Turning Words into Clients: The Art of Effective Copywriting
In this session, I'm chatting with Arianna Smith, a licensed therapist and copywriter, and I can't wait to share her wisdom with you! We'll be diving into buyer archetypes and the essential role they play in the copywriting process. Arianna will break down the four distinct buyer types and share tips on reaching and connecting with each. Plus, she shares some common mistakes she sees private practices make when writing their own copy and how to avoid them.
Takeaways
Copy is crucial for marketing in the private practice space as it guides people to the storefront (website) and compels them to take action.
Common struggles in writing compelling copy include using jargon, not knowing the writing process, and dealing with perfectionism and imposter syndrome.
Understanding buyer archetypes helps tailor copy to resonate with different types of clients, such as logic-driven CEOs, detail-oriented thinkers, emotion-driven connectors, and slow decision-making feelers.
Tips for writing effective copy include knowing your ideal client, ditching jargon, and keeping it concise.
Incorporating personality and values into copy can help clients connect with therapists on a deeper level.
Measuring the effectiveness of copy can be done by tracking client inquiries, analyzing referral sources, and using voice of customer data.
Therapists already possess the skills needed to write good copy, and it's just a matter of adjusting mindset and learning the skill set.
Meet the Speaker: Ariana Smith
Arianna Smith is a licensed therapist, intuitive copywriter, and content strategist. She helps therapists, healers, and holistic practitioners write words that sound like them and dazzle their ideal clients. Powered by clinical insight and ethical sales psychology, she helps you write copy that converts maybes into hell-yes! without sounding salesy, sleazy, or like someone else.
After working on 100+ copy projects, her methodology weaves together big-picture planning, somatic wisdom, and feel-good strategy so you feel clear and confident about the next steps for your copy. Away from the keyboard, you'll find her narrating her dog’s thoughts or buying (yet another) tarot deck.
Transcript
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Elevate Your Practice Summit
[00:00:07] Meet Ariana Smith: Therapist and Copywriter
[00:01:22] The Power of Copywriting in Marketing
[00:03:55] Common Copywriting Challenges for Therapists
[00:06:42] Understanding Buyer Archetypes
[00:12:32] Strategies for Writing Compelling Copy
[00:21:00] Incorporating Personality and Values in Copy
[00:23:50] Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Copy
[00:28:01] Connecting with Arianna and Closing Remarks
Full Transcript
Welcome to the Elevate Your Practice Summit
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: Thanks for listening to this session of the Elevate Your Practice Magnetic Marketing Summit.
Meet Ariana Smith: Therapist and Copywriter
[00:00:07] Samantha Mabe: I am speaking with Ariana Smith, who is a licensed therapist, intuitive copywriter, and content strategist. She helps therapists, healers, and holistic practitioners write words that sound like them and dazzle their ideal clients.
Powered by clinical insight and ethical sales psychology, she helps you write copy that converts maybes into hell yeses without sounding salesy, sleazy, or like someone else. After working on 100 plus copy projects, her methodology weaves together big picture planning, somatic wisdom, and feel good strategy so you can be clear and confident about the next steps for your copy.
Away from the keyboard, you'll find her narrating her dog's thoughts or buying yet another tarot deck. I am so excited to talk with Ariana about turning words into clients.
Thanks so much for joining me, Ariana. Can you Introduce yourself for everybody who's listening and tell them what you do in your work?
[00:00:59] Arianna Smith: Samantha, thank you so much for having me. My name is Ariana Smith. You can also call me Ari if you want to. And I'm a therapist by day, copywriter by night. As a copywriter, I help therapists and healers and like holistic minded entrepreneurs write copy that draws in their ideal clients and sounds like them.
The Power of Copywriting in Marketing
[00:01:22] Samantha Mabe: We're talking about marketing in this summit and I wanted to bring in a copywriter because that's such an important piece of marketing, but I think sometimes it gets thrown in with other stuff. So can we start off by talking about why copy is so crucial for marketing in the private practice space for therapists and everybody here?
[00:01:44] Arianna Smith: This is such a good question. I'm so glad that we're talking about this because yeah, Copywriting gets thrown in with marketing gets thrown in with copywriting, or they get separated out and forgotten. So this is why one of the reasons when people come to me with help for copy, I am always asking, what's your marketing plan? How are you going to get people in front of this copy?
And the analogy I like to give involves a birdhouse. So you're looking for a birdhouse and how do you know where to find it? You might think, okay there's this general area where I might be able to find a birdhouse, aka the World Wide Web. And how am I going to know where to look? There might be some signage that says birdhouses this way, boutique birdhouses this way, whatever that looks like.
And then you walk down the street. And you see a sign and it just says store and that's all. And so then you're like are there birdhouses inside? What's going to happen if I go inside? But then next door you see a sign that says boutique birdhouses for sale. With certainty, if you go into that store, you are going to find what you need, right?
The reason I share this analogy is because marketing, in my mind as a copywriter, is what's guiding people to the storefront and your copy is the storefront. Your copy is what is compelling people to be like, ah, Yes, I found the right place.
It's so important to consider your copy and your marketing, because if you don't have solid marketing, you have this beautiful storefront and no one's going to come inside. But if you don't have good copy, all your marketing efforts are going to drive people to your storefront and then either not going to know what to do. They're not going to know who you serve. They're not going to know if you can help them. And then you've lost All your marketing efforts right outside your front door.
[00:03:37] Samantha Mabe: That makes perfect sense. A lot of the other interviews from the summit are about how do we get people to even find out what we offer and what you and I do, you write the copy for websites, I do the design, so we are the store and we're helping people once they're in there and they're trying to find where do they go?
Common Copywriting Challenges for Therapists
[00:03:55] Samantha Mabe: Let's start by talking about some of the common struggles or challenges that private practice owners face when it comes to writing compelling copy for their business, what are some of the things people come up against.
[00:04:09] Arianna Smith: A lot, but that's not through their fault. Most of the clients that you and I are working with folk private practice owners, they probably have a master's level education or higher. And so they have been conditioned to Hit a word count, right? We could have flashbacks. So Oh my God, how am I going to hit this word count? And then you're like, maybe if I double space it, will my professor know if it's double space?
So we've been trained from a really early time to make things complex, make them long, make them wordy. Make us sound super smart and we know what we're talking about. And that mindset is often the opposite of what you need to take when you are writing copy.
So this beautiful training that helps your clients can also be a detriment when you're sitting down to writing copy if you don't adjust that mindset. That's the biggest one I see.
Other ones I see is not knowing the writing process, skipping ahead to a blank page before they've done the legwork and the research ahead of time.
Emotionally so much perfectionism and imposter syndrome, right? Who am I to do this? I have encountered so many amazing service providers that actually they can write really well, but they're afraid oh, but what if I actually worked with this population? Who am I to want to work with this population in this group?
There's more in there as well, as far as like avoidance and overwhelm, over editing, but they all go back, I feel like, to questioning who am I to do this? Do I know how to write this? And the only way I know how to write is these jargony academic papers and that is not what creates compelling copy.
[00:05:55] Samantha Mabe: What's so hard about being in this space is everybody has so much training and they're so smart and they want to help. But no, you don't get business classes. Like you're not told how to run a business and do marketing and put up a website. And so all of that, you have to learn while you're also trying to serve your clients and work with people.
[00:06:17] Arianna Smith: And it's a lot of context switching, right? You and I were talking earlier about if I see clients or not, and I do, and I can't do copy on the same day I do clinical work, it requires a completely different brain space. So that's another layer of this too, is it's like you're, service providers are going from helping their client to one moment and then trying to write copy in the same breath.
Understanding Buyer Archetypes
[00:06:42] Samantha Mabe: You use buyer archetypes? Can you explain what that is and why it's important for people to understand?
[00:06:49] Arianna Smith: Oh gosh, so there are courses purely devoted to buyer archetypes So I'm gonna give like the most basic overview and also Even more so give the lessons that we can take from knowing about buyer archetypes. Because if you can know buyer archetypes up the wazoo, but if you don't know why and how to use them, it's like a moot point.
So one thing to keep in mind when we're considering buyer archetypes, sometimes they're called buyer personas, buyer modalities. You could Google this. It's originally from two dudes that wrote a book, like teaching your cat to bark or something. I wanted to say, this isn't my intellectual property. This is just thematically what you'll find in the internet. So if you're curious, you can learn more.
So the idea to think about with buyer archetypes is that we go through a unique psychological process when we are faced with a parting with our time, money, energy, and resources, right? There's certain things that we go through, but not everyone makes the decisions in the same way. They have different data that they take into account and different speeds that we do that.
So when we think about buyer archetypes, I like folks to, to imagine quadrants with four squares and on the bottom of the axis is either the data that folks use to make a decision, either logic or emotion. And then on the other side of the quadrant, you have the speed at which they make decisions, which is either fast or slow. This is very binary, right? There's like people use more than this, but for conceptualizing this, right?
So the folks that need logic and make decisions quickly. I call those the CEOs. So those are the folks that they're like, where's the button to push? They're asking that they're very logic driven, fast moving buyers. And the question that they're looking at is why are you the best solution for what I need right now? Sometimes in other models, these are called competitive buyers.
Then below them visually, we have what I call the thinkers these are folks that they make decisions more slowly. So on that axis, they make their slow decision makers, long thinkers is what I like to call them, and they use logic to make decisions. So these buyers, the thinkers, they need a lot of details. They need to feel really satisfied that they have all the information before they move forward. These are folks that probably have a spreadsheet to compare and contrast like different options. Definitely not speaking from experience here. And they research reviews. They are very much about, I need to have the data I need to feel satisfied about making a decision. The question they're asking is more around your process. What is your process? How can it help me?
As you're listening, Samantha, do you have a sense of either of those land for you at all or resonate?
[00:09:42] Samantha Mabe: I think I'm one of the long thinkers too, although I don't have a spreadsheet. My husband is like the spreadsheet person.
[00:09:48] Arianna Smith: Yeah, my partner too.
So then on the other side of the quadrant, we have folks that are using emotions to make decisions and they either make decisions quickly or they need a long amount of time to make decisions. So folks that make decisions quickly on emotions are sometimes called spontaneous buyers. I like to call them connectors because they're very fueled by fun by relatability. They're asking the question, why should I buy from you right now? Why is this the best choice for me right now? So they're similar in the CEOs and that they want to know like, why is this right decision right now? But they're driven more by their emotion and what feels right.
Sometimes these buyers can be categorized as quote unquote, impulsive buyers. And I don't think that is necessarily the most straight positive I think we need all type of buyers, but that is when I have described this buyer archetype to folks, they're like, Oh, yeah, that's me. Sometimes I'm pretty impulsive and I'm like, no, you're spontaneous, right? Like, when you see something you want that's what you get.
So then the 4th type is what I call the feelers or the deep feelers. These are folks that they need a long time to make a decision and they are using emotional data to do it. So of the four, they are often the ones that take the longest to make the decision, right? Because they are gathering emotional data. They're gathering do I align with your values? do we personally relate? Can I trust you? Will you like meet the individual needs that I have?
And as you can imagine, when we're conceptualizing buyer archetypes, these folks are the opposite of the CEOs, right? The CEOs are like, where's the button, right? And then the feelers down here are thinking can I learn a little bit more about you? Where can I ,see more photos of you? Oh, I really like this story. So there's very different motivations.
[00:11:40] Samantha Mabe: That's so helpful and it reminds me of the importance of having all of the different marketing channels because we've talked about earlier TikTok as brand awareness so that is going to speak to those kind of longer term, more emotional buyers because they can watch you over time and they can learn and they can see your personality. Whereas, If it's somebody who's the CEO decision maker and they just want to hit a buy now button, like they're going to find you and that needs to be super obvious on, in your copy and on your website to click check out, let's get it done.
[00:12:16] Arianna Smith: That's a really big thing to consider with this particular archetype is, why are you the best decision? And that's an important thing to consider in copywriting to stand out, right? If you got two birdhouse stores next to you, why is this one the better choice for you?
Strategies for Writing Compelling Copy
[00:12:32] Samantha Mabe: If somebody is listening to this and they're thinking, okay, do I have to write for all of these people? Do I write for one of these people? How does understanding archetypes help us actually write our copy to better resonate with our target clients?
[00:12:46] Arianna Smith: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you asked this because it's okay, what do we do with this information?
And some people might be listening and feel overwhelmed because they're just like, crap. I thought I just had one ideal client avatar, now I have four. What the heck? So don't hang up.
The biggest lessons around buyer archetypes is one, like I said, understanding that there's different process that people go through. And we often write to our buyer archetype. And we can use this model, not necessarily like what to write to, but also what are my blind spots. So I tend to be more of a long thinker and so one of my blind spots is Oh, like how can I make this decision more easy for people to get the information they need quickly, right?
[00:13:34] Samantha Mabe: When I have my sales page on my website, it's super long. It answers like every single question and I have to remember, okay, we still have to have buttons for people who are like, okay, I have enough details. Let's go to the next step.
We get really long winded when we're talking about stuff, we're trying to explain everything and For some people they're gonna get lost. They're gonna be like, this is too long I don't know what to do and they're gonna find somebody else.
[00:13:59] Arianna Smith: When we translate this Conceptually to practice. That's where the above the fold section gets so important and your menu gets so important at the top, right? This is where the interplay of copy and design comes in really beautifully because you want to have really compelling copy in that above the fold, but you also want it to be really clear.
There's a saying in copywriting Clear is better than clever. And so sometimes when we're crafting this above the fold section, we want to be possibly maybe a little bit more verbose and more descriptive. And it's no, what are the facts? And that serves all buyer archetypes.
I think the other thing to consider with these buyer archetypes Is the understanding that it takes people a while to decide to work with you. I think we're sold a lie in the online business world or in the business building world, that if we do all the things people will immediately want to buy from us.
And they will, right? There's two buyer archetypes that are like, boom, you're exactly who I want. You've done all the things in the backend, but there's two other types of archetypes that need more information before they make a decision with you. And so that's where I think the mindset piece comes into this, especially when it comes to copywriting and marketing is we often so quickly go to, it's not working and instead we might consider, okay who are my main buyer archetypes? Oh, they're mostly feelers. Okay. Maybe I need to give them more touch points to get to know me. Maybe I need to send out a video of me so they can see my face and express my mannerisms. Maybe I need to have more story based messaging, right?
And this is where the design comes in. Yeah. I don't want that to clutter up other sections of my copy to also take care of those fast acting decision makers.
[00:15:52] Samantha Mabe: I think that's really helpful to get us started thinking about that: How do we put together all these pieces and make sure we don't miss anybody? So we have things for people who can act quickly, but we've also got enough information in there for people who take longer and need more information.
So if somebody wants to write their own copy or maybe make some improvements to their website copy that already exists, what are some of your top tips or your best practices that you can share?
[00:16:20] Arianna Smith: I'm going to condense it into three which will I think, relate to what we've been talking about before.
I think the first one is to really know your ideal client inside and out. Get specific which I know is really hard. I didn't mention that earlier under the struggles around copywriting. I would say, honestly, that is the top top one.
It's but I don't want to exclude anyone, right? I want to be able to speak to everyone. So you will. But once again, if we go back to this birdhouse analogy, if you have a sign that says we have birdhouses and plants and also clipboards and exercise balls, you're just going to get overwhelmed with it.
So I think the first one is really knowing your ideal client. I guide folks in doing this with gathering voice and customer data. And once again, that could be a whole course in and of itself, but basically voice of customer data is the data that your client has used to describe themselves: their hopes, their goals, their pain points and what they need from you. And the easiest place to get that is, typically if you're a helper, like a service provider. Is your intake forms, your intake data. You can also get it from researching other sources. And one of my sayings is like research don't guess.
The second thing is ditching the jargon. We talked about that earlier. The listeners here probably have, advanced degrees, advanced training. They speak in clinical, medical, professional terms, and you have to decondition yourself from that and speak to the language that your ideal client uses.
The third tip I'd have also relates to this is keep it concise. So I think good copy is knowing what to write, but great copy is knowing what to cut. And that's the hardest thing. They have this saying in the writer world, kill your darlings, you have to fall in love with what you're writing, with what you're doing. And then for the sake of conciseness, for the sake of respecting your customer's time, energy, and attention span, you have to pare that down to what is the most essential message that's going to land with them.
[00:18:28] Samantha Mabe: I think those are great tips. I have seen that so much. You talked about really knowing your target client. I think that also comes, we've talked a lot with people about niching down, let's get really specific about your specialty or the specific things that you work with. Because then when somebody lands on your website, they're like, Oh, I work with moms who have anxiety, not I work with anybody who might walk into my office, and it's going to resonate a whole lot more.
And then the jargon, I see so much of that. Either things are really jargony, and people aren't searching for those words, right? They're like, that's not what I would call what I'm experiencing, or we get really vague into let's revitalize your life, let's transform your life, and that doesn't mean anything either.
[00:19:19] Arianna Smith: Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. I want to have a little confetti cannon right now.
I think also the language of the ideal client changes because four years ago, I was telling my clients, do not use trauma, do not use the word trauma in your copy. That was still a jargony term. And now things have shifted. And that is something that people are searching for. They're searching for trauma therapy. So I think this is where it also goes back to knowing your ideal client and the words that they're using. They might be using some of your jargon, right? No one was using the term like attachment styles, like as widely as it is now. So you got to get rid of the jargon, but if you are going to keep some in, make sure it's what your clients are using and searching.
[00:20:05] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I think that's where paying attention to the trends on social media and what people are talking about can be so helpful.
Cause what we call gentle parenting now didn't used to be called gentle parenting and people are really confused which I have seen so much on my feed, but we have to understand like, what are people calling these things so that we can speak directly to what they're looking for.
[00:20:31] Arianna Smith: Yeah. And that's where the research comes in, right?
There's SEO, like keyword research. There's this voice of customer research. I think I would just want like folks to know you don't have to guess around this, right? I think a lot of overwhelm with writing copy comes from not knowing what the steps are or not knowing what to say, and it's like your clients are telling you exactly what to write. If you listen. If you're feeling stumped in your copy, listen a little closer to your ideal.
Incorporating Personality and Values in Copy
[00:21:00] Samantha Mabe: So how do we then, or should we even incorporate our personality and our values into our copy when we're writing things?
[00:21:10] Arianna Smith: I love this. I love the question, should we?
Because that's another trend and shift that I've been seeing in the copywriting world, as I'm sure you've been seeing in the website design world, is this call for more authenticity, more transparency, more personality of who you are.
As a strategic copywriter, I always want to be rooted in why are we doing this? And I think that also creates safety because it is really vulnerable to disclose things about yourself. And I think that sometimes business owners get this message that they need to almost exploit themselves in order to connect with their ideal clients. And I don't believe that's the case.
So if we're going to root into the strategy of self disclosure, which, any helper healer therapists, this is something you're already thinking about when we're working with clients. We're like, why am I sharing this? How can this benefit the client? So that's a skill that Everyone already has is like, why am I going to share this? So if we're going to read into the strategy around this if you are thinking about the buyer archetypes there's certain buyer archetypes, the emotion driven ones where, yeah, more of your personality is going to be important.
If you're a personal brand versus a group practice, really different ways that you show personality, right? You're thinking more about what's the personality of this group practice as opposed to with a personal brand, it's what's my personality? So different strategic decisions.
[00:22:40] Samantha Mabe: I've had clients who have come to me and said like I swear in front of my clients, I'm pretty upbeat. We're gonna have some fun and I want that to come across my website because you never want somebody to walk in And sit in the chair across from you and be totally thrown off because of who you are and how you do things.
And you don't want to feel like you have to push your personality down In order to serve them because neither of you is going to get the best experience out of that. So I think it is helpful to showcase at least some of that, especially as a personal brand to let people know, this is what you're going to get and if it's not the right fit, then you can find somebody else who would be better.
[00:23:24] Arianna Smith: People can decide to outsource their copy, keep people can write it themselves. There's pros and cons to each, but this is one of the pros of writing your own copy, right? Is you can express your personality as opposed to hiring someone that writes in a completely different voice than you do. And then Once again, your clients get in front of you and they're like, wait a sec, this is not the language that you use.
[00:23:49] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. All right.
Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Copy
[00:23:50] Samantha Mabe: Once we've written our copy or have worked with a copywriter, how do we actually measure the effectiveness of our copy? How do we see if it's working? Or if we need to make changes?
[00:24:01] Arianna Smith: There's so many different things we can root into to measure this. 1 is are you getting clients right? Do we have the proof of you got a phone call from someone? And they're like, yeah, you were referred to me by my couple's therapist. I saw your website and it spoke to me and I'm like, so ready to move forward. So I think we can get data on the front end of people just saying it speaks to them.
And this is why it's really important to track your referral sources and track where like sources are coming from. Because if you are getting a bunch of referral sources through some way that don't go through your website. Then you're like, huh, what's happening there.
I think also to test the effectiveness of your copy, I would only change one thing at a time. Because I grew up in the nineties. I liken this to when we overplucked our eyebrows, right? We just can't leave it alone. Don't overpluck your website because if you think about these buyer archetypes that need more time to make a decision, every time you change your copy, every time you change something dramatic, that trust process or that data gathering process starts over. So when we're measuring the effectiveness of our copy, once again, we're going to look at do we have clients that are reaching out to us.
If we are toying with it are we being really strategic in what we're changing? Are we just feeling scarcity because we don't have the clients that we need so we're just going to completely rewrite our about page without actually having. Given it time, right? And you might know more of the stats around this, but people would need about 7 to 12 different Times to interact with you before they're ready to move forward. That may not be your website. That may be social media, your email newsletter.
And then I think also measuring the effectiveness is once again, going back to that voice customer data, right? If you know your ideal client and you're using their language, and it's very likely. That you are going to be drawing in your ideal clients, assuming once again, the marketing is driving them to the storefront as well.
[00:26:07] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I think that's helpful. And it is a really good reminder that because we've done all this research and we know who we're talking to, you should be seeing more and more of your ideal clients. They should be self selecting in or out based on the language that you're using. Then the people who aren't the right fit will know, okay, I need to go somewhere else.
And I think that can be super helpful for us as business owners, because then we're not having to turn people away or feel guilty because we don't think we're a good fit for somebody.
[00:26:40] Arianna Smith: The idea is by, this isn't the case for all businesses, but the idea is by the time they book a call, they already feel pretty solid, right?
And if you think about, especially I see this with the long thinkers and the feelers, they're feeling pretty solid. If they've gotten to the point where they're booking a call with you, think about all the time that they had to spend before doing that. And then once you get on the call, it's just about connecting with them and being yourself.
Encouragement and Final Thoughts
[00:27:06] Arianna Smith: I'd like to end on a positive note because I think therapists and business owners can be really critical on themselves. And I just would want to remind anyone listening that they already have what it takes to write good copy, right? They know how to research, they know how to analyze data. They know how to write a cohesive sentence. We're just asking you to write a shorter one. You already know how to listen. You already know how to connect. You already have to build empathy. So there's so many things that folks already possess that are going to make them good at this.
And it's just like a skillset, right? No one listening to this was good at doing their job when they started. We had supervisors, we had mentors, we had training programs that taught us that. So I think that would be the mindset I'd want to impart on people listening is, you're already you already have what it takes. It's just a skill set. It's just a mindset adjustment in most cases.
Connecting with Arianna and Closing Remarks
[00:28:01] Samantha Mabe: So where can people connect with you? And I know you have a freebie to share with everybody who's listening.
[00:28:06] Arianna Smith: My website is ariannasmith. com with two N's.
And so there's a couple different freebies. We'll have a email autoresponder template. So the idea behind that is it's a really low risk way to play with copy and instantly connect with folks that are reaching out to you. And so if you download that template, you'll be able to see different examples of how it can work depending on your business.
And then also I have a copywriting masterclass. It's geared towards therapists, but really anyone in the helping profession is going to benefit from this as well.
And I have more resources coming out. I want to do one around voice of customer data. Certain professions have ethical considerations when it comes to voice of customer data. We didn't get into that, but I definitely want to put that in here because psychotherapists, we can't ask for testimonials from their clients. So that is something that is on my radar too.
If you're on my newsletter, you'll be getting access to because it is such a careful consideration when you're navigating a license and code of ethics.
[00:29:11] Samantha Mabe: Thank you so much for tuning into this session of Elevate Your Practice. I was so excited to talk with all of the guests in this round of the Summit, and I hope that you'll share it with a colleague or a friend who could use this magnetic marketing magic as well. You can send them to elevateyourpractice. co to register now, and they will get access to the Summit right away.
