Today's guest is Lianna Patch. Lianna is a copywriter, speaker, and the founder of Punchline Copy, a copywriting agency focused on injecting humor into brand copy. Lianna also runs Snap Copy, an on-demand copywriting service.
It took some time for Lianna to find her niche. She'd been writing copy for seven years and was finding herself unhappy with her business. At the same time, she was also starting to do stand-up comedy and joined a copywriting mastermind group. She felt the group "gave her permission" to incorporate her improv work with her copywriting and she's been at it ever since.
Lianna started niching down her market by simply writing the copy for her own website. She didn't do a bunch of customer interviews or outreach, she just wrote without inhibition (and probably with a few drinks) and let her positioning grow organically from there.
Throughout the life of her business, she's gone from being mostly retainer-based to project-based, which grew from the types of projects and clients she found herself working with most often. Currently, her business has grown through word of mouth via podcasts and speaking gigs, but she plans to put more marketing systems in place in 2019.
Additionally, in 2019, Lianna plans to finalize and release a course she's working on and doing more to productize her services.
[click_to_tweet tweet="My goal is to work with people who, if I met them at a party, we would just talk easily and we'd have a good time and that's my metric for new prospect calls." quote="My goal is to work with people who, if I met them at a party, we would just talk easily and we'd have a good time and that's my metric for new prospect calls." theme="style3"]
In this episode Lianna talks about:
- The parallels between good comedy and good copywriting.
- Transitioning between a retainer-based and project-based business models.
- Creating a better customer experience by writing copy that shows you understand your client and care about their needs.
Main Takeaways
- Creating clear positioning ensures that you target the right kinds of clients and that you don't spend a lot of time assuaging the concerns of the wrong ones.
- Build a revenue model that works for you and that you are comfortable with. Don't force retainer-based clients if it's not what's best for you and your business.
- Writing shorter sentences and punctuating them with animated gifs or emojis are an easy way to make your writing more approachable.
- Give an opportunity for clients to work with you if they don't necessarily fit into your larger services.
Important Mentions in this Episode
Season 4: Niching Down
More episodes in this season:
S04 E01 - Josh Doody on Why, When, and How to Niche Your Business
S04 E02 - Sara Dunn on Overcoming the Fear of Specialization
S04 E03 - Chris Bintliff on Filling Gaps in a Niche and Building Marketing Engines That Work
S04 E04 - Matt Medeiros on Community and Finding Niches in Unlikely Places
S04 E05 - John Locke on Pivoting Your Niche and How To Validate A Market For Your Services
S04 E06 - Elliot Murphy on Abundance Mindset and Providing Value to Your Clients
S04 E07 - Troy Dean on How To Focus Your Marketing and Speak Your Client's Language
S04 E08 - Lianna Patch on Making an Impact by Injecting Humor Into Your Copy
S04 E09 - Joe Workman on Finding Your People and Creating What They Need
S04 E10 - Andrew Askins on Burnout, Pivoting, and Creating a Company People Want to Work For
