One Million Dollar Controls in Copywriting, with Kim Krause Schwalm
Episode 6, Season 2 – Kim Krause Schwalm

 

Welcome to the sixth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Kim Krause Schwalm, a top-a-list copywriter, an “OG” in the direct response arena and a copy mentor who helps copywriters be dangerously good.

If you want to be good at copywriting, this episode is filled with valuable insights to improve writing copy. 

• Kim quit her 6 digit job to become a freelance copywriter. Find out her reasons at 1:29
  
• Why sending emails every day is the BEST? Answers are at 3:08
  
• Two valuable content ideas for daily emails – information and entertainment
  
• Have a hard time coming up with email ideas? Kim shared proven tips at 5:54
  
• The stressors affecting copywriting and the good thing about it is explained in this episode
  
• Why triggering shame in copy is not a good thing? Listen at 11:43
  
• The powerful combination in writing a converting copy is at 12:37
  
• Learn how to write an easy to understand copy package about a complicated topic at 14:33
  
• What is a successful control in copywriting? Check out the details at 19:31
  
• Need help in writing promotions? Get The Ultimate A-List Copywriter’s Promo Checklist! here
  
• “When you do get some wins, you should let people know. I mean, not in an annoying braggy way, but use that as an opening.” – Kim Krause Schwalm
  

Important Links:

 

kimschwalm.com

dailycookie. co

Transcript:

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode





Open Transcript

Voice over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host coined the 10 hour rule of getting results work for at least 10 hours a week on one marketing tunnel. And that rule gets his clients consistent results. Ziv Raviv

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome back to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. So excited to have an interview today with a top a list copywriter. Some of it has been writing for years for decades, and nowadays even trains and mentors, copywriters, and business owners that want to know how to use copywriting. Hello Kim Krause Schwalm. How are you?

Kim:

I’m doing great. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Ziv:

Well, it’s an honor to have you here. You’ve been promoting a lot of free advice online and in your email list, and I really appreciate your generosity and I just love talking about copywriting with people that understand it so well like you. So can you just for the sake of context, just have, give us the one minute version of your journey in copywriting?

Kim:

Well, I was always a marketer who could write copy. I worked for a couple large companies in various marketing roles. I’ve been a brand manager. I was a publisher for publishing company. I actually helped launch and run supplement business. That was a subsidiary. So I’ve always copywriting had, was always a little bit of what I did in the bigger picture. And I actually realized that I was actually kind of good at it and I enjoyed it. And then I saw what freelance copywriters were able to do in terms of working a lot less and earning more than I was in my 50 hour work weeks. And so after I had my first child, I went back to work and I decided, you know what? I think I’m gonna take the leap. And I walked out of my a hundred thousand dollars year job back in 1998 and became a freelance copywriter and just never looked back and it’s worked out really well.

I’ve been able to, I had a couple of children. They’re young adults now, but it was just a really great way to work from home. Have the flexibility still continue my climbing, my career goal, reaching my career goals and, and having a satisfying career. So I’m at a point now where I’m kind of getting my marketing hat back on. I’m not writing as much copy for clients. I’m be teaching and mentoring other copywriters and finding that really gratifying to help people like copywriters and entrepreneurs be able to have the kind of flexible, more rewarding life that they want. So it’s kind of full circle.

Ziv:

So, I think we just dive right into some of the topics that we are passionate about, and we want to know what you think about it. And we’ll start with the million Dollar question, which is how often do you think should people send, should business owners send emails to the audiences?

Kim:

Why honestly, if you do it every day, that is the best. If you can do that would not just email people every day, just for the sake of emailing them, make sure you have something to say something new you wanna share. I’m actually somewhat guilty sometimes of packing so much into my emails. I probably could stretch them out into five or six different emails. So some people find their audience really likes just getting regular short and sweet emails with one idea every day. And, and yes, maybe there’s an offer every day too. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with selling it to your list. I mean, they’re there because they want to be sold to, they want to hear from you. Yeah. I think every day is really the best.

I mean, sometimes you can do two to three times a week. That’s fine. It’s only when you, you step away and you don’t, they don’t hear from you and you only come to them. Maybe when you have something to sell of them, you know, it’s much better to use your list to build that relationship. And in that spirit of giving, you know, sharing demonstrate what you can do with your knowledge or what your business can do for them or the service that you’re offering. And yeah, so that’s how you, I would use it to build relationships and that takes consistency. Whether it’s every day or two to three times a week,

Ziv:

You did mention that you don’t just send an email for the sake of sending it. You actually want to provide some sort of value. What would that look like?

Kim: 

So value and all use quote marks can be anything from teaching something. Maybe it’s demonstrating a concept like here’s some really great headlines and here’s what I do. Here’s my top three tactics that would be like serious value. Right. All the way to the other end of the spectrum could really just be sort of infotainment because people like to be entertained. I mean, I sent out a, a kind of funny tongue and cheek email the other day to my list. And it was strictly to promote an event that I was an affiliate for, but I just had fun with it. And it was people, I got a lot of engagement. I got people emailing me back. You know, people thought it was fun or they had some kind of reaction. So it doesn’t always have to be a serious lesson. So I think there’s a really broad range there, but you want it to feel like it was worth them opening it up, whether they got like a little bit of a laugh or they actually got some kind of value. And

Ziv:

What do you do to like come up with more ideas about your specific audience when you wanna send them some piece of value, either an entertainment piece of, or some teaching, but how do you find ideas for those?

Kim: 

Well, I mean, first off it’s you wanna make sure you really have a good idea who it is that you’re writing to. And for me, because I was that person or have been that person for a couple of decades, it’s, it’s pretty easy. And I also continue to mentor people. So when you have a picture of who your target reader is, or prospect or avatar in your head, and those there, people that maybe you have some regular interaction with, it’s one reason why a lot of times, I like to invite people to email me back with maybe some kind of comment or reaction. I have so many people on my email list that I’ve actually developed relationships with just because we’ve emailed, you know, back and forth. In fact, I went to Hawaii a few months ago and somebody on my email list showed us all around Kauai and gave us this amazing tour and had us to his house for dinner.

Those are the kinds of things that can come out. Just a few little emails with people on your list. But yeah, it’s important to, to really have a picture of who it is you’re writing to, whether it’s somebody on your email list, or if you’re sitting down to write a promo, whether it’s a sales page or direct mail promo, I’ve been known to actually call up and interview people who have bought the product from my clients, I’ve done maybe anywhere from six to 10 interviews completed. And I’ll just call and say, Hey, I’m just, I’m not selling you anything. I’m just when I had a few questions about such and such product, and it’s not so much like market research, it’s really more are getting that picture. Who is this person? So when I sit down to write, I have this picture of Joe from Tennessee and he buys financial newsletters. And here’s why, and kind of that idea of who that person is. So, yeah, I think it’s really important to talk to people and interact with them, not just go on a screen and do all your on online research behind the scenes.

Ziv:

I wonder if there’s someone or something that you think about this world that is like to really dislike, like who is the enemy in your world or the way you see things.

Kim: 

Okay. I think it depends on what I’m selling. So I’ll put my copywriter hat on. I write a lot of copy for the supplement and natural health alternative health industry. So the enemy is often big pharma or big food. You know, they’re putting all this crap in your food and that’s why you’re overweight and it’s not your fault. Or people are seeking better alternatives to costly drugs that are with side effects. So, you know, those are some pretty common enemies with financial copy. It can be the government, right? It can be government regulation. It can be the wall street fat cats who keep all the good stuff to themselves as far as copywriters. I don’t know. I think it’s more people get really anxious about bad clients, right? We all want good clients. We want clients that value copy. There’s a lot of clients. There’s a lot, I’ve heard so many horror stories over the years.

Kim: 

I actually remember going through some of these situations myself, where, you know, you get into a bad situation, some client SIFs you on payment, or they hire you. You send a copy, you never hear anything, you know? So those kind of client nightmares, I think, would be sort of nightmare. Clients are definitely an enemy. Competition. I mean, there’s so much more competition for copywriters today than there was 15 or 20 years ago. Right. Right. And it’s not just, especially if you’re a US based copywriter, you’re not just going up against other us based copywriters. You’re going against a whole globe of copywriters. And in some cases, these people can be just as strong of copywriters, but then they can charge maybe a third or half as much because maybe they’re costly thing is a lot less. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of stressors affecting copywriters. The good news is there’s more opportunities for copywriters than there ever has been too, because everything’s requiring words. The more we do things online, the more people that are doing email marketing or whatever, kind of online advertising, the more words we need and we need people to write those words, not robots.

Ziv:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Do you find it hard to convince copywriters that you teach, that you find it are being trained by you? Do you find it hard to convince them that daily emails is the way to go? Do you see any, any resistance?

Kim:

So most of the copywriters working for me, don’t have their own email list that are studying with me. They’re usually working with other clients. They might be helping the clients with their email list. So, no, I don’t know if it’s necessarily that I’m trying to convince them to do that. But I think just on a different note, kind of similar, I think writing every day is so important to getting good at copywriting. It’s just like a muscle, you know, it’s like, if you let it atrophy and you don’t work it out very regularly, it’s the kind of thing that when you’re just starting out, even if you don’t have back to back client projects to work on, it’s so important to whether it’s hand copying promos, if you find that helpful or giving yourself projects to just write practice copy. And so one of the things we do in my mentoring group is we pretty regularly, there’ll be a homework assignment. You know, no one likes homework, but this is how we get better. Right. That’s how we work out that muscle. And so they bring their completed assignments and then I critique them in the group call and they get feedback. And again, this is, we’re it so many of the aha moments, right? It’s doing, it’s not buying a course and then tucking it aside. It’s actually doing the course and doing the work and practice every day. And that’s where I see people really getting dramatic improvements with their copywriting.

Ziv:

What is your opinion on triggering shame in copy? Is it okay? Is it, how do you overcome it?

Kim:

Hmm. It’s not a tactic that I have used overtly if you know what I mean? I think it’s one of those things that you can tap into that emotion, but you have to be careful. You don’t want to necessarily call that specific prospect out, but you can maybe call up a situation or this happens to, so and so, or some people experience this or some blah, blah, blah. And you know that they’re gonna relate to one of those scenarios, but they won’t feel like you’re attacking them or threatening them. You gotta be really careful with that. I think.

Ziv:

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes shame can really make someone stop reading an email, of course. And there’s so many ways to describe it as the problem that some people face and implications or the, to tell a story as if it’s of a specific person not use the rhythm

Kim: 

Yeah. One of the things I like to do with an, if there’s any kind of negative emotion, like let’s say fear, you know, fear is a very common emotion to tap into is very effective with financial or health copywriting or for business success, or really a lot of other things. Right. But you always have it with some kind of positive emotion when you give them hope, you know, you can use fear, but you gotta give them some hope. And whether it’s health financial, I found that to be a really powerful combination. So, you know, you kind of let ’em know kind of what is that worst thing that they fear the most that could happen, but you’re gonna show them know their Salvation. There’s a way to avoid it. There’s a way to reverse it. There’s a, a great example would be talking about a hidden cause for, let’s say Alzheimer’s, I mean, you can’t usually use that obviously in a supplement promotion, you can’t say a disease name, but let’s say scientists just uncovered this hidden cause, and you’re not hearing about it.

Kim:

And here’s how you can easily reverse it using this natural method. I’m about to reveal or something like that. Right now you hook ’em in, it’s like you haven’t just hit ’em with a negative where they’re just like, ah, I don’t wanna think about that. Right. You know, and they move on, but you gotta immediately say no, but there’s this hope, there’s this secret, there’s this easy thing that’s going to reverse this problem that I just raised. And yeah. So you have to really combine that and give that to ’em fairly quickly to get them to want to read.

Ziv:

Do you have any method of going into like a new type of client or something that, or maybe that’s a method that you teach your old copywriter, where for example, in the supplemental world, you had to learn a lot of jargon words or maybe what was to avoid and how to explain the different, different topics in a way that makes sense? So how do you actually go into this new field and present copy while you need to be an expert potentially?

Kim: 

Right. So you’re talking about like, when you’re talking about something more complicated, like maybe a health. Yeah. Cuz sometimes I find that I’m, I’m spending all this time digging into these scientific studies and all this, these terms that I don’t understand and yeah. Google’s your best friend, look, everything up, make sure you understand it. And then you need to be able to write your copy in a way that it sounds like is at the fifth to eighth grade level and that you were able to explain it in language, not getting scientificy or not getting using sophisticated words, just, you know, how would you explain it to your grandmother or to a friend or to, to your spouse and make it conversational? I have actually sometimes found going to like middle school science. I forget the names that there’s like different websites out there that are for eighth graders and fifth graders.

Kim:

Right. And I have found out, okay, like for example, I was writing a joint promotion, a joint supplement. And I, I like wanted an easy way to explain this complicated inflammatory process. And I was my, well, my brain was sort of exploding going through all these studies. And then I went to like the eighth grade science website, whatever the name was. And it was this beautiful explanation about it, what inflammation was. Right. Because it, it actually can be good is one of those things, like if you start to form a scab, it’s because your inflammatory triggers are there to help you heal. But when you have too much of it, it’s a bad thing. And your body turns against us. That’s the kind of language you wanna use. You don’t wanna, when your cytokines get really high and your blah blah. And no one, like no one cares what that is.

Kim:

Right. So yeah, those are some short cause. But yeah, because I’ve done a little extra digging with the help of Google. If I’m looking at a study that’s talking about, they use this certain type of test, like, you know, and they had them all do this. All the participants I’ll look it up. Oh, that’s when they hold up a series of pictures and they have you do a me recall how many of these can you recall after seeing them one time after? So then I could just explain, well then they, they sat down with the participants and they showed them a series of cards and 30 minutes later, 90% of those could, whatever you tell it, like a story you don’t just say, oh, they did the blah, blah, blah, test that no one ever knows what that is. So you just wanna go that step further with your research and then translating that back to, how would you explain that in a way that’s engaging in the copy that educates and continues to lead them towards, you know, your sales message.

Ziv:

What are some of the things that you are really proud of?

Kim:
Why back when boardroom was this major direct response company. And it was so hard just to even even get hired there as a copywriter to write a promo. One of my first promos that I wrote for them, actually it was the first promo I wrote for them. It made me the first female copywriter to get a boardroom control. So yeah, I was really proud of that. I felt like I kind of broke through a little bit of a class ceiling there. I also beat Paris from Papas control and that I beat the great, the late Jim R’s control. So when I beat like these legendary copywriters names and I’m like this still fairly young woman and up and coming, it really put me on the map as a copywriter. But it was funny for years and years, I never kind of bragged about it or never even talked about it.

Kim:

I sort of felt like, well, you know, I shouldn’t do that. And everybody’s like, why aren’t you telling everybody that you’ve done this? You know, I think sometimes it’s not just women. I think a lot of us tend to not be comfortable about talking about like our wins or our successes. And I would say that when you do get some wins, you should let people know. I mean, not in an annoying braggery way, but use that as an opening. It’s like, well, you know, I’ve gotten some successful promos. I’ve written some for some of your, you know, companies you go up against, you know, and would you like to see them? Don’t be shy about sharing your successes that can open many, many doors for you. But yeah, those were some successes I had early on. And then I would say, I’m also proud that several of the copywriters I’ve worked with just over the last few years have really gone on to either having their own products or their own email list or, you know, becoming in demand copywriters and making six figures or more. And, you know, again, this is part of what, you know, kind of the full circle thing I talked about earlier. I just feel grateful that I was able to get into copywriting when I did and have the kind of lifestyle that it gave me. And if I can teach other people how to do that successfully and navigate or avoid bad clients along the way, I really get a lot of satisfaction from that. I can’t hear you right now. You’re muted. Thanks.

Ziv:

One of the ways that people can learn from you is actually through one of your courses, which is called copywriting velocity. And you explain the, the concept also of successful control. Can you expand on what is a control and what is covered in the course?

Kim: 

So the term control is used by a lot of direct response companies. Usually it refers to a long form promo, which could be a sales page or a video sales letter or a direct mail promo. If I have one, like, you know, here’s an example of like a big direct mail promo. So whatever the promo is that they can use and know that they’re gonna get a certain response, the one that’s tested and proven to work, that’s what they might refer to as their control. You know, it’s almost like a scientific experiment. You have your control where you kind of expect certain things and then you’re constantly do different tests against it. So smart companies are always have new tests in the works has no controls last forever. Although I’ve written some that have mailed or been controls for eight or 10 years or longer, which is great.

Kim:

If you can have a multi-year control, that’s wonderful. But yeah, most companies are constantly testing. So if you’re a copywriter who’s been hired to write a new promotion and you always wanna find out, well, what is the existing control? And you wanna study that control and you, you wanna tear it apart and you wanna figure out why is it working, right? But what are some potential weaknesses because your goal is to beat it. In fact, I have a course, actually, that’s all about this called million dollar controls. And in it, I break down actually seven of my most successful promotions that I’ve written. And each breakdown is about an hour, 10 hour and a half long where I go through it. And I talk about my process for each one of these controls that I wrote. But an important step is looking at what is that existing control promo and where do I think I can do something a little bit better or try something different that they didn’t do that I think’s gonna make it work better.

Kim:

And so when you can start beating controls, that’s when you really start to get a lot of respect as a copywriter, you also can earn royalties. If you’re able to negotiate arrangements where basically, if you have the control, you’re usually getting a Royal based on either the number of names at mails, or if it’s an online promo, you can get a percent of the sales. And so this is not becoming increasingly common. Now you may not get these kind of deals the first or second promo you write, or even the third. But I guarantee once you get a few controls under your belt and you prove that, Hey, I can write successful promos. You can definitely start negotiating some royalty deals and you can get like a, a passive stream of income that can come in for many years, depending on how long it runs in return for that.

Kim:

Whenever your headline starts to fatigue, or maybe the, you know, an ad or email is, you know, needs some freshening, that’s striving traffic to your promo. You just go ahead and you, you do whatever copy needs to you done. You don’t charge for that because you wanna, you’re a vested partner. You want it to be successful and continue to keep it going. And if you’re earning royalties, you have a stake in the success. So, you know, a lot of business owners don’t always realize, you know, that it’s a, win-win when you can work with a good copywriter and create those kinds of arrangements where they have a stake a in the success, and then it becomes more of a partnership and it can last for many, many years.

Ziv:

Wonderful. Where can people learn more about you team?

Kim:

They go to kimschwalm.com, K IM S C H w a L m.com. They’ll find out all about me, my different courses, my mentoring programs. I’m gonna be updating my mentoring options soon and beginning to fill those for next year. So yeah, that would be the best place to go to find out. And also more importantly for free, you can become a copy insider and get on my email list. And I do any letter called copy insiders. Plus I do occasional promo breakdowns called what’s in Kim’s mailbox where I analyze promos that I’ve seen out in the wild, either online or in my mailbox. And so yeah, people really seem to love those breakdowns.

Ziv:

Amazing. And we will put in the show notes link. So in case anyone is typing right now, just go to the show notes and you’ll see kimschwan.com link. And I think it’s very important. If you are learning copywriting or you want to use copywriting in your business, then you have to also sign up for a few, a list copywriter email list, and just be influenced by the pace and by the style and, and by the generosity.

So, I wanna thank you Kim, for being here in this show. And I want to thank everyone for listening for yet another episode of a Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. See you next week, guys,

Voice over:

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