Post Updated [March 9, 2023]
Have you ever felt overwhelmed or stumped when it comes to copywriting for your business? Perhaps writing just isn’t your forte, or you’re used to speaking in health jargon or scientific terms that only another practitioner would resonate with? If you’re nodding your head “yes”, then this session with Michelle Leotta, Practicing Health Coach & Business Mentor, is for you! Uncover the best copywriting practices for health and wellness practitioners in this exclusive Business Building Conversation.
Michelle dives into effective copywriting strategies for emails, blogs, and social media that will help you sell your signature program. Michelle’s tips for copywriting are simple, tangible, and easily implemented in your business right away. You don’t need to be a copywriting pro to effectively market and sell your business. You’ll leave this session feeling confident that you have the formula you need to find the right words.
In order for a client to resonate with your offering and be willing to pay for your services, they must understand exactly how you can help them. And to understand how you can help them, they must be spoken to in a way that meets them where they are, but also feels genuine and engaging. That’s where copywriting comes in. Using effective copy will help your client feel seen and understood, as well as keep their attention— two essential components of selling your offerings.
One of the best copywriting practices Michelle recommended was mining for language, as this will help you speak in your client’s words in your copywriting. To facilitate this in Practice Better, you can simply search the platform (using the search bar at the top) for keywords in areas such as your session notes or forms, or you can pull a Form Response Summary report which will generate a visual word cloud for any short or long response questions.
In order to generate form responses, Michelle recommends embedding a form question as part of the opt-in for any freebies or lead magnets you offer. You can ask a question such as “what is going on in your life right now that prompted you to download my [Insert freebie title]?” and the responses to this question can provide you with a great resource for mining language.
Facilitate the form response in Practice Better by creating a simple form with one question, and adding it as a booking page form to any of your services, packages, or programs (this could be done for a free offering like Michelle suggested, or even a paid service or program—you can survey your paying clients for feedback). Then, once you receive some responses, you can pull the Form Response Summary report mentioned above to generate a visual cloud of helpful words and phrases, right from your client’s mouths! Pulling this report helps you save time and streamline your copywriting process, as you can easily use it as a reference any time you need to write new copy for your signature coaching program or service.
Each month, our Business Success Coaches, host an interactive BBC YouTube Live, bridging together expert advice and Practice Better technology. Take a moment to watch the session with Michelle below.
Video Duration: 39 minutes
https://youtu.be/Gq0cLL7-URk
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Michelle Leotta has been featured on ABC, CBS, NPR, and in the movie “Lemonade” with her inspiring story of burnout recovery. She has spent the past 13 years as a practicing, certified health coach and a mentor for health coaches, a presenter at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and host of the Health Coach Power Community podcast and Facebook group.
Connect with Michelle: Website | Instagram
Download your free Copywriting Worksheet that Michelle references during her talk; you can start to work on it when following along.
In this BBC session, we covered how to use copywriting to sell your signature program. But what if you don't quite have a signature program yet? Join Michelle’s FREE 5-day challenge and she’ll help you create your very own.
Jen:
All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome back once again for another edition of our Better Business Conversations with Practice Better. I am Jen, Community Manager with Practice Better. And today I am joined by our friend and very special guest, Michelle Leotta. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Leotta:
Hi, thanks for having me back.
Jen:
Yeah, we're so happy to have Michelle back. It's funny, we were just saying before we hit record that Michelle was our first BBC session that's up on our YouTube channel. So, definitely check that one out too, but we're excited to learn from you, Michelle, again today. And you're going to be talking to us all about copywriting to sell your signature program, email blogs and social media. It’s such a hot topic, copywriting. I know our community's just going to love this so much. Before I let you dive in, I just wanted to give a little bit of an intro to Michelle in case anyone in our community might be new to you. I know we talk about you quite a bit, so they're probably familiar, but for anyone who is new, Michelle is a practicing health coach and business mentor.
She's been featured on ABC, CBS and NPR, as well as in the movie Lemonade with her inspiring story of burnout recovery. Michelle has spent the past 13 years as a practicing Certified Health Coach while also acting as a mentor for health coaches, a presenter at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, as well as the host of the Health Coach Power Community podcast and Facebook group. So Michelle just has such a wealth of knowledge and experience, and we're so grateful to have the opportunity to learn from you again today, Michelle. So I'll hand it over to you and let's dive in.
Michelle Leotta:
Okay. Yes, before we jump right into copywriting, I got to tell you, earlier today I was working out in my basement and I have this morning routine. I'm sure we all have our morning routines. Mine involves some crazy headstands wearing ankle weights apparently. And that's what I do before coffee, before I'm checking in with my Healthy Profit University members or the Facebook group with all my ... any of that stuff. It all waits until after the morning routine. And in my house the basement floor is a little bit sloped like this. Just a little bit, just enough to be annoying when you're in a headstand and actually went right over today and crashed onto the floor. So if I'm standing a little bejankety, that's why. I just wanted to get that out the way.
Jen:
Oh my gosh.
Michelle Leotta:
We're good. Not hurt, not hurt. Just like a little, but we'll be good.
Jen:
Yeah, maybe walking a little sideways today.
Michelle Leotta:
Maybe, maybe. I need to move my mat to the other part of the basement that's more flat, that's what I need to do. Tomorrow. Okay, I just told you a story and it's a true story, but it was a story. And from that story now, Jen, now all of you know that I'm into fitness. I have a morning routine. It involves ankle weights. You know that I work with health coaches. You know I run a program called Healthy Profit University and you know that my basement, the floor is not really perfect and neither am I, because I fell on my butt today. And I told you a story because it is so much more interesting than if I was just like, "Hello, let me tell you about my credentials and how happy I am to be here today." I am happy, but that is not the point. Here's what we're going to cover today. First, what the heck is copywriting? And how is it different from writing, or any other kind of writing in the world?
Then I'm going to show you exactly what words you want to be using in your marketing—and this part's going to blow your mind—and then we're going to talk about how to get over the fear of the blank page. I'll give you my tried and true recipe for writing just about any marketing copy, like longer form copy emails, blog posts, those long social media posts, whatever. And then I'm going to give you a couple quick tips to make your writing as effective as possible. Now, I also have something for you to help you practice what we're talking about today. Because copywriting is something you really do need to practice. So I put together a Google Doc Worksheet to help you through today's lesson, and you don't have to give an email address or anything like that. It's freely available. So I want you to go get it now at healthcoachpower.com/pbcopy. So go grab that. You can use it as we move along here.
Before I became a certified health coach, Jen mentioned I've been doing this for a while, so this was 13 years ago, I actually worked in the creative department at the big ad agencies. So my clients were Volkswagen and Royal Caribbean and Ocean Spray and…McDonald's also—didn't like that part too much. But no matter what you're selling, you might be a health coach, you might be a nutritionist, whatever kind of practitioner you are—this even goes for industries outside of health and wellness. Whether you're selling nasty, greasy, awful hamburgers or you're selling your own signature package, one thing remains the same: good copywriting makes sales happen. There's so much beautiful writing in the world. I have books and books and books downstairs of all kinds. There's Emily Dickinson poems. There's Bob Dylan songs. All these things, it's all written.
And we write every day, we're text messaging our friends or our clients or, whatever we're doing, we're always writing. But that's not the same as copywriting. So when you hear copywriting—we have copywriters in the ad agencies—copywriting is writing that's done for the sake of your marketing. It's writing that's intended to ultimately create a profit, create sales. So in the case of health and wellness practitioner like all of us, we are writing with the end goal of signing clients into our program. Now, speaking of that program, as a marketer, as a copywriter, your own very own copywriter, you have to know, you really have to know who you're selling to and what problem you're helping that person solve. Because it's going to make a huge difference in what words you use. Like I said, this is true across industries—this is not just for health professionals, this is not just for solopreneurs. This is something that the top brands in the world spend probably millions of dollars to hone in on.
Who are we selling to? What is the plan here? What problem are we—or promise—are we giving to these people? What problem are we helping them solve? Every business needs to do this. It comes across very clearly with health practitioners because when we speak or when we write it can sound so generic. If we tell people we're going to help them get healthier, we're going to help them even just lose weight or get their health in order or feel more vibrant, all this stuff just sounds like fluff, because it is. It's just very vague.
So let's do a silly example and let's step away from all the health stuff for a second because sometimes I think it's easier to understand the point when we're not in our silo. So let's say, and I just got back from Florida, Jen and I were talking about it, I just got back from Florida with four boys. Two are mine, two are my boyfriend's. It's a handful, but we were on the beach in Florida. And let's say I was one of the people selling beach umbrellas. So, on my sign or in an ad for my store or whatever I could write, "Buy your beach umbrella. Five colors. Only 19.99."
Okay, but now let's say that I am more focused on a specific type of person that I'm selling these umbrellas to. And I know I'm selling them to midlife women who are worried about their skin aging. Now, I know who they are, I know what their problem is. My copy is going to be so much more effective. Listen to this, "Soak up some beach time while your skin stays smooth. Sun-filtering beach umbrellas in five colors, just 19.99."
Now frankly, when I phrase it that way, I could probably double the price, right? I could probably triple the price. It sounds so much more valuable to the woman who's worried about her skin. It could be the same darn umbrella, but that's the power of marketing copy. You're going to see it all around you. Now you'll just go on Instagram, look at the ads. You're going to see the stuff happening all the time. The words we use matter. So, take a minute now, and in that Google worksheet that I was talking about there's a space for you to jot down some ideas about who are you selling to and what problem do you help them solve? And if you're not sure, that's okay, just do your best for now. Give it a shot, because this is the basis for your copywriting. This is also the basis for any signature program that you'll be writing the copy to sell. So again, if you need that document, it's at healthcoachpower.com/pbcopy.
Okay, you got it? Good. So I'm a mentor for health coaches, but I still have my own private health coaching practice. And in my practice I work with type-A, high-achieving women in their 40s, and I help them deal with the effects of chronic stress. So, I'm seeing a lot of HPA axis dysregulation, a lot of gut health issues, quite a bit of autoimmune disease. So there is an example of knowing exactly who I'm marketing to and what problem I'm helping them solve. So I want to show you how that translates to copywriting now within the health profession.
So let's say that I'm selling my signature program and I need to write some copy for my program page, inside Practice Better. Or I need A headline for a graphic that I'm going to post on Instagram. So it could say, "Recover from stress, regulate your HPA axis and heal your gut." But I am definitely not going to use those words. And maybe you can guess why. These are not the words that my clients would ever use to describe their problem. Certainly not before we work together, even while we're working together. I don't think any of my clients really can remember the phrase, or use the phrase, HPA axis dysregulation. She would never even think, "Oh, it's my gut that needs healing." All she knows is that she's so stressed out, so we're not going to use those words.
What I do hear from my clients is that they're stressed, they're overwhelmed. They've often been diagnosed with anxiety. They're bloated, that word comes up a lot, and they're just feeling meh. So a much, much better headline to use, again, for my Practice Better Program page, my social media, maybe a subject line for an email, "Beat stress, anxiety, bloating, and the blahs."
You see that difference? Now, these are actually her words. This is what she's already thinking in her head. So when she sees it on her screen, she's like, "Yep, that's me. That's what I need." So I'll say the two again, just so you can see the difference. The first was, "Recover from chronic stress, regulate your HPA axis and heal your gut." Those are my words, and they make sense to you because this is practitioner-speak, but again, clients would see it and the words are just going to pass by them like this. They're going to ignore it. It's not going to resonate with them at all. But the second headline, "Beat stress, anxiety, bloating and the blah." That's exactly what she's thinking. That's what she is aware of needing. She's not aware that she needs to heal her gut, right? She just knows that she's bloated.
So big lesson for copywriting in this field always use the exact words and phrases that your clients are using in your marketing copy. Write that down. No, really. I mean, that is gold right there. And that makes your job a bit easier, because you don't have to come up with these clever phrases or really wrack your brains. In fact, I'm going to help you find these words. Like how do you actually know? How do you find those exact words and phrases that your potential clients are using? Here are some ideas, I got a bunch for you. First is, if you've already been working with clients for a while, you can start with your client notes, go into your notebook or wherever you take notes online and see what you've written down from your consultation. See what you're writing down during your actual client sessions. You can also look at emails that you've received from people, clients, anybody who's interested in what you do.
What are they saying to you? What are they saying about their problems? Look in your DMs, your—I'm motioning over here because this is where my phone is—your Instagram DMs, your private messages on Facebook, wherever people again are writing to you saying, "I need your help. I have this problem. Can you help me?" What words are they using? If you have your own online community or if you belong to an online community where your target market is talking about their big problem, then that is also just a field of language that you can pick up and use. If there are books that have been written for this same target market, helping them with the same problem, then you can use what people are saying—not what Amazon says about the book, not that—go to the reviews because that's where you have real people that are going to say, "I picked up this book because blah, blah, blah."
That's what you want to capture. You want to hear them say, and then maybe they had some good results, and how did they describe that? What does it mean for them to find success? You want to pick up their language. And I like looking at the three-star reviews because the five star reviews could be other practitioners, friends of the author, people who were sponsored to write a post, you know how that goes. If you get the one star reviews that tends to be people that are just complaining about how the book never came or whatever, they're just, those are just in left field. But look for the three, four star reviews, those tend to be real people. They're nice and honest with language that you can quite literally copy, paste and use in your marketing. Now there's a place your worksheet where you can collect some initial language that your clients are using or that your potential clients are using, again, that worksheet’s at healthcoachpower.com/pbcopy.
And even if you just kind of did a roll-through today of your client notes or some Amazon reviews, just copy and paste a few things in there. The next time you need to do some writing, you can refer back to it. That's an exercise that you could go to town on, you could be adding stuff to that list of client language for months—don't spend months on it. Don't spend hours and hours and hours, but do spend a little bit of time so you have a bank to pull from when you need to write some words. So that's all mining for language, you're going to mine your own client notes. You're going to mine the Amazon reviews and things like that.
But you can also, and I love this, I've been using this a lot lately, you can create an automated system to collect your prospective client's words with a one-question online form. I'm not talking about this big old SurveyMonkey thing—don't do that. Nobody wants to complete a whole survey. That's not what I'm suggesting and you're not even going to collect very good language if you do it that way. If you're like, "Hey, I have a survey for you." Ugh. First of all, only certain people will spill out the survey. Don't get me started. Don't do that.
But here's the idea. Let's say that I have in my business, I have a downloadable freebie, like a “Stress Less Recipe Book,” something where there's recipes to help lower stress in the body. So this would be something that we're offering to build our mailing list. Some type of free download. I'm sure you have something like this. And if I'm offering my “Stress Less Recipe Book,” I'm going to get these women on my mailing list who know that they're super stressed out. Great, love the strategy. Good, good. That's another lesson for a different day. If you don't have something like that, set it up. But the point is, somebody goes to my webpage. They go, "Yes, I want that." They enter their email address and the recipe book is emailed to them. On the thank you page that suddenly comes up on the screen, that's a great place to embed that one-question form.
And I like using Typeform for this [Editor’s note: you can also set up a form in Practice Better]. You could also use Google Forms or whatever you have. And what happens is that every time somebody downloads the recipe book, they automatically go to that thank you page. They're going to type in their answer to my question and their voice, that answer, their actual words are captured automatically.
I have my Typeform connected to a Google spreadsheet. So when somebody enters their data, boom, it goes straight into the spreadsheet. When I need to know, what are my customers saying? I just go to my spreadsheet. It's so beautiful. So here's the thing: what should that one question say? You just get that one chance. And my suggestion is that it says something like this, "What's going on in your life right now that prompted you to download my ‘Stress Less Recipe Book’?" Or whatever it is that you're giving away. "What's going on in your life right now that prompted you to do this?" Because you know, they're only doing it because they have some kind of problem to solve. So if they were interested enough to give you an email address, there's got to be a reason why. From there you're going to capture exactly what you need to know about this person's big problems and the words that they are using to describe it.
I've also used this technique on waitlist pages. So let's say that I have a program to help, well, I do have a program to help you beat stress, anxiety, bloating and the blahs. And let's say it's not open yet, but if you want to be the first in line, you can join the waitlist, put your email address here. Same thing, boom. You get a thank you page with that question. "What's going on in your life right now that prompted you to add your name to the waitlist?" And you got this gold mine of copy to use from all these people that you know are interested in what you have to offer. So this is how use our customers' voice in our marketing.
That's part of the picture, but I don't want you to forget about also using your voice. It can't be one or the other. Sometimes we use neither. Sometimes we use this generic voice or some voice that we've heard before in other marketing, we definitely don't want to do that. So first, we want to use the customer's voice. Secondly, we want to use our own. And by that I mean, when you're writing anything, your emails, your social posts, whatever, you want to write the way that you speak. I'm in New York, and I grew up around here too, so I'm going to say certain things that somebody who grew up on the other out of the world would probably never say, and that's awesome. You really want your voice to come through when you're speaking—also, when you're writing.
Here's some things to notice about the way that you speak. Most of us, all of us, speak with imperfect grammar. We use slang. We speak in run-on sentences, sentence fragments— there, I just used one. If you are from another part of the world, maybe you speak maybe sort of blend of English and whatever other language you often are speaking in, blending the two together, that's very common. Anyway, the point is your voice will come across if you write the way that you speak. Your marketing copy never wants to sound formal or stuffy. It's like you're speaking directly to me, person-to-person. If you wrote the way you text your friends, you'd be doing better than most of the marketing copy that's out there that's very formal. And please enroll today in my program. You know, that stuff doesn't land.
Sometimes we sit down to write, ugh, like you have a big blog post. You have to write. And you're staring at that blank page and we get all high school English class. I had Sister Karen for my senior year, my AP English class, and man, Sister Karen was about 900 years old, and everything had to have one-inch margins that she would measure with a ruler, and everything had to be double-spaced and pristine grammar. But marketing is not like that. Copywriting is not like that. Sister Karen would hate copywriting. So if we go back to that headline that I shared earlier, "Beat stress, anxiety, bloating and the blahs." What if I had written that for Sister Karen? I would have had to say something like, "Reduce your stress, lower anxiety, minimize bloating, and improve your mood." And that sounds boring, generic. It doesn't even sound trustworthy. It sounds like just it's coming from a generic source. It sounds like somebody's trying to sell you snake oil.
But when I say, "Beat stress, anxiety, bloating and the blahs," it sounds so much like a real person is saying that. So forget the AP English class stuff and write the way that you talk, whether it's a headline, a social media post, an entire email or a blog post. So again, in the worksheet, I have an exercise for you. It's going to help you practice using both your own voice and also your client's words. Check that out, give it a go, and as with anything, practice really makes perfect with this. Nobody is born with perfect copywriting skills, even the best copywriters I know—and I know some of the best copywriters in the business—their first drafts suck. It means draft after draft, headline after headline, the best copywriters in the world will write 50 headlines before they come up with one that's decent. So don't feel bad if when you sit down and you type something, you think, "Oh, that's terrible." That's okay, that's just part of the process.
So let's talk about the emails and the blog post, that longer form copy, because that's kind of a whole other thing when we're writing not just one line but many lines. And now we're talking paragraphs, so long form copy means you need to be able to hold somebody's attention. That's the whole trick with copywriting. It's not like you're writing a textbook and someone has to read it. Nobody has to read your emails—oh my goodness, if they get past the first line before they hit delete, we are lucky. So everything that we've already covered still applies when we're doing longer form copy: you want to know who you're speaking to, you want to use their words, you want to use your voice, but I want to give you a formula to help you put together interesting emails, interesting blog posts, things that people want to read.
There's three parts. So first, you have to know the goal of this piece that you're writing. What action do you want the reader to take? We call this a call to action in marketing—nnd this is marketing copy—so we do always want the reader to do something as a result of reading whatever we've written. And it could be: sign up for our signature program, it would be join our Facebook group, or simply read the next blog post. But before you start writing, you want to think, "What is the business goal? Why am I even bothering to write this?" Don't just write blog posts for the sake of writing blog posts. "I'm writing this blog post and I want the reader to do X, Y, Z." That's the action that we want to take.
Okay. So know that in your head first. Then second, remember how I started today, this whole presentation? I started by telling you how I fell over and I was wearing ankle weights and hurt myself in my basement on the sloped floor. That was a story. It had nothing to do with copywriting, had nothing really to do with today's topic, did it? Well, you need a story. Any story, it doesn't have to be exactly about the topic that you're writing about that day, any kind of anecdote that will capture somebody's attention, that'll be perfect. For this, you also want to keep in mind who you are talking to. So I told a story about my morning routine, my exercise because I know you guys all probably also have a morning routine and do some kind of exercise during the day, right? Read the room.
So when I am writing to my mailing list, for example, for my health coaching practice and I'm speaking to my type-A high achiever clients, and they tend to be well-off financially, they often are childless or they have older children and they appreciate the finer things in life. That's what I know about them. They love hearing about my new designer handbag and they love hearing about my trip to Martha's Vineyard. They're going to be less interested if I tell them a story about something cute that my kids did or how I saved money at the grocery store yesterday. I love a good grocery store challenge, I could shop for a whole week for 100 bucks—that includes organic, okay? But that's not them. That's me, that's not them.
So you want to choose a story from your life that also resonates with your target market. You can also choose a story about somebody else, maybe a client or someone that you know, but keep it personal. It shouldn't just be about some third party, some character, keep it personal. Then connect that story, connect that anecdote to your call to action in some way. You have to create a bridge between the story or anecdote and the action that you want someone to take. So I'm going to say that again. Remember, this is for your emails, this is for your blogging, this is for long social media posts. Longer form copy wants to start with some kind of story—connect to a call to action. The story doesn't have to be long, doesn't have to be complicated. It could be two sentences. It could be like this, "For the 100th time I was so grateful for my Louis Vuitton backpack. It was the perfect size to hold my laptop, an extra sweater and still pass as a personal item on my flight to Portugal."
Okay, that is a two-sentence story referencing things that my target market loves. Designer bags and high-end travel. Like she's in, she saw some of those words and she's like, "I love this." Now, if I wanted to go a little bit longer, of course I could. I could talk about how I almost missed my flight or how I was seated next to an extremely handsome gentlemen. But for right now, we're going to stick to the short version. Now, let's say that the goal of this piece is that I want to get her to sign up for my signature program. We have the story. We know the call to action. Honestly, when I sat down to make up this example for you guys, I didn't even know how it was going to connect.
But I figured it out and you'll get better at this with time. Start with the story, your call to action, and let me show you what I came up with. "For the 100th time I was so grateful for my Louis Vuitton backpack. It was the perfect size to hold my laptop and extra sweater and still pass as a personal item on my flight to Portugal. You know, there was a time I couldn't imagine flying to Europe for a long weekend. Beating stress means that I no longer let anxiety take me down, feel bloated or uncomfortable, or collapse on the couch after work. Instead, I'm able to live the big life that I've always wanted and you can do the same, take the first step towards beating stress, anxiety, bloating and the blahs," and that would probably be a link that takes them to apply for my signature program and take the next step.
Got it? So that was just a quick example, but you can see, I started off with that relatable story that she's interested in. And then I tied it to the call to action. We could do this all day. When I'm in a live session like this with some of my health coaches, I have them shout out random stories from their life and then I have somebody else give me a call to action and on the fly we come up with a way to connect them. That's the interesting part. This takes practice, like I said, but it pays off, because people are going to continue reading what you write.
It's so much more interesting than just starting an email launching into, "Hi, I have a signature program to help with stress. Do you want it?" Nobody's going to read that. They're moving on. So good copywriting—this is what I want you to remember—good copywriting leads to signed clients. That means good copywriting has to get read, which is why it's so important to weave in this element of storytelling and to write in your voice and to write the way that you speak. It's just interesting for somebody and it makes you, as a practitioner, more human. It makes you more trustworthy—you know that whole know, like and trust factor, that goes way up. People can feel your voice, they get to know you that way and it keeps them reading.
Now I have a final copywriting secret to share with you today, and this is something that I learned in the ad agency. If you can say it in five words, don't use six. Do you hear what I'm saying there? Keep it short. And when you do that, each word has to be meaningful. To get there, the secret is editing—edit the heck out of everything that you write. I like to walk away from whatever I have written and come back a day later, or a couple of hours later if I don't have the time to wait a whole day. Come back with fresh eyes and read it like you've never seen it before, and then it's much easier. Start deleting stuff. I'll go, "You know what? That sentence isn't necessary. Take that out. Or this entire paragraph that's going on a tangent? It doesn't help me make my point. I'm going to get rid of it." Or I'll see two thoughts and think, "I could combine that into one sentence." Edit, edit, edit.
And in your worksheet I have an example paragraph that I'm challenging you. See if you can edit it down to as few words as possible while retaining the original meaning of the paragraph. Just give it a try. Editing is every writer's secret—it's the secret weapon. Like I said, nobody just comes out of the gate writing perfect copy. So you're going to write many, many headlines and you're going to edit out the ones that stink and get rid of them until you're left with the best one. When you're writing long form copy, you're going to write and you're going to edit; you're going to write and you're going to edit. So practice on the worksheet, and I think you'll be better able to then do the same thing with your own copy. Again, that worksheet is at healthcoachpower.com/pbcopy. Okay, I'm looking at the time, we've done a lot today. We learned what copywriting is and what it isn't.
Remember, it's all about leading to signed paying clients. Then I gave you some ideas for incorporating the exact right words and phrases into your marketing copy. I shared my tried and true recipe—you got to try this out, you guys, for writing just about any long form copy by weaving in a story. And you got some quick tips to make your copywriting as effective and impactful as possible. You're going to notice that all the work we did today is around selling your signature program. If you're like, "What? Michelle, I don't even have a signature program." I can help you with that, too. You're going to want to go to healthcoachpower.com/pbprogram, and we'll hook you up so that you have exactly what you need to sell to the right target audience.
Jen:
Beautiful. Michelle, thank you so much. That was incredibly beneficial. Wow. I went actually to the worksheet as you were going through it and went through the worksheet myself and yeah, everyone listening in, you got to go get that. It's so great. I just love that some of the things you shared it's just so tangible, like the formula. I think that's so helpful because having something like that where it's like, "Okay, we're looking at the story plus the call to action," that makes it so much more approachable to write this copy when often it can just feel really overwhelming. That formula will also just make the process a lot more quicker and streamlined, which I know our community is obsessed with. Any way we can really streamline our work is just so valuable. So I think that formula was just really, really cool. So thank you for sharing that.
Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, you're welcome. I've even heard of people keeping a note on your phone or something. So whenever you think of a story, you don't even know what email it's going to go into yet, but you can just jot it down. I want to remember that this thing happened or this funny thing happened to me, or it doesn't have to be funny, but whatever, have a little record of it. That can be helpful for when you then need to go write something can look back.
Jen:
That's such a good tip. I love that. And sort of tying into that, what you mentioned at the beginning around sort of mining for language when they're looking for, "Okay, what type of language are my clients speaking?" And actually what came to mind for me is in practice that if anyone listening in is on the platform, they can actually search right from the platform all of their notes and their Form Responses. So if they were say looking for something related to stress, or some commentary from their clients, they could just easily put that in a search and then they can have that really easy process to find some of that language from their clients.
Then I know you also mentioned the idea of having that just one question form, which I thought was genius. They could also facilitate that in Practice Better. They could use our Forms feature and just build it out with just one question and then make it really easy to then go in and search for those responses afterwards. So just a couple things to sort of tie that into the platform too, because I think there's a couple ways that they can do that.
Michelle Leotta:
I didn't even know you could search all the notes like that for a keyword. That's cool.
Jen:
Yeah, yeah, and actually one of the other things I'll mention too is some of our reporting, so you can do a Form Response Summary Report, and then so if they did use, just build a form with one question, they could pull that report and it generates kind of a word cloud and the words that are most often used are bigger and bolded and then there's all the other words floating around. So that would actually be perfect for something like this.
Michelle Leotta:
Who knew?
Jen:
Yeah.
Michelle Leotta:
Who knew?
Jen:
Yeah.
Michelle Leotta:
Because you might think that everyone's using, just as an example, using the words like chronic stress, but maybe the word that really comes up most often is overwhelmed.
Jen:
Yeah, exactly.
Michelle Leotta:
I can see that.
Jen:
Exactly, yeah, yeah. So definitely some ways to sort of facilitate that with the platform.
Michelle Leotta:
Yes, I love it.
Jen:
Love it. Thank you, Michelle so much. This is incredibly valuable as all of the things you share always are with our community. We're so happy to have had you back. And where can our community connect with you if they want to just touch base and learn more, all of that?
Michelle Leotta:
You know what, the best place for anyone to find me is inside of our free Health Coach Power Community Facebook group, and you get there at healthcoachpowercommunity.com.
Jen:
Amazing. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Michelle, for being here once again. Thank you to everyone for tuning in to this episode of Better Business Conversations, and we will see you back for the next one.
Michelle Leotta:
See you, Jen. Thank you.
Jen:
Thank you.
Practice Better is the complete practice management platform for nutritionists, dietitians, and wellness professionals. Streamline your practice and begin your 14-day free trial today.
