In this episode, I interview Kerry Campion, a copywriter and content marketer, about the power of the customer in marketing. Kerry shares her experience of conducting customer interviews and how they have helped her create effective marketing copy.
Kerry Campion is a copywriter who helps brands generate more inbound traffic and optimize their website for conversions. She does her best work at the intersections of SEO, conversion copywriting and brand strategy.
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Podcast page: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/azeemdigitalasks
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Kerry’s website: https://kerrycampion.com
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Episode Transcript
Azeem Ahmad (00:01.048)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Azeem Digital Asks All Round Digital Marketing Podcast. We are flying through season six now and I’m really excited for this episode. We’re going to be talking about basically the power of the customer and I’ve got an absolute legend, Kerry Campion, who’s going to join me on the show today. So Kerry, thank you very much for joining me and giving up some of your time.
Kerry Campion (00:28.811)
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Azeem Ahmad (00:30.87)
It is an absolute pleasure. We, our paths have crossed a few times, but most recently in Barcelona where you’re asking me stuff about podcasting and then fast forward, here we are. very glad that we’ve made this happen. Like I said, you’re a legend. I don’t want to talk too much because people are here to listen and see and learn from you and not from me. So for those people who shamefully don’t know about who you are, what you do,
Kerry Campion (00:46.645)
Mm
Azeem Ahmad (00:59.416)
Please would you mind sharing a little bit of an intro to yourself please.
Kerry Campion (01:05.79)
Yeah, so I’m a copywriter and a content marketer and I’ve been running, doing that kind of freelance and then running my own agency for the past four years. And yeah, you kind of caught me at a transition moment because I am moving in -house in September, which was a big goal of mine last year. So yeah, I’ll be moving to the email marketing software, Mular Light, on the third of September, where I’ll be doing more content and copy there.
Azeem Ahmad (01:29.988)
They are very very lucky to have you. So we are going to be talking all about… you’re frozen are you back?
Kerry Campion (01:43.666)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you kind of froze there for a second as well.
Azeem Ahmad (01:44.738)
You’re back. Right, one second.
Okay, I’ll cut that bit out. So amazing, they’re very, very lucky to have you at MailerLite and I wish you all the best in that role. We’re gonna be talking all about the power of the customer and in the sort of brief that we had before the show, you mentioned there.
Kerry Campion (01:50.79)
Yeah.
Azeem Ahmad (02:07.535)
something about getting a customer to attribute $100 ,000 in revenue due to working with your clients. So would you mind just sharing a little bit more about that because that is a huge, huge number.
Kerry Campion (02:13.566)
Yeah.
Kerry Campion (02:20.221)
Yeah, and was, I mean…
I was preparing for a website copywriting project to do a lot of those. And as part of that process, we always have customer interviews, right? We want to make sure that our messaging is really resonating with the people that it’s supposed to resonate with. And, you know, we can’t really do that without ever speaking to customers slash clients, right? So I was having an interview with with one of their clients and, we were just kind of talking about, yeah, how they discovered the client. What was the
like working with them and when they kind of mentioned the the campaigns that they had worked on this was this particular client worked out with real estate agents on their Facebook ads strategy to sell more houses and so he was explaining one of those campaigns and I just you know this is a question that I always ask which is just simply like what impact did that have on your business and then he just kind of like thought for a second did some quick you know back of a napkin math and he’s like yeah well I mean thanks to the leads that we closed
through those ads you know it was like roughly a hundred K and revenue it’s like wait wait what sorry sorry sorry back up it’s just so like yeah like a hundred K and revenue you know and it’s just incredible because you know it wasn’t like a super prying or complicated question of just what impact did that have on your business right and he was able to say like literally 100 K and he had sorry he said I think he said at least 100 K in revenue so I mean that
Azeem Ahmad (03:29.912)
Hahaha
Kerry Campion (03:51.876)
was just I was like okay well that’s going in the testimonial that we write up after this interview and that just would have gotten lost right if we just hadn’t have reached out and asked that question so yeah it’s always worth trying to have more of those conversations because sometimes customers and clients they’re not really you know necessarily keeping track of these types of things or they just don’t necessarily think to reach out because life happens you know so yeah.
Azeem Ahmad (04:20.631)
No, that’s amazing and already, like what, handful of minutes in.
one immediate takeaway to write down. Sometimes you might see me leaning away because I’ll be writing stuff down. Literally, what impact did that have on your business? Absolutely solid. On the point of questions, that’s a great way to sort of lead me into my next one. So you mentioned there that you’ve got questions that you have. So what are some of those questions that you’ve kind of got in the bank when you’re talking to customers? And why do you think that those particular ones work so well?
Kerry Campion (04:31.271)
Ha
Kerry Campion (04:51.697)
Yeah, so actually with just sort of on the back of that question, you know, what impact did that have on your business? This is when I was, you know, it was a couple of years ago now and I was a little bit more experienced. What I always follow that question with is and what I.
what did that make possible for you? Cause that’s when you’re really kind of getting to the benefit beneath the benefit, right? Because yeah, a hundred K sounds amazing. mean, who doesn’t want an extra 100 K in revenue? But then what did you do with that? What did you go on to do? And that’s when you’re really getting insight as well into yeah, like the real goals that they actually have behind these types of figures and stuff. remember once a coach asked me that like, you know, what would make possible for you?
And I remember that question and I was like, I’m adding that to the bank. I’m adding that to the question bank. I guess so for some of the kind of go -to questions, it does depend a little bit, which is why you have to really think about why you’re speaking to these customers, what are you trying to achieve? Because that’s going to affect which customers you’re speaking to. It’s obviously very, very different. The questions you would ask, you know, a customer who you know, switch from a competitor compared to a customer who had sort of lower market awareness.
you know, before discovering you or a small medium business versus enterprise, et cetera. But in general, for let’s let’s take B2B. One of the great B2B questions that I love asking is how do you get measured? So I want to really understand kind of what’s at stake for them, how is success being measured for them? What kind of pressures are they under? And then that can help us think, well, how does our product or how does our service help them attain that?
Yes, that’s like one of my favorite ones for B2B. And then it just naturally leads on to other questions like, wow, so that sounds tough. know, how have you struggled with that in the past, et cetera? It kind of leads very naturally into a bigger conversation. Another one I love for B2B, because as we know, for anyone who works in B2B, there are multiple stakeholders. There’s a lot of decision makers there. It’s not just this nice, you know, DTC kind of, I like this, I’m going to
Kerry Campion (07:05.458)
it so I also like to ask things like who else was involved in the decision -making process? Who did you need to get buy -in from? How did you achieve that? Because in marketing copy, yes we’re speaking to one person generally but we have to be aware as well that there are other people who you know are involved in that decision -making process and we want to help the people who are discovering the product or the service to be able to sell it to them, to those other people who are involved but might not necessarily be in the room.
that makes sense.
Azeem Ahmad (07:37.264)
Absolutely, and I…
love the one you mentioned prior to that in terms of how you’re being measured because more often than not, certainly in my experience, different teams have different sort of KPIs and goals and not finding those out is almost like, you know, trying to run a race with like your legs tied together pretty much. So that’s really, really helpful. Thank you very much for that. The B2B one, yeah, it goes without saying there’s like seven million different decision makers. So that is gold.
Kerry Campion (07:52.884)
Mm -hmm.
Kerry Campion (08:00.989)
Yeah
Mm
Kerry Campion (08:08.542)
Yeah.
Azeem Ahmad (08:09.412)
But yeah, too much for me. Anyway, let’s carry on. When it comes to the end customer then, what do you think the dangers are of losing touch with them in the messaging?
Kerry Campion (08:23.944)
Yeah, I mean, obviously the biggest thing is that you end up repelling the people that you want to attract. So I I don’t want to like name and shame, but there was a brand who did this very semi recently with the copywriting community where they had this sort of Instagram post that was very like, you know, if you want a six figure business, you need to hustle. You need to have a moment. It was like just very kind of it was a bit aggressive. Right. It was like, no excuses. You need to do this. Boom, boom. And I just felt like
When was the last time you spoke to these people? Because I mean, I’m very, I mean, it is my community, right? It’s copywriters, it’s content writers. I have a copywriting community, I have a newsletter for copywriters. I talk to these people constantly.
Azeem Ahmad (09:01.401)
Mm.
Kerry Campion (09:09.235)
You know, they’re not trying to build the six figure businesses. They’re not trying to be like the wolf of copywriting, like the wolf of Wall Street of copywriting. know, they’re they’re very often women, right? They’re very often like women. like, you know, need to work from home because they have children. They have other responsibilities. They want freedom. That’s really what they want. Very few of them are saying like, yeah, my biggest goal is to, you know, earn six figures, whatever that means. Right. Because.
that can also be a bit of a grey area but and they’re very community driven they’re very supportive of one another like
Yeah, so just sort of felt like this, like who are you speaking to? This would be great if your target was like Hustle Bros on Twitter, right? But like not for your, not for this audience, like on Instagram as well, because it was an Instagram post and I don’t know, for me at least, sort of, for me Instagram has a much more, I don’t know, kind of like a more communal vibe. It’s softer, it’s like kind of supportive, or it’s like I see much more of the hustle stuff on Twitter, right?
Azeem Ahmad (09:56.121)
Hmm.
Kerry Campion (10:19.313)
And you know, I had several people like send me the screenshot of it and like in our Slack channel like, my God, like what is wrong with these guys? Like I can’t, like what are they doing? This is horrible. Look how they replied to people in the comments and.
It was just like it was not a good look for the brand and I think it really did come from they’ve now moved they’ve become so big that I think they’re very disconnected with the people that they’re supposed to be talking to and so like yeah their messaging is now starting to repel the very people that they’re trying to attract.
Azeem Ahmad (10:51.332)
I love that the whole point about becoming so big that you just forget about the people that you’re talking to because that sentence I would argue is probably true for quite a lot of brands.
Kerry Campion (10:57.37)
Mm
Kerry Campion (11:04.081)
Yeah.
Azeem Ahmad (11:04.65)
More recently, the one that I can think of in terms of audio messaging was that was an I card about, know, how only number one counts and everyone else doesn’t matter, etc, etc. And paraphrasing that seemed to divide the marketing community into very much like, this is great versus this is the worst I’d ever written. How can someone like Mike do this? But anyway, I digress the point about, you know, talking to customers and and customer
Kerry Campion (11:17.777)
Mm
Kerry Campion (11:29.05)
Yeah, yeah,
Azeem Ahmad (11:34.533)
conversations, I mean you kind of touched on it there, but how do you think specifically those conversations can impact like the effectiveness of marketing copy?
Kerry Campion (11:45.853)
Yeah, I mean, I guess it really comes down to the fact that we are just bombarded by messages daily. You know, it’s worse than ever. time you open your phone, there’s like 500 ads in your face. you know, there’s I don’t think there’s any sort of blue ocean products or niches left. It’s like everything is competitive. There’s a thing for everything. Right. And we’re all, I think, trying to find the little, you know, our little niche, our little wedge where we can kind of differentiate ourselves from
competitors in particular and know the only really way that we’re going to do that is by understanding who we’re speaking to it’s just so basic but you know I still see companies who you know the hero section in their website is best -in -class tool for innovative solutions or all those kind of buzzwords that don’t mean anything to anyone and it just sort of feels like have you actually spoken to anyone that you know that you’re you know marketing to so I
think it’s just that and then obviously what I just mentioned there you can end up repelling the very people that you’re trying to attract. You know, I think we always have like people love quotes, right? Like I love quotes, I collect quotes, you know, like mad. And we always remember the ones that resonate the most with us that remind us most of our own experience. Like I have like poetry like tattooed on my body because it was so like, this is like, feels like it was just written about me.
I’m not saying people are going to get your copy tattooed on them, that would be a bit mad, but you know marketing comedy it is the equivalent of that.
Azeem Ahmad (13:18.478)
Yeah
Kerry Campion (13:25.87)
I’ve had clients who’ve sent me screenshots from people who have found them on Google or whatever, read their website and the amount of times this exact quote has come up, I felt like you just got me. I felt like you just understood exactly what we needed. Like those exact words because it’s like, yeah, well, because we spoke to people like you and we put those pain points and those benefits and stuff in the copy. It’s, know.
Yeah, so I guess it’s really just that. It’s the difference between someone going, this is, yeah, they do this thing that everyone else does. Okay, which one’s cheaper, right? Compared to, my God, like, I really think if I go with this guy, this solution, it’s really, really gonna help me because they actually know what I’m going through.
Azeem Ahmad (14:16.259)
Absolutely, I’ve said it like a million times already in this episode. I love that. The whole point about I feel like you just got me resonates because as a consumer I’ve done exactly the same as well. That takes me very nicely on to…
My next question, which is about maybe using your customers own words in your corporate writing. Have you ever done that before? And if you have, I’d love to hear of, you know, some examples like headlines or testimonials or whatever, where this particular approach has like made a big difference for you.
Kerry Campion (14:47.694)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, so there was one that was super specific that really comes to mind. So I was working as like fractional head of content for a jam stack development agency. So I do headless CMS builds. And one of our pages was very much targeted at the very, very techy sort of heads of designs, maybe CTOs, those types of people, because they were the only people who were searching for jam stack development agencies. No, our other ICP was marketer.
But you know most marketers are not gonna know what jump stack is that’s very much the the CTO the head of designs and from speaking to them One thing that was very clear was like the reason they wanted to go for that type of build is because they really want to like get super granular About what they could control on the website and they just can’t really do that with most you know traditional sort of what they call monolithic CMS is like WordPress or Squarespace and stuff So those are the guys who are like we really want to get like technical we want to get like I really want to get
granular. So one of our subheads was a direct quote from a customer. It was during one of their, I don’t know if it was a, I think it was like a review call actually. So wasn’t even an interview. was, I was like on the call while they were kind of reviewing one of their.
one of their sprints for their website. And it was, need this animation to trigger on frame 57 when the scroll height reaches 35%. I was so, so ridiculously specific that I thought I’m going to use that as a subhead. So instead of just saying, you know, cause I could have just, I could have just done, I could have just said, we, we are, you know, we can really handle your requirements. Well, you know, it’s show don’t tell, right? That’s one of the, you know, the facets.
Azeem Ahmad (16:21.07)
Heh.
Kerry Campion (16:34.318)
of good writing so instead of just saying that it was like no that’s actually how granular we can get with your designs like really the only limit is your imagination and it’s you know and it is jargony and you know our we’re sort of told but I can avoid jargon but there’s some people who will really love seeing that jargon and because then they’re like okay yeah this is my people they’re speaking to me on the really techie nerdy stuff that I love so yeah that was an example of a very specific subhead that was taken straight
from a client’s mouth.
Azeem Ahmad (17:06.821)
That is… I think I need to see this once we finish the recording. But yeah, no, that’s very, very specific. We are flying through this episode and I’m sure that by now there’s going to be people watching or listening who are thinking, you know what, I’ve already got a lot of gold so far from you by this point. there’s a couple that I thought like people might want to know by this point. The first one would be like
Kerry Campion (17:12.611)
Yeah, I will stand it across to you.
Azeem Ahmad (17:37.017)
What steps do you think that people can take? People who are listening and watching this or just marketers in general. What steps can people take to ensure that they’re like continuously engaging with their customers? Because for me, certainly it’s something you’ve got to actively think about. You can’t just think, you know, today I’m going to do ABC and talk to my customers. You have to actively go and do it. So what sort of steps do you think people listening and watching this can take to making sure that they’re constantly engaging?
Kerry Campion (18:06.16)
Yeah. So I mean, jump to mind, would say improve cross team communication and collaboration. So like for instance, you know, obviously we’re talking to marketers, right? Collaborating with people on sales and customer success teams are absolute gold mines of this kind of voice of customer data because they are in the trenches every day, right? They are, you know, the sales team is like staring someone in the eye as they say, no, I don’t want this because XYZ or, know, customer success. They’re also dealing with like, you know, complaints,
etc. So because I’ve heard from a lot of people like but it’s difficult sometimes I’ll send a know slack message to someone on product and they don’t get back to me and stuff so I would say trying to improve that cross -team communication can be super helpful because that way you know maybe someone’s just off a sales call not too long ago with a certain ICP that you’re writing a landing page for right and you can you know quickly chat with them or check out their Gong calls. Gong is a great tool for
keeping a customer interview calls and sales calls and things like that. We’ve used that with clients in the past. Brilliant resource. You can filter it, add tags and everything. So yeah, and then thinking about as well, like, you know, marketing can help create sales enablement content. So if you’re kind of like helping to produce things for other teams, you’re going to naturally get that collaboration rather than just kind of pinging people on Slack and getting them to take time out of their day. And as well, doesn’t always have to be live interviews.
which you know because that’s that can be tricky people are busy people have lives it can be tricky to get people on a call that’s why you know I just mentioned there are things like gong recordings because usually sales teams will have those recorded for future reference etc emails surveys you know you can you can use that as well doesn’t always have to be live calls which can make it easier to to get a handle on it
Azeem Ahmad (20:01.072)
Nice, nice. Yeah. You’ve gone in the past really, really good. A couple more then. Like I said, we’re flying through this episode and I want to extract as much gold from you as I can in terms of marketing knowledge and wisdom. How would you say that a brand can balance having like their specific brand tone of voice, but also
Kerry Campion (20:07.968)
Love gone.
Azeem Ahmad (20:27.991)
including direct feedback from customers. For example, B2B, it’s very often, you know, hard, firm, bland, let’s call it what it is. So how would brands like, how do they, you know, how do you include feedback from customers as well as holding up and maintaining your brand’s tone of voice?
Kerry Campion (20:39.469)
Yeah.
Kerry Campion (20:50.509)
Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is that your tone of voice is kind of determined by your customers as well. You know, like if you are a law firm servicing like retirees who want to, you know, retire abroad, probably not going to swear in your marketing copy. You’re probably not going to use like emojis or memes, right? Like it’s really not going to work with them. Whereas, you know, for instance, like take Mailer Lite, it’s aimed at small media businesses, creators. It makes a lot more sense to have like a lighter, cheekier tone of voice, to use memes and things like that.
you’re talking to people in marketing in the creator space, et cetera. So in part, it’s not so much of an issue because it should kind of be based on what’s going to resonate with your customers anyway. And then I guess the second thing is don’t just rely on outliers either. You know, so sometimes you might get someone who says something that might be quite good in an interview, but then you kind of, you know, after maybe reviewing other, you know, customer calls, et cetera, you might think, actually, I think that was really cool, but I don’t think it’s actually
what the kind of majority of our customers actually want and resonate with. just, yeah, I guess just kind of being, you know, having good judgment about that really. But essentially you can, you can go too far the other way and use like, you know, not all VOCs should be used for Betum. So someone might have like a more of the essence of sort of what they’re saying that you might just have to kind of rework. But yeah, I think, I think that’s probably the best sort of overall advice is really just Betum.
your tone of voice on who you’re actually speaking to and what’s going to resonate most with them rather than you know which happens in a lot of smaller companies it just becomes like the founders tone of voice that happens a lot and sometimes you have to say well yeah I don’t think that’s actually going to really resonate with with these types of customers.
Azeem Ahmad (22:39.217)
Yeah, no, absolutely. You just you reminded me of a situation where.
a brand had used like a customer’s negative experience and then turn that into a piece of content. So it’s not normally something that you would like traditionally see, but basically it was, I used it in my presentation at MilesCon and I’ll share the YouTube link in the show notes. So basically it’s a cinema and they have one rule. You’re not allowed to talk, text or use your phone basically. You’re not allowed to use your phone while you’re in the cinema.
Kerry Campion (22:52.348)
Ugh.
Kerry Campion (23:04.29)
Yeah.
Azeem Ahmad (23:14.395)
What had happened was somebody had got kicked out for using her phone.
So she calls the brand leaves her like an aggressive voicemail saying stuff like, know, didn’t know that wasn’t supposed to use my phone. I was using a flashlight to get to my seat, etc, etc. And you crappy little cinema, blah, blah. The brand basically took that, used it, just the audio with subtitles on it, shoved it in negative customer experience, turned it into a positive saying, you know, thanks for not coming back. And it hits something like four or five million views on on YouTube. And all it is is just a black background, white text with the
Kerry Campion (23:42.808)
Mm -hmm.
Kerry Campion (23:47.96)
Yeah.
Azeem Ahmad (23:50.117)
which is like wild and that’s a negative experience and if brands can do that with a negative experience and based on what you’ve just said there should be a hundred times easier with a positive experience. But I’ve talked your head off, I’ve got one more question for you, maybe two and then I’ll leave you to enjoy your day. When it comes to things like this,
Kerry Campion (23:56.077)
Mm
Kerry Campion (24:03.927)
Right.
Sure.
Azeem Ahmad (24:14.257)
The one question that maybe we could have touched on earlier, but I deliberately wanted to leave it at the end was why? And that is why do you think marketers should start to implement customer interviews into their workflow? Why should people do this? Why is this important?
Kerry Campion (24:32.363)
I mean, I guess it’s just what we’ve been hitting on throughout, which is if you actually want your mark, if you want people to remember your copy, if you want people to remember your marketing collateral, you need to be doing this. And it’s also it’s a great way as well to kind of.
to defend your ideas as a marketer as well. I’ve had situations where maybe a client has wanted to do one thing or emphasize a certain thing on their landing page, say. And I’ve had to say, but actually from speaking to your customers, like they don’t care about this. They actually, they care much more about this feature or this benefit. that can really empower marketers. So I came out my Belfast accent, empower.
marketers to get more buy -in because they’re actually saying, hey, no, we’ve actually spoken to customers. We’ve done surveys, we’ve done this. Here’s like the reason we should go forward with this. And because, you know, we all know what it’s like to have an idea and to kind of, you know, not really get it through or to get a lot of pushback. But when you have those conversations and your customers words actually backing you up, can be like, that’s so, so helpful and so powerful.
Azeem Ahmad (25:19.157)
You
Kerry Campion (25:47.17)
for helping you get your campaign ideas implemented and yeah, and just to create stronger marketing material.
Azeem Ahmad (25:55.672)
Absolutely love it. This has been up to half an hour of just pure gold. I’ve really enjoyed this. So thank you very much. There’s just one thing left before we wrap up the episode and let you go. And that’s the most important one, arguably. Where can people find out more about you? Where can they follow you? How can people connect with you on the socials?
Kerry Campion (26:20.329)
yeah so LinkedIn is the only one I’m really active on now because Instagram is taking up too much of my life so yeah LinkedIn if you just search Kerry Campion that is champion without the H
Yeah, Kerry Campion on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to connect with people there. And I also, you know, if there’s any copywriters who are listening, I do have a newsletter called the Copy Comrades Newsletter and Slack Community. Yeah, so we send out a new issue every Monday and yeah, love connecting with other copywriters and people and content. So would love to see some more people there as well.
Azeem Ahmad (26:57.669)
Absolutely and by all means share with me the links and I’ll put them in the show notes so anyone on any platform can get them But yeah, if you’re watching listening, please do connect with Kerry even if it’s just to say thank you for sharing so much knowledge and wisdom Really really appreciated it. And that’s pretty much it for this episode as always Please do like write share subscribe Tell a friend to tell a friend and then tell that friends to go next door knock
Kerry Campion (27:05.107)
Awesome.
Kerry Campion (27:24.78)
Yeah.
Azeem Ahmad (27:27.585)
on the door and say I’ve heard this great podcast I don’t even care if you’re into marketing you need to hear this right now and I’ll find out I don’t know how but I’ll talk to my customers and I think we should pretty much end it there thank you very much and we’ll see you for the next episode
Kerry Campion (27:39.157)
Hahaha!
Kerry Campion (27:47.818)
Yeah, bye!