigger with your message. So on this podcast,f I will share with you the untraditional, yet proven strategies for PR marketing and creating more opportunity in your business. If you are ready to take control of your narrative and be your most unapologetic and confident self, you're in the right place. This is the Small Business PR Podcast.
Gloria Chou 01:16
Woohoo! I am so excited for today's episode because I have my friend and personal copywriter, Brittany McBean on the show. If you've ever wondered about what sales tactics are sleazy, or what things to look out for and what ethical copywriting and ethical marketing really means this episode is for you. Welcome to the show, Brittany.
Brittany McBean 01:35
Yay. Thanks for having me.
Gloria Chou 01:37
I love watching your work Brittany, because it's literally watching like a bird fly or like a cheetah jump. I feel like you're truly in your zone of genius. And I feel that way when I work with you. It's like your brain just like it just starts to work. And you apply that in copy. So for the listeners who don't really understand kind of where marketing is heading, like can you define for us what ethical marketing even means?
Brittany McBean 01:57
Yeah, thank you for saying that. I mean, I like, I have to pause. Even just hearing that, like I get emotional hearing you say that not to make this like the Brittany show. But I'm 35 and for most of my life, I was the person who had every parent teacher conference, the teachers were telling my parents like she just doesn't live up to her potential, which is, f---, does that mean? Like, you can't measure potential. Like, that is an unattainable goal. Right? But like, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 34. So last year, and so it's one of those, you know, Einstein said, like, I think as Einstein said, if you measure a fish by their ability to climb a tree, like that kind of b-----, right? Like, I felt stupid, unworthy, dumb, all of these things my whole life, but then you find the thing you're good at and you're like, I'm really f----- good at this. Like I'm really f----- smart, but not having had that experience until I found this and so thank you for saying that. But also, like I say that because I'm hoping that you feel that way. I'm hoping your listeners feel that way. I'm hoping that other people can like feel that and say that like, Okay, I couldn't climb a tree but like, I'm f----- swimming like a shark now, right? So what I do as a copywriter, I think copywriters are just quite simply sales people with words. We just use words to make sales. And traditionally, marketing has gone through a few iterations. But it all just looks the same dressed up in different clothes. I mean, you look at like, the Mad Men era of marketing. And then we kind of have this weird 80s and 90s, infomercial-style marketing. And then we have the early 2000s, like mid 2000s, like online boom, and well, not early 2000s. But what we've seen that has become like the digital age of marketing. It all kind of comes from the same thread, and it's just been dressed up and repackaged over and over again and it uses the same kind of principles of marketing and you don't have to look hard and I mean, all of you know exactly what I'm talking about. These principles that are used over and over and over again, whether it is like urgency and scarcity, whether it's social proof, whether it's big claims within promises, and you know, these sexy lifestyle marketing claims that we make all of these different things, and they're all founded and specific principles that are based in research and things that have worked in the past. And the tides are shifting and changing, and they no longer work. And so I'm happy to talk more about about what that means. But when we're talking about things that are unethical, or things that are sleazy, we are living in a very unhealthy society. Not that, I think we were ever truly healthy, but we are more unwell than we ever have been, we have more access to information that makes us more anxious, depressed, triggered. We have gone through more experiences currently going through more experiences that make us anxious, depressed, triggered. And we don't need our marketing to do that for us. And yet, marketing is based on giving us experiences or feelings that trigger us into making a buying decision by raising our cortisol, triggering our anxiety, and giving us the false sense that we will never again have the experience to take a hold of this opportunity. So if we do not buy now, then something about our lives will either go fundamentally wrong or be fundamentally missing. So marketing is based on triggering anxiety in order to cause someone to make a buying decision. And we're getting smarter. We're getting more emotionally aware, and we're catching on and our consumers are realizing that, well, I'm going to have another opportunity to buy this, and this thing probably isn't going to change my life. And if I really can't get this tomorrow then I can go get it from someone else. And I probably don't actually need to spend all that money to get this. So that was a very ADHD long -winded way of saying unethical marketing is marketing that uses manipulation, dishonesty, and anxiety to trigger a buying decision that is not rooted in someone's best interest. And the pendulum is swinging.
Gloria Chou 06:25
Yeah, I love that when you gave at our mastermind retreat, you gave a presentation that was mind-blowing. I never thought about it that way. I never thought that because we've all seen the timers, the value stack all the funnel bros that have basically brainwashed all of us because they were kind of the first people to do this. And so we were just copying their templates, guilty as charged, yours truly right. Because when I was doing the online courses, I was thinking, well, that's how you sell. And I think it was through working with you and you dismantling that and making me realize it's so much better to get people to say an empowered 'Yes,' than a 'no' out of FOMO or scarcity. Because you get, you know, less refund requests, you get more transformation. That's when I started to really do the work in my own business. So can you talk a little bit more about like, what are some of the things that fall into this scarcity and triggering a response that we can look out for as consumers?
Brittany McBean 07:14
Yeah. And look, you don't know what you don't know. And our culture, like, especially North American culture, our education system, as a whole does not encourage critical thinking. And so that is a, that is a muscle that we have to turn on. And like, build up and practice, we have to be asking ourselves, does this actually work? If it does work, why is that how I want to be working? And like, does it does it work in the way that I want it to work? Like, I'm sorry, but if 1% conversion is the average, that bars really f---- low. Do you know what I mean? Like, like these things that are being taught, like the bar is so low, what if there is a better way. And so if we are just doing what the experts are teaching us to do, because they're the one, they're telling us to trust them, there aren't other voices that are being spoken into. We don't have other contexts, we don't have additional information. And we don't have other other ways of thinking. It doesn't mean that you're bad or wrong or manipulative. Those practices are manipulative, those people who do have additional information who do have more access to other ways of seeing or thinking or doing that or choosing not to do those things. I would put some fault on them. But I would like to go ahead and take the blame off of the people who are just doing what they've been taught and doing what they know. And I've already forgot your original question, what was-
Gloria Chou 08:53
Things that fall into this umbrella of toxic manipulative marketing? So obviously, like, I actually do use timers because I do have an evergreen bonus right? But there's things that you taught me that I, for example, don't do anymore like I don't do the value stack of like this is three days. Cool. And you get this all for like 90% off.
Brittany McBean 09:12
Yep. So and again, critical thinking means not putting things in a binary. It doesn't mean this is always bad or this is always good. It means why are we doing this? What are the intended and unintended consequences? Am I okay with that? So what I want to do with our marketing is give our readers the information that they need to make a confident yes or no decision. That is the goal. And rather than leading on gimmicks, I would, to me, I think the messaging should be so powerful, and so strong that that should create the desire to buy. Like, what if we can just speak to someone in a way that gives them the information that they need to make that emotional connection and gives them the details and gives them the logistics that they need. So they have so much information and so much autonomy, that they cannot wait to plug in their credit card. And if they are not the right buyer, if this is not right for them, if they are someone who's just going to get inside your program, and complain, or they are the person who's going to buy your product and then write a nasty review, or just use half of it and then try to get a refund. They don't even end up buying in the first place. Right? So like, again, let's raise that bar. So the things that I would prefer to leave out of our marketing are those things that are just there to raise someone's cortisol, like saying, this opportunity ends tomorrow, if you don't get this now, where is your life going to be? Would you rather have this opportunity? Or would you rather have this? Those things that just don't even respect people's intelligence. Like if you see those like, pop ups, where it's like, 'Would you like to save 10% today?' And then it's like, No, thanks, I hate savings, s--- like that, where it's like, come on like that. Nobody thinks like that. So, you know, just it's very easy to list these things. Like I say, price stacking, where no one is going to believe. And here's the thing. I'm going in a million different directions here. Ten years ago, when we were seeing the ship for the first time, we were like, Wow, that's amazing. I'm getting a $500. Or like, I'm sorry, this program is worth $50,000, I'm getting it for $500. What an absolute deal, right. But after you've seen that, like 10 times a week for like five years, you don't believe it anymore. So that's where we are, like your consumers are jaded. They are intelligent that like we're just more sophisticated. So something like price stacking, like, we're just not there anymore. The bar is just higher, right? We're assigning false value when these things are not sold retail price. So we're just like making a value based on how how much we think our time is worth or how much we think we could sell this for when we've never actually sold this thing or it is actually not purchased at this price. Nobody's actually buying it at this price, right. And we're just making this wildly inflated value for this thing and then saying but you're getting it all for this low low price. So that's what I mean by value stacking, creating this false urgency and scarcity where there actually are not limited seats on your webinar and there is no limited space inside your program. This is a one to many and there is no capacity for this product, where we are not about to sell out. Where there is no deadline on pricing or on a bonus or on a thing right, where the only point in having that countdown timer or having that deadline is to force someone to buy out of anxiety out of not missing, out of that FOMO, when the reality is we're already so f---- stressed that if something stresses us out more, we're just going to click out of it and we're not going to sit there and pull out our credit card. You know those big lifestyle claims saying something can change your life. We have tried enough solutions that did not change our life that we now know this is not going to change our life not even the 52-mood pills that are prescribed to me that I take change my life. But they do make my depression better. They do make my anxiety better. They do make my ADHD better you know what I mean? Like my medication does not say this will change your life, but it will say this will make you not so suicidal. This will make you not want to kill your family right, like all of all of these things. So our programs our products should not promise the same. We know that your PR program is not going to all of a sudden make our entire lives better, but it is going to change this one area of our business that will also probably have an impact on other things. Let us make that connection play. Let us play inception right. We have seen the claim and we have already disproven them with other solutions we've tried. So you making them again, just discredits yourself that like, again, like the big lifestyle stuff we know. We know how filters work. We know how easy what happens when you zoom out. And we see that like you're not actually at an Airbnb in Bali, but you're sitting in front of a green screen at a hotel, right? Like, we know how this stuff works. I mean, we talked about, literally, we talked about your your webinar, like waiting until the very end to do the pitch and kind of making it feel like a bait and switch. Anything that you're doing that makes your reader I mean, almost kind of the gotcha journalism, right? The things that are meant to stress them out, to trick them to get them in the door, and then kind of tried to like sneak something else in front of them. It just doesn't work. They're just smarter. And the numbers will still show on the big scale that those things work. Like yes, the people who are making millions doing this 10 years ago, are still making millions. They're probably making a couple million less than they were 10 years ago. But like, yes, these things still work. But the pendulum is swinging. It is swinging. And I hear it every single day. And we see it in the market research. And we see it in the numbers. So like if you want to be riding the wave into what's coming next and you want to be having positive conversations with your audience, and you want to be ahead of the curve and you would like to not be left behind and you would like to not look gross. And I highly suggest you start respecting your audience's intelligence and start speaking to them the way you'd like to be spoken to in marketing.
Gloria Chou 15:58
Amen, sister, I mean, just really quickly, just to give our audience a little rundown of like, the changes that I've made in my business, thanks to you, is telling people at the beginning that yes, a pitch will be coming at the end to take the next step and revealing what that price is. And I think for a lot of people, this is still really kind of like, whoa, like, it's like, why would you do that? But it actually works. And I tested it. It just felt so right. And so when you told me to do that, I did it. And like no one really left, like maybe a few people left the room. But most people were like, thank you so much for telling me and treating me with respect and like knowing what's coming. Right. I love that. I also love that you told me to get rid of the value stack. So I stopped doing that. And then like, I just love what you said about not creating a sense of urgency from a place of missing out. Right. So you can still create urgency. I don't think you're saying that urgency is inherently bad. Like we know that people want to be incentivized to make a decision. But the intention of what you're doing is has to become coming from a place of service. And, you know, we all see the world marketers with their jets, and they're discussing bags and selling us this life. And yes, they are still making a lot of millions of dollars. But I also think they're getting sued. And people are really upset that the claim of the lifestyle that they're selling is not really living up to what they're what they're tricking people into buying. So I don't really think it's working anymore. And I think if you actually look into the numbers, I bet you their profit margins are just getting lower and lower and lower. Because like you said, so many people are so sick and tired of this messaging.
Brittany McBean 17:30
Yeah, well, and if you can't find the negative stuff about them, it's because they pay to have the internet scrubbed. And because what their consumers don't know is that when they sign up for their programs, they sign a non-disparagement clause. And the second they write a bad review, or the second they go on Reddit and say, Oh, actually, I bought their program and it wasn't very good. Or actually I interacted with this person and they were an a-----, then that gets scrubbed. And that person gets sent a cease and desist letter. You know, like-
Gloria Chou 18:01
That is crazy. I have not heard about that at all.
Brittany McBean 18:03
Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and name names, because I'm not interested in.
Gloria Chou 18:07
But I think we all know who these people are. Yeah.
Brittany McBean 18:09
But Gloria, it's really interesting. I'm not here to fully argue this point. Because I think that there's absolutely room for all of this. And I think that every business owner has to do what feels best for them. But like, I consistently hear this conversation of people have to have that deadline. People have to have some urgency and scarcity. People have to be incentivized. Marketing research still says that that is true. Psychology research does not. And we often spin marketing research and psychology research and that is wholly irresponsible, and very inaccurate. I'm not saying you were doing that at all. I'm saying marketers do that a lot. You are absolutely not doing that. My husband works in the field of addiction and recovery. I would also like to be very clear that I am not making a parallel between therapy, recovery and psychology and marketing. But I would like to share some research that I think speaks to what I, how I approach my work. So anyway, he works in the field of addiction recovery. He's been in that work for about 15 years. And I'm going to talk a lot about how people make changes how people make decisions, how people make hard decisions, how people move into the next chapter of their life, and how they take hard steps. And a lot of times, and so the work that I do, the work that I do, if that makes me sound really important. It's just marketing. It's not that important. But the people that I work with are a lot of times people who have online courses or programs or coaches, or are often selling to someone who is looking to make a change. So they are often working with someone who is looking for a solution that is going to represent a big change in their life. It doesn't have to be a really expensive one, but it's a big change in their life. So this is getting kind of like third degree of separation. But when I am writing for my clients, we are speaking to someone who is looking to make a change. And so these are the conversations my husband and I have a lot. And my husband is a great nerd. He's only interested in data and research and like not emotions, and very, very objective. And so like I'm the one who's I'm very subjective, like I feel like this, he's like feelings. Feelings matter. He's he's very, very empathetic, but he's like, but data and research. So we talked about this a lot. So research shows that people make change faster, and more sustainably. So like they make a faster change decision. And they sustain that change, when they have less pressure and more autonomy. And so in the world of recovery, what this looks like, when you see someone in like a high pressure situation, like an intervention, and not all interventions are done this way. But like, if someone is in a situation where their family is sitting them down, and they're like, you're hurting all of us, and you need to change and we don't like you this way, and you here's an ultimatum, and you have this or you have to get out, and it's all of this and they are going to become defensive, they're going to become resistant, they are going to dig their heels in and they are going to they're less likely to enter into recovery, or, or a action that might be that might be better for them or their health. But when someone who might be in the middle of a substance use disorder, sits down with someone who says, How do you feel about how your life is right now? How do you feel about how things are going? I felt great. Things are great. Okay, so these are these are the conversations that my husband and I have with with full confidentiality. I just asked him to play these things out for me. So it kind of goes like this. So he would say to someone, how do you feel about how your life is going? My life is going great. Amazing. So your drinking isn't affecting your life at all right now? Well, no, I I'd actually like to see my kid a little bit more, but I can't. Okay, so you're drinking is affecting your life? Well, yeah, a little bit. Well, what do you want to do about that? Well, I'd like to stop drinking. Okay, so what do you think needs to change for that to happen? Well, I think I'd like to get sober. Okay, so what could that look like? And then the conversation goes like that. And typically for him, by the end of an hour long conversation, that person has made a plan for sobriety and with the people that he engages with those people enter into a sobriety plan and get and stay sober at a rate that is very, very different than other sobriety. modalities and therapeutic modalities. I'm getting way off track here. I can get more technical, if any of your listeners are interested look up a modality called motivational interviewing, it is all about having a having a conversation style that emphasizes a person's autonomy, and enters into a spirit of collaboration. But that is what I do with marketing, I am interested in having a conversation with a reader. It's obviously one way because we are writing to them. We're not having a one on one conversation, where we are entering in the conversation with a spirit of collaboration. We are asking them to bring their ideas to the to the conversation, to give them autonomy and to have them make a decision that is in their best interest rather than us saying, The time is running out, the pressure is on it's now or never. If you don't make this decision now you're never going to get better. They will make a decision faster, they will make a more confident decision and they will stay committed to that decision when they have more autonomy. And when they stay committed to that decision. That means you have more success stories. You have better testimonials. You have better case studies. They're spreading the word. You've better social proof and social proof does a lot better than any copy that I can write. So I prefer to give people autonomy over urgency.
Gloria Chou 24:02
Yeah, I love that so much. I mean there's so many things to unpack here. But just in the journey of me dismantling my own internalized capitalism, and this constant pressure of more, more is better, right, which is what we're told. I've seen the ways where I've also, you know, bought into that. And I will say that after working with you, my launch actually went even better. You would think that taking away all those scarcity, things would not make people to make a decision, but it actually went better than before. So I am an actual like case in point of how this actually works, right? When you, so it's like PR is not going to change your life, but it's going to drastically change the way that you feel about yourself, and how confidently you can put yourself out there. And the ripple effect of that is going to be transformational in different ways. So I do love what you said about that, too. It's like these big claims seem very fluffy and non-specific. But if you can really pinpoint, like, what exactly are they building? They're building a skill. They're building a mindset, like that's actually tangible for me. So I really do love what you said about that. And I'm very wary too, if I'm going on someone sales page and they make really big claims without any specificity of what is it that I'm really gaining? Is it content? Is it tools? Is it skill set? Like what what is that? Right? So I really do think that and I also, I want to talk about testimonials, because I know like you have, you've seen things about testimonials? How do we discern like which testimonials are actually accurate? Because everyone can have a really great testimonial, right? But then their program was like absolutely, yes. So how can we like as consumers be alerted to like, you know, which testimonials we should look at? And how much weight to give to it?
Brittany McBean 25:42
Yeah, so it's really important to know how people perceive your messaging. And one thing that we do sometimes is run user tests on either our clients work, or sometimes I'll just do it on just general marketing, like how are people perceiving just marketing, and sometimes it's like, people's marketing that I hate. Because I just want an objective view, right? I'm like, do I hate this? Because I'm me, and I just have opinions or like, how do people feel about this? It's really, really interesting, because just the average consumer. So when you do user testing, you can't, you can kind of get down to like demographics, but not like, not like it's super, super targeted, just like women ages, like 25 to 35, or something like that, right. But like, you can hear like a recording of somebody going through a sales page, like I did this on a male marketers sales page that a lot of people would know, not, don't have a ton of respect for, but just would represent your average, typical, traditional marketer. And it was just fascinating. I'm gonna start this over again. When the viewer got to the testimonials, they were just saying things that it would never have occurred to me just because I'm in this world, but they were saying, like, oh, this person was probably paid to say this. Like, how do we even know this person was real? They probably just grabbed a stock image. And if this person is real, they're paid for this. Whereas for me, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, the things that I'm worried about is like, is this the average testimony, I would be thinking, the reader is thinking like, oh, this person's probably really special. Whereas the reader is like, this person isn't even real. Somebody made up this testimonial, or this person was paid for, like, there's so much more skeptical. Yeah. So when we're looking at what social proof we feature, first of all, in terms of messaging, the purpose of social proof, it is proof, proof of evidence. You are backing up a claim. When you make a claim, you use social proof, to prove the claim you just made. So on Gloria's sales page, when we say we have a list of 1000s of, a proprietary list of 1000s of journalists, that you can't get anywhere else, we're going to have a testimonial that says, I can't find this information anywhere else. I've googled and these journalists' names aren't anywhere. Or when we say this is so easy-to-use. All you have to do is type in blah, blah, blah, and you get a customized list. And we're going to have a testimonial that says, I spent hours trying to find these journalists and I get more confused. I have all these things, right. So when we say this, like our pitching method, it makes pitching so easy. Then we're going to have social proof that says I was writing pitches for years that kept getting rejected. And then the second I use Gloria's method, all of a sudden, we knew exactly what to write. And we started getting our pitches responded to. We started getting pitches accepted. You know, we are backing up specific claims. We're not just making generic social like I got into 1000s and hundreds. And when we say our clients have been featured in these big publications, and we've gotten in front of millions of views, then we can have that, like, I've gotten featured in front of all these people and million publications over. Right. Right, exactly. And yes, it can be exciting to show the potential, but the majority of what you want to show is the average of what is possible. And you really want to show what is the most likely next win for them? What is the closest minimum viable win to where they are, where if they bought this product, or joined your program, or hired you tomorrow, where could they be next month because that is believable. If they want a six figure business, then make your testimonials all about their first $3,000 month or $5,000 month right and have a couple testimonials or case studies about their first $10,000 months. It has to be believable, and they have to see themselves in it. Otherwise, it's just another reminder of what a failure they are. Because we have no self-esteem. We are just like buckets of water with anxiety. That is all we are as people. That is what social proof is. That is what it is for. And it is highly unbelievable. So if you can have a first name, a last name, a picture, a website, anything that they can Google to prove that this person is real. If there are typos in their testimonial, leave it. Leave it slang. Leave it. The more imperfect it looks, the more believable it is. Because if they can assume that you paid for it, or you wrote it, or it's too good to be true, or it could never be them. Then they will assume that.
Gloria Chou 30:49
Yeah, we have like hundreds of screenshots. But I don't know if we should just because it kind of like messes up with the aesthetic, but I really agree with you. Yeah, I rather like that and like keep it clean, because I've just we just have so many. So I like how how you affirm that.
Brittany McBean 31:05
Yeah, well and like conversion rate optimization and user experience is super important on the sales page or a landing page. And so it is really helpful to have those quotes pulled out from a design perspective, because they can like grab someone's eye. But and yes, like a designer can doctor up a screenshot, right? Like, please don't. That's dishonest. But like, it's all about their first impression. Like what do they first think? And someone is less likely to be skeptical of a screenshot, those are huge. And having that poll quote, out with an image next to it is going to like grab someone's attention as well.
Gloria Chou 31:44
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I love what you said about having them have different lived experiences and see themselves because my audience is 95% women of color. So, and I know you know this too, because you know, for you, it's such an important part of your journey and your identity too is diversity and inclusion. When we see someone's sales page or even on their Instagram, and we all know that people are and they say, oh, DE&I is a top priority for me. But then I look at the last ten people they interviewed on their podcast, I look at their Instagram and they're girl besties. Right.
Brittany McBean 32:14
Jesus. I mean, like, that's the thing, if you're backing something up, if you're like, I'm all about, like DE&I and then it's just like white woman, white woman, white woman, white woman, or like white male white. Like, you're not backing up that claim. Um, but you know, I mean, that's actually something. That's something I struggle with. Something I talk a lot about. And I also know like, I'm not, I'm not an anti-racist educator. I'm not a historian, like it is not my responsibility to take that work away from those who are. And I am someone that a lot of white people who want to do better, but are a little scared to try to do that publicly because they're afraid of the backlash. They feel comfortable coming to me and saying, like, I don't know what this looks like, can we work together? So like, I do have a lot of case studies and testimonials from a lot of white people because, yeah, part of my work is like redistributing wealth, and writing words that put money in the pockets of people who have historically not had money thrown at them before. That's really important to me. And then the other part of it is helping people with large platforms have messaging that is safe and have Words and community that is not furthering harm. And it's kind of, you know, like, we have that conversation of like, white people, like, get your white people, you know, and I take that very seriously. That's been a real mindf--- for me that I didn't initially see coming, you know. I had to kind of look back at like my client roster, and I was like, I have a lot of white dudes on here, who are really f----like really like and respect, who, in the past, maybe weren't doing so great. They are really open to listening, and hearing, and doing something different, and are really open to, to doing better. So I don't know. Maybe social proof isn't always, it's not always 100% Science.
Gloria Chou 34:57
Yeah, I love the energy that you're bringing to the table. And I also think it's about accessibility. So I think we do. we can have our higher tier things. But it's all about like making people feel seen, right. So one of the things I did, and we talked about is adding those monthly PR workshops that are like mastermind level calls, at no additional cost. And I think as long as I can still make it accessible, that I still will be allowed, you know, to make, to do the work that I want to do in communities that I do want to work in. So I want to switch gears on my last question. Of course, I cannot have you leave this podcast episode without asking you about PR for service providers. Right. So in our PR Starter Pack community, we have about 60% product owners and 40% coaches and service providers like yourself. So how has organic PR not ads, not dancing on social media, how has it helped boost your business and the way you think about your business?
Brittany McBean 35:45
Yeah, my social media is a joke. I mean, it always has been, like I just I just don't have time or energy or care to do it. It wasn't intentional. It wasn't intentional for me. But PR visibility publicity is where all of my client lead gen comes from as a premium service provider. And so that is what I teach. I teach other copywriters how to do what I do. When I started my copywriting business, which has now turned into my agency about four years ago, and very quickly knew that I wanted to do premium work. It was very important to me to do something quality and high-end and work with people who wanted a premium experience. And yes, that comes with a high price tag. But it really was about providing a really high quality experience and a high quality product. And so our average client contract is $30,000. And that is not a drop in the bucket at all. But that also means that like, I'm probably not going to be getting a lot of inquiries in DMS and on social media, and I've never once gotten a client off social media. If everyone's gotten a client from my email list. I don't think that for, like scalable offers need scalable audiences, social media and email lists are scalable. Like when you have a scalable offer, a digital offer, a one to many offer, that is where you go for the scalable audiences. That's not what I have. I need five to 10 clients a year. That's all we have capacity to work with. That's not false urgency, or scarcity. Like that's all we have capacity to work with. So the majority of my clients when they inquire and we say where did you hear about us? They say I heard you on this podcast, and that we just kind of fell into like, I started doing podcast interviews. I'm really early on just because I love to hear myself talk. And I just liked the idea of like, kind of workshopping my perspective of on my industry and what I do and and started talking about how I approach messaging and how I approach writing the launches and the funnels and our process and the research and how we advocate for our clients' audiences and how we kind of overhauled our messaging and how we do the strategy and all of that and started getting these inquiries and have somebody say, 'Oh, I heard you in this one podcast.' And then I basically Googled you at iTunes, and then binge all of your other podcasts. And by the time I was done, I knew I had to inquire. So that became a huge part of our quote unquote, marketing strategy for the client side of our business. So I don't have a marketing budget for the client side of our business. I've never run ads. Like I said, I've never gotten a client for my email list. Not not ever, not once. never gotten the client off social media, never in the DMS. I do podcasts, and sometimes it's through pitching. It's almost always through pitching But lately, I've been very lazy. And I've been doing the very lazy pitch and just you know, talking to friends and saying like, Oh, have you ever had this on your podcast? Or hey, can you introduce me to this person? I've been doing a much more lazy pitch this year, because I'm tired, burnt out. But yeah, I have been and that was a big surprise to me at first, but it's what I've taught because I've learned that those premium clients, the people who do have that budget and the people who are when their priority is quality, when their priority is experienced when their priority is ROI, and they are not interested in chasing their service provider down. They are not interested in paying their team to follow up. They are not interested in late deliverables. They are not interested in just having copy turned over at the end of the day. And when they need their campaign to perform an outperform the control, and they need strategy. And they need a high level partner. They are looking for an expert, a strategist, a partner, and they are willing to pay a premium for it. And they are not typing in copywriter and Instagram and seeing who's dancing. That's not where they're finding. They are looking for somebody who has a degree of authority and credibility attached to their name. And you know, as well as I know that sometimes that comes in the form of referrals, sometimes that comes in the form of logos and media platforms. And that's as good as or for all.
Gloria Chou 40:06
I love that too, especially with TikTok like might be banned. It's so volatile. I am. You know, it's so funny. Like the coaches that I follow. And people I truly respect they don't really have a lot of social media followers. So it just goes to say, you don't really need social media followers to have a successful thriving business and make impact. And the fact that you can buy like a blue checkmark, it's just like, it's comical, right? Because so many people are like, oh, I want to, like pay to play this. And this is why PR gets such a bad rep. And this is the work I'm trying to do is to dismantle all of those years of this, like terrible marketing and terrible pay to play scams, where it's like, pay me for this arbitrary, you know, blue check where like, now everyone can get it. So it just I'm just like laughing about that. And I'm so glad that you did take the organic route and you're not falling for those gimmicks and things that really don't maximize your time because you're busy. You're mom. You have a business like I know we have much better things to do than to pray to the algorithm gods hoping that they'll like our dancing reels.
Brittany McBean 40:58
Well, Gloria. What you teach is just so unbelievably powerful. And it's so hard because I think so many early business owners, or maybe people that are still like, waiting for that, that big break, or the thing that they feel qualifies them, which is just such a logical fallacy. It's such a logical fallacy, but the people that are still waiting for that, like that qualifying event, they think that they need that metaphorical blue checkmark, whatever that f--- thing is that they think qualifies them to the rest of the world. And yet, every single week, you have these journalists on that are like, don't send me a goddamn pitch that tells me that gives me your resume and tells me all of the accolades you've had, I don't give a s--- about you telling me the value you have to offer my audience, you know, and I think it's just it's such an equalizer to remember that. We don't need to have this resume. We don't need to have this massive pedigree of accomplishments or experience or stages or whatever that thing is. We just need to have something that we know that matters right now, that we can be like that relevancy, that point of view that we can bring to the table. And I get so encouraged listening to those journalists who are like, don't come in with your ego. Because we think we need the ego, we think we've had to have earned it. And you're just saying, the only thing you have to earn is like the right to show up and great news, you're human. You've earned it. Like your your worth is intrinsic. It's there. Like you've already you've already done it, write the damn pitch and send it in. And I think that's so powerful for people who are sitting, still sitting around, like waiting for someone to qualify them. And what we're learning is yeah, all those people that you think you're supposed to be, we hate all this. This is the pitches that get thrown in the trash.
Gloria Chou 42:58
You know, I love that. I think that's gonna be the next iteration of the sales page that we work on. 'Cause you know, because obviously, we're kicking the imaginary gate of gatekeepers, but I do feel like after people watch my masterclass, I got a DM the other day and someone said, you know, 'I never thought I had anything to say.' And then she tells me she has this crazy story about Ms. and like her immigrating to this country. And she's like, I didn't realize that that was like interesting or special to anyone. And I was like, that is this work that we have to do in this lifetime. It's like somehow we have to wait to have permission until our story feels validated to tell like she was like shocked. She was like I thought nobody wants to hear anything about me.
Brittany McBean 43:33
And then meanwhile, the journalist is like sitting there staring at their inbox or like I have a deadline please with the next email that comes in being the interesting one right there. Like the like the bias is in your favor. They're like, please, please be the interesting story I want to write you know, and I think yeah, nobody needs like the power given to them. But you're the one that's just like, if you need permission here it is like, the door is open. The gate is open, like that matrix isn't real. Things are not how you think they are. And it's just, it's just context and perspective, you know, and it's so easy to sit in our bubble and be like, No, but it's this. Like, it really isn't. It really isn't that.
Gloria Chou 44:13
Yeah, and this is why this work is sacred. And you helped me realize that too, because I think when we first started working together, it was like, get PR for your business, like grow your business, make more money. But now I realize like this is confidence building stuff. This is dismantling years of conditioning, where we feel like someone else says it better that someone else is more ready. And I think that just opens up so much access for people who have been disenfranchised and left out of the conversation. So thank you for helping me see that that that is truly the work that I'm doing.
Brittany McBean 44:41
But what made what made your project so powerful, and what made it so effective is, there's Seth Godin said, don't make customers for your products, make products for your customers. And what that means is like, don't try to make fetch happen, right? Don't sit around and be like, what's the fastest way to get rich, quick? Make a product, go on Shark Tank and be like, Look, everybody wants to buy this sit around and say, what's going on? Who are my people? What do they need? And you didn't come to me and say, Hey, how can we make all this money with PR? You we're like, this is my successful business. This is my validated offer. Let's like go all in on the messaging, right? And so we looked into it, like 75% of my audience is black women. The rest of them are first generation immigrants, single mothers, like historically emerge marginalized people, you know what I mean? Like, there was no 'Okay, I want to jump on the DE&I bandwagon.' It was. This is who is there. This is who is actively there who has already shown up, who we are already serving, who you're already helping, who is already benefiting from this work? How do we speak to them? And how do we make sure that those people, not those people, that sounds terrible? How do we know that the people that we are already serving know that this is for them? And that's how you do messaging. That's how you do marketing. And that's why your messaging, your copy, your funnel was successful, right? Because you said, what are we already doing? And then how do we pour fuel on that fire? And that's how you do marketing.
Gloria Chou 46:14
I love that. Well, I'm so excited to work with you again. And I respect the work that you're doing as well. And how can people find you because I know they want to learn from you. You have so many things that we didn't even cover in this podcast episode, messaging, coffee, headline formatting, how can people get into it?
Brittany McBean 46:31
I joke that I'm terrible on social media, which is true. I never post that I am in my DM. So feel free to pop over and say hi, and just say you, you heard me here, so I know where you're coming from. But I post on YouTube every other week. I'm doing every other week now because I'm trying to stay sustainable, potentially get back to every week. And feel free to hop on my email list. I'm always sharing something somewhere to hop on my email list. We can link drop something in the in the show notes if that's helpful. But yeah, just pop into my DMs and say hi, we can chat.
Gloria Chou 47:02
Yay. So is it brittanymcbean.com? Or how can people find you?
Brittany McBean 47:06
Yeah, brittanymcbean.com. And then if you just scroll to the bottom, you can get on my email list right there. So yeah, really, DMS, YouTube, website. Those are the easiest places.
Gloria Chou 47:16
We'll link it to the show notes. Thank you, Brittany.
Brittany McBean 47:18
Thanks, Gloria.
Gloria Chou 47:22
Hey, small business hero. Did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, The New York Times, Marie Claire, Pop Sugar and so many more, even if you're not yet launched, or if you don't have any connection? That's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR Secrets masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods 1000s of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought after industry expert. Now if you want to land your first press feature, get them a podcast, secure a VIP speaking gig or just reach out to that very intimidating editor. This class will show you exactly how to do it. Register now at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass. That's Gloria Chou c-h-o-u pr.com/masterclass. So you can get featured in 30 days without spending a penny on ads or agencies. Best of all, this is completely free. So get in there and let's get you featured.