Carmine (02:08):

Hey man. Good. Thanks for having me looking forward to it.

Dylan (02:10):

Hell yeah. So I mean, as mentioned, copywriting is such a big thing. I mean, it that's what moves the needle in so many different, you know, content marketing approaches, direct response. So, I mean, it's definitely going to be a super hot topic and I think it's gonna be super juicy to kind of dive into the more nitty gritty stuff. But for people who don't know, you kind of give them, you know, what, what do you have to, what are some cool projects to kind of give everybody some insights there?

Carmine (02:33):

Yeah, man. I mean, right now I mostly do freelance copywriting. I do a lot of content writing as well. Like on the SEO content writing side, a lot of marketing consulting. I like to blend in my writing services with consulting. And then it just goes hand in hand when I'm helping a client, maybe develop a funnel and different strategies. And then you mix that in with the content and copy and it goes really well. But like you said, Britain for Neil Patel go daddy post schedule tons of big publications and mostly spend time in the SAS space and working with other agencies, but I've dabbled in a lot of different niches and markets. And in the past I've also ran different affiliate businesses, e-commerce businesses, which I think were a really big part of the journey. Um, you know, starting multiple businesses, trying with different niches.

Carmine (03:16):

It taught me a lot about copywriting content, marketing, SEO, lead gen funnels. Like it all kind of taught me those skills, which ultimately allowed me to get where I am today and, you know, entrepreneurship for me, I think probably like you and a lot of other people, it goes all the way back to childhood man. Like I just loved, you know, opening lemonades and selling trading cards, like all of that when I was a kid. So when I eventually got into high school, I was learning about internet marketing just as a hobby and for fun. And I was also starting to freelance web design and learn about freelance writing. So by the time I graduated high school, I was actually making a little bit of money. And then that's when I started to really get into e-commerce and doing, you know, physical inventory and fulfillment doing affiliate stuff on the passive income side.

Carmine (04:01):

And then after a few years of that and running my own web design agency, I just realized that I love writing the most. I'm the best at it in terms of all my skills it's frankly like most of what I was doing for my clients anyway. So a few years ago I ended up doubling down on copywriting and now I'm starting to release some of my own courses as well, teaching people how to do copywriting, build their own writing businesses and yeah. Working with a lot of big companies. And I have my own six-figure copywriting business, but that's about up to speed where I am today. Nick. Yeah. Who are some big copywriters that you kind of looked up to and then you kind of just continuously learn from, I think we'll always talk about, you know, what got you there. Yeah. In terms of inspiration, like actually it's funny in my office right now, I have one of David Gill, these famous, a rolls Royce ads hung up and I was like, kind of breaking it down, but definitely him, like all the ads he did from rolls Royce and Hathaway, all those famous advertisements and campaigns.

Carmine (04:53):

Um, I love breaking those down and his books as well, like confessions of an advertising man, guilty on advertising. Those were huge inspirations of mine. Breakthrough copywriting was a book I just recently went through, which is really good by David Garfinkel, all the stuff by Bob Bly. I tend to read and learn from all like the really old copywriters and advertisers. It's really interesting because like things that worked 50 years ago, man still work today, like copywriting as like remained the same because it just, you know, consumerism, the psychology, the behavior. So it's all the greats man, all the old grace I studied and learned from all the time. Oh yeah. So with that rolls Royce ad, you mentioned is that the ones where it's like, you can't hear anything, but the clock on it, that's 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise and the new rolls Royce comes from the electric clock at one great stuff. Yeah. That's it, that's an ogy in there. What's wild. How we know what that is. Oh yeah. Well, sweet man. So you, the authority, there are some bad stuff. So I mean, you know, we love to kind of take this podcast to kind of dive in, what's working good for you at this kind of point in time, ads, campaigns, email funnels, you know, we already more or less, so what's something that's kind of working really good for you kind of in this rich ad segment.

Carmine (06:17):

Yeah. I would say

Carmine (06:18):

Funniest say email because I'm, I had a really cool case study. I want to share with you and everyone listening because I recently had a digital agency client come to me. It was a wise media. They do mostly websites and they want it to just fill their pipeline more. Um, they were kind of just tired of relying on referrals. Like a lot of businesses do and you can grow that way and they actually do quite well, but you're not really in control of your sales and your growth when you're just relying on referrals. So what actually proposed to them is that we do a cold outreach system with emails, automation, automated followups. And that's something that actually a lot of my clients and people kind of in my space know me for is being really good at cold outreach. And I think it definitely can have that reputation of being a little bit of a numbers game.

Carmine (07:00):

Like you have to send out a hundred emails, a hundred cold calls. If we get like one person that's like, all right, I'll listen to you. But that is the reality for a lot of people. If you do it incorrectly, I think when you do like copy and paste your messages and you take that kind of disingenuine numbers game approach, then yeah. That's where you're going to get. But I'm with this agency wise media, we actually ended up starting doing is they pretty much had the perfect foundation for cold emailing, um, because they had a really good portfolio. Their buyer persona was mapped out and it was primarily a law firms and their area. Um, they had productized services, so it was just perfect. So what we ended up doing is I created a list of just 40 highly targeted lawyers that matched their buyer persona and their area.

Carmine (07:43):

And then there's a tool that I love called Hunter IO. And it's an email hunting tool. We can plug in any URL yet, every single person's name, email, phone number. If the main I was doing outreach, that's listening, you need that tool. And it's pretty cheap too. And so pretty much I found all of the main attorneys' emails and maybe like the marketing director, depending how small or big the firm was. And then I'd run these through a CRM move to have a really personalized subject line. The body of the email needs to really focus on just value, personalizing it with like their first name, their company name. And in the case of this, uh, campaign, what we did as I mostly focused on like their portfolio. Cause it was really impressive. Um, also the urgency of needing to be online and needing a good website with COVID, you know, obviously there's lawyers, they can't, uh, meet their clients in person really anymore.

Carmine (08:33):

And just the benefits of having a good website, like they're going to book more clients and meetings and they're gonna have a better local reputation. And then that email campaigns end up killing it. It was like an 80% open rate. Um, 14 appointments were booked, which meant it was a 35% appointment book rate. And then wise media ended up getting if it was nine clients, um, closed for about 10,000 each. So they nearly did a hundred thousand in revenue in that month, just from the cold email campaign. And now we're trying to think of is pretty much scaling that up and also retesting and to ads and creating a funnel on that end. But I think right now a lot of agencies could definitely really benefit from learning how to do proper cold outreach and nurturing and not having really good copy as well. They're doing the emailing.

Dylan (09:19):

Do you write the copy for the emails? Oh

Carmine (09:21):

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I consulted them on like how they should set up the funnel. I did all the prospecting. I wrote the initial email, all the followups actually set it up with their CRM and everything, but yeah, a to Z. And that's what I was talking about, like where I'll write the copy, but I also do the consulting side too. I think it just doesn't make sense.

Dylan (09:38):

So like when do you kind of start writing the copy and you mentioned, yeah, of course you have to chat with them. Do you pretty much kind of pull specific things? They kind of mentioned it kind of put it all together more or less so

Carmine (09:49):

From the client themselves. Yeah.

Dylan (09:51):

Yeah. Cause I mean, it's, it's always different. I know if you had five, you know, these guys, you know, five realtors, for example, they all kind of work through themselves differently. So I'm kind curious on from a copywriter's perspective, how you're able to, you know, show that brand positioning, you know, we're not the ones writing it, I guess.

Carmine (10:04):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I think research has probably the most underrated and important part of all copywriting. I do. It doesn't matter if it's email copy sales letters, it's all about understanding that client, their branding, their tone of voice. So I always ask for things upfront, like you have buyer personas, content guidelines, branding, guidelines, anything like that because I want to like step into their shoes, understand who they are, who they're servicing, how they talk and then I'll go do my own research as well. Like it's really common for me to go interview people within their company and learn more about how they operate. I'll go look at competitors, read market reports, like really just become an expert at that industry and client. And then exactly when you go write the copy, it's something that their buyer persona and customers resonate with. It sounds like them and performs really well. So I guess the trifecta,

Dylan (10:51):

What's your favorite kind of copy to write? Is it the, the email side? Cause I mean, I mentioned more long. I would imagine more long form of the email side, but I mean, yeah,

Carmine (10:59):

Yeah. Honestly, I've been loving sales letters lately, man. Just exactly. We were talking about David Ogilvie and those guys. Yeah, man, the classic sales letters, video sales letters, I've been doing a lot lately. Um, lots of Facebook ads, banner ads, Google ads. So even the short form, stuff's been really fun, but yeah, I've always enjoyed the long form stuff I find it makes the greatest impact and it's also just the bigger projects, more research goes into it and there's a lot of fun.

Dylan (11:23):

Now I did have a special question from Zach. Yes sir. Do you do any ghost writing?

Carmine (11:28):

That's pretty much 99% of what I do. I figured it's a city. I do a lot of C-suite ghost writing on Forbes too. Most writing on their yeah. I writing through their Forbes accounts. That's sick. That's a fun thing.

Dylan (11:43):

Yeah. So cool. I mean, when it comes to email cold outreach, that's sounds like the way to do it, especially when it comes to the entire system in place there, this episode is brought to you by funnel add card, the

Zach (11:54):

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Carmine (12:54):

Oh, that went really well. We love to kind of do a quick one 80 and for a poor ed segment, which could be something embarrassing, you know, something you thought would kill it totally burned. So, I mean, what kind of poor ad would you like to kind of talk about on this bad boy?

Carmine (13:12):

Definitely. There's another client I can think of, but they're in the SAS space a little bit different than agencies, but they're in the SAS space and they came to me, they needed help with their funnel out of Facebook ads or Google ads and just a lot of stuff. And, you know, we talked and checked out their product, their website and everything checked out. They're cool guys. We started working together. Um, and I don't know about you, but I'm like when I'm doing consulting work, it's so common to see even like pretty big businesses and they have a broken funnel or like it's just not glued together. Right. And it's so unfortunate because they have amazing products and everything looks so great, but they're just not, you know, gluing it together and making a flow correctly. So that's what I kind of realized, uh, with these guys when they came to me, is that, you know, I wanted to their back end for Facebook ads and Google ads, HubSpot, the whole shebang.

Carmine (13:57):

And I just realized, you know, for ads weren't set up, right. They had no real middle or bottom of the funnel. It was just pure top of the funnel. And that's one thing that I see go wrong all the time. You know, I definitely was guilty of it back in the day before I was really good at marketing and, uh, something I definitely avoid, uh, would recommend everyone listening to avoid is make sure, like you have a very defined middle and bottom of the funnel because it's so easy to set up the Facebook, ask of your blog posts, go on your podcasts, but then you have no kind of like gated offers, no free trials, free consultations, whatever it might be at the bottom. And in particular with these guys, they are running through, I remember quite a bit of ad spend. It was like at least like five to 10 K a month.

Carmine (14:37):

They were going through without really any kind of positive ROI. And that's when kind of realized how big of a project it was going to be for me. And, um, you know, one of the first things I made sure we had was just a more clearly defined funnel, even if it was as really simple. And I think that that's one of the best places to start is to make sure you have your top of the funnel. So maybe it's ads, maybe you're doing inbound blog and SEO and then create some kind of lead magnet that helps people opt in for that it gets you their info and they can remarket to them in the back end. And then we also created a landing page for that. And for the lead magnet, I wrote like a 3000 word guide on how to do digital marketing or digital marketing strategies as they they're mostly targeting agencies with their SAS.

Carmine (15:18):

And then an in-house designer made it all, you know, nice and professional. I'm not the best graphic designer. I'm just a good writer. And yeah, after that, you also did a lot of blog content for that for more top of the funnel stuff, just make sure we're taught targeted keywords and topics that got the right buyer persona coming in and that matched their domain authority. Because another thing that I see go wrong all the time is if you're doing inbound marketing and specifically blogs as you target, we too competitive of search terms and topics that just don't match, you're a domain authority. Like if you're a newer website, you know, I hate to say it, you're not a ranking Neil Neil Patel, or Backlinko any of the big guys, you know, but you can definitely really niche down. Like if you're doing Facebook ads, whatever it might be, you can niche down and do something like how to increase jewelry store, Facebook ad conversion rates.

Carmine (16:07):

Like you'd find some really detailed topic to write about that brings you the right people. That's pretty much what we did. We fixed up their top of the funnel about them, a nice little lead magnet landing pages, and then start tidying up from the Facebook ads and Google ads and what tested a bunch of different stuff in terms of the copy. Cause I think, uh, a lot of the staple stuff works really well. Benefit-driven copy. So not necessarily the feature and what they're getting, but what it really actually means for them, like, is it translating into conversions, revenue, customer loyalty? That's what people care about. So we're, you know, tidying up the abs to have that, um, or urgency and scarcity. You have the competition, uh, curiosity where, you know, testing a lot of different strategies with the Facebook ads because I'm the original one for kind of just simple and boring.

Carmine (16:53):

So just wanted to make sure that they were a little more, a little more spicy and can actually drive some good conversions. And, um, that's something definitely I see go wrong all the time. It's just kind of boring ads, man. Like if you look at all, the good ads were talking about earlier, like those, the ones, they have a lot of emotion, they're really creative, they stand out. So it's a good thing to kind of go look at the competition and see what they're doing. And then just kind of learn from that, apply it to your own and make it a little bit better. And then with all of the inbound and outbound, we ended up after people essentially opted in, we had like a sequence in the back and I wrote all the copy for that. And pretty much just a pretty normal email drip strategy would just kind of drip, a lot of good content.

Carmine (17:34):

Talk about all the awards that the startup has. One build that social proof case studies, testimonials, you know, the usual stuff. And then that campaign had like a 40% open rate. We're actually still doing it. We're still refining it right now. Like a 3% click through. And then I think it was 9% of the people who did the free trial converted into the paid. So it's actually gone really well now, but I'm going, it's only to a positive direction, but it's so common mountain my clients to see them. They just don't have that photo map though from the beginning. And then there's wasting the ad spend and like all the time, then

Dylan (18:05):

It comes to broken funnels. How, how, how long do you think that agents who is running ads

Carmine (18:11):

Like, cause he must have been months and months man. So they can get 30 K maybe it's going through like the green greenhouse go into a good direction. I love seeing that, man. It's so cool to, to work with a company and like at the end of the day you see them growing, doing better. It's just, it's awesome stuff, man. I think that's a big part of what I enjoy both business is actually like helping the businesses and seeing them turn around and do better and grow. I bet you see the same thing, man. It's fun

Dylan (18:36):

From your perspective, uh, would you rather work with the business directly

Carmine (18:39):

Or you know, bigger like Neil Patel

Dylan (18:41):

Or an agency who may have a lot of clients or maybe doing things?

Carmine (18:45):

Yeah, it works with pretty much all of them, you know, it's cool when you work with like someone bigger, like an individual brand, like some like Neil Patel for example, but he has a big team behind him. So he kind of gets work with someone like that. But then you also work with their team agencies are cool because they can usually like white label to you outsource you interesting work. And then that grows your portfolio more. So honestly I wouldn't say I enjoy working with any of them more than the other actually loved doing them all men. And if there's a good opportunity, I take it. Oh yeah,

Dylan (19:13):

Yeah. It's good to diversify. You may get tired of one person. I'm gonna change it up. Go to the agency.

Carmine (19:19):

Yeah. That's

Dylan (19:20):

Whenever I get tired of, you know, running fitness ads, I just moved to the, you know, organic stuff just to swim. It's a good little mind to refresh.

Carmine (19:27):

Yeah. Honestly, that's the cool thing too about, you know, doing ads. I bet for you, copywriting for me is like, it's fun to just dabble in different niches and markets and you always have some kind of new product or something you've never kind of experienced before and it just makes the project that much more fun. Oh yeah.

Dylan (19:43):

Random. And I'm like, that's a good ad and all, and I'll put my own twist on and do something super similar. So yeah.

Carmine (19:50):

Swiping is a big part of the game. Just shaking, uh, something that's working well and then make it even better. Put your own twist on it. We have,

Dylan (19:56):

We have one account and we've been running the same ad for about eight months now. And we have competitors who are just, you know, swiping it. I bet we noticed they were just taking multiple ads maybe like six months ago. So we just kept these really crappy ones up at a dollar.

Carmine (20:12):

Yeah.

Dylan (20:16):

Ad's been active for, you know, over nine months I'm gonna be working. It's not,

Carmine (20:22):

I love that. It's funny. Cause yeah. You know, it's

Dylan (20:25):

Easily go in and check out all active ads and you know, it's pretty easy to copy and paste, but I mean sometimes, you know, if it's been active for a long time, it may be killing it. But I mean, somebody like me, who knows, you know, how somebody,

Carmine (20:38):

Is it a thing for HS man? Yeah. Yeah. I mean 300 bucks a year just to kind of focus. Somebody screwed up the competition. That's a good investment.

Dylan (20:48):

It's solid. So I mean, you know, when it comes to the podcast, rich ad pour out, of course we wanted to take a page out of rich dad, poor dad book. So we wanted to kind of have, you know, crossroads between marketing and financial more or less. So we kind of spoke about a little bit before the show, but when it comes to some sort of financial principles or financial tips, what can you kind of share with the audience based off, you know?

Carmine (21:10):

Yeah, sure. You know, one financial principle that I'd love to share something that's really changed my personal life and business recently, that's actually investing in my own physical office because I get the chance to work from home like us. It's, it's awesome. Right. A lot of people kind of with the whole COVID thing right now, it's their first opportunity to work from home for a lot of people and it's exciting and it's new, but I think if you do it for long enough, um, you know, like anything kind of get a little bit repetitive. Um, and for me working from home, you know, for years it kind of did, and it started to become, you know, cool idea to go maybe to go get my own office, have a physical space. And then I did that recently, uh, certainly leasing my own office and I can honestly say it's probably the best money I might've ever spent in business, you know?

Carmine (21:50):

And you can of course write off your rent and when you do taxes and the different capital we put into the office, have you renovated or anything like that. But um, you know, firstly just a day-to-day pace, man. I love it. Oh, between the house and the office are constantly in and out. Um, cool place to just take calls, do meetings, do things like this. Um, physically sit down with the client and kind of run them through copy and deliverables. That's something that I never really got to do before, but now I can have that extra little relationship and see my clients a bit more person, which is really, really cool. And you know, also it's amazing for networking because I lease and sign of a coworking spot, not just like, you know, uh, you know, building or something. And what that allows me to do is I'm constantly meeting new start-ups and freelancers and other companies.

Carmine (22:33):

Those have been getting me tons of work, you know, getting my name out there locally. I just meeting a lot of like-minded people like Elon and I were talking before the podcast. Well, masterminds, I think that's a super important thing, man, to have as an entrepreneur and to be surrounded by like-minded people, people that uplift you give you good motivation and just kind of pushing. So that's been huge for having the office right now. And actually remember when I did the tour originally was actually before COVID, um, and literally on the tour I met a guy who runs another agency. You wouldn't have talking and it closed them as a client. So I mean, you know, that's like the best first impression for getting an office is I got a client like on the tour. That's what I knew. Okay. This is probably going to be pretty good. So for any agencies out there, if you're like thinking of getting an office, I wouldn't consider doing it within a co-working space, if you're comfortable with, you know, COVID and all that, but it can be really good for networking and getting your business out there. And I don't know about you, but like I always tend to be way more focused when I'm out of the house, working Mandy, find that.

Dylan (23:30):

Yeah, I know I was gonna make a joke that I have the same footprints from my bedroom to the office, but yeah, it was, it was fun for the first like two or three years, but I mean, I like to go out, I'll go to my client's offices and the like, Hey, can I hang out for a couple hours

Carmine (23:46):

Here and stuff, but like a change of scenery is so gold because I mean, even on days like this, I mean, we were chatting earlier and I'm just like, I was in a, you know, more of a work mode, had some other people around me. The moments would probably be so much stronger, but I mean, for sure, luckily I can kind of Slack a little bit there, but I love coworking and other places like little coffee shops. I mean, we don't, I, I will say the biggest thing that, you know, I bought a Mac book to kind of become a digital nomad and I love monitors too much to work on one laptop screen. It's just, I feel like I'm just not as productive to where, when I, because I have a desktop at home, but I just bring my laptop to the office. But I'm actually funny.

Carmine (24:27):

You say that you can get like a Google Chrome extension that like splits your tabs up. Like, I use that like everyday on my laptop, so it's kind of a little work around, but I used to be the same man coffee shops campuses, man. Yeah. It's nice to just work out the house, change up your scenery. And that was a definitely a big part. Again, the office man is super stoked to have it and you know, just only recently got it a few months ago, so it's going so well that make great investment has a good ROI, but definitely recommend that for anyone listening. Is it pretty cost-effective and then see crazy. Oh yeah, man. No, for sure. I think that, you know, definitely month over month is making me more than I pay and you know, it's definitely exponential right now. And also in terms of like the amount of work I get done, you know, that's going to translate to growing my freelancing more, faster, more bigger. So that's going to be more income and revenue to so a hundred percent man. Great ROI. Yeah. I also

Dylan (25:15):

Think, I mean, you mentioned earlier is that kind of face to face

Carmine (25:17):

Aspect. It's so much easier to smell and you have that personal relationship side. I mean, zoom calls are fun and all, or just talking on the phone or texting, but I mean, nothing is going to be an old fashioned, you know, face to face conversation, shaking hands actually. Yeah. They look like going over deliverables and stuff that whether it's ads copy, whatever it might be, it's often just to show them in person like, Hey, here's what I've done. Here's why it's going to work. And it just adds like a way better impact. It's more of like a, whenever you,

Dylan (25:43):

Because yeah, whenever I do like deals online, they're way more business oriented, but when it's face to face in person, I'm like, yeah man, check this out. Okay.

Carmine (25:50):

I could duplicate this pretty easy. It's so weird. But I mean, it's just that, you know, consumer behavior, I mean, so we might have took advantage of it. I think you're definitely kind of killing it on that kind of, you know, office space out of things there, especially when you have like the coworking spot with other businesses and they're, they're cool people too. It's not like, you know, you know, crappy, they're the start of phases and stuff. So it's like, we're all on the same wavelength everyone's growing. Everyone's hustling. So yeah, man, it's great to be around like minded people tell ya. Alrighty man. So I know you mentioned you got a course coming out. I want you to weigh in here, give everybody an idea of what you know, what's in store, maybe some cool projects in the future, how they can kind of get in touch with you.

Carmine (26:35):

Yeah, yeah. So right now actually I have a wise copy out, which teaches people how to grow their own profitable writing businesses. And then it should be this month. I'm also gonna be releasing like hell, which is a course is teaching you how to write really good, copy that converts. But, um, besides that, right now I was working on some big copywriting projects and talks with some other pretty big companies for some podcasts and sponsorships developing more courses. But if you didn't want to work with me and he'd copy where you want a free consultation, you can just head over to my website, RN, piro.com. You can just hit me up on email. We'll schedule a time to chat then. Yeah. And get your proposal where you figure out how we can work. Hell yeah. Man. Sell like, hell I love that. Isn't that good? That's really good. Yeah. Well, good stuff, man. Thanks for jumping on for having me, man.

Zach (27:26):

Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich ed [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or add book. Learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.

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