EPISODE 14 - FINAL AUDIO
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Linda Melone: [00:00:00] The criteria I use is it needs to be unique, desirable. People want it specific, succinct and memorable. So in other words, for me, My value prop is I create conversion focused copy for B2B health and fitness brands, leveraging insight experience from both sides of the industry. That sums up everything I do.
Linda Melone: So it's who it's unique. It's desirable. Who doesn't want conversion focused copy?
Chris Hughes: Welcome to how to build a profitable nutrition business. If you love nutrition and you love helping people and you want to be in the game long enough to keep doing that. Then this is the podcast for you. Let's get into it.
Chris Hughes: There's something that we're not really taught at university or through our training, or at least not when I went through, that can have such a profound impact on your business and the ability to generate new business and have the impact that you desire to have. And that's the art of creating good copy today.
Chris Hughes: I've got a guest on who has worked in the health [00:01:00] industry and is now a world renowned copywriter. And she's got some great tips to help you in your nutrition business, create good impactful copy that will have the impact that your business desires. Let's get into it. Welcome back to How to Build a Profitable Nutrition Business.
Chris Hughes: Today, I'm really excited to have an awesome guest all the way from Arizona in the U. S. and her name is Linda Malone. And she's a really perfect guest for our podcast because Linda's background is in food. Food and fitness, but she's transitioned to a space that all nutrition professionals in that business space can really dive into and learn a lot from.
Chris Hughes: And Linda, I'm going to hand over to you. So firstly, thank you for coming on, but if you can give everyone a little background about where you started a bit of a reveal as a pastry chef and how you grew the health industry and landed to where you are right now.
Linda Melone: Yeah, thanks, Chris, for having me. Yeah, I started out in the food business like many years ago, more years ago than I would care to admit.[00:02:00]
Linda Melone: I have a bachelor's degree in nutrition and I thought I was going to become a dietitian and ended up getting more into the fitness end of things. But before that. I, yeah, I was working in restaurants and I was a pastry chef. I actually had a bakery, so I've been accused of creating my own clientele because then I went on to become a personal trainer, but the thing that's been consistent for all the years I've done with the food and it was really personal training for about 15 years.
Linda Melone: And then I got into writing for, there was a local publication, a business publication called OC Metro's Orange County. Um, California and they had a column, a fitness column and I was reading it and I've always loved writing. I always had a knack for it. Never really pursued it until this point. I thought I could write this.
Linda Melone: So since I was doing in home personal training, I thought, why not pitch how to set up your home gym? Because people didn't know how to do it and they were buying. I had like my, I had most of my clients. I got them through a local [00:03:00] gym equipment store. So when somebody, I went in there and this is before I knew anything about marketing, I just used like common sense.
Linda Melone: I walked into the store, met the manager and said, Hey, when you sell a piece of equipment for home gym, would you be willing to offer a free session with a personal trainer? That'd be me. And that would just go along with it. And he said, that would be great. It was a win for him. He wasn't paying me anything.
Linda Melone: So they would sell, say a home gym, even if it was a treadmill. And then they, if they'd asked the person, would you be interested? Nine out of 10 times that person will become a client because I would tell them a lot of good stuff and I wouldn't write anything down. And they were like, could you come back?
Linda Melone: And it's also, it's such a personal thing. I want to one thing they get to meet me. So I started doing that, but I was writing for this publication and ended up branching out to the national magazine. So I had a column in oxygen, the woman's magazine for a while. Um, I wrote for pretty much you name any fitness magazine.
Linda Melone: And I don't know if [00:04:00] it's the same in Australia, like men's fitness and with all the big glossies they call them. And then that whole, the whole industry went under about 2014. Everything went online. I had these big gigs that were just, they went under and they just said, we're not using freelancers anymore.
Linda Melone: And if you Google my name, because I have an unusual, usual spelling of my last name, you'll see a lot of bylines still by me. Cause they're repurposing everything. So it looks like I'm still writing for them, but I haven't since like 2015. And so I, yeah, so I started a, a online business for, um, Women over 50, because I'm in that demographic and so I thought, okay, I know what this is about.
Linda Melone: I've been working with all these women. I know what their pain points are. And so I started to, I had a course, did that for 5 years. I just couldn't, there's so much churn with memberships. It's hard, you know, and so I just said, let me go back to writing, but I didn't want to do content. [00:05:00] I wanted to do copywriting.
Linda Melone: I wanted to get into the marketing end of it because I've been in, I had been writing for Bowflex even I met some of the marketing people at a, an event and they hired me. And so that's a long answer to a short question, but that's how I ended up.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, wow. It's well, it's such an important space, isn't it?
Chris Hughes: Because we are essentially competing for attention, like in the nutrition space and particularly, and you can probably relate to this for sure, is that for us as dietitians, I'm a dietitian and personal trainers are very similar, is that. You know, we're working from an evidence based background. We've got principles that we need to abide by.
Chris Hughes: And the issue is that you get into this nutrition space and anyone can put up information. And it can look credible to people that aren't really familiar with what to look for. And so how do you then sort of stand out that, because you, like for us as dieticians, I think the States is the same. We actually can't do testimonials.
Chris Hughes: Which, yeah, we're not allowed to do [00:06:00] testimonials because it can be perceived as I can get anyone to do a testimonial. So it's got to be, it's got to be evidence based. And the problem is, as you'd be aware of marketing is that word of mouth and, you know, uh, testimonials from people that they know is one of the most powerful forms of marketing.
Chris Hughes: We're hamstrung. And so it's really then competitive to have a good copy when you're trying to generate your business, you want to be successful. You need to. Have a good nutrition business to have the impact on the clients that you want to work with, but it's such a challenge. So what tips would you have for anyone in this nutrition space to really stand out, but still stay credible and evidence based guidelines?
Linda Melone: The number one thing is you want to have. A really great unique value proposition. So this is what the statement that's going to set you apart from everyone else, or it's something no one else is talking about doesn't mean that you have to be completely different. But maybe you talk about what [00:07:00] you do differently.
Linda Melone: The criteria I use is it needs to be unique. Desirable people want it specific, succinct and memorable. So in other words, for me, my value prop is I create conversion focused copy for B2B health and fitness brands, leveraging inside experience from both sides of the industry that sums up everything I do.
Linda Melone: So it's who it's unique. It's desirable. Who doesn't want conversion focus copy for a B to B health and fitness brands? Who is it for leveraging insider experience? That's something that. Separates me from other copywriters can be, you can write about fitness and nutrition by researching it, or. And it's a whole different thing when you're in it and the industry, you have a whole different perspective than someone who's just reading, but everyone who's reading thinks they know about it.
Linda Melone: And so that, that comes down to niching down. So how, cause there's people I know who's, who specialize in child, childhood nutrition or certain groups, or [00:08:00] just, they specialize in working with people with diabetes, that kind of thing. And so how do you. Differentiate yourself instead of just saying I'm a nutritionist isn't really a term that's anyone can use that.
Linda Melone: And so then it's also what's your brand and what's your story. I know someone you always hear this people who've lost a ton of weight who then go on to become like coaches. It gives them credibility because they've been there and if someone needs to lose weight, they're going to say this person knows how hard it is.
Linda Melone: So you have your story. And then just being consistent across all your channels with it. So you take your brand, find your value prop, get the branding down. Is this is what, how I want to present myself and then make sure it's consistent through every channel.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. Okay. So, so unique, desirable. What was the other one?
Chris Hughes: So succinct, specific and memorable. Okay. Specific and memorable. I was
Linda Melone: trying to get it to, to form an acronym, but [00:09:00] there's none that made sense. It's like U D S M, but yeah, it's just, as long as it's different, people want it. And it's something that was relatively short and that people will remember. It's like, she's the one that does this, or you're the, he's the guy that is known for this thing.
Chris Hughes: So with that being memorable, the headline, the scroll stopper, as they say with social media is so important. Have you got any tips around that? Because ultimately now in our feeds, we're trading for attention, aren't we? So it's like, what advice would you give around a headline that's really going to stop?
Chris Hughes: And have someone pause on your content or your message.
Linda Melone: Or your email, right? To open up your email. Yeah.
Chris Hughes: Subject. Yeah, absolutely.
Linda Melone: Yeah. It's a tough one, but there's a few things that one of them is to keep in mind that 80 percent of people are not going to get past your headline or your subject line because everyone's scrolling.
Linda Melone: And so you have only 20 percent are going to make it [00:10:00] to the body of whatever it is you're writing. So you want to be, you want to keep it short. Now the general rule is six to eight words. It varies because I've worked with a couple of copywriting coaches, real high level ones, and they say it's either make it really short or really long.
Linda Melone: Are you familiar with BuzzFeed? I don't know if they have BuzzFeed. Okay, so BuzzFeed, sometimes they have these ridiculously long headlines, and that's an example of that. Catching people with something that's way long, but spend most of your time coming up with a headline. What I do for my own copy, whether it's an email or copy for a website is I write the body copy 1st.
Linda Melone: And then I start and I do use AI to sometimes I'll pop it in. Um, the only thing I don't like about using AI for coming up with titles, I use it for brainstorming. I never use what it comes up with because it always uses what we call marketing speak. Those marketing words are real fluffy and top tier, next level.
Linda Melone: It's stop. Everyone uses [00:11:00] those
Chris Hughes: words. I've found that myself. I use AI to generate ideas, but I find they tend to use words that the email filters don't like. So there's words like free and giveaway and what like those sort of words and they're a red flag for a lot of the email filters. So you immediately get pushed into the junk or spam or the not the, if we're looking at the outlook, they've got focused and the other emails.
Chris Hughes: So you tend to get pushed if you use that language. And I find that's what AI tends to do.
Linda Melone: Yeah. That's the other negative part. I try to write, the goal is like to come up with 50 headlines. That's a lot. I usually get around 20. Walk away from it and then because I do this with any copy, do something else, go for a walk workout or whatever and come back and then look at it again because it's a whole different story.
Linda Melone: When you walk away from your copy and come back to it. There are some apps that you can use. There's a headline analyzer. I think it's actually called the headline analyzer. It's free.
Chris Hughes: Well,
Linda Melone: I can send you the link to it if you like. It's uh, we'll put that in the shine
Chris Hughes: [00:12:00] nights. Yeah, that'd be okay. Yeah. I
Linda Melone: think it's just headline analyzer.
Linda Melone: com and it'll give you a percentage. Like it, it'll come up with a percentage of. I don't even know what the percentage is, but the higher, the better likely it is to be opened or read and it will tell you. And usually. You want to get 30 to 40 percent or higher. And most of the time, when I really work on something, and it's going to be catchy, it's like, around 50, sometimes 60 percent and it's things like.
Linda Melone: Numbers work, like, 7 ways to blah, blah. Those are good. 1. Wow. 2 is a big. A big one. It also depends on what you're writing. What is relevant.
Chris Hughes: Do you think just the psychology of that numbers? Cause I've heard that before, right? The numbers were top 10 things to do this or whatever. Do you think the psychology of it is that people can then guess how long it's going to take them?
Chris Hughes: How much of their time it's going to use if it's like top 5 things to do this. It's like, [00:13:00] I've only got to look at 5 things.
Linda Melone: Cause that's probably part of it. Yeah.
Chris Hughes: I personally look at it. If there's top 20 things in one, I probably don't. Yeah.
Linda Melone: Then you just said it there. It's also that it's just in small bites.
Linda Melone: Like people will, Oh, good. It's a list. I don't have to read through all of this stuff, but the headline itself should be, it should be clear, not too clever. People try to be cutesy in the headlines. And it has to say something about what people can expect if they open that email or when they click on that button or whatever it is, no one likes to be tricked.
Linda Melone: And that's why clickbait is so bad. And you want to be authentic, but some of the other, the side notes is using lowercase for your subject line in an email seems to work better. You probably get, you haven't heard that yet. Like dashing off, you're dashing off an email to a friend. You're not going to be worried about punctuation and capitalizing and everything.
Linda Melone: And anything that's in title case, Is automatically seen as, Oh, this is newsletter. So put it [00:14:00] in just the lower case and make it conversational. If it's an email, that's why I get a lot of good responses of my emails. It's you're talking to somebody. If you're telling somebody about your product or service.
Linda Melone: How would you describe it? You just met them for lunch and they go, what do you do? Those are the words you want to use. People tend to get very formal when they get on a page and they start using words they don't usually use, or it sounds like they're out there at some, some kind of ball. You have to like, yeah, you want to use power words though, even though it's, you want to be conversational, but things like discover proven methods, that's a good one.
Linda Melone: Especially when you're writing something that has to be backed with research, backed seven research backed ways to get rid of belly fat. There's something like that.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anything to do
Linda Melone: with belly fat is going to get open. You know that.
Chris Hughes: Can I put you on the spot?
Linda Melone: Oh,
Chris Hughes: can you come up with a headline for the email [00:15:00] for this podcast?
Linda Melone: Oh, I don't know. It depends on what we see. And here's the thing. I want to see everything we talk about. So if it's How to even how to stand out in a competitive industry, how to stand out in the nutrition industry or 7 way, whatever, how many ways we come up with 7 ways to separate yourself, or I can't just do it off top of my head.
Linda Melone: I'd have to really sit down. I need to break those 20 things, but something like that 7 ways or how to
Chris Hughes: stop that. I would have opened all of us. So that they were very good.
Linda Melone: And it always, it comes down to testing, like even with my newsletter, I have a newsletter goes out and I do AB testing, try two different headlines. And do you do that with, I don't know if you have a I use
Chris Hughes: Kajabi and Kajabi has just brought in not so long ago an AB test so you can send out multiple headlines.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. Yeah. And it'll let me test on [00:16:00] them. So that's good. Yeah. Yeah. It's so important, isn't it? It's, and it's, you were talking a bit about the clickbait before, because I agree it's a fine line, isn't it? Like the clickbait headlines, like I read the news and I'm like, oh geez, that sounds interesting. But then you get there and I knew that's what it was going to be.
Chris Hughes: I've been tricked. Yeah. So they got me, I opened it, which is what I want. When I sent an email. I want someone to open it, but I, I wanna be authentic. I don't want to, I don't want them to feel cheated. So it is a bit of a, a balancing act, isn't it? Like it's about trying to get their attention and, and get them intrigued about what's in this email, but at the same time, deliver on what you're promising.
Linda Melone: And because once you lose the trust of somebody, when they read your headline, if they find that they get to the body of it, especially if it's an email, because I've get had so many of those, I'm sure you do too, that the headline. Has nothing to do or lately, there's some weirdness going on to with emails and I had 1 and somebody else that they had this happen to them where they said in the subject line.[00:17:00]
Linda Melone: My boss is worried about you or something like that. I'm like, who is this now open up and it says so and so my boss head of whatever this company said that you're not responding to his emails and he's concerned and. It's who are you? It was, and somebody else in LinkedIn had talked about this. It's like a, it's a attempt to be, I forget what it was called, like fake intimacy.
Linda Melone: Like we're concerned about you and
Chris Hughes: don't
Linda Melone: do stuff like that. People are, they're really going all out to, to get you to open it. You lose them. Like I'd never work with that person.
Chris Hughes: Yeah. So that's right. So they've succeeded in opening the email, but you've lost their trust. They never, you've lost credibility.
Chris Hughes: And then the point of the email is a waste of time anyway. Yeah.
Linda Melone: The goal isn't to open your email. The goal is to have them take action on whatever it is. Exactly.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, exactly. You're just going to anger them. Yeah. With the AI, if we can dive into that a little bit, it's obviously growing at a rate of knots.
Chris Hughes: It can really help with copy. But like I, I say [00:18:00] to my kids, some teachers at the school are a little bit against AI, but I think it's something we need to embrace, but I still don't think we're at a point where it's replacing humans. I just think it's actually taking a lot of the legwork out for us, but you still need that human touch.
Chris Hughes: You've got to read it and add your own personal insights to it. Is that what you would recommend or do you have any advice around using AI for For creating copy,
Linda Melone: what I use AI for, and this is anyone who has a business can do this is when you're interviewing customers, I did this, I've done this a number of times and it's always very helpful.
Linda Melone: I record interviews, put the transcript into AI and say, can you pull out. The main points, what's most important about this conversation. It's amazing. Cause it saves so much time. Otherwise you have to go through it yourself. What the, one of the most helpful things I was writing for a client who claims she had four different personas.
Linda Melone: So she said, but I need something, a homepage for all four of 'em. I'm like, how are we gonna [00:19:00] do this? So she sent me details about all four personas. So I put them all into AI and I said, what are the commonalities between these four? And it pulled it out and it was perfect. So it's a time saver. I don't use it for writing because I never like what it writes because it's always it can only pull from what's already been written.
Linda Melone: Right? So you're going to get stuff that's been said a million times and it seems to like certain words. All the marketing speak top notch top rated best in class. I always think about dog shows when I hear that, by the way, don't you, ? Yeah,
Chris Hughes: I'll Now that does certainly have a dog show ring to it, .
Linda Melone: But it's great for data, for collecting data.
Linda Melone: It's great for personalizing. If you wanted to create personal experiences just to put in the data for the persona, what would this person like, or I've even asked it, what kind of conversations would somebody in this. Business, [00:20:00] what do they talk about and they can pull from some social media and I do it manually to I'll get into Reddit and see what are people talking about.
Linda Melone: It just speeds up things and then testing. And yeah, I just find it's really good for organizing. Outlining, yeah, even for this discussion today, I asked what are the most important things that I need to cover. This is what the topic is.
Chris Hughes: Yeah, I love it.
Linda Melone: I love AI because it's like, it talks to you like a person.
Linda Melone: You're really going to, you're going to do a great job as
Chris Hughes: a
Linda Melone: pilot.
Chris Hughes: It's interesting, like whenever I talk to, I use ChatGPT for the most part, I'm always very polite. I'm like, hi . Thank you so much for that. 'cause I think one day they're gonna own us. I'm like, we're .
Linda Melone: Everyone says that. I know one day they're gonna turn on us and they're gonna remember who was rude to them, right?
Chris Hughes: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Um, so in, in that health and wellness space, which is where we're at, what advice would you have for creating [00:21:00] converting copy? Okay, so copy that was really gonna get a potential client across the line. That someone in that health and wellness space can use to really influence the decision of their potential clients.
Chris Hughes: Have you got any advice around that?
Linda Melone: You want to keep in mind that people make decisions that's based on emotions. We justify it with logic. But we, we make emotional decisions and it's never more true than in the health and fitness world because it's such an emotionally charged so much of it. That's emotionally charged.
Linda Melone: So, empathy, and this is something I cannot do for you. You want to have empathy for who you're writing for. So, for example, I had a client. Who had a product that helped with the side effects of chemotherapy. So, I spoke to people who were using the product. And I asked them walk me through a day and it was a product that really helped with the side effects.
Linda Melone: It was amazing. And people were saying, well, Before I use this product, I wasn't able to get through the day because I always had to know where there was a [00:22:00] bathroom, all this awful stuff. And so you want to, not that you want to include all those specifics, but you have to have that empathy for your, for the people that you're writing for.
Linda Melone: That's why to me, when I, I hear, I see these, they call it bro marketing, the real loud and, Oh, you're gonna, you're gonna lose, you're going to gain all this muscle and you're going to lose all this weight. And so for somebody say for a 50 year old woman, she doesn't want to hear that. This is, you have to know what is it that they're struggling with.
Linda Melone: And you use those words in your copy. I think that's the number one thing. And then. You want to focus on the transformation, like how they're going to feel, how much better they're going to feel, what they're going to be able to do. Now, as I mentioned, my course was all for women over 50. So it wasn't about getting the six pack abs.
Linda Melone: It was about being able to get up off the floor. So they, when they play with their grandkids, like it was that sort of thing. They didn't care about the same things, like a 30 year old bodybuilder would [00:23:00] care about. So what is it that they're? I'm talking about what are they, what's their biggest challenge and their biggest worries and address that and show how first you have to show them, you understand.
Linda Melone: What they're going through. And then it's, and here's a solution that can help you that approach, but you really have to have, you have to have that emotional intelligence. You can't just expect
Chris Hughes: what you're perfect for the position, given that you've got that lived experience in the industry. So you can really relate to the copy that needs to be done
Linda Melone: and what not to say, like, for example, you never address, I don't care if someone is 200 years old, you never use the word.
Linda Melone: Word elderly, your cop. Yeah. I don't care. People who are 85 are like, I don't consider myself elderly. So you just never, it just, we should just get rid of that word completely. But you don't know. I didn't know that when I first started out and not that I used it, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with it until I started working with women who were extremely insulted and it's
Chris Hughes: [00:24:00] okay.
Chris Hughes: I guess there's no faster way to turn off a potential client than insult them. Yeah. What about humor? Do you use much humor in your copy? Do you think it can be relevant?
Linda Melone: I I'm known as that funny friend. I can, you can even tell I'm always, I find lightness in everything because I think life is too short.
Linda Melone: So if you're like, if you can relate to your client in a way that is somewhat humorous, I think it's really helpful because being serious and really say, for example, with weight loss, like I had women that want to lose weight and I would describe, okay, so you're lying on the bed, trying to zip up your pants.
Linda Melone: If you were tired of that, like you describe the scenario in a way that's funny, but you have to be careful because there's always those fine lines and you have to know where they are. And you're probably going to insult some people. It shouldn't say insult. Some, not everyone will find it funny. [00:25:00] So you have to know your audience.
Linda Melone: We have like nerd fitness. The they're a big, I don't know if you heard of them. He's it's I forget the owner's name, but. His whole website is about being nerdy. He's really successful. He's got a huge business. If you're a nerd, if you're like, and he has these really goofy looking people on the homepage, this is where this is your new home or something, and he gets great results for people.
Linda Melone: So I think that's the thing too, is you have to be knowledgeable as well as you can joke around within a certain stamp. You have to know that they have to know you're going to deliver on what you're selling to
Chris Hughes: yes. Yeah. Ultimately it's everything you've talked about there. It's there's a real art to creating good copy, which sort of ties into a whole story.
Chris Hughes: Like you're telling a story about yourself and making yourself relatable to your clients, potential clients. Is that a fair summary? Exactly. Yeah.
Linda Melone: Yeah.
Chris Hughes: [00:26:00] You
Linda Melone: have to know that you get them. It's like going to a doctor or something who, you know, someone who it just doesn't seem like they understand you or they're not listening to you.
Linda Melone: There's nothing worse than you feel like, why am I even here? And yeah, I've been, I worked with clients in home. So I would get, I go into the middle of arguments, I walk in the house and I have to, it's just very uncomfortable and I've dealt with all different situations. You name it. I've had to come up against it and you just learn what to say, what not to say.
Linda Melone: And kind of listen, I think the most important thing is really listening to what people are telling you. Yeah. Cause most people, yeah. Clinicians,
Chris Hughes: personal trainers generally should be good listeners based on their experience in the industry. So that's really good advice. I like that. So you really got to listen and understand your client and it's what you would buy, isn't it?
Chris Hughes: Like you got to think what would make me buy, [00:27:00] right? Yeah. Uh, Linda, thank you so much for your time today. It's been amazing. Oh, thank you. How could, how could any potential nutrition professionals, fitness professionals looking to create some converting copy? How could they work with you or learn more about you?
Chris Hughes: Or if you've got a blog, can you share it here and we'll put it in the show notes?
Linda Melone: Sure. Yeah. I'm at thecopyworks. com and you can email me at lynda at thecopyworks. com. And I have a bunch of freebies on my site. I can also give you the links. You can put them here. I have one PDF on how to add humor and others on using power words.
Linda Melone: The other is how to avoid using marketing speak, which is all the fluffy words. And I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Oh, brilliant. And I have my own podcast. So there's that, the, I don't know that. No, I didn't know that. Oh, B2B marketing and copywriting [00:28:00] podcast.
Chris Hughes: Ah, there you go. We'll put both of those in there because that would be great for people to jump on and subscribe and listen, because it's one of those things that it's a skill that we're not taught in our training or at university.
Chris Hughes: And it's such an essential skill to survive in the business space. So it's, yeah, your work is very much needed and very much valued.
Linda Melone: Great. Thanks so much for having me.
Chris Hughes: No problem. Thank you. Linda. Did you find this podcast valuable? There may be other nutrition professionals out there will also do you like share and subscribe.
Chris Hughes: It's going to help other nutrition professionals make an impact on the world. Just like you. Thanks.
