TCC Podcast #339: The Formula for Finding Ideas with Dave Harland

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Join the AI Challenge 
The Copywriter Think Tank
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
Dave’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Free month of Brain.FM

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  There’s a saying among copywriters, especially online conversion copywriters that goes back to Eugene Schwartz. He put it like this: sales copy is not written, copy is assembled. And of course that’s true. The messages that customers relate to best are assembled from interviews, surveys, and other research. But in subscribing to this idea, a lot of copywriters have inadvertently lost the connection to creativity and copy. After all, what’s the point of being creative if the words are in the survey responses?

Our guest for The Copywriter Club podcast today takes a more creative approach than many copywriters we know. Dave Harland, also known as the word man, walked us through his 10-step process for coming up with big, compelling ideas. And he shared three questions that he asks every time he comes up with a good headline or a good idea, to make sure that it is good. He also talked in-depth about his unconventional approach to posting on LinkedIn, one that has attracted a lot of great clients for his business. If you want to be more creative in your approach to copywriting, this episode is for you.

Kira Hug:  But before we get to the interview, this podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Think tank. That is our mastermind for copywriters, content writers and other marketers who want to figure out the next thing in their businesses. That could be anything from creating a new revenue stream or a couple new revenue streams to launching a new product or a subscription service or a membership or podcast book. You name it.

Our members are doing incredible things and we actually have a retreat coming up in early June. It’s a virtual retreat and in-person retreat in London in September. And so we are really excited to add a couple of new members to the Think Tank before the retreat in June. And if you think that could be you, visit copywriterthinktank.com to apply. Let’s kick off our episode with Dave.

Dave Harland:  Probably like most people fell into it completely by accident. My, no, my background is journalism, so I did a journalism degree. I mean, before that, I loved writing as a kid, as I presume most copywriters. Had a love of words growing up. Got into Scrabble when I was six with my dad and just never looked back, really. Started writing poems and stories and loved English at school. So yeah, that led me down a journalism path. So I did work experience at the local paper when I was at school for a couple of weeks and just loved the buzz of that.

And then yeah, went to university to do a journalism degree. So I was a three-year undergrad degree in journalism, which really opened my eyes to all the different kinds of types and styles that were out there. I just thought when I went there, I was just writing about news. Didn’t for one moment think I’d be learning how to package up a radio news article, or we did a little bit of TV as well. I haven’t got a face for TV at all. So we tried that. And then watching it back, I just looked all kind of nervous and my tongue was hanging out. It was like “TV isn’t for me.”

And at the time they just introduced an online route. So it was online journalism. In your third year, you get to spec, specialize in TV, newspapers, radio, or this new route online. And in a class of a hundred, there were only two of us that went online. I mean, I’m talking 2002, 2003. So, Google was only in its infancy. There was no social media at all really. Maybe MySpace was just starting, but there was nothing like that. And I thought, “That’s where the world’s headed. Let’s do this.”

So I learned a little bit of Photoshop, learned about Dreamweaver and basic HTML and some of them things that I learned back then I still use today. Maybe not in the copywriting side of things, but certainly on my website, or when creating little memes and things. So that was the journalism side of things. But then I only really did four months of journalism. I worked as a football reporter, or, sorry, soccer reporter just for a website based in Manchester, which isn’t far from where I live. But I was only there for three or four months. My face didn’t really fit. So I was scrappy looking for a new job, and my old university came calling and said, “You fancy being the editor of our journalism department website?” So I went back there and I still thought that was like, “Oh, it’s great journalism. I’m interviewing students.” It was promoting the university in all the courses, really. I was a secret copywriter, but I didn’t know it.

So then, yeah, I was there for a couple of years and then got a job as an actual copywriter for a Christmas hamper company, which is a bit of a mad one. But yeah, it was around the corner from where I lived, and at the time I was kind of… I’d just met a girl, moved back home rather than being at the university. So it was just a nice little fit. Again, it was a copywriting role, but it did it. The job title was content and communications coordinator. I was like the editor of their customer magazine. So again, I still wasn’t a 100%, I’d never really heard the word copywriter before until about two years in when they asked me to start doing, they’re that direct mail letters and some kind of product descriptions for their catalog, which is when they official say, “Oh, so I’m a copywriter now, let’s Google that and find out all I can.”

So that led me to where I am. So that was about 17 years ago I joined that company. So I’ve been doing it ever since then. So yeah, I was there for 10 years and then got a bit bored. I will probably outstay my welcome by about five years. And then a friend of mine had just moved to an agency in Dubai, and started asking me if I wanted to do some projects for him. That was about two years before I left. And then after those two years, I was earning more on the side than I was in my day job, and it made sense to go it alone and be a full-time freelance copywriter.

So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. So over the past seven years, yeah, pure generalist, everything from email campaigns and tone of voice projects to banner ads and conceptual stuff. I tend to leave the longer form blog posts and case studies and the more content market and stuff for the sector specialist. So I tend to focus more on the big idea, more leaning towards stuff with humor and personality of late. So that’s me, in a nutshell.

Rob Marsh:  So as you talk about that, Dave, obviously you had the journalism training. Did you ever have any specific copywriting training or was everything learned on the job? And I guess, what would you say are the three or four big things that you had to learn in order to become really good at what you do, and this is me saying you’re really good at what you do.

Dave Harland:  Oh, nice one, because I find it hard to take compliments sometimes. No, when you’re just kind of working on it and people say, oh, you really good, I’m just like, “Oh, whatever. It just fell into this.” I think it’s probably because I haven’t got that kind of formal training. So training-wise, when I was about three years into that job at the Christmas hamper company, they said, “Why don’t you do courses someday, just to learn some really intense skills?” So I did a few one-day courses. There’s a place called the IDM in London Institute of Data and Marketing. So they do some really good, just, I think it was just one or two-day courses, one on how to write more powerful direct mail letters. Another one, how to write a really impactful sales email. So I did about three or four of those, and they really gave me the foundation in most of the fundamental skills that I use today.

So put the reader first, and the importance of benefits over features and the staples of which form the basis of most of the stuff I still write today, and probably what most copywriters out there write. So by doing these courses, it gave me the confidence to see myself as a copywriter, and not so much a journalist anymore. So yeah, aside from that, nothing else. It was just learning as I went.

Did loads of testing at the company where we were at. So we were testing email subject lines, and because it was a Christmas hamper company, and orders were coming in all the time, you could see what was working and what wasn’t, so we could really hone the copy on the fly, which is good. We never really got to do much testing on websites or anything like that. That functionality came after I’d left, but I’d have loved to use that as well.

Kira Hug:  What helped you transition from your agency time to going freelance? You mentioned you had, I think, one project from one client, but what else helped you make that jump?

Dave Harland:  Yeah, so well, I started off with one project for my friend’s new agency, and that was, I think it was an IT website, a 10-pager. And I think I charged something. It was really low, it was a couple of hundred pounds, which is, I think I charged 20 times that, now, for the equivalent of what I did. So it was just, for me, it was just like, “Wow, I can earn money. I get paid actual money. I’m not waiting for the end of the month for my salary to drop in. I’ve just been paid from that.” So I was like, “How can I do more of that?”

So the agency themselves was sending me a little bit more work. It wasn’t like by any means regular stuff that I could really sack my job off and go all in on that. But it opened my eyes to what was possible. So I thought, “How can I do a little bit more of this, and not just rely on the agency?” So I thought, “Right, I need to do two things. I need to market myself.”

So I created this brand, so I branded myself, the Word Man, used the word, “Word” specifically rather than copy because I thought in the early days I’ll be targeting small businesses, many of whom will not have even heard the word copywriter. Somebody might have said, “Oh, your copy rubbish, you need to speak to a copywriter.”

As most copywriters know, at one point or another they’ve had an email in their inbox asking about trademarks and all of that type of stuff. So there’s that confusion. So I made sure, right, let’s ground it in the word “Word” rather than “Copy.” So that’s what I did. And then I put a portfolio together of everything that I’d really written that I was kind of proud of from the job that I was at, from stuff that I did when I was a kid. So even stories, some spec stuff, just little Twitter contests and stuff, where I come up with ideas for random brands or charities and stuff. So all of that, I just looked kind of lumped on that website.

And I spoke to a few SEO nerds as well that were at my previous company who showed me how to start ranking number one for all the local searches for copywriters. So where I’m based in Liverpool, Liverpool copywriter, I’ve been number one since I set that up, really. And at all at the kind of local towns and stuff, I’m number one when people search for that, so I was hitting the top of Google when any of those types of businesses were searching, and I made sure that you had the copy itself was just, it wasn’t talking about strategic innovations, or anything like that. It was just really down-to-earth stuff, speaking to Bob who runs a factory who’s been told “You’ll get more business if people understand what you do, because at the moment you’re just waffling on your website.”

So I was speaking to Bob on my website when he landed there, everything made sense to him and I started getting inquiries from local people as well. So I had this study agency stuff coming from my friend in Dubai, where I work. I worked with them probably for about six or seven years, and don’t do much stuff for them anymore. But I was doing stuff regularly for them for a while.

And then just projects coming in from local people. Like I said before, after about… I think it was less than two years, it was only nine months. Nine months after doing that first project, I set the website up, put my portfolio on there, started getting clients and was earning more on the side than it was in my day job. So I was just like, “Right, it’s now or ever. Let’s go for it.” So yeah, I handed them my notice, and that was 2016, so I’ve been doing it ever since.

Rob Marsh:  And what does a typical day look like for you today, Dave? What kinds of projects are you working on, clients that you’re working with? I know you’re still working with a lot of little guys, yeah? Or is it bigger than that now?

Dave Harland:  Not so much, nope. It’s probably 80% big brands or brand big brands through agencies and then 20% the odd smaller clients, if it’s a fun project, if they get in touch and say, “We want to have a bit of a laugh with our advertising,” or “Our stuff’s a little bit boring, how can you turn the dial up in terms of our humor?” So they’re the smaller businesses that I’ll work with, but yeah, I’d say four out of five of them are bigger brands.

So I’ll work either directly with those businesses who will find me, could be through the socials. I do an email every Friday. I get clients through that. And then there’s the other 50% of those of that 80% is agencies. So I’ll be working on their client stuff, or occasionally for their own lead gen stuff. I do quite a lot of that for agencies as well, who, especially at the moment, the economic downturn and more agencies are looking at how we can market ourselves and stand out. So yeah, it’s pretty much a 50/50 split I’d say with agencies and businesses. So my day normally starts by getting punched in the face.

I’ve got a little 20-month old little boy, so yeah, off quite early. I’m in an early bed as well, so I’m normally in the office before 8:00. Well, between 8:00 and 9:00, I suppose. But getting not as early as it used to be, I used to be a proper early bird. It used to be like 6:00 AM starts before we had Jack, but now, yeah, now, they’re few and far between. But yeah, it obviously depends on what project I’m working on, what it’ll be but I tend to do about three and a half days worth of client work a week.

So actual writing, thinking, project stuff. And then the other day and a half I’ll spend either… Permit myself on social media, writing my own market and email or doing any other bits and bobs that come with running a freelance business, which nobody really understands unless they do it. All of the admin, replying to emails, putting proposals together, taking photos of receipts so I can claim expenses, all of that stuff. Which people just… Yeah, if you don’t run a business, you don’t realize all that goes on.

Kira Hug:  So, you have such an impressive portfolio after working with all these big brands. And for a copywriter who might be listening to this and is like, I want to do that too, I want to work with the big brands, what advice would you give them, especially if they’re just starting out beyond “Experience, get better,” what else can they start to do to position themselves for that type of work?

Dave Harland:  Yeah, I think getting that type of stuff off the bat straight away is tough. I think unless you’ve been established for a while or you’ve kind of built that reputation or portfolio working with the bigger brands, I think it’s going to be tough for those types of… To get those bigger projects from the off. Certainly having a portfolio of all your best work so you can demonstrate straight away exactly what you are good at and what you can provide. I think that’s hugely important. But there’s a couple of ways that you can also target those businesses.

And I did a talk last week to some Gen Z copywriters and they were asking me the same things, “Oh, how can we stand out? How can we make a bigger brand notice us?” And I said, “Well, if you know Target a brand that you really want to work for, have a look at everything they do, have a look at their market and have a look at their website, see if there’s anything on there which isn’t particularly good, and rewrite it and send it to somebody who’s in charge of that. Whether it’s the brand manager, the market and manager, whoever oversees that bit.”

You don’t have to be like, “Oh, aren’t I great? I’ve rewritten this.” If you can demonstrate your skills as a copywriter, the first thing you should be able to do is market yourself, and talk about yourself and persuade people like you are the right choice. So yeah, one other way… I mean I’d probably take it to the extreme in my newsletter. So I tend to pick on the really, really, really bad stuff, and just go to town on what’s really bad in a… I’m doing it more for entertainment than being really vindictive. But yeah, that’s the approach that I take.

But yeah, I was saying to these more junior copywriters, that’s one way in, take something that those brands have done and if there’s something particularly not working, demonstrate how you could make it better and improve on it. So that’s one way to; the cutthroat way, of going straightforward really.

Rob Marsh:  So, earlier when you were talking about some of the approach that you have to your business, you talked about the big idea, you’re the person that comes up with a big idea, I think that’s really obvious in your newsletter, in your social media posts, and we’ll definitely want to talk more about that, what your approach is there.

But before we do that, talk about coming up with big ideas. And I know this is a little bit nebulous, there’s not a process that necessarily works for everybody, but how do you do it? Where do those ideas come from? How deep do you get into the weeds in order to find those ideas? Just your thinking around that.

Dave Harland:  It varies from project to project. I suppose the ideal project would be where I’ve got complete access to that brand or that business’s customers, the people that work for the brand speaking to them, it’s just so invaluable. I know there’s copywriters out there, who are writing stuff, having never even spoken or heard anything from the people who are actually buying from that brand. And it’s such a quick win to be able to speak to those people.

So wherever possible, ask to speak to one or two, or even up to five, maybe, of their client and just ask them about what’s it like, what’s this brand like? What’s your past experience with them? What are the products like? Have they ever failed? What do you tell people about these products? Nine times all the time. It’s like, “I don’t give this stuff a second thought, I just wash my hair with this shampoo. I don’t care.” And that’s the way it should be. Really no one, one wants a shampoo brand to be their best mate as much as they try.

But the process, certainly looking into or doing that research into the voice of the customer. And it’s handy to speak to people that work for them as well. So speaking to their staff and various people involved in whatever processes go on behind the scenes, especially if I’m writing a brand story, or any kind of social media stories which really explain what that brand does, and the process that they go through to deliver the service or create a product. So that’s definitely the first step. Sometimes they won’t be available to you, so you’ll have to do a little bit of digging. So I’ll have a look on forums or I’ll have a look on review sites and Facebook reviews and stuff like that.

You can actually pick a load of really nice little sound bites up there. Just a lot of customers when you speak to them, maybe it’s like when you’re filling out a survey, they feel a little bit on the spot. They should be only saying nice stuff about this stuff. Whereas when they’re slagging off a brand or a company on the socials, that’s where they’re using the real hearty emotive stuff. So yeah, that’s a crucial one as well to dig into forums and review sites and have a look at how they actually talk.

So that’s the way I get the voice of the customer in my head. So, now and again, they’ll have a tone of voice documents or some kind of previous copy, which is “This is how we sound, this is how we want to come across.” But by listening to how the customers talk as well, that allows me to get almost an entirely new vocab in my head. So when I’m writing the stuff, I can really play back some of those phrases back to them, even if they’re not contained, or not within the constraints of the brand’s tone of voice guidelines. So that’s crucial.

I mean, there’s other research as well. I will always try and get hold of a product. So I’ve been writing for a headphones brand recently. I’ve got the product, so I’ve got three of their products. So I’ve had to play around with them, you can feel… I think when you can feel something, and the case for these headphones, it’s got a little velvet interior, you feel the quality. So when I’m describing them, I wouldn’t have been able to describe them without having them in my hands and playing with them.

So, whenever possible, get hold of the product, which again, it’s not always possible. If you’re writing about super yachts or whatever, you’re not going to get a free week on a super yacht, are you, you’ve just probably got to wing it. But if they’re services or products, try and use the service or at least get a demo of the service. So I’d say that as far as the kind of research side of things should go, really as long as you research the customers, the clients, as long as you know the product inside-out so you can get a feel for the benefits, the pitfalls, and how it’s going to improve people’s lives.

And then the big idea, I mean it’s a hard one to articulate, because sometimes it can just come from anywhere. What I tend to do is plow through all of that, the reading and the research stuff at the very start. So that’s all in there. And then I’ll just leave it for a few days. I’ll go away, just let some thoughts fester in there. Usually after about 24 to 48 hours of that, I could wake up in the middle of the night, the baby will be crying or whatever and I’ll be like, “Ah, what’s that?” I’ll get my phone out. There’ll be a couple of headlining ideas or even just a couple of angles, which I know is an angle into how I’m going to build this big idea. And it might just be a couple of words.

So if I’m writing about headphones, if it’s like I want to talk about comfort, I might go into, “Okay, oh I could talk about the comfiest things in the world.” So what’s that? “Okay, you’ve got… What’s the fluffiest thing? Pillows, clouds,” so that I’m in the middle of the night, just going, jotting all of this stuff down. It might not come to anything. I might read it two days later and go, “Yeah, that was a load of… What’s the point?”

But usually there’s something within those really early rough notes that will form the basis of an idea that I can take to the next stage. And those ideas, yeah, they’re just connecting to usually disparate things. So when I’m thinking about the product, like you said, if my angle is common comfort, I’ll have a thing, I’ll just go round the houses in terms of the word “Comfort.” So even as rudimentary as at the start of most jobs, I’ll get a sheet of paper, cut it into four boxes, and in the top left box I’ll do experiences. So my own experiences of that product and the top right box are synonyms. So other words for that product, the bottom left is idioms. So, common phrases and cliches. Most of that’s just to discount all the obvious ones really. And then in the bottom one rhymes.

So I go from an initial inkling of the big idea, to having a load of suitable words that I can play around with. So once those initial ideas are down, that’s when I start building on, it’s almost like an idea… A vocabulary that I can use, per big idea. And then again, I’ll just play around with that, leave it a day or two. And again, it’s crucial, back to the advice I can give to junior copywriters and copywriters wanting to take that next leap. Time is just crucial. And I know at agencies, you don’t really get it as much as you should. If you free your lunch, try and build two weeks into it, coming up with an idea. Don’t say, “Oh yeah, I’ll get back to you in two days.” Because your brain hasn’t got that time to process it and do all that crucial thinking.

So yeah, back to the idea. I’ve done my initial research and thinking I’ve got the words down and then that’s where the connections will start firing. Then I’ll be playing around with the word. So one of them rhymes or one of them idioms. If it was music, it might be a popular phrase with the word music in for earphones, you know, “Music to your ears”, I might change the word ears around, “Music to your eyes” if they add a visual connection, or “Music to your…” And I’ll just be playing around with all of these different phrases, and that might just magically form the perfect line which the idea can hang off.

And then I’ll look at how that idea can then extend whatever the deliverables are, whether they want an email, whether they want… It’s an out of home ad. I’ll then start… do the elevator pitch of what the idea is, and then just test it within. Will that flex for an out of home ad. What are some headlines I could write about this idea? What’s a couple of subject lines that might make people open an email if we wrote it? And just kind of flesh it out.

Sometimes if the idea doesn’t work, you’ll notice it within those early stages. And I wrote about this in my newsletter the other week, whenever I’ve come up with… normally not this… it’s not normally the big idea I’ll do this with, but one of the execution examples. So say I’ve come up with a headline to test that headline, I’ll run it through a little three-question filter, which is does it grab attention? Number one, because if it doesn’t get noticed, what’s the point? Number two is, will your target audience understand it? So is it clear enough? Again, if they don’t get it, you’ve wasted your time.

And then the third one is, will they feel something when they read that enough to go, “Oh, I’ll pick up the phone.” Or even just to go, “Oh, I’ll file that in my little brain’s filing cabinet so when the time comes for me to buy these headphones, that’s who I’m going to because that spoke to me.” Pass that three-question test, which you look out there, certainly in the  B2B world, none of them headlines are passing that test already, let’s be honest. Unlock your futures.” It’s all gobbledygook isn’t it? Or the majority of it is. It’s not… certainly not striking a chord to people. So that’s it, really, in a nutshell.

Kira Hug:  So many good ideas in there. I’m wondering how many projects you’re juggling at one time? Because I’m just imagining, you sit with an idea and then you come back to it a couple days later. So what does that juggle of projects look like on a regular basis?

Dave Harland:  Yeah, I’ve been a glutton for taking on too much work in the past, and getting to that point where my brain just feels like “Blah,” it’s like full of bees. All of these ideas, it’s like headbutting each other as they’re flying around. So it’s taken a while. Also, I’m greedy. I love earning money, especially for myself. Because everything I do ends up making money for me as a freelancer. So I’m like, right, yeah, I want to earn that, I want to earn that much. Can I take that work on, and squeeze it in on Tuesday afternoon, yeah? Whereas now it’s like time’s so much more valuable to me since having a little one and slowing down the pace a little bit.

That’s said, I’m still probably working on a maximum of three projects at any one time. So I’ll be working on… Yeah, at the moment I’m working on a big email and email automation rewrite for one brand. I’m doing some tonal rewrites for a website, for a Cloud phone, these office cloud phone companies. And I’m also just starting a tone of voice project for the housing company. So they’re the three ones I’ve got at the moment. So I’m just, they’re the ones that I’m allowing to ruminate around my head. Any more than that, like I said, it gets a bit messy and a bit hard to manage, especially if you push for time.

Kira Hug:  All right Rob, why don’t you kick us off. You know the drill.

Rob Marsh: I do know this drill. So there are a lot of things that I think are worth touching base on. Number one was just Dave’s framework for coming up with big ideas, and we should probably encourage everybody to just listen to that on a loop maybe three or four times. I’ll just quickly reiterate the different steps, because as he was talking about it, I started to bullet it out. I’m like, “Wow, there’s actually a lot of stuff going on here.” So number one, you mentioned looking at interviewing customers.  Second, interviewing staff founders, people who are involved with the company or the product itself.Number three, digging into forums and reviews and trying to find the real emotive stuff, because that isn’t always in surveys, it’s in the places where people talk about things where the company’s not involved. So Reddit, kind of things.

Number four, getting your hands on the product to test and play with so that you can identify things that you wouldn’t be able to see if you don’t actually have it. Five is to do the reading, so reading through the briefing materials, anything that the client has provided, maybe previous marketing materials that have been done for the product or the service before. Six, just letting things sit for a couple of days. Seven is then coming up with the ideas and the angles that just come from letting it marinate in your brain. And then eight, as you start mixing those up, the ideas, the words, the synonyms, looking for something that maybe comes out of that.

Dave, then step nine talked about the four boxes that he draws, experiences, synonyms, idioms and rhymes, and just having that vocabulary of ideas to play with. Then he leaves it for a day or two again, and really starts coming up with the idea. So I think it’s a really good framework for thinking through how you do it. It’s no wonder that he said you should have at least two weeks to do it properly.

Kira Hug:  Yeah, and there are a lot of steps in there. So I think maybe I need even more than that. I think just listening to him talk through the process, and all the steps involved and then just how you really do need to sit with it and how the ideas pop into his head at 3:00 AM. It just reminded me of how we do need to give ourselves time for these projects, and how we need to give ourselves space.

And I know that’s what so many of us are missing right now. It’s like we just feel like there’s no space to actually be creative, and to do the type of work we want to do. And so we’ve talked to a writer recently who mentioned that he works on a 100-plus projects a month and they’re smaller projects and he’s this incredible writer, but there’s not a lot of space to be creative, and when you’re cranking through 100 projects.

And so Dave mentioned that ideally he’s working on no more than three at a time and I think we all have to figure out what that number is. Maybe it’s probably not 100, but it could be for you, it could be 10, it could be six, it could be one. For some copywriters we’ve interviewed, they can only do one at a time because that’s how their brain works best and that’s how they deliver the best work. So just figuring out what that flow is for you can be really helpful.

Rob Marsh:  Yeah, another thing that stood out to me as Dave was talking, he intentionally branded himself as the Word Man instead of using copy in his name. And this strikes me as something that more of us ought to be cognizant about. Not that we necessarily want to call ourselves the Word Writer or that, but just being aware that oftentimes our clients don’t use the same words to talk about what we do, that we use.

So they don’t think about the copy on their website, they might think about the words on their website or they don’t think about top-of-funnel materials, or bottom-of-funnel, or even funnel. So there’s all these words that we use and we need to be really careful when we’re talking about those, especially in marketing situations, when we’re trying to talk about the problems that we solve, we need to make sure that we’re using the words that they use. So he did it in a really clever way, just as he was naming himself, but it’s something more of us need to be doing in the ways that we talk to our clients.

Kira Hug:  Which means you actually have to understand who your client is first, and how they talk, and their level of awareness of marketing. And that’s why it’s tricky and you can’t just market to everyone because “Word” will resonate with certain business owners and not with other business owners. So just goes back to knowing your ideal client really well, which Dave clearly did and does. He also mentioned his test that he runs his copy through and runs his messaging through, and the questions that he asks when he’s running it through that test.

Number one, does it grab attention? Number two, will your target audience understand it? And number three, will they give a crap? Will they actually care about it? I think that’s such a simple test, but we could run all of our copy through that test and do much better work because of it.

Rob Marsh:  This reminds me of something that David Ogilvy used to talk about… or he wrote about it, and he’d say something like, the headline on an ad does 80% of the work because of everybody who reads a headline, only 20% go on to read the body copy. And I’ve always thought that that’s maybe not quite it. I think part of the problem is most headlines are so bad that this is the only part of the ad that gets read. And if headlines were better, more people would read more ads. And it’s those three questions, the attention, understanding, and do I care, that I think help make headlines great.

Kira Hug:  All right, well let’s jump back to our interview with Dave to figure out how he uses LinkedIn a little bit differently in his business.

Rob Marsh:  So Dave, I want to shift a little bit and talk about what you do with social media. So many experts are like, “Okay, you got to show up on LinkedIn, you got to be talking about the things that you do.” And my sense is that you don’t necessarily take the standard approach on LinkedIn. You’re posting conversations you’re having with scammers, you’re, like you said, poking fun at different companies or different approaches. Talk about your approach and why you take that approach as opposed to the expert’s advice as to what we’re supposed to be talking about when we talk about copywriting and marketing.

Dave Harland:  Well the two big places I’m active on social are LinkedIn and Twitter. So let’s take LinkedIn. Twitter’s mainly my creative mates. Don’t really get much work on there, so let’s discount that, for this one, which is more about marketing me, and me picking up clients. LinkedIn, I probably get 70% of my clients off there. It’s the golden goose. It’s worked wonders for me. So I started, we started taking it seriously, it was when I really noticed that LinkedIn changed its newsfeed to look a little bit like Facebook in 2017, I think it was 2018.

I was contracting at the time and had a little bit of downtime every Friday afternoon when everyone had clocked off and I was still contracted, do half an hour and there was no other work for me to do. So I was like, “I’ll just plan some posts for next week.” So I did one post on the… which… Before I get onto that, at the time I’d already noticed most people are just seeing this as an extension of their CV, not really marketing themselves and any time they’re talking about themselves or what they do, it’s all “I’m delighted to announce we’ve just launched this new product” or “Such and such happened to me today.”

Nobody on there really that I was connected to anyway, was taking the proper marketing approach, hadn’t done the research and knowing exactly who they’re targeting. They had certainly had no strategy, and the tactic they were employing was just all talking about themselves. The