Why Not All "Bro" Marketing Tactics are Bad and What That Means for your Business, Featuring Rob Marsh

But here's a good name Rob Marsh is here with us today and we're gonna talk about why not all bro marketing tactics are bad and what that means for your business , rob , if you haven't listened to him on the previous episode where we got you know some nice candid snapshots of how he's built his business , the Copywriter Club , and some transitions and challenges

that he's going through in his business . Right now he is a direct response copywriter who specializes in email and sales pages . He's written everything from direct mail to TV case studies and a book . He's worked for clients like American Express , cedars-sinai and Pluralsight .

Today he writes primarily for tech companies , software as a service companies and even health supplemental clients . When I looked at the Copywriter Club if you haven't heard of it I see the tagline it's where copywriters go to get better better copy , better clients , better paychecks and maybe , Rob , you're going to change that tagline soon .

I will see what happens , but thank you for coming on to the show a second time and I'll share the same thing I shared before .

When I read your bio , you said you have a very or you're trying very hard not to have that second donut , and I commented that copywriters always have this little something that tickles your fancy , that , as you called in the previous episode a pattern interrupt . You being on the podcast has been that pattern interrupt .

I would say a nice , fresh , just amicable interview . Not that all my interviews aren't friendly and fun , but I thoroughly enjoyed our first episode together and I'm happy to welcome you back for a second one . Thank you for being here .

Keep us all listening for at least four months till we can find out what's going to happen .

I mean , there are definitely people out there that use them , and especially in the use them and especially in the biz op kind of world . They're out there for sure .

But I think a lot of people have grabbed this term bro marketer and applied it to all marketing in a way that is really unfair to marketing on a whole and makes people afraid to actually do marketing . And so I've talked about this several times .

But I am a fan of marketing , I love marketing , I love what it does , I love how it works , I love doing it , I love figuring out the problems and solving all those issues .

I'm guessing most of the people that listen to your podcast , cry Joe , are marketers who love this thing that we all do , and when we hear people talking about how bad marketing is bro marketing whatever sometimes we start feeling bad about it .

In fact , I once gave a presentation , a talk , about how marketers can use the tactics that con men you know , confidence men use in order to do good in the world .

And after I gave that presentation , somebody came up to me and said I don't I mean thanks for the talk at all , but you made me feel like I'm a con man and that was not my intention at all .

You know , after hearing that feedback , I'm like , okay , I got to rework this presentation because I was focused way too much on the negative and not on the positive . But there's a lot of baby in that bathwater that we like to throw away . You know , and say , hey , you know all of that , bro , marketing stuff is bad . So , yeah , I can go through .

You know the tactics of why I think that we still need them . But let me just say that if your product works so I mean , if your product doesn't work then yeah , you should not be marketing it . You have no business selling it to anybody . That's bad .

But if your product works , you owe it to your potential customers to get it in their hands at a price that is fair , in a way that doesn't take advantage of them , but that helps them solve the problem that they have . And if you do that , then the marketing tactics that you work are going to naturally be pretty darn good .

I believe we have our skills and our gifts and our passions , and we are meant to serve and work with people . And without selling , how are we going to be a blessing and a transformative agent in folks' lives ? Exactly ?

So they say that when you agitate that pain , you're making people feel bad about themselves , you're making them uncomfortable , which isn't a good thing . And I don't necessarily disagree with that , although helping people understand how bad their problem is , if it leads to a solution , can be a good thing . But obviously we don't want to cause more trauma .

We don't . We don't want to make things worse for them . So I would just maybe twist that just a little bit and think about you don't agitate the problem or the pain in order to make people feel bad .

You do it in order to empathize with them and show them that you understand what they're going through , so that you can say to them look , I hear you , I've , I've been there .

If you have actually been there , you've been through the same kind of thing , or , or you know , I can empathize with you and because of that I have this thing that's going to solve the problem for you . Right like that is a sales message that works , and it does it in a way that is uh helpful .

Now , sometimes we do have to help people feel like how bad that pain is right , and so that in that case , agitation isn't necessarily bad , as long as you're not using it to traumatize or to manipulate .

But a lot of programs are time bound , they start on a particular day and , in order to help people decide to join , it helps to have a countdown timer saying , hey , this offer does end Right , and after the offer is over , you can't get it anymore .

And so again , doing it from a place where you're helping your customers , as opposed to trying to get something out of them or manipulate them into making a decision , is a good thing . So , and we could , you know , same thing applies for , you know , scarcity and risk removal .

You know where , where we try to make it an easy decision for people by lowering the price or giving them a free trial or offering a money back guarantee . Like all of these tactics are effective marketing , and just because bro marketers use them does not mean that they're bad .

It means that we're trying to help people get to a solution that helps them ultimately solve a problem .

Let me give you one other example , because I've heard this a lot , where people say well , you know the product , all you're selling is hope , right . So my mom , before she passed away , had Alzheimer's disease and obviously Alzheimer's is a terrible thing to get there's no hope for a solution . You know it's going to end badly .

And as she was starting to deal with this diagnosis and what was going on , she went online and she found some tapes and a couple of books . I think that you know it's like brain energy and the promises there were .

You know , helps you remember things and they may even have stretched the truth a bit into you know , helps delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease . My mom bought those and you know when , after she passed away , you know , and I was cleaning out some of her stuff I found these products .

Now you could argue that the products didn't work and it was bad and she shouldn't have been sold these products . Now you could argue that the products didn't work and it was bad and she shouldn't have been , you know , sold these products .

But I would argue that those products gave my mom something really precious in the years that she was alive , and that was hope . She had some hope that she would find a solution or that there would be .

You know some way to , if not overcome it , delay the symptoms and the things that she was feeling , and to her $100 or $200 , whatever those things cost to give her that hope in some ways was way more precious than an actual solution . You know , if there was a solution out there could be Like . Hope is an awesome thing to give people .

Now I am not arguing that we should sell products that don't work or that we should manipulate people based on hope , but I am saying that when we give people hope that there is a solution for their problem and and can back it up , that's a good thing , and I I saw that in this thing that you know , maybe was a little bit dubious , that my mom bought and

again , I think that's a good thing and something that marketers should be proud of .

They were like not trusting of people and it seemed like during what I thought was an amazing trip , like everything went right for me , everything went wrong for them , in the matter of a day that we were together , even to the point where we're sitting down for coffee , and this weird spiny looking pine cone not pine cone , seed acorn thing dropped on our table

and was like mashed . I'm like what the heck ? That has never happened to me before and they were like , yeah , you know I would . I'm not surprised this kind of stuff happens . I'm like , oh my gosh , like we need to not hang out anymore .

But to your point , it's definitely good to give somebody hope , and especially so when it's tied with a program that actually can deliver . So I have a question , and I think the listener might have had this question too when is the line ? Can you speak to that as a copywriter ? Where is the line ? Can you speak to that as a copywriter ?

Good agitation versus bad agitation . How far do you go to agitate a problem for good before it becomes ?

And I know a lot of us really want to say , yeah , the line is right here and you can go right up to the line and be okay , and then , once you step over the line , everything is bad and it's just not like that . There's a lot of gray space where a tactic might be okay in one situation but would definitely be bad in another situation .

So but I would say this if you're , if you're manipulating and you are trying to get people to act and I would define manipulation as acting against somebody's will not necessarily because sometimes we manipulate people to do things that are in their interest , especially as parents . We do this all the time , right Like you know .

Here comes the choo-choo train and we stick a you know a bit of cauliflower into a kid's mouth instead of apple or whatever . Right Like we're , we manipulate our children all the time and , by the way , our children manipulate us right back , you know it is a very human thing to do the things that that get us the things we want .

So so we gotta be a little bit careful about that . But if you are manipulating people to act against their own interests or even the way that they want to act , like they would not choose to do this for themselves at this time , even if it would be good for them , it's probably not a great thing . There are exceptions , you know .

Like if you manipulate people or a person to stop taking heroin , very few people are going to say that's a bad thing , right , even though we may be manipulating them .

But we're not talking about that kind of case . We're talking about selling your product or your service or whatever the thing is , and in those cases we should not be impeding people's free will , people's free will .

And so the dark side of marketing where we set up these things , like the buy button that says I'm 100% in and then right below it it says no , I love failure or I want to keep failing all my life . Those dark patterns are ugly and manipulative and , yeah , those are bad .

But a button that says yes , I'm 100% in , and then the button underneath says no , I'm not ready for this right now . That's fine , right ? We give people the option to decide yes or no , right ? We're not taking away their agency . That's where I would draw the line .

And again , if you're trying to get somebody off heroin , fine , manipulate a little bit , but I'm not talking about that stuff .

But if it said , no , I never want to succeed , no , I'm happy with ads that don't perform Right , like that , takes that decision and turns it into more manipulation , where we're making people feel bad about the thing that they're doing as opposed to giving them a yes , no decision .

When we start to cross that line , when we start to feel like we know we're crossing that line , when it's there and we should probably move , take a couple steps back you inside of the Copywriter Club , help .

Because I've coached people in similar situations and I know somebody who's listening right now , who is way , way , way , way , way too far on the other end of the spectrum , like scared to even talk about what they're great at , what they can help at , because they think that if they say even one or two things or send out another email that they are the sleazy

car salesman .

But , as I said when we first started talking , if you have something that genuinely helps people , you owe it to them to get it into their hands , if you can , at a fair price , in a way that is reasonable for you know , can you imagine somebody having the cure to cancer and this is an extreme but having a cure to cancer and saying , well , I don't really

want to talk about it because you know the team helped me get there and I actually used some ideas from other people before I came up with my own breakthrough , and you know . So I'm just kind of people find it if they really like me or they hear , you know , other people talking about me and I'm okay with that .

So why not shout it from the rooftops In saying that , obviously , do it in the right way , do it in a way that is comfortable for you , but there is definitely a way that you can get the word out , whether it's with things like Facebook ads , which you are so good at and helping your clients do , and , like you know , breaking that , that pattern , or getting

noticed and introducing these ideas and getting them onto a sales page . Like there's a skillset , and if you didn't share your skillset with marketers who need it , then there are . You know , how many clients do you have in your groups ?

Like dozens , maybe hundreds of people who will not sell as well as they could , and you owe it to them , kwaijo , to help them if you can , obviously at a fair price , obviously in a way that helps them , right ?

Like you're not going to be taking money and selling something that doesn't work , or continually running ads that fail and fail and fail and keep going back to them and saying , hey , just one more try and we're going to get this . Like you're being very real about this , but you owe it to people to use your skills to help them .

It's just part of being human and living in a community .

Add the word you know . If you want people to feel angry , add the word anger or mad or you know some related word like that to your copy . You want people to fear missing out on something ? Yeah , talk about how you're frightened or scared . Right , they're told to pepper in these words . I'm just going to say it . That doesn't work .

Whoever is telling copywriters to do that is feeding them a line , because I just said anger , mad , frightened , scared , and I guarantee you there's not a single listener . You're not angry or scared or frightened , right , like , we just use those words and it doesn't change the emotion .

But when we tell stories , when we are vulnerable , when we do things that I share three tactics in that emotional copywriting workshop . When we do these things , we actually can evoke emotions , and it all starts with knowing what emotions people are feeling and then what emotions they need to transition to in order to buy .

And so , yeah , I put together a workshop to help people do that . And again , this taps into a lot of these marketing tactics where you're not trying to be manipulative , you're trying to make a connection . You're , in some cases , you're showing your own vulnerability or you're empathizing with the problems .

Now we do that with emotions , and that's what that workshop is all about .

I guess I am a copywriter , huh Rob , I always feel like copy is so difficult for me , but I want to make sure that my copy is better and motivate people to take the decisions that I know they will make . That benefit their business .

It's one of those things that gets people involved with the message you have to say and then , assuming that you can really help them , gets them to that point that buying decision where they can opt in . I actually put together for your show , kwaijo . I was working on this last week .

I started going through and thinking you know , what would be really helpful is a playbook . So that workshop sells for like $27 . And I thought if I had a playbook that I could give to your listeners that basically walks through the three steps of how do you write an emotional headline or an emotional hook that you know . And so I kind of created that .

And then I went in to chat GPT and I actually wrote out some prompts so that if somebody doesn't want to actually do the exercise that helps them figure out the emotion , helps them with the hook or the headline and then to connect it to the rest of their ad message , can actually have ChatGPT or Claude or Mistral or whatever the AI bot that you use do it

for you , and so I put together this little playbook , and I didn't tell you this before we started recording .

And it's because they're free and I know I'm going to get to them someday and I never do . I literally I think I have 1,100 . Last time I counted in my downloads folder of stuff that I've looked at and thought , oh , I'll get to that someday . We I counted in my downloads folder of stuff that I've looked at and thought , oh , I'll get to that someday .

We value the things that we pay for and so , even though it's almost free , it's $1 . And if anybody wants that playbook , they can have it . And if $1 for some reason is a hurdle too hard for you , message me directly and I'll figure out a way to get it to you $1 .

If we were in the same room I would say all the free lead magnets that you have . It's like we've been going for dopamine hits and we feel like , hey , I made the move . I gave my email address , I got this free lead magnet . I'm doing something to grow my business . No , no , you're not . You're not using it . I've done it before .

You just admitted to it , Rob . How many times ?

But if if that feels like too much of a commitment and you just want to see how do you write an emotional hook , emotional headline , go to the copywriter . Clubcom forward slash smile .

If you just make a demand or you know whatever , then it doesn't work . And we apply this to everything . Everything is sales , everything is marketing , and that sounds really harsh to say it that way , but the way that we deal with other people is us helping them get what they want , them helping us get what we want .

Vice versa , those relationships are all about helping each other , and the more we know about persuasion and how to persuade people for their benefit and for ours , the better . So , yeah , if you find a book on it , if you find courses to look at on it , even write free articles online , whatever . The more you can learn about persuasion , the better .

And I can say that because I've observed his business and know people that have been inside of his paid offers . And super legit I mean , everybody that comes on the podcast is legit . But I just want to say that for you , rob .