Welcome to Episode 43 of Write with Influence.
This week’s topic was inspired by a powerful storytelling technique that I discovered whilst studying for my degree in script writing.
In fiction, you can’t write a well-rounded character unless you know them inside out and the same applies when it comes to copywriting – you have to write in a voice that appeals to your customer, and this is why I’m going to teach you how to write a character monologue for your target audience.
My simple three-part structure to creating a customer monologue will help you to:
- Gain a deeper understanding of what your customer is going through.
- Shift your perspective and bring you closer to your customer’s point of view.
- Discover themes of frustration and desire that you can apply to your copy.
I have included some sketches to shine a light on the importance of communicating specific details about people – we’ve got a police interview with an unexpected arrest and a netball semi-final where “stocky,” “ginger” and “cranky” dominate the court in an arm-waving battle to win the trophy.
Writing a customer monologue will make you take a step back and revisit your customer from a slightly different angle and in this episode, I am going to show you how to use this tactic to create emotional, specific content that expresses a greater depth of understanding and empathy and speaks to your audience in a new language.
Don’ forget to subscribe so that you can automatically get notified when the next episode is available. Likes and reviews are also massively appreciated – I read every one and they warm the cockles of my heart.
Links:
The Write With Influence Course
EPISODE 43
THE CUSTOMER MONOLOGUE – HOW TO INJECT EMPATHY AND EMOTION INTO YOUR COPY
AMY HARRISON
Amy Harrison:
Hello and welcome to Write with Influence, a bite size snack of copywriting tips and tricks that I put together just for you. Why? Well, because I think you deserve the persuasive writing power to show people just how valuable you are. You’ve got your thing going on out there and the world needs to know about it.
Today’s copywriting tip comes from a storytelling technique and it’s one that makes it easier to put into words what it is your customer is feeling about their problem. And that’s why today’s artwork shows folklore hero, Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Blue Ox as they listen to their customer’s problem. You can see that over on the show page at www.writewithinfluence.com.
This technique is called the customer monologue. When you articulate how customers feel, it helps build a connection between your business and them. When you don’t quite get it right – this can happen when we sit down to write from our perspective and talk about what we think our customer wants to hear about our product – we can usually tell because you can feel it. You might not be able to put your finger on what it is, but as you’re reading through your copy, nine times out of 10, you can tell if it feels a little bit out of sorts. I sometimes think of it like wearing ill-fitting clothes. You might be able to force it, but it might not be pretty or comfortable. So your copy should feel like it fits your ideal customer. It should be easy for prospects to read, and I’m not talking about plain speak or nicely edited sentences. It should be easy to read because it feels comfortable and it feels familiar and it feels like it speaks to them. Now, this technique that I’m going to share with you, the customer monologue, comes from back when I was training to be a screenwriter many, many, many, many years ago.
I studied screenwriting for film and TV for three years, and I got my degree in it. I was really happy with the degree, I learnt tons over the three years, but I’m going to be perfectly honest, I’ve never written anything for the big screen. However, all was not lost because what I learned later on was that the narrative lessons that I learned during that course were invaluable for copywriting. One of the lessons that we learned was called a Character Monologue. Now, in fiction, you can’t really write a well-rounded character unless you’re really in their head and you know what they think, what they say, what gets them upset, and most importantly, you know what they would say that perhaps you wouldn’t. This really opened my eyes at the time as to what it means to be a good writer and I think it’s the same for being a good copywriter. You have to write in the voice that appeals to your customer, not necessarily in a voice that appeals to you. So, for example, I remember my tutors, when we all started that course, they saw a lot of students writing scripts about students who sat around and had conversations about being students and they encouraged us to stop this and to stretch ourselves. They would say, “Write about someone who isn’t you. Go out, do the research, don’t rely on just what’s in your head.” And they really encouraged us to create characters that were not like us. In order to do this effectively, we would have to go and research the type of people that you wanted to write about and build that background, know how they spoke, uncover their values. Now, doesn’t that sound really familiar with copywriting and the research that you would do with your customer?
So, at university, even though we were writing about fictional characters, to really feel authentic, we did have to work hard to get to know them until they became real, and they didn’t just sound like us. So, we would write these reams and reams of background documents on our characters, thinking about the events that shaped their lives and outlooks and we would also do research as well to make sure that we had the accuracy for the story. But at some point, one thing that we would do is write a character monologue. This would be a character speaking alone, not as part of a scene, just to themselves. It could be them just talking to themselves or talking to someone else, but it was a long piece of writing just in their voice. To make it interesting, it worked really well when they were experiencing conflict. For example, a mother talking about her daughter having to go into care or a sea fishing apprentice who was working on a trawler for the first time. It doesn’t matter the situation, but the reason it worked really well was, you learned a lot of value about the characters when you were talking or describing a situation where they felt some kind of emotional conflict or drama, and that is what I want for you to do for your customer. So, it’s not a character monologue, but a customer monologue. It’s a great way of getting into their head, thinking about the problem that you solve and encouraging you to try on the language and the words that your customer would use to talk about that situation.
So, I’m going to give you three really simple tips that can help you write a customer monologue and just get up and going. It’s such a powerful technique and a really effective exercise for you to practice because when you can write a really vivid and clear description of someone, it makes it so much easier to imagine that person.
[SKETCH – Police Scene – Mugging Statement]
Policeman: Can you describe the man who mugged you? Did you get a good look at him?
Victim: Oh yes, I got a very good look at him.
Policeman: Excellent, what did he look like?
Victim: He looked like the kind of person who you could do something nice for, but he’d never acknowledge it.
Policeman: I’m sorry?
Nothing big, just like when you walk past someone and say good morning, but they don’t say it back or you hold open a door and they don’t say thank you. He looked like that.
Policeman: Could you be a bit more descriptive about his appearance?
Victim: Of course, sorry, I think I’m still a bit in shock.
Policeman: Do you remember what he was wearing?
Victim: I remember thinking, I bet he owns a pair of Crocs.
Policeman: Was he wearing Crocs at the time?
Victim: No, I don’t think so. He just looked the type.
Policeman: Do you remember anything about his facial features? Did he have any distinctive marks?
Victim: Oh yes. Yes. He had this really irritating expression, like he was the type of person who bangs on about the environment but doesn’t rinse his jam jars for the recycling or never sends an RSVP but turns up unexpectedly and wanting the vegetarian option.
Policeman: What about his height or hair?
Victim: Yes, he had both of those things and something else has just come to me – he looked like he’d have outdated views. I can just hear him now saying, “Well, it wasn’t sexist in my day, it was just a bit of fun,” or, you know, when someone says something, he would probably follow it up with something like, “That’s what she said!”
Policeman: Did he say any of these things while he was mugging you?
Victim: No, I never heard him speak, but I could just imagine him saying that. I must have given you plenty to be getting on with. When do you think it’s likely that you’ll be making an arrest?
Policeman: Unfortunately, these cases can be tricky to solve.
{Hornsea News Bulletin}
News Reader: Today on Hornsea community news, Mr. George William Taylor, 38, from Brough, will be going to prison after mugging local landlady, Jean Smith. Jean was brave enough to give a description to the police who circulated it throughout the area, which generated an avalanche of callers. Who said “That’s George, that is definitely a description of George, he’s a total t***!” Despite confessing to the crime, the judge showed no leniency and when he said that he would be passing down a sentence that was long and harsh, Mr. Taylor responded with, “That’s what she said!”
[END]
Okay, so we want to be descriptive, but here’s the good thing about customer monologue – I know I talked about how, when we were writing character monologues, we’d do a lot of research. We’d write reams and reams of background information, and you should be doing this stuff for your customer profile and research anyway, but what I love about customer monologue is that you can sit down and write it and you don’t have to have all this information to hand in order to write a pretty decent customer monologue that will help you in your copy. And the reason for this is that the most important part of writing a customer monologue is not so much the information but the shift in perspective – it’s really getting you to think like your customer. One challenge with writing a customer profile is that we tend to write it from an external perspective because we’re writing about someone else. For example, if we were doing a very high level description of a customer, at the top of our customer profile it might be, Hotel owner looking to get more leads and bookings so they can increase the capacity of their hotel. Now I’m deliberately keeping the detail light there, but the point that I want to make is, in that description we are we’re writing about someone who is separate to ourselves and when we do this, we think in terms of what we can help with and we may really focus on language like leads, increased capacity, etc. All of that is correct and that is what customers want, but it’s lacking a bit of emotion and that is the distinction with a customer monologue, because it encourages you to tap into that emotion of how your customer is feeling. So, when I ask people to write a customer monologue, I want them to think about the conflict or the problem that their prospect faces, and then I ask them to write maybe just a paragraph or so using the following three prompts.
- I’m sick and tired of …
- I wish I could …
- But I don’t know …
And what we’re doing here is, we’re setting up, first of all, I’m sick and tired of – what are they sick and tired off? What do they hate about their problem? What do they find frustrating?
I wish I could – what do they want instead? What do they wish they had in their life that they don’t currently have?
And then finally, but I don’t know – what is getting in their way? What is stopping them? If they’re sick of one thing and they want something else, why don’t they just get it? What is the obstacle or the perceived obstacle that is stopping them from eliminating a problem and achieving an objective?
So, in our above hotel owner example, what might this template look like?
- I’m sick and tired of the hotel industry being dominated by big chains with no character. It kills me when customers tell me we’re so much better than other hotels, but that they found us by accident and decided to take a chance.
- I wish I could let people know we are here, but hotel booking sites take too much money.
- And I just don’t know how to compete online without a massive budget.
That’s a very short, simple example, but because we’re putting ourselves in our customer’s shoes and we’re writing as them, suddenly we have something that is much more emotional, more specific, and most importantly, it doesn’t sound like something that you’d find on a marketing site for boutique hotels, because the content here expresses more depth of understanding and empathy. Now, I’m not saying that you would pick this paragraph up and put it on your site, but you could start to pick out the phrases from here and drop them into your copy. Think about how you want to describe that pain after going through this exercise of seeing it through your customer’s eyes, because content like that is going to show that you really understand what your customer is going through and that you can help. What I love about this is it’s super simple, but whenever I’ve done it in workshops in the past, it’s funny how quickly people feel that they have a deeper understanding of what their customer is going through, and it gives them a lot more confidence and ideas to pick the words, phrases and themes that have cropped up in the customer monologue that they can then try on their website and in their marketing.
This simple three-part structure brings to the surface themes of frustration and desire that we can play with as ideas to test in our copy. But as I said, for me, it’s really about a technique that helps you shift perspective and bring you closer to your customer so that when you write your copy, you can ask yourself, is this tailored to my customer, or am I trying to force copy that is more from my perspective and might not fit their needs. In my experience, businesses know this information, but we’re so close to this information that sometimes that it’s very easy to overlook it.
So, the customer monologue makes you take a step back and revisit your customer from a slightly different angle, and who knows what great copy ideas might emerge if you go through the process yourself!
That’s all for this episode. Don’ forget to subscribe so you can automatically get the next episode when it’s available. Likes and reviews are also massively appreciated – I read every one and they make me smile and they warm the cockles of my heart. And remember, being able to describe and communicate details about people is not just useful in your copywriting, but in many areas of life.
[SKETCH – Netball Semi Final – Hornsea vs Bridlington]
Steve Stomblewatts: Come in, come in, get settled. Did you get the sheet with the player names?
Amy Harrison: Yep. Right here.
Steve Stomblewatts: Coverage starts in 3, 2, 1. Welcome to the netball semi-final where local stalwarts, the Hornsea Hot Shots, are playing their long-time rivals, the Bridlington Brigade. I’m Steve Stomblewatts and here with me in the commentary box is Amy Harrison, a veteran commentator, I believe.
Amy Harrison: Oh yes, I’ve been doing commentary for years – the Ashes, the Ryder Cup, and in Germany last year for the World Plowing Championship.
Steve Stomblewatts: Any faster pace sports? Football, squash, Formula One?
Amy Harrison: There must have been, but nothing’s coming to mind at the moment. So, I’m really looking forward to the next . . . how long has the match?
Steve Stomblewatts: 60 minutes played over four 15-minute quarters.
Amy Harrison: To the next hour of game play. I’m looking forward to a fast-paced game.
Steve Stomblewatts: Well, we’re about to start. Here comes the first center pass, which will be taken by Helen Parsons, a legendary player in these here parts. Amy, over to you.
Amy Harrison: Okay. Parsons has the first center pass, she’s thrown it to, erm, oh, it’s now, it’s gone to someone else. I’m just getting used to the names here. So, okay, the ball is now with a tall lass from the other team, they’re wearing blue – I think that’s Bridlington. Oh, she’s now been stopped by a stocky girl, waving her arms around. Oh, someone in yellow now has it. She’s passed it to a ginger one on her team and she’s passed it to a cranky looking one. Oh, it’s near the goal. It’s near the goal, yellow have got it. Yellow have got it. So, it’s the blue team’s turn to wave their arms around, jumping to try and stop the ball going in, but it has gone in, it’s gone in, it’s gone into the net. And the ginger girl looks happy with that. Wow, what a first center pass! I think that’s going to set the stage for the rest of the, oh, and they’re going back for another center pass – they don’t hang about do they!
[END]
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