How I Used Discussions As a Marketing Tool

A mem­ber on my copy­writ­ers forum (now my blog) started a thread on what makes my forum so pop­u­lar. Every­one chimed in with some great answers, and I appre­ci­ate the feedback.

(The cool thing about it is, that very thread also reached an impor­tant mile­stone. It was the 10,000th one! Talk about a coin­ci­dence, eh?)

But then some­one asked:

“Michel, can I ask how you ini­tially got the word out about your forum?”

My answer revealed a bit more than what the mem­ber antic­i­pated. Instead of talk­ing about how my forum became so pop­u­lar, I went on a tan­gent and explained the step-​​by-​​step process I used to book copy­writ­ing projects.

The answer was so well received that I decided to reprint it here.

Now, you may be won­der­ing what pro­mot­ing a forum (or a blog, for that mat­ter) has to do with pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. Keep read­ing because you’ll soon under­stand why…

When I first started pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices, I did it pri­mar­ily in three ways:

1. Arti­cle marketing
2. Viral mar­ket­ing
3. Email newslet­ter

My arti­cles, ini­tially writ­ten for my newslet­ters, were dis­trib­uted to ezine edi­tors, mag­a­zine pub­lish­ers, arti­cle direc­to­ries, and con­tent web­sites. (This was way back before “blog” was even a word.)

Each arti­cle had a byline — the “about the author” sec­tion — at the end. It pro­moted my free book and email newslet­ter, which at the time was called “The Profit Pill.”

(For an exam­ple of my byline, just check out the end of this blog post.)

My free ebook also became a viral mar­ket­ing tool because I allowed read­ers to freely dis­trib­ute it (see strat­egy #2). I gave peo­ple per­mis­sion to pass it around and offer it to their lists.

I still offer it today. It’s a dig­i­tized ver­sion of my book­let, “The 10 Com­mand­ments of Power Posi­tion­ing,” which osten­si­bly pro­moted my copy­writ­ing services.

I ini­tially wrote it to pro­mote my ser­vices offline. I offered it to prospects via direct mail. But when I started mar­ket­ing online, I dig­i­tized it and offered it as a gift for sub­scrib­ing to my email newslet­ter (strat­egy #3).

As you can see, my newslet­ter, ebook, and arti­cles all worked in tan­dem. Each one worked with, was based on, or fol­lowed with the other in some way.

Through each one, I offered a free quote for my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. So their job was to pre-​​sell my exper­tise, estab­lish my brand, and, bot­tom line, get quote requests.

Now, get­ting a quote request may seem to have been the end-​​game, but I also had an elab­o­rate back­end. And this was where things started moving.

After a per­son asked for a quote, I would email an esti­mate. The day after, I would send them an email to remind them just in case the quote got fil­tered as spam.

My quotes were good for 30 days only. In fact, I used a stan­dard quote reply tem­plate with vari­ables allow­ing me to cus­tomize it for each indi­vid­ual. One of those vari­ables included a date at the top, where it said: “Quote Guar­an­teed For 30 Days From [today’s date].”

If they chose not to go ahead within those 30 days, I would tell them that they’d be forced to request a new quote. I would also sug­gest an open­ing (not a turn­around) they could lock in by pro­vid­ing me with a finan­cial com­mit­ment — that is, a deposit.

As you can tell, these ele­ments were used to rein­force the sense of scarcity.

More impor­tantly, I wanted to fil­ter out those who wish to sit on their quote requests for months (even years!), and still expect the same prices or turn­arounds when they decided to go ahead — yes, it has hap­pened. Many times.

After send­ing out their quote requests and the next-​​day reminders, 10 days later I would remind them that there were only 20 days left, and they should book their project quickly as avail­able open­ing spots were shrinking.

I would also downsell where I would offer a cri­tique con­sul­ta­tion if they felt that writ­ing or rewrit­ing their exist­ing copy was out of their bud­get. (Most of the time, the rea­son for not going ahead was sticker shock.)

That’s why I got a ton of cri­tiques, too, which I repur­posed and gave my mem­bers to watch inside my mem­ber­ship site, The Copy Doc­tor. In other words, those cri­tiques are truly from real, pay­ing clients.

(Since it was a downsell — about 1/​10th of the price of a full-​​on rewrite — the trade-​​off was that I could use their cri­tiques for my own mar­ket­ing, at my dis­cre­tion. This was included as part of my agreement.)

Then, 20 days later, I would send them a final reminder telling them that their quote was about to expire. I would say some­thing like, “Please let me know either way so I can close your file.”

(Say­ing that I was going to “close their file” wasn’t a threat, but it was usu­ally enough to prod them into mak­ing a deposit fast.)

Even though open­ings were avail­able on a first-​​come, first-​​served basis, I would still sug­gest an open­ing in my quote request, and pre­dicted when the copy would be done. For exam­ple, I would say, “I have an open­ing dur­ing the third week of next month, and it will take me 3–4 weeks to com­plete this project.”

I wouldn’t guar­an­tee a turn­around. Guar­an­teed turn­arounds would incur a 50% rush charge, because I con­sid­ered work­ing with dead­lines to be no dif­fer­ent than work­ing on rush jobs. (Indi­cat­ing so in the quote request also increased the urgency.)

But by sug­gest­ing an open­ing, they knew that the longer they waited, the less likely that the spot would be available.

That is why I would add in my quote, “Even though your open­ing is not guar­an­teed (unless I get a finan­cial com­mit­ment from you), by clos­ing your file I can release the ten­ta­tive spots, and pub­licly offer them to other pay­ing clients.”

So there was no pres­sure (I wasn’t try­ing to has­sle them into giv­ing me a deposit), which was very dis­arm­ing. How­ever, it rein­forced the scarcity ele­ment and kept bring­ing it back to the top of their minds.

I would also say, “If you wait, you will lose your sug­gested spot, need to resub­mit a new quote request, and fill out the quote form all over again. Plus, the next avail­able open­ing may not be until sev­eral months down the road as they are fill­ing up fast…”

(Either that or they would have to pay me 50% more.)

I would also indi­cate that a deposit would guar­an­tee their spot and lock in their quote, and would remind them of the downsell with the lesser price for a cri­tique rather than a full-​​on rewrite or copy from scratch.

The result? Either:

1. They went ahead.
2. They didn’t respond.
3. They told me to close their file.

If they didn’t respond, I would send them a final email after the 30 days. (How­ever, if they did tell me to close their file, I would send the same email right away.)

That email would offer them a free cri­tique.

Obvi­ously, that was the ulti­mate downsell. All they’d have to do is visit my blog or forum, and post their copy (or a link to it), and I would pro­vide them with a brief cri­tique there. Nat­u­rally, it would be posted in pub­lic for all to view.

This helped to accom­plish a cou­ple of things.

For one, those who decided not to go ahead finally did take the leap and hired me, because my cri­tique, which was always brief and incom­plete, per­suaded them enough to finally hire me.

On the other hand, out­siders would come to my blog or forum, read my cri­tiques, and hire me after read­ing some of the advice I gave others.

So my forum — and now my blog — wasn’t just for dis­cus­sions. It was also a great way to close deals, build rela­tion­ships, and mar­ket my copy­writ­ing ser­vices at the same time.

The nat­ural byprod­uct was that the webiste grew with prospects com­ing to the board look­ing for help, and other copy­writ­ers who joined as a way to hang their shin­gle and par­tic­i­pate in the cri­tiques, too.

It was also a per­fect tool to scout for junior copy­writ­ers who I could hire to do basic stuff, such as gath­er­ing mate­ri­als, con­duct­ing research, and writ­ing first drafts. I still use it for that pur­pose to this day.

But in addi­tion to mar­ket­ing my ser­vices, my forum and blog was also a fan­tas­tic tool for me to cre­ate con­tent. It was (and still is) a great way for me to get ideas for arti­cles, or get feed­back on my own copy.

In fact, some of the responses I posted in my forum (and other dis­cus­sion boards on the Inter­net) even­tu­ally were con­verted into arti­cles — first for my ezine and then as stand­alone arti­cles. And when I pub­lished such an arti­cle, it would con­tain a link to my blog. Some­thing like:

“A mem­ber [link] asked the fol­low­ing question…”

… Fol­lowed by my answer, which became a newslet­ter issue and sub­se­quently an arti­cle for reprint.

Of course, my newslet­ter and my forum even­tu­ally became my blog. But many arti­cles I write for my blog come from ideas I got from, or posts I made on, forums, dis­cus­sion boards, and even com­ments I made on other people’s blogs.

(This very blog post is an exam­ple of this in action!)

I often link to pre­vi­ous posts in my arti­cles, which are still dis­trib­uted to ezine edi­tors and pub­lish­ers by my pub­li­cist, Anne-​​Marie Baugh.

Anne-​​Marie has been work­ing for me for years. She still does. She dis­trib­utes my arti­cles for me by sub­mit­ting my blog posts and arti­cles to thou­sands of ezine edi­tors, mag­a­zines, arti­cle direc­to­ries, blogs, and pub­lish­ers on a monthly basis.

Nev­er­the­less, all these strate­gies work together in some way. They’re like the pieces of a clock that con­nect to one and other. And over the years and after doing this again and again, my forum sim­ply took a life of its own. My blog is no different.

Now, do I rec­om­mend start­ing a dis­cus­sion forum or a blog to pro­mote your copy­writ­ing ser­vices? Not really.

But if you want some great ideas, advice, and step-​​by-​​step strate­gies for build­ing a suc­cess­ful, multi-​​figure copy­writ­ing busi­ness fast, I highly rec­om­mend John “Angel” Anghelache and Ryan Healy’s Copy­writ­ing Code.

I’ve worked with both of them, and I know for a fact that their stuff is top­notch. I know because I hired them based on the same mar­ket­ing they teach! They offer a bunch of free videos. Go take a look at them now.

About the Author

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