224. How to Grow Your Brand and Authority Using Content with Bernadette Schwerdt

Productive Insights Podcast — Actionable Business Growth Ideas — with Ash Roy

Links Mentioned:

• www.productiveinsights.com/212
• www.productiveinsights.com/200
• www.productiveinsights.com/195
• www.productiveinsights.com/176
• www.copyschool.com

00:00 Intro

0:58 The importance of understanding the creative brief

1:12 How to balance writing for humans and SEO optimization

1:35 How to leverage customer feedback and understand your audience in copywriting

3:53 Approach to content creation in the awareness, consideration, and decision stages.

6:06 How to tailor content to different stages of the marketing funnel, from awareness to consideration to decision

14:35 How to blend writing for the audience and search engines, using keywords to guide copywriting

23:00 The importance of strategy and higher-level thinking skills in copywriting

Ash Roy 00:00

If you're a small business owner looking to build his or her brand, using the power of content marketing, copywriting and better digital marketing strategies that attract lifelong clients who become raving fans and tell their friends about you. And this episode is for you. I'm actually the founder of Productive Insights dot com and the host of the Productive Insights Podcast, and I'm genuinely excited to bring you this episode with Bernadette Schwerdt

Bernadette is an award winning Australian entrepreneur and the founder of Copy School. In this conversation we dive into a variety of fascinating topics that will help you move the needle in your business using genuine, authentic methods to build your brand over the long term. Firstly, Bernadette and I talk about her approach to creating content in the buyer's journey at the awareness, consideration and decision stages, and specifically what questions she tries to answer at each of those stages in her content.

Bernadette Schwerdt 00:58

A lot of business owners don't know this, and that is one of the first questions a client will ask is What do we write? And that's not a simple answer. You have to take a few steps back and look at the creative brief You actually do a whole series of question and answer sort of responses.

Ash Roy 01:12

We then talk about striking a fine balance between writing for humans, but still pleasing the SEO gods so that your content ranks for the correct search terms and is search engine optimized.

Bernadette Schwerdt 01:25

You can sort of infiltrate those keywords into your copy. You merge both the human need and Google's needs so that you come up with a piece of copy that's going to appease both camps.

Ash Roy 01:35

She talks about how to leverage customer feedback and parlay that into your copywriting, and she really emphasizes the importance of understanding your audience. She even talks about how strategy connects at a high level to the copywriting process, which I thought was very important and useful.

Bernadette Schwerdt 01:52

I don't think you can ignore the SEO completely, but at the same time I don't think you can ignore your instinct and impulse as well and listen to what my customers or prospects say. I hear the questions that they're asking me and I take that into accommodation as well when I'm writing copy.

Ash Roy 02:06

And then she also shares how her skills as a mentor and copywriting has helped some of her clients make massive transformations in their lives and build businesses that have given them freedom from the 9 to 5.

Bernadette Schwerdt 02:19

Part of the reason I love what I do and this is only come about since I've started the training, is you realize people want something different in their lives and I get a lot of joy from being able to see people make progress and take information and apply it. And so when I see these people progress on a certain age, it gives me enormous joy just to see how people can take the information, apply and change their lives.

Ash Roy 02:43

So strap in and listen carefully to the pearls of wisdom that Bernadette shares that you can then implement in your business and your life and what your business saw. Oh, and one more thing before we start over. 90% of you who watch this YouTube channel have not subscribed. If you've ever enjoyed our videos, could you do me a favor and please hit the subscribe button?

This helps the channel more than you probably know, and the bigger the channel gets, the better quality guess we can bring to you. So please go ahead and hit subscribe. If you enjoy these videos and share them with a friend. Thanks. And let's get into the conversation with Bernadette, Bernadette Schuett is an award winning Australian entrepreneur, author, TEDx speaker and advertising copywriter.

She's the founder of Copy School, the Australian School of Copywriting and is the country's leading copywriting coach. Bernadette's flagship online courses help marketers, business owners and freelance content creators create cut through content that places them at the top of their field and on page one of Google. Today, I am delighted to welcome Bernadette Schwerdt from copyschool.com, and we're going to be talking about how you, our listeners and viewers, can grow your brand and your authority using content.

Ash Roy 03:51

Welcome to the show, Bernadette.

Bernadette Schwerdt 03:54

Thanks for having me. Ash. It's great to be here.

Ash Roy 03:54

I'm very excited to have you. I've been reading some of your books, one of your books particularly, and I found it to be very, very succinct and punchy, which I absolutely love and very biased towards that sort of content. That doesn't waffle a lot. And that's a very Aussie approach to most things, in my opinion. So great to have you.

So, Bernadette, let's start there. Let's talk about your approach to content creation in the awareness, consideration and decision stages and how you approach content creation in each of these stages.

Bernadette Schwerdt 04:23

I think what you're talking about there is the marketing funnel, isn't it? That's how two people come into your ecosystem as a business owner. And a lot of business owners don't know this, right? Because it does help work out what do you want to say? And that is one of the first questions a client will ask is what do we write?

And that's not a simple answer. You have to take a few steps back and look at the creative brief, which is another thing I talk to a lot of my students about is having a creative brief so you don't just go straight into the writing of something. You actually do a whole series of question and answer sort of responses.

So what I do actually, what I train my students to think about is, firstly, who's your customer? Right. Pretty basic. You try and get down to the one person, not so much a group of 25 to 34 year old women who buy groceries. I like to think within that subset, who is this woman? What is her name? Where does she live?

How many children does she have? What does she do for a job? What's her concerns? What's the problem? She'd love to solve here? And it doesn't take very long. I could do it in about 2 minutes with my clients. But once you get down to it, it's Gemma and ...