Ep 229: Copywriting For Beginners To Increase Revenue For Your Blog with Martha Barnard-Rae

Jaryd Krause:

Martha, welcome to the pod.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Thank you so much. How's it going?

Jaryd Krause:

Really good. How are you?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

I'm really good. I'm coming to you from my closet, which is the quietest place in my house. And it's quite peaceful. So I was just saying that both my children are homesick today. So maybe I'll just stay in here for the rest of the day.

Jaryd Krause:

Productivity from the closet, guys. If you're watching this, or if you're not watching this, jump on YouTube, check out her array of get ups.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, this is my husband's stuff, and then my stuff's all down the side. We're living the dream with this big closet.

Jaryd Krause:

The flannelette is very Australian. A lot of Australians wear flannel. We call it flannel over here.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Well, I know there is some discussion about whether it's a flannel or a flannery. So I don't know. I think it might be like a WA thing, but then other WA people are like, “No, absolutely not.” We do live on the deep, deep South Coast of Western Australia. So you need a bit of warmth, but yeah, I'm looking now, and it's not a great look. This is not how much flannel we actually incorporate into our daily lives.

Jaryd Krause:

Well, you're living in Australia now, so why not? Where were you originally from?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

I'm from Canada.

Jaryd Krause:

Where in Canada?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

So I grew up sort of just outside of Toronto.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, cool, cool, awesome. I've been in Toronto, and it's got a good music scene.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, it's lovely. Cold though, boo.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, boo. Can't deal. All right, so let's dive straight into the goods, the value, and what everybody wants to hear. We're going to be talking about copywriting. Now you've got two awesome skills, copywriting, and SEO. And a lot of people may think they're different, but why is it important to have a blended approach to copywriting and SEO?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Well, the way I explain it to people is that I obviously approach this from the copywriting side as a copywriter, but I kind of use this very basic explanation of the whole purpose of Google, which is to give people the best possible results for their search. And the only way Google can do that is if we make it very, very clear what's happening on each page. So the words that you choose to use in your copy and in your titles, meta descriptions, image names, and alt texts are just a way of saying, “Oi, this is what's going on this page,” right?

And so when we kind of think about it, it's not as simplistic as that, but from my perspective as a copywriter, it is. Because if you can identify, with the help of an SEO keyword researcher, what is the term that the people who are looking for this product or service are using? What actual search terms are they using? And what is a term that doesn't have 40 billion people using it and ranking for it already?

So you want to have something with a reasonable search volume so that the page one results on Google aren't full of big corporations, right? So we're targeting words where it is possible, with time and effort, for your business to rank on page one for that word. So copywriting is a really big part of SEO, kind of in conjunction with somebody who has the magical skill of figuring out which keywords you're supposed to use.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, keywords—good keywords—and then copy that. I guess we can talk about why copy is so important. But I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong and please add to this, that good copy is so important because it's words that are music to the reader's ears and because they are in that space and are like, “Yes, I feel totally understood right now, and this is exactly what I need.” Is that your goal with good copy?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah. So the goal with good copy is to write copy that's palatable for humans, for the target audience, and for the algorithm. So what we used to do, and I know you know this, but what we used to do is keyword stuff. So if we were writing a page about pineapple mugs, we would say the words pineapple mugs 700 times. Welcome to the pineapple mug shop, where you can get all your pineapple mug needs met. We have pineapple mugs for adults and pineapple mugs for children, and that was sort of how you ranked them.

And those days are over because Google and search engines realized that that was actually interfering with the user experience. So now what they're looking for is copy that is welcoming, makes the reader know that they're in the right place and that thing is for them, and is also clear why they're there. So the thing that is really difficult for me as a copywriter is sort of when you get to a website and the H1, that really important heading is like, “Welcome.” And it's like, oh. So yeah, using those words as much as you can, as naturally as you can, is the way to go without interfering with the enjoyment that a human being will get from reading that thing.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, I want to talk about enjoyment in copy because that really excites me. Even to the point that before we even started hitting the record buttons, you mentioned how important that is in your work. And it's clear when I go to your site how punchy and awesome it is. And I really, really dig it. I think we're in a world now where, more than ever, we're going to be seeing a lot more content online that isn't enjoyable to read with the rise of this AI thing where people think AI is the answer.

And I said to you, it just frustrates the hell out of me how much focus is going into AI, where people are even distracted in their businesses, and they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They don't understand what they should be continuing to do really well. And I think a lot of blogs are going to suffer due to this.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Well, I mean, I think a lot of blogs are going to suffer, but the ones that are good and the ones that the bloggers or the content producers realize, “Yes, AI is a very powerful tool. I use AI, but I don't use it to write for me.” So it's about how you're using it. I mean, a lot of creators on LinkedIn and stuff are kind of saying, “Here are the 600 ChatGPT prompts that you need.” But, I mean, to get a prompt that gives you anything that's not garbage is a skill.

I always tell people that if you need to produce content for your business, you either have to invest your own time or your money into that process. People just kind of think this is just a thing that happens, and it just isn't. And when it comes to AI, it's the same. You need to invest your time to actually learn how to use this very powerful research tool to make it easier for you. Or you need to outsource that to someone else. But I really do think that in a few years, the premium product in terms of copywriting is going to be that which is written by a person. And we use those tools as a research tool, but then you still need to have copywriting skills to turn that research, which often isn't even good research, into something.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, that's right. So the research is not good. It's not fun to consume. If you just have three clever prompts or whatever, it's not fun to consume AI. And first, before I bring this up, people need good copy on their site. So people stay on their site longer, and they sell more advertising space, affiliate products, digital products, and e-commerce products. It's so important. The better your copy is, the more money you're going to make.

So how do you get a good copy? research using AI. AI is not your competitor. So using AI for research is not going to make the people on your site stay longer, make more money, and make more sales. With good copywriting, from what I've learned because I've studied a bit of it myself, I love it. You need to speak to people who have ideally bought your product or are on the journey to buy it.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jaryd Krause:

So how do we get that data? How do we find out what words they're using—what's on the tip of their tongue—that we can use for our copywriting, honestly?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Well, I mean, I've kind of skipped forward to the research part here, but you're absolutely right. When you speak with a copywriter, they do a full brief. They often do voice of customer research, where they actually talk to your customers and take the words, the concerns, the successes, and the solutions straight from their experience and write those into the copy.

So I think, or I guess I should say, as a copywriter, I do use AI as a research tool, but it's not the only research tool. So there's all of the briefing, talking to the client, and doing the voice of customer research and market research that copywriters also do. So I probably made it sound simpler than it actually is. You're very right.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. This is the thing, though. If your goal is to chop a tree down and you've got six hours, you're going to spend five hours sharpening the ax. With copywriting, most of the time goes into

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Are you bringing this up because of all the flannel? I've never chopped down a tree.

Jaryd Krause:

You want me to just go get my flannel and chop it up.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

It'll be great. Sorry for interrupting. I had to.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. So the research is the preparation, and the easy bit is putting the icing on the cake of writing out – well, I wouldn't say it's easy, but that's a bit of an art form, really, a skill.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jaryd Krause:

Most of the time goes into the research, right?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Oh, definitely, yeah. The research and also understanding the purpose of each. You wanted to talk about blogging. Understanding the purpose of each sort of piece of that blog and the job that it is there to do, and then making the most of each of the tools that you have in a blog to speak to the client, speak to the algorithm, make sure that we're kind of keeping both of those humans, or I don't know, creatures on site, right?

I think what a lot of people kind of don't realize is that with copywriting, each little milestone that you can get the reader to get to is a cause for celebration. So if you've written a headline that's good enough to make a person open that article, great. But you've only now gotten them to read that first thing. And then the next challenge is let's get them to the bottom of the first paragraph. Let's understand that when people read content online, they don't start from the very beginning and read every word.

Using subheadings is essential in blogging. And the way that you use those sort of in the smartest way possible is that you write them so that when the person skims the article, which we all do, they can get a sense of what is going on in the article without reading the whole thing. And then they can kind of go, “Okay, I kind of know what's gonna happen here. I'm gonna go back up and revisit this section or this section.”

So if you're like five ways to, I don't know, improve your surfing stance, right? We're like, “Okay, I want to know five ways to improve my surfing stance.” And then in that first paragraph, you need to identify who this article is for and what they're going to get out of it. This isn't a time for you to wax lyrical about the time you went to Hawaii, and it was amazing and it was romantic and blah, blah, blah. No.

So you're getting straight to the point, letting people know the value that they're gonna get from the article, and then you're splitting it into those very clear five sections so that the people can go, “Well, I already know about like this and this, I'm gonna skip down to like the third one.” And you're facilitating the reading process rather than forcing people to kind of slog through it because they just won't.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, they just won't. I love that you are talking about the user experience. What I hear when you speak is that it's all about the user experience. What most people think when they buy a blog and want to grow it is, How do I just get people to my website? And once they're on my site, who cares?

But you're taking the opposite approach, and it comes back to the same if you're going to use paid marketing, throw money into ads to grow your business, you're going to get a better ROI from remarketing people that already know more about you and people that have already bought from you. You're going to get a far better ROI. It's the same with user experience.

Once you win somebody in with just one really good paragraph at the top, because it's got some awesome humor in it, it's got some words that only surfers know the feeling of, and then there's this joke that goes into it, that's going to buy a huge brownie point for me to want to go through those headlines. And then when I'm like, “Okay, cool. There's these three things that suck in my surfing stance; I need to learn about those, then you've got the opportunity with that user experience to win them over again.

And I think where most bloggers drop the ball is that they don't focus on the quality of the content and the user experience people have with the goal of them visiting multiple pages because visiting multiple pages buys far more trust. Also, if you're just selling ad space on the site, you've got far more eyeballs on the site and on the ads, and you're going to make more revenue. Versus, how do I just rank for this keyword, and then I'll just put some keywords on the page, and I'll just do that at volume and use AI?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, I wouldn't even do that. I think I haven't written content for a blog whose sort of “only purpose” is to get found and sell ads. But I think no matter what you are trying to use the content for, if the human doesn't enjoy reading it and it's not useful to them, they are not going to continue to click through. So if you're putting blogs on your site, you want to have an idea of, like, Okay, when somebody finds me because of this blog, where do I ultimately want them to end up? And kind of making that journey clear. So if you're talking about surfing, I love how I'm talking about surfing. I literally know nothing about surfing, but you have a surfboard in the background, and so I've just gotten onto that.

Jaryd Krause:

I feel like if you’re from Washington, you know about surfing.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

There are five things you need to know about surfing, right? And then, within that blog, those internal links are going to kind of capture people's interest in other ways. So you need to make sure you prep your board properly. That one can lead to a different blog about wax and whatever you need, right? One of those points might be about your own physical fitness, and then that can lead to something that touches on that.

So which type of client are you trying to attract with this piece of content? And then where do you want them to go after that? And where do you want them to go after that? It's kind of a much better way to think about it than just saying, “I just want to get them here.” Because it's not like they get there and then you can lock them up and keep them forever. You have to make them want to stay.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, exactly. And also, like I said before, the more content they consume, the more trust that they get from you, the more likely they're going to go, “Oh, I'll subscribe to your newsletter.” If you do just have a newsletter, I would suggest having a better thing. That's a resource that's going to be—most people don't want to read a newsletter.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

No, newsletter is like the kryptonite word. So yeah, a lot of people went like, “Join my community.” But again, I would rather die. But if you're going to give me something that's useful to me, then I'll join. This, and then we go into email marketing, right? What do you do with people when they're on your email list to make them want to stay and to make them associate with you? Whether it's a service-based business or an e-commerce business, you need to have them associate with you. This is a solution to a problem of mine. And so that's when we kind of get into email sequences and all that good stuff.

Jaryd Krause:

Ah, so people listening, our regular listeners to the podcast probably don't want me to get started on email marketing because I love it so much. But I have to pick your brain on it because you do SEO content creation services, email, and all that sort of stuff. I love email marketing, and people love my emails. Guys, wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Same.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah? Cool. Congrats. Get on both of our email lists, guys. People reply to my emails.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Isn't that the best feeling?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Just saying thank you. It was a good email. Thank you. It was great. So how do you do it? What are some of your secrets to having great emails that people say, “I love you coming into my inbox”?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah. Well, the first thing you need to do is welcome them properly, right? And different people have different ideas of how long a welcome sequence should be. But the thing you need to realize is that when somebody first signs up for your list, it is the most likely they will ever be to open your emails. So if you have a lead magnet and they're like, “Oh yeah, I want that lead magnet; I'm willing to trade my email address for that lead magnet. I would like to see that, and I would like to learn more from this person.

That is peak enthusiasm when it comes to email. So welcome the person, deliver the lead magnet, and then follow that up with a couple of emails that just let the person know who this is for. Is this for you? Is this not for you? Because if it's not, they unsubscribe, and that's not a bad thing because if they're not your ideal client, they're not your ideal client. And we don't cry over unsubscribes. We kind of go, “Okay. That person has self-selected out.” And I don't have a massive email list, but if you've got 8,000 people on your list that you're paying to send emails to and they aren't opening your emails, that's your problem, right?

Jaryd Krause:

Waste of money.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

You need to get rid of those. Just get rid of those, yeah. So the person has kind of opted in; you've made a “conversion” when you got them to subscribe, and they want to learn more from you, but you also have to keep them, right? So any email that you send needs to deliver value. And people do that in different ways. And if you're getting “thank you for this great email”, that means that you are delivering value.

So thinking about the market, the audience that you have, with that segment of your email list, what is it that they need, and helping them with that thing. Also, really, I'm a big fan of storytelling emails, which is sort of the opposite of what I said about blogs because they are two different tools. So I do a bit. I mean, I send sort of silly emails that then have the values down at the bottom, right? We kind of get to it, and then it's like, “Oh yeah, that is useful.” And so I'm thinking about how I can catch these people with a clever headline, and we want to know about other people, right? And I talk about a bunch of stupid sh*t, but people enjoy it.

Jaryd Krause:

They love it.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah. Get that storytelling stuff in, and then deliver the value at the end. And I try to keep mine kind of monthly. This month, we're talking about this. This month, we're talking about this. And like I said, it takes time, right? It's not just a thing that we kind of can do; I'm going to set aside 10 minutes a week to write my email. I write one email a week, and it takes about 45 minutes. And that's 45 minutes that I'm willing to spend because I'm getting good responses from the people who read the emails. And then the people who unsubscribe who don't want to read my email subject to Farts in A Jar—that is their problem.

Jaryd Krause:

Exactly. So I think I do a similar thing to you. I don't like Instagram. I treat my inbox like Instagram, and I turn a story into a lesson, and I start the story in media res, like I just jumped off the bridge with James Bond and my parachute is not opening. Starting an email that way grabbed attention.

And also one little trick that I haven't shared before. I've found people in this space, in my space, copying my emails and how I write them now, and they also write them the same way on social media now as I write my stories and whatnot. But I make sure that the text is quite large in my email and that there's no more than one sentence per line, and the sentence should not be more than ten words, and so it's just so easy to read. The experience is fun and great, and I'm very jarring, stopping and starting in the story and jumping between different timelines.

And I want to say this, guys, because it's really good for bloggers to know. If you write in a way that people absolutely love to consume, not only are they going to want to continue reading, you've earned their respect, and they're enjoying the experience, so they're going to be on your site longer, but this is how human beings freaking beat AI. AI cannot do this right now and probably won't be able to do it in the next five years, even with all the data that everybody's putting into it, unfortunately. This is going to create an ugly monster. Humans beat AI this way, and I see that in my email, so I'm sure you see that as well, Martha.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Oh yeah. And humans do beat AI, and I really resonate with what you're saying about short, sharp—oh my god, short, sharp sentences. And I do also think, yes, and I also think it's okay to pop in a bit of a longer sentence occasionally and maybe a two-sentence paragraph because they can be a little bit of a bomb for the brain, right?

I mean, I personally find it—I don't know, I don't love it—when it's like sentence, sentence, sentence, and there's no kind of rest. You know in a TV show when there's comic relief? I feel like you can also have some sort of verbiage relief when you have something a little bit longer that allows the person to settle into that idea a little bit. That's just my opinion.

But yeah, that short and sharp way of writing emulates the way that we talk when we are kind of excited, and that's what people are kind of used to, and that's how people like to read online. But I do think there is a place for something a little bit meatier occasionally. I'm not saying blocks of text Never, never, never. But when you do it intentionally, it can work really well.

Jaryd Krause:

Just don't replicate the Bible in your emails and have this block that you could literally build a building with just from those words because they're so condensed.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Don't replicate the Bible in anything, as far as I'm concerned.

Jaryd Krause:

We're not going to go into religion here, but I'm with you. So SEO and good copywriting are a winning formula because they gain more trust and respect. People are going to enjoy the experience. The more they enjoy the experience, the more trust they have, and the more likely they are to want to opt in and join our awesome email list, the more likely they are to purchase products.

Now, I want to ask you about the results. And you can share a result from an e-commerce brand or any business. But do you have some case study or an example of a business that you guys started working with that was like, “Hey, can you just help us with some content creation?” And what that looked like and what the results were?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

I mean, you're bringing this question to a woman with ADHD, so I cannot answer that question at this time.

Jaryd Krause:

I did not send you a list of questions either.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

That's okay. That's okay. I think I struggle sort of with this, which has resulted in conversions and blah, blah, blah. And realistically, if I am writing website copy from start to finish for your new website and it's SEO optimized and I've worked with the keyword researcher to create a content creation strategy, I mean, initially, when the new website is released, your SEO is actually going to dip, right? Because if you pull down everything that's there and recreate it, it's not going to be stratospheric, right? This stuff takes time.

Jaryd Krause:

One step back, two steps forward.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, this stuff takes time. And then I think the idea that the copy is the only thing that made this website successful is not necessarily a really true assessment of all the things that a website does, right? So the copy, the images—if I am working with a designer, I put in sort of UX recommendations, and I mean, I have no control over how it ends up at the end, right?

But I've definitely worked with heaps of companies that are kind of stagnating. Our growth is kind of stuck here, and we're not reaching the right audiences. We're not really getting people through the user journey. And I've seen huge improvements in that, huge improvements in terms of email opens and clickthroughs. But I'm just not the kind of gal who's going to be like, “I can 10X your income.” It's not something that I would ever claim. Like it's just me.

And also, yeah, I am always referring. Well, if you need Facebook and Instagram ads or whatever, you need to go to this person. And if you need this, you need to go to this person. So it's a real team effort. But yeah, the power of having good, solid, personality-driven content that actually resonates with your users cannot be overstated. And I'm sorry for not having a number for you, but that's just not the kind of person I am.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, no, that’s fine. Yeah, no, that's cool. I'm glad that you're straight up and honest about it. That's what people love about this pod. So one thing that just really caught my attention is that you mentioned getting, and I'm sure people are going to want to hear this and share what you are willing and open to sharing. You said it’s getting keywords, then doing some copy research, and then putting a content strategy sort of plan together. What are some of the components you get? I do keyword research and then some research for the copy. But what are some of the other things that might go into building out a content strategy for a new site?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

So yeah, I generally—oh, sorry, I cut you off.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Basically, it's just for a revamp of a few pages, sites, blogs, or whatever it is.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah. I'm working with an organization now, and they have a lot of content on their website to the point that it's overwhelming. And so I was working with a strategist friend of mine and kind of helping that organization. They want to target corporations. Who are these corporations? So the strategist worked with them to come up with personas and make sure that we were talking to all the right people.

We did a content audit where we kind of went like, “What is the content that's on here?” There were 300 blogs or something. We found out that it's a scientific organization, and a lot of the blog content was scientific because you can put it through a thing that tells you what grade level it is. And I like to do that to kind of demonstrate to people that you're not talking to the right people because the scientists that understand this and find this interesting are not the people that are going to give you money, right?

So identifying like, “Oh wow, 95% of the content on this site is pitched at a year 11 level reader,” and it's just not going to be read by the people that you want to read it. It's not helpful to the corporations, who you say are your main clients, right? I was like, “Sorry, but there were something like 150 pages on this site that had not been clicked on once in the past three months.” So you can do an audit where you go, what is the content that's on here? Have we kind of categorized it? Is it in pillars, or are we just checking stuff up?

And we've kind of realized—I mean, I knew this when we started—that there's a lot of stuff that just needs to go. And that kind of thing can make a person, a business owner feel bad because they've put all their time and money into it. And it's like, “Well, maybe you can repurpose that for some other reason. But if the reason that you have this website is because you need to engage these corporate clients, you need to speak to these corporate clients, right?”

So that's kind of the first thing. And then we look at, with the keyword researcher that I work with, sort of like I said before, what are the corporations that are searching for this type of service? What terms are they using? Who's the competition? Where do we have potential to rank? Which keywords do we have potential to rank for? And she creates a list of keywords and then sort of secondary keywords for the pages of the website that we have kind of worked out in that when we've mapped out the UX journey.

You can also choose to have keywords, kind of like blog keywords. So if you work with somebody to work out, like these are my content pillars, a keyword researcher can help you to kind of go, “In this pillar, I am looking to kind of rank for these kinds of terms.” Just learn kind of where to put them within a blog.

So here we go with the surfing analogy again. If you are a company that sells surfboards, your content pillars are going to be the things that are helpful to surfers, right? So you might have a content pillar that reads: This is for people who are just getting started. This is for people who love to travel all around the world and surf.

This is, I don't know, troubleshooting. I don't know. And then you might have another one where you're giving people inspiration: This is where I went on my trip, and it was great. Or this is the thing that I did to fix this problem with my stance, right?

So you kind of identify what those content pillars are, and people call them buckets, and you just fill those buckets with useful content that's going to be helpful for the different audiences that you have. And again, you might have those beginners who don't know their asses from their elbows—I don't know, I wanted to say something like don't know their asses from their elbows, but with a surfing thing. But I don't know enough about surfing to do that.

So they don't know their whatever from their whatever. And you're going to teach them the basics. This is how you choose a surfboard. This is how you know when it's safe to surf. This is how you take care of a surfboard. This is how you travel with a surfboard. All that kind of stuff.

And then you'll have your other market, which is maybe the person who's been surfing for ten years already and thinks they know everything, and what's useful to them is going to be very different from what's useful to these people.

I mean, I always tell people that, as business owners, we know so much about our topic. So even just sitting down, once you've identified those, say, four pillars, three pillars, or five, and just making a list of all the things I know about this thing that could be useful to my ideal client, And then when it comes time to create some content, you have a framework, and you aren't like, “Oh, I have to choose from every topic in the world,” right? You're like, “No. Today I want to write a blog about these beginners.” And then I already have 12 ideas, so now I can start with my research. But you already know all about this person that you're writing to—what they need, how you can help, and all that sort of stuff.

Jaryd Krause:

Ah, I really like it. The idea that I like around the pillars and the strategy is sitting down and understanding how somebody who's just getting into the space is going to be, and then mapping out each key milestone that they would achieve. And that could be three to five things throughout their journey in that space.

For example, I worked with one of my clients on a dog site around—all right, they've just got a puppy. What the hell do they do when the puppy's at the puppy stage? Feeding training, toilet training, stuff like that. And then get to the next stage. How do you keep them healthy? How often should you walk them once they achieve a certain age? And then yeah, all the different stages of the milestones that a dog would

Then you have something for everybody that comes to the site, and they can go backwards, or forwards, and you can keep them on the site. And then, in each of those pillars that you're calling them, you can have different opt-ins for the email list with different products and different services, especially for an e-commerce business, right?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, yeah. So just having an understanding of where the person's going to be and what they need from you is important, and your job is to solve a problem. People don't care about anything except having their own problems solved. And it sounds whatever, but it's true. I'm not reading someone's blog to support that person, necessarily because I like them. I'm reading it because I'm like, “Oh, I've got redbacks on my roof. What do I do?”

Jaryd Krause:

That's great. That's so Aussie. Guys, redbacks? Yes, correct. Yes, Australia is littered with creepy crawlies and wildlife.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Oh my God. Okay. We've moved since then to this amazing closet, but last year, I went outside, and I looked up in the eaves, and there was a fat mother redback with three egg sacs sitting there like queen shit. And I was like, Whoa. I'm Canadian, right? I was like, Oh, what's going on? So then, apparently, you have to call the spider guy, whose name is not Spider-Man, impossible. And he came and sprayed. And then, over the next couple days, they all just descended on the outside of the house because they were dying. I was like, Is this the end times? What is happening? Why are we all comfortable with this?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. We used to have a lot of redbacks when I was young, and somebody in our street got bitten, and he nearly lost his whole arm just from a spider bite. And those redbacks are bad, but the Sydney funnel-webs are way worse. People die from those spiders.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Yeah, totally. It's all very adventurous down here in the great south.

Jaryd Krause:

It is. It is. Well, Martha, thank you so much for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Where can we send people to check out some of your content creation services and what you guys are doing?

Martha Barnard-Rae:

So my website is wordcandy.com.au. I offer SEO website copy and content creation services. I work in hyper-focused weeks. So the reason why my clients love that is because a copywriting project can take six, eight, or ten weeks. But this way, we kind of start the project on a Tuesday and end the project the following Tuesday, and it's a good way to kind of get started with your copy as quickly as you can. And I'm also on Instagram @wordcandycomms and also on LinkedIn if you just look up Martha Barnard-Rae.

Jaryd Krause:

Awesome. Guys, check that out. There'll be links to that in the show notes. I really appreciate you coming on. Everybody is listening; thank you for listening. And I just realized we're up to something like 230 episodes, and I think the last time I actually asked people to subscribe was like 130 episodes ago.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Oh my goodness.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. I don't really ask you guys to subscribe, but if you got value from this, please do so. There's more awesomeness coming.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

And to celebrate your 230th episode, people could also listen to my podcast, which is called The One That Works For You. And I will ask you to subscribe.

Jaryd Krause:

We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So that's The One That Works For You.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

The One That Works For you, And thank you so much for having me, Jaryd. This has been fun.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, it has been fun. Thanks.

Martha Barnard-Rae:

Take care.