How do you stand out in a sea of copy and content sameness? A USP (unique selling proposition) isn’t enough. Neither is being different. My guest for the 230th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is marketing strategist Louis Grenier, author of the new book, Stand the F*** Out. We talked about what it takes to position your business, find your people, and build a durable brand. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Stuff to check out:
Louis’ book and bonusesLouis’ book on Amazon
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:
Rob Marsh: The biggest question facing most people who own their own businesses is how do I stand out? How do I position my busines in a way that makes it easy for customers to find me—and more importantly, to know they want to work with me? What can I do to make them care? Those important questions are answered in the new book, Stand the F*** Out by Louis Grenier. And Louis is my guest for today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast.
The topics we cover in our discussion are the kinds of things that help copywriters go from helping clients get the words right to helping clients sell more products, grow their businesses and as the title says: stand out of the crowd. This stuff isn’t easy. It can take years to learn. But if you stick around, the insights Louis shares will shortcut your learning curve
Before we jump into this interview, I want to mention the guest trainings we have lined up in The Copywriter Underground this month one more time… the first one is focused on building connections with prospects and clients on social media without burning out. If you’re like me and struggle to show up on social media consistently, this one will change your approach entirely—and help you find a client. And by the way, a single new client could pay for your Underground membership, for the entire year, two or three times over.
And the second workshop is all about landing a “real” in-house job—either part time or full time. A lot of copywriters want something a bit more stable than the string of clients they get as a freelancer. If that sounds like you, you need to hear the ideas this workshop will include. The presenter for this workshop was a talent placement expert for creatives. She’s helped hundreds of copywriters find so-called real jobs. What she’ll share is critical to know if you’re thinking about applying for these kinds of jobs and want to stand out from the crowd.
Both of these workshops are exclusively available for members of The Copywriter Underground. If you want access to them plus more than 30 templates, 70+ other workshops and trainings, and monthly coaching and copy critiques from me… you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. If you’ve been thinking about trying out The Underground, now is the time to do it. The first workshop is tomorrow. Go to thecopywriterclub.com/tcu for more information.
And now, let’s go to our interview with Louis Grenier.
I like to start by hearing your story, how you got to where you are. You’re a marketing strategist, author of a fantastic book, Stand the F Out. I don’t usually use that word. I do. But it stands out for sure. So tell us how you got here.
Louis Grenier: Bonjour, bonjour. Thank you for having me on. And it feels like I’m part of podcasting royalty. So it’s good to be invited on this podcast, listen to it a few times over the years. And it’s funny how the copywriting discipline is is still thriving despite the fact that they were supposed to be dead a couple of years ago. So it’s good to see that you’re still fighting the good fight. So yeah, to answer your question, it started from a trip in Paris when I was 17. So that was 18 years ago. to visit one of my older brothers. And I saw this book on his shelf that was basically the French version of Influence by Cialdini. But it wasn’t a translation of it. It was like a psychology slash marketing slash behavioral psychology book in French about key facts about human behavior. And I remember reading it. I was a lost mechanical engineering student at the time. And I just loved it so much. And things started to develop from there. I started to connect all the little puzzle pieces that I had misplaced, like the fact that I love being on the internet from a very young age and love hacking stuff on the computer. I loved all things psychology, understanding people. I felt I had the knack for it in some way. It came naturally to me. And all of that came together while I was doing mechanical engineering, realizing that that wasn’t my thing, that marketing, digital marketing at the time was the thing I wanted to do. So that was the start at least.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I think a lot of marketers have a transition where they want to do something else or maybe not want to, but they’ve been sort of programmed by school or whatever to do. I was ready to go to law school when I started copywriting and kind of fell in love with the whole thing. So, there’s a little bit of serendipity, I think, in a lot of our journeys. So from reading Influence though, you immediately became a marketer or you had a lot of steps along the way?
Louis Grenier: I did. So after that, I quit engineering. I did one year of business school. And at the end of that year, I did an internship for a French car manufacturer in Dublin, Ireland. I was supposed to do that for three months, but I stayed on for like three years with them. So I got full-time employment after a year, I was doing contract stuff for them. And I wanted to get into marketing, but I was still doing basic business-y type stuff, like account management for dealerships across Ireland and stuff. The first opportunity I had to actually apply the knowledge I thought I had about marketing from reading all the books, but doing none of the work, just, you know, theories was for a startup, a mobile marketing startup at the time in Dublin. That’s when I started to work for real in marketing, realizing that all the things I thought I knew about it, or at least most of it was wrong or untrue, or just, I knew nothing really. So it took me a long time to unlearn all of that. I then launched my first marketing agency with 20 grand in savings that I burned through within a year and a half. I burned myself out doing that, but I learned a lot. After that, I joined Hotjar. which is a web analytics startup. It’s not really a startup anymore, more a scale-up. I joined them thanks to a little podcast I had started at the time, which was eight years ago, Everyone Hates Marketers, which I have stopped now, but I met the CEO of Hotjar through that. So Hotjar learned a ton as well for four years, kept the podcast on the side, kept sending emails, started to practice a lot more of what I would call real marketing. and then restarted a business, which is standard F out. And it’s really a combination of all the mistakes I’ve made and all the stuff I’ve learned into a book and a couple of other stuff.
Rob Marsh: We’re definitely going to talk about the book. I’m holding it up as we speak and it’s a fantastic book. Everybody listening should probably have a copy of this on their shelf just as a reference on how to work with clients. But before we get to all of that, you mentioned that when you started out your career, you knew all the theories, you knew all of the stuff to do, but you hadn’t done any of the practice and it was all wrong. Can you give us some examples of that, the wrong stuff, and how you figured it out in your own agency and through the other experiences, what was right.
Louis Grenier: If I had to pick one, I would say that not necessarily something that was purely wrong, but very biased in one way, which was, I thought it’d be much easier than this. Meaning I thought it’d be much, much easier to make people do what you want them to do. You know, like clicking on a link or registering to something, basically making them care about something and how hard, I got punched in the face so many times in that startup, realizing that it’s actually probably one of the hardest things to do is to make people care, make people do something you want them to do. It’s just so, so, so, so, so hard. And we were in an industry that was already dying. Kind of the demand was quite low. And yeah, it was really, really hard. So if I had to pick one, probably the biggest thing, because in my head, I was imagining how it would be and the impact I would have on, you know, all the books I could cite and the research and whatever. But the reality, yeah, was much, much harder than I had anticipated.
Rob Marsh: It’s interesting you say that because I don’t think that that has ever been mentioned on the podcast before and yet this is probably something that every single person who’s been on the podcast or even listened to the podcast has dealt with. It’s almost like an unsaid problem that we have is how do you get people off the couch? to make the phone call, to click on the button, to pull out the credit card. And I mean, that’s why response rates are so low.
Louis Grenier: Like you said, it’s not easy. We are talking about the pain here. I think the answer to that, the solution to it, what I found along the way, what seems to work the best to make people care is to stop trying to make people care and instead understand what they care about already. So where is the demand? Where is the flow? Where is the need going? And channel that. So instead of playing God, thinking that we are smarter, better than you, and we’re gonna make you do something that you don’t know about, like problem unaware. Yeah. I’m rolling my eyes so far back. So… When you do that, it’s easier, but far from being easy. I mean, an example, right? When we talk about percentage, you know, let’s say 200 people join a waiting list for a program, right? So they show intent, they join the waiting list for something that you’re announcing. And then you announce the thing and maybe what, 10% of people would act to like reply and maybe apply, you know? And you’re like, why? I’m sure that if you’re talking to folks outside of the industry, and you ask them, what do you think is going to be the percentage of people applying after they apply to a waiting list? I don’t know, probably 50, 60, 70%, right? But it just doesn’t work that way. So, very humbling.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, incredibly humbling. But there’s a way to overcome that, at least for a certain part of the market, like you said, that has that desire and has in some ways the need. And your book is about a lot of that. And how do you make that connection with the client?
Louis Grenier: Yeah, but it’s still hard, right? You can make it slightly better, but there’s no secret. There’s nothing that will make it unreal. I’ve noticed a few times in my life where the demand is so high, that you’re so much at the right time, the right moment, with the right people, that it’s so easy. Like at Hotjar, when we started out, oh my God, it felt like we had a very bad site. very poorly designed, a 99 cent logo, literally. And the demand was just so high. We felt like we were geniuses, you know. So, you know, when you feel that, you’re like, no, you’re not a genius. You were at the right place, right time. right people, good for you on that, but it doesn’t make you a marketing genius because then you move all of those marketers to maybe an industry that was dying where there’s barely any demand, they will fall on their faces, right? So it’s one of the key things that I talk about in the book is picking the right category, making sure that you pick the right category that’s on demand, not trying to like create a new category, which is very sexy at the minute. leaning on what already exists in people’s head, in the market, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, one of the things that you mention in the book, which I thought was really interesting and I started underlining is when you talk about picking a category, obviously, you’re looking for a category where there is demand. And so there are probably other competitors out there. But at the same time, you’re juxtapositioning yourself against everybody else. So you’re trying to stand out. So you’re basically saying, hey, look for a crowd to be a part of. But also, how do you be the tallest person so you get noticed?
Louis Grenier: Exactly. First, you need to imitate and learn. The process takes years for most people because you need to know the industry, the category, the box you’re in, first of all. You need to know its rules. You need to know… the way people think in there and whatever. And once you know that, once you’ve made the mistakes, you can start challenging it in one dimension. If you start challenging it in too many dimensions, then you lose the box you’re in and people start misunderstanding what you’re up to, right? So it’s really like, it’s a, I always talk about it like as a, almost like a dance, you know, it’s like tango. It’s like, you want to go far, you don’t want to go too far, right? If your box is “marketing podcast”, if you’re like a podcast for copywriters, you don’t want to try to come up with a new term for podcasts, like audio experience for copywriters. You have to explain yourself and you’re losing the demand that is already there. So it’s always a subtle movement inside a box that others are not doing. But it’s not a gimmick. You use the term like being the tallest in the room or something along those lines. It’s not really about being disruptive and challenging the norm for the sake of it. It’s really trying to find a set of ignored struggles, problems that others are not catering well for in that category that you can serve better or differently. And that becomes then a meaningful differentiation. So it’s not like a gimmicky I’m using this orange color everywhere because all the dealers are using blue. It’s really like deeper. It’s true innovation when it comes to like solving unsolved problems, ignored struggles that others are not taking care of very well.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, the term ignored struggles is another thing that I underlined in the book a few times. And in order to find that, you spent a couple of chapters talking about digging for insights and what insights are worth looking at and what insights, you actually call them, I think, poisonous. Poisonous versus juicy. Can we talk a little bit about that? Because this is a huge part of what copywriters, content writers, social media writers are doing is they’re looking for these insights so that they can find that hook, the headline, the thing that stands out, right? Or if they’re working with a brand for that thing that a brand can hang its name on and really differentiate with.
Louis Grenier: One of the other biggest mistakes I’ve done in my career was to listen and learn from folks or sources that could actually lie to you without even knowing, without necessarily doing it on purpose and really leading you to a place that you don’t want to be in. I’m being quite radical in my way of defining what is a good insight, what is juicy insight, what is poisonous insight. I’m being radical in a sense that yes, you could get insight outside of the group I’m going to mention now, but for the sake of safety, for the sake of efficiency, for the sake of just going for it, I think that the only group you should listen to are recent past customers. So recent because recency, making sure people remember. Past because you don’t want people who are thinking about doing something because they will bullshit you, it’s likely. So people don’t know what they’re going to do in the future. There’s no point trying to predict that. And customers, meaning we have proof that they spend resources, whether it’s money, a lot of time, a lot of effort, trying to solve one of the struggles you want to solve for. And it doesn’t have to be folks who you’re talking to directly. It doesn’t have to be folks who bought from you. And that’s the beauty of it. You can learn from folks who’ve bought in your category, in your industry, even if you don’t have a business. And you can scan through online reviews. Review mining is very popular amongst copywriters. You can do interviews, you can be a fly on the wall. There’s many ways to get that. But if you only focus on them and forget about the rest, you, I think, increase the probability that you will get juicy insight, or at least usable insight, by quite a lot.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. And there are a couple of different insight types that we’re looking for when we do this. I think you listed out six or seven of them. I would love to go a little bit deeper on three of them if we can. Sure. Jobs to be done, problems, and triggers. And I’m really excited to talk about triggers, but I want to leave that to last because I think triggers is the one that’s overlooked by almost everybody. 100%, I agree. Because we all focus on problem. And if we take it to the next step, we talk about jobs to be done. But let’s talk a little bit about your thinking around those insights and what we’re looking for there.
Louis Grenier: So my thinking is really a mix up of thinking from others who are much smarter than me, have done research and all of that on behavior and stuff like that. And it’s learning from them and applying, trying to apply their learnings and figuring out that it actually works because that’s the way people think. So it’s definitely not just my thinking, right? I’m only a student of this art we’re into, but I’m glad you’re mentioning triggers. I completely agree. This is the most underused, misunderstood concept, and yet it explains so much. Imagine, you know, let’s say I start to have a back pain, right? A literal back pain. Whenever I try to stand up for too long, it gets sore. I have to sit. It’s a pain. It’s a pain point, right? In the traditional way people would think about, marketers would think about that, it’s a reason to market to you, let’s say, something to solve that, right? I’m not going to go into the products or categories, but there’s so many ways to solve that, right? But I’m not going to do anything unless I have a direction to go to, meaning why I’m going to do this, and unless there is a trigger or several triggers that make me act. And this is where demands start to flow. So I can have a back pain for literally 10, 20, 30 years without doing anything about it. And I’m sure in your life and in folks listening, you can find examples of a literal problem or pain point that you do nothing about. Until I learned that maybe my grandkids is coming to visit me for the first time in a while. And in my head, I’m imagining, well, I’m going to bring them to the park and I’m going to do this. I’m like, oh, yeah, but I can’t do that with my back. OK, better call a physio, right? And that’s understanding those triggers are far more powerful than understanding the pain. The pain is easy to understand, but it doesn’t talk to people as much as I think we believe. And it’s a bit, you know, we push too much of the anxiety part of it, like, you know, like, are you in pain? And are you, you know, like the, in copywriting in particular, like agitating the pain and whatnot. I think if you understand the triggers that start them all, it’s much easier. Just to go through that example one level deeper, how do we use this information, right? If we take this fictional example. Well, when, I would ask myself, okay, when does this trigger tend to happen the most often? I would say during the holidays. Right? Maybe Christmas holidays in particular, Thanksgiving, when we are more likely, that’s when you’re more likely to see your grandkids to visit. So this is when you can then push this type of message instead of saying back pain. Now you say, do you want to enjoy a better time with your kids without worrying about pain in your legs or whatever? Then this is the place to be. And it even informs where to be, right? So now I know what to say around when, when to push for it, which is like highly seasonal likely. But I’m thinking of places where people travel, right? So airports and train stations and other places where there’s a lot of commuting or whatnot, right? Again, I’m just speedboarding here, it doesn’t mean it’s 100% accurate, but thinking of triggers adds flavor and adds depth and context that you’re missing with just the pain. just like a back pain that doesn’t talk to me, doesn’t make me more creative. The trigger makes me think of so many things straight away, right? The when, the where, the with whom, the with what. Those are like real contextual clues that you can use.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. And these, in my opinion, these are the hardest things to find because it takes real conversations with real customers. Like you said, if you start asking people who might purchase, you know, whatever the thing is that you’re saying, they have no idea what the trigger is yet because they haven’t yet made that purchase right there.
Louis Grenier: Exactly.
Rob Marsh: And all of us have tons of things. It’s like, well, someday I’d like to have an iPad or someday I’d like to have whatever the car is or considering purchasing a subscription to that magazine, right? But we haven’t done it. And there’s probably a reason we haven’t done it. Maybe the pain isn’t high enough or maybe the event that makes that thing happen, the trigger hasn’t happened. So, give us just a couple of tips on how to find them, how to uncover them.
Louis Grenier: So you go back to the first insight that I shared, which is if you talk to recent past customers, you will likely find them. So you don’t have to interview people, right? So in copywriting and B2B in particular, B2B copywriting, this is like one of the most popular methods, but you don’t have to do that. So you could literally go to online reviews if your industry is prone to like having people leaving online reviews. And this is where you can start seeing the triggers if you pay close attention. So I have a real example here, right? Which is, I give this example of this toilet scent packet product, which is like you drop that in the toilet before going number two so that it doesn’t smell, right? And I went through Amazon reviews just to see what other triggers, what make people say, I need this now, even though they might struggle with that smell beforehand and whatever, they haven’t really searched for it to search for a solution, right? So for example, there’s this review, this product will work wonderfully for my upcoming cruise. It smells so nice and seems to work great. for my upcoming cruise is a trigger, right? Or at least it’s a contextual cue that tells you that there is a trigger behind it. This person is planning to go on a cruise in close quarters, right? Share a toilet with someone else. And they are thinking of this toilet situation. The problem has always been there. Maybe they’ve struggled with digestive issues all their life. They never bought anything for it specifically, but as soon as We mix the job to be done, which is masking bathroom odors in that case. We mix the problem, which is making sure that maybe the friend you’re going with isn’t smelling anything. with the trigger, the upcoming cruise, you create a chemical reaction, which is where the demands start to flow, right? So another example in the review, easy to use, I’m going to travel soon and it will be super handy in small bases. Again, cruise, travel, when you start, when you look for them, you will find them. But you need to look at many sources, right? If you can’t find them in reviews, if you can’t find them in interviews, if you can’t talk to people like that, there’s plenty of other ways. So I mentioned like be a fly on the wall. So maybe like observing people in their natural habitat. If you’re selling, let’s say, you know, cheap enough product or FMCG, you know, like a very fast moving stuff in supermarkets, you could literally see them buying it and asking them, why did you buy it? What made you buy it? Let me see. I’m just trying to find the fully so we give as much as possible. But it’s really like once you know that that’s what you’re looking for, the when, the where, the with whom, and the with what. So with whom could be like with a friend or whatever when they mention people. With what could be another product, the where, like a place, but it doesn’t have to be a location per se. It could be at your desk and whatnot. You will see them, honestly. That’s what I think. It’s not hidden that much. It’s just that we are never really looking for them that way. Yeah. Makes sense.
Rob Marsh: So, I imagine somebody listening, and I’m actually thinking this as well, although I have some thoughts on how to do it. Somebody might be thinking, okay, that’s easy for a packet that you drop in a toilet, that kind of a product. There’s four or five competitors out there. But what about my industry? I’m a copywriter. If I go on LinkedIn, there are over a million copywriters on LinkedIn. How do I find those jobs to be done, those triggers for something that’s literally a commodity and can be bought anywhere by anyone at almost any price point?
Louis Grenier: Well, I would say good news. First of all, that means there is demand for it. There is money flowing into it. So that’s already, that’s a good thing. I get excited when I hear those questions about, oh, I’m in a saturated industry, crowded market. I’m like, great, that’ll be fun. Because I know I can get data really fast, insight really fast. And I know then we can use a unique positioning to really dive into very specific ignore struggles, because despite what we may think, there’s always ignore struggles appearing, right? AI has just changed a lot of stuff. And as soon as that appeared, that created new struggles for people. So you can be the first, you can be someone looking into the forefront of the industry, A crowded market is not an issue. It’s just, it becomes an issue if you can’t figure out, you know, if you can’t go granular into specific problems you solve, that’s the first thing. And if you can’t pick a category that is niche enough for you to become the only, the only in that very sub, sub, sub, sub category that solved that specific ignored struggle for this specific group of people. So then you really minimize the number of direct competitors while still taking advantage of the demand. Then once you have that part, you you can then build distinctiveness, which is a different concept than differentiation. So we can talk about that. But you mentioned the insights. They will be in front of you, right? The jobs, the struggles, they are easy enough to find. You can look at literally competitors’ websites and look at case studies that they’ve shared. You will find insight that way. They’re not going to be groundbreaking new insight that you’ll be the only one to find. However, you can be the first, the only one to interpret them in a specific way and solve them in a specific way. And as you mentioned earlier, a few minutes ago, very few people care about, think about triggers. And so you just looking at them and understanding people that way, is already, I think, a huge competitive advantage. But on its own, to finish, on its own, a unique positioning might not be enough for you to stand out. You might need also distinctiveness on top, especially in crowded markets.
Rob Marsh: So yeah, let’s talk about then that unique positioning. The concept of USP, unique selling proposition, I think was invented by Ross or Reeves 60 years ago. Yeah, and it’s bullshit. Yeah, well, people still talk about it and I agree with you. I don’t think it works anymore. I actually think there’s a concept there that’s really nice to think about, but the reality is, It’s so easy to copy a unique selling proposition today. Literally, you might have one, but you’re not going to have it in 90 days. Somebody is going to copy it. You can’t be unique like that. So how do we become unique?
Louis Grenier: So the formula, the statement that I’ve put together uses the ingredients that you collect along the way. So the sentence, you need to be able to feel a sentence like that, unlike alternatives. So that could be competitors, there are competitors, there are competitors. my product, my service, my brand, whatever, is the only in that category to solve those ignored struggles. So like a list of the ones you’ve identified and get the job done for this particular segment. So the key is not to find an ignored struggle that others haven’t found or a category that others haven’t claimed. It’s the intersection of all of those things that create a unique positioning. And this is not meant to be customer facing, right? This is not meant to be on your homepage as a headline. It’s meant to really be to give you the clarity and direction to say, okay, we have a unique positioning, niche enough, specific enough, granular enough that gives people a reason to trust us. We become the least risky option, not necessarily the best. That’s another important concept. And that gives us the direction we need to then move on to maybe distinctiveness. So if we are Going through an actual example in the B2B world, I work with a company called the PTDC, which they do fitness training for personal trainers. And their statement, their unique positioning statement could sound something like, unlike just working more or selling out for quick cash, that’s the alternatives. The PTDC is the only online fitness training program. So that’s a sub, sub, sub category, right? That helps you, and now we’re talking about the inner struggle, overcome self-doubts, build a real business, and create a successful career you love as a jacked nerd. That’s the segment. That’s the smallest way they kind of talked about it. And you can see, if you take each of them individually, like online fitness training program, they’re not the only online fitness training program. But if you start mixing with the alternative, the triggers, the triggers are not there, but the struggles, the inner struggles, the job, the segment, that’s when you have an intersection that is quite unique. But it’s not in the same way, it’s not described as a, it’s not like a unique value proposition thing because you cannot genuinely realistically have that because as you said, others are probably using it and others will pick it up and use it as well. So it’s disingenuous this way. Well, the unique positioning statements and the ingredients that it’s using can’t be disingenuous because you have to go granular and the intersection again is something that you can uniquely claim.
Rob Marsh: So like you said, this is a statement then that drives the marketing.
Louis Grenier: Yes.
Rob Marsh: So then the job becomes, okay, how do we go from that statement and start creating assets, offers, branding, messaging that starts to convey that to our audience in a way that they’re going to connect with it and say, oh yeah, this is the product for me.
Louis Grenier: Yeah. So this is really like the very core of any business. You know, I don’t remember who said that. It might be Peter Drucker. I’m going to butcher it, but it’s like, there’s only two functions in business, two functions in a business, the marketing and innovation or something along those lines.
Rob Marsh: Yep.
Louis Grenier: Yep.
Rob Marsh: That’s a Peter Drucker quote. Yeah.
Louis Grenier: Something like that. Something like that, right? So this is the very core of your innovation strategy, your marketing strategy, because it’s how you serve people, how you serve a specific group of people in a way that others don’t. You already, in one single sentence, you have much more clarity and that’s the biggest job to start with, right? As soon as you become more than one, you have more like a team or even for your own sanity, and clarity and relief, having one single sentence that gives you direction is already a big, big win. So the benefit doesn’t have to be monetary or business directly related. It could just be like relief and confidence and clarity. Once you have that, it’s already much better to do marketing and to be creative once you have a bit more confidence, a bit more joy into what you’re doing, a bit more clarity. It changes the game, really, because it removes the noise and stuff. So this on its own, just going through that exercise and having it is already a huge, huge, huge relief for people. That’s what I’ve noticed. But let’s say we have that. So you have the knowledge. That’s the core of your business. You know who you serve, how you serve them, why you serve them, whatnot. Then you can move on to, you mentioned branding, so distinctiveness, which is not the same as differentiation. So differentiation is the ability to solve struggles that others alternatives are ignoring. That’s differentiation. Struggles that people care about, not struggles that people don’t care about. Distinctiveness is being able to stick out in people’s mind for things that don’t necessarily connect directly with what you do. So that’s why I talk about the concept of meaningless assets, meaning you don’t have to create logos and colors and whatnot that connect directly to what you have to say. For example, in the copywriting world, you don’t have to use a a pen as your logo, you don’t have to.
Rob Marsh: If you want to stand out, you probably shouldn’t because half of the industry does.
Louis Grenier: Yeah. So it’s okay. Again, it’s the same concept in differentiation and playing inside the box. You don’t want to challenge too many conventions in the branding side. So if you’re a writer and you want to be known as a writer, a copywriter for B2B SaaS, let’s say, whatever, you do need to make sure that you use some conventions that others recognize of that category and specific brands or else you might lose them. So it’s always, again, this subtle dance and this tango between going far and also staying in your lane in some way. So it’s always recognizing the few places where you can play without going overboard or else people just won’t know at all what you’re up to, what you’re doing and who you are and why you’re here.
Rob Marsh: So would you characterize these usually as design elements or are they like actual parts of the offer, parts of the business? The immediate example that comes to mind is the original iMacs. When Apple innovates and they add color and they kind of create this bubble shape to the iMac, suddenly it’s a computer, but it’s very distinctive. It’s very different. Some people reacted to that negatively. It looks like a toy, which it did, but also that was the thing that made it distinctive, but it didn’t really affect the function of what the Mac did. So, is that distinctiveness versus differentiation?
Louis Grenier: Yeah, so assets, brand assets that are part of your distinctive brand, they are basically what makes your brand uniquely yours. So it could be color, shape, sound, word, even a mascot. And it’s the association of all those things that create a branding experience, that create the memories in people’s brain, right? Which is the core thing. You want to associate certain things about you to specific triggers. So instead of thinking of pain points, if you start to think of how do we associate that with this specific trigger, to go back to the example of the back pain and the kids coming back for holidays, you could think about ways to develop things that people could associate with, my kids are coming back, my grandkids are coming back for the holidays. And this is how you kind of create connections between you, your brand, and people’s brain, so that when the need appears, the demand starts to spark in people’s mind, you come first to mind, or second to mind, or third to mind, or at least you’re there, right? So yeah, faces, colors, phrases, anything that is there to stick to people’s brain, right? So like the speech thing, the facial reconnection part of the brain, the vision, the different bits and bobs that are there to like tickle your brain, tickle your customer’s brain.
Rob Marsh: This is where we start to get into points of view as well. And the things that we talk about, content we create. I know there’s a whole section in the book about point of view. I’ve got mixed feelings when it comes to points of view. I think that there’s a lot of value, particularly with points of view that are related to what you do. But I think there’s a lot of people who talk about your point of view as being your politics. And there’s almost been this trend over the last maybe decade, maybe it’s a little longer, where politics is the point of view. And to me, that becomes really dangerous. Michael Jordan, I think, was really famous for saying, he was asked why he doesn’t talk about politics. or do advertising that’s political. And he famously said, Republicans buy shoes too. And he obviously, from that comment, we can discern that he probably leans left, but he wants everybody to be able to buy his product. So there’s this tension when we talk about sharing points of view. Tell me your approach to this and where we should draw that line.
Louis Grenier: So the line is drawn by sharing things, opinions or signals to the people you seek to serve in order to protect them from the pains, the struggles, the monster, I call it as well. We can talk about that later if you want. That is preventing them from making progress or just doing something, right? So it’s not there to be controversial for the sake of it. It’s not there to stir the pot for the sake of it. It’s not there to be disruptive. It’s there to be distinctive and sending a signal to the people you seek to serve that you’re here for them, right? So I would define a point of view as a collection of consistent messages inserted into everything you do and say, showing the people in your segment you’re committed to protecting them and earning their trust, right? And that creates a sense of coherence and control, right? Meaning we’ve got you, we’re here for you, and that’s why, right? So this is a point of view, like, I don’t know, every time I talk about or share point of views, I think of LinkedIn. It’s just the place where people misunderstand the concept quite a lot by sharing points of view that have nothing to do with your industry or nothing to do with the people you seek to serve. That’s my rule of thumb. Just stay in your lane for the business you have. The point of view should be there to protect your segment. And maybe some others outside of it might disagree, but that’s fine. But you don’t want to be disruptive for the sake of it and sharing stuff that have nothing to do with what you have to say. So that’s kind of the, again, the tension. And as you mentioned that word, I’ve noticed that, yes, a lot of the concepts we’re talking about here There is a tension, there is like a dance, there is subtlety because it’s not black and white. It’s not as easy as just, you know, a five-step formula. There is always subtlety and you need to build your taste and develop your taste towards that, right? Toward all of those concepts, like to try things and see how far you go. Is it too far? Is it not far enough? Yeah. It’s, it’s, there’s always a messy middle.
Rob Marsh: And just to be clear, as you talk about that, politics might be okay, right? Just depending on the product, your audience or whatever. So I’m not saying, hey, never touch that, but what we’re saying is it really needs to relate to the thing that you’re doing or to your audience or to the offer in some way.
Louis Grenier: Yeah, or else you lose yourself.
Rob Marsh: Okay, you mentioned the monster. I think another marketing concept that a lot of people are familiar with is picking an enemy. I think the monster is a little bit different from the concept of picking an enemy, where like Apple goes after IBM and Microsoft or whatever. So let’s talk about what is the monster and how do we develop or create this monster that actually works for our brand?
Louis Grenier: So a monster is a fictional or semi-fictional enemy that represents some of the problems that the people you seek to serve face. And the game is to give a name to some of the inner struggles they are facing. And that helps them to understand what’s going on better. that gives them the sense of control and coherence in the world. As an aside, that’s what religions are here for, right? They give this randomness of the universe and why we’re here. It gives some sort of a sense into it that, oh, it’s because God or multiple Gods are creating all of this instead of just pure random chaos. You know, it’s just you can’t explain it. It’s much more unnerving to think about it this way. So anyway. Pointing the finger at a specific monster that tells you this is why you’re struggling. It’s not your fault. And I’m here. The brand is here for you. It’s kind of the concept behind it. But the biggest mistake I see people make with this concept of enemy or monster is that they sometimes make their segment feel guilty instead of, um, getting them on their side. So for example, like procrastination, like you’re always doing things late. Well, it’s your fault. You need to pick yourself up and do this. So it’s never really like that. It’s always making sure that you get them on your side by instead saying, The way you’re built as a homo sapiens is a result of millions and millions of years of evolution, and it’s just the way you’re built. It’s normal that you’re procrastinating. It’s completely normal behavior. Now I can help you channel that, right? So that changes the entire narrative where you get people on your side, you show that you understand them, you bring empathy into the table, and then you can move them further.
Rob Marsh: So to be clear, in that case, the monster is this evolutionary development of… For example, yeah. Yeah, human kite. Okay. And it’s not my fault.
Louis Grenier: It’s not you per se. I mean, I’m spitballing here, and I’m sure that others might disagree, but… That’s one way to talk about it. So the other mistake I see is that people think enemy equal picking a direct competitor, naming them, shaming them out loud. That’s not it. So a monster is something that is responsible for the struggles or some of the struggles that your people are facing. It doesn’t have to be, and in fact, it’s almost never a direct competitor, unless you’re in incredibly crowded categories where almost everyone have used that direct competitor’s product before, like let’s say you do a new search engine, then I would say it’d be difficult not to pick Google as the monster that’s causing their pain, potentially. So there’s four types. It can be a corporate giant that is so big that it’s creating the the issues that your people are facing. So like an example would be big oil, right? You could point the finger at big oil, the four biggest oil companies in the world are responsible for climate change. The alternative solution. So this is what people use instead of using your category. So for Hotjar, that was a typical thing we did. We pointed the finger at only using traditional web analytics. We didn’t point the finger at Google analytics. We pointed the finger at only using them. And the subtlety is important here. We are not saying we shouldn’t, we didn’t say you shouldn’t use GA. We said you should use GA and Hotjar. And the third type is the culture of the category, right? Like the hustle culture or fast fashion or all of the biggest, you know, the biggest trends and themes that are causing people issues. And the last one, which was part of the example I gave from the procrastination is the monster within. So it’s like the feeling of behavior or something within us that is causing us pain. So those are the four types. So it’s quite in-depth. And again, you need to be subtle about it. You don’t have to talk about it out loud every single time. It could be just something for you to be clear about internally. You don’t have to say it out loud. But I like to use it as a, it’s almost like the Death Star, you know, in Star Wars, it’s so big, everything gravitates around it. And so everything you do and say is kind of there to help people slay that monster. And it, again, gives us clarity, this sense of direction that leans on negativity bias or the way people are, you know, we are just geared towards negativity and it creates this anchor.
Rob Marsh: Should every brand or every personality, everybody who’s trying to stand out, should they have a monster? Or are there still places where that’s not important?
Louis Grenier: You should because I think if you don’t, you run the risk of blaming people and actually going against your audience and not having this empathy that you need to have. But again, it doesn’t have to be written on your homepage. It doesn’t have to be said out loud at all. It could just be an internal compass. I think it simplifies things. I’m a sucker for simplicity and the rule of one in as many things as we can, especially in marketing, right? You’re going to have to pick your battles. You can’t do everything, especially as, let’s say, a solo copywriter. You’re going to have to pick something, go after it. And yes, there could be others and there could be other type of monsters or whatever, but the point is not to pick the perfect one. The point is to pick one and fucking go for it, commit to it with intensity.
Rob Marsh: Okay, so let’s say we’ve done all of this work. We’ve gone through the frameworks, we’ve got our insights, our unique positioning, we’ve created our monster or identified our monster. We know how we’re gonna be unique. Let’s talk a little bit now about how, now that we’ve done that, how do we find our audience? What is the, where basically the tire hits the road?
Louis Grenier: Yeah, so ideally, you would have not spent too much time in the framework, in spreadsheets and stuff like that. Ideally, you start to play with some of the concepts already, test them and see how it feels. But the last stage is what I call continuous reach, which is reaching as many people as we can for as little efforts or resources as possible, right? And it’s really based on pure behavioral psychology and basic psychology on how people remember things and why people think of Google as the first search engine and why some brands are first in their category and whatnot. It’s really using the triggers we mentioned as the source of all of that. So once you understand what makes people act, even if it could be six months before they actually purchase. But like this series of triggers, you can find ways to be there, be at the right time, the right context. And that’s how the concept of triggers gets so, so powerful. Because if you split them into the four contextual elements that I mentioned, so when is this trigger happening, where it’s happening, with whom it’s happening, and with what it’s happening, you almost start to get your marketing plan created for you without thinking too much about it, right? So for example, for my own agency, my first failed agency, I actually looked back at all the notes I had about clients and whatnot. To understand the triggers and to see how differently I would have maybe marketed if I had a bit more brainpower by then, right? So let’s say there was this software company I consulted for and they told me that the French website conversion rate was lower than the American one. They wanted to understand why because I think their boss told them I need to do something about this after the quarterly meeting. So that’s an unexpected event. Let’s say that’s a trigger. You can start thinking, okay, when was that happening? Where? So for example, when it’s like pretty much every quarter. You can start playing with that. But once you really understand the triggers, where to be, when to be, what to say, it becomes quite… Again, it just comes naturally because it talks about the way people experience them, not about the pain points that are completely abstract, right?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, so I’m going to change subjects here just a little bit. You somewhat famously asked Seth Godin on your old podcast, a question that he told you, you’re asking the wrong question. You’re asking like, you know, if you probably phrase this better than me, but you asked him something like, you know, if you were a tech company, same as everybody else, how would you differentiate? your business if you’re building it. And he said, you’re asking the question the wrong way. I’m not necessarily asking the same question, but I wonder if you’ve taken what he said, what he told you how to build, if that’s how you’ve built your consultancy today.
Louis Grenier: So yeah, I’m happy to say, I’m happy to report that all the learnings, all the stuff, all the mistakes I made, the lesson learned and whatever that I’ve compiled into that book is something I try my hardest to apply to every day. So yes, in terms of I think the biggest concept that I’m trying very hard to make sure I’m using when I launch a new product and do stuff is, is there a demand for this? Is there a crowded market already? And can I play inside that? So I’m sending a newsletter. Yeah, everyone does it, but actually no, very few. But like, let’s say I sell, I’m going to start to sell a certification program specifically for marketing business owners. So folks running marketing businesses as a solopreneur, freelancer, consultant, agency owner. certify them on the methodology, give them an exclusivity in terms of the badge and other stuff. So limited, all of that. I think 10 years ago, five years ago even, I would have said, everyone does certification, so I’m not going to do it. Let’s find another way to do this. And I would have completely messed that up by essentially stop myself from using the demand that is already there. If there is certification programs out there that are being run by, let’s say, Donald Miller and StoryBrand, like they do, like the StoryBrand certification stuff, and it’s been running for years, I know, therefore, that there is demand for it. And therefore, this is a box I can be in as a product. And so, yeah, I’m using that entire unique positioning. The only difference, the only inner struggles that I’ve identified that I’m going for to have a unique positioning, all the rest stays the same compared to others, is the fact that this badge is earned. You don’t pay for it, even though you pay to enter, but you need to earn it in order to get certified. Meaning you have to show me that you’ve created actual results for clients using part of the methodology, and I reserve the right to not certify you if I feel you don’t fit with the brand. That’s it. That’s the main difference compared to everyone else. creates more exclusivity, this feeling that the brand is protected and the feeling that people who enter this are not just, you know, they just didn’t pay their way to get a fucking badge on the bottom of their website, right? So that’s unique positioning. Distinctiveness, well, distinctiveness, I can talk about it forever, but behind me, you’re listening to this in audio, but you can see that behind me is Roger, my rooster.
Rob Marsh: Big rooster, big orange rooster.
Louis Grenier: Yeah, this is my mascot with a purple beret, with this look on its face, just this aggressive… It’s just such a funny facial or whatever expression. And that has nothing to do with what I do. directly at least. Yes, it’s a nod to me being French because it’s a rooster and wears a beret, but it’s just a nod. It doesn’t explain it. You’re looking at this, you don’t know that I do marketing, right? And this is why, like, this is the beauty of a distinctive brand because it connects meaningless assets that I’m the only one that can claim in the category. I’m the only one with this, right, in the entire marketing category. So that means when people think of me, they think of the rooster. When they think of the rooster, I want them to think of a couple of things such as, you know, they may maybe feel that their business is stagnating and that it’s the new year, turning the new year and they are stagnating. Their positioning is not where they want it to be. This is where this is a trigger. This is where they can think of me. Right. So I genuinely try to apply the entire framework as much as I can. It’s not easy all the time and things change and it’s not perfect, but I try to. Because it’s all rooted in science. It’s not my point of view, my opinion, this is what you should do and this is my way. I sincerely think that this work is rooted in first principles, meaning things will not change. And so if you pick up that book in 50 years, I really hope that most of it will still be relevant. And that’s, yeah, that’s what I’m probably the proudest of.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I agree. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast in the first place, Louis, is because I think that this book basically gives the structure for anybody who is doing marketing and copywriters. Oftentimes we think, well, we’re just writing the copy, somebody else is doing all of this work, but a good copywriter is looking for those insights, is helping to develop that unique positioning statement, you know, so many of the things. It feels like a manual that helps marketers just do business. The frameworks, the tools, the practices that are in the book. And so I agree. I think in 50 years, it’ll still hold its value.
Louis Grenier: Thanks, man. That’s really nice of you to hear because I’m looking at your library of books behind me and the fact that you’re saying that behind you, The fact that you’re saying that it’s a good one, that makes me very happy. The last thing I would say on this is that it’s not easy. It’s not meant to be easy, right? It’s difficult to stand out. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes, you know, mistakes and whatever. And it’s normal. Don’t allow those marketers or not marketers to gaslight you, making you believe that There is a secret you don’t know yet that you should follow, that there is all this like an AI tool that is going to change everything and put you out of business. Be very careful with all of those. They are making you feel bad in order to sell stuff to you. So it’s not that easy, but it’s also not that hard and there’s no secrets and you already know everything. You just need to go for it, try, do new things, try again. So yeah, be careful out there, especially in the marketing space where people are trying to sell stuff you don’t need and recreate, reinvent the wheel. So, yeah.
Rob Marsh: Louis, you have a daily newsletter email that you send out. Let’s share where we can join that. I’ve been on your list, I think, for years. It is unique in the stories that you tell. You’re very outspoken. You have your opinions. You will probably offend some of our listeners when they join, but I think if they stick with you long enough, I think they’ll learn a lot. Where can people jump on your list?
Louis Grenier: If you just Google Stand the F*** Out, you’ll find the newsletter, you’ll find the book. Honestly, it’s as simple as that. And the last thing is I’ve put together an offer specifically for folks who have been courageous enough to listen through my French accents and my cursing. So you can get the book, instant access to the book, meaning through Kindle, through like PDF, EPUB. plus a bunch of other little stuff outside of it, like action kits for $9. So that’s it. So it’s cheaper than the Kindle on its own in Amazon, but you’ll get way more. So the link is stfo.link/tcc.
Rob Marsh: Fantastic. I mean, I hope everybody jumps in and gets it, but I will say it’s worth having the physical book to underline, to go through, to have on your bookshelf and next to you just to refer to because it really is how to build a marketing plan for any business and I think will help a lot of copywriters be more strategic about the work they do.
Louis Grenier: Thanks so much, man. Thanks for all the kind words and your support, encouragement, and thanks for being on the list for that long. I know it’s not easy sometimes.
Rob Marsh: It’s a great email. I probably overstated it a little bit, but it is a great email. So thanks, Louis, for sharing so much. I appreciate it.
Louis Grenier: You’re very welcome.
Rob Marsh: Thanks to Louis Grenier for taking some time to sit down with me. You should definitely join his list at everyonehatesmarketers.com. and get a copy of his book, Stand the F Out. As Louis mentioned on the podcast, he has a special offer for anyone who is a listener to the podcast. You can get a PDF or Kindle version of the book, plus a few other bonuses for just $9. The book is a primer for anyone who wants to stand out in a crowded market or for anyone who works with clients and needs to stand out at a crowded market. So get your copy today.
I really appreciate how deep Louis was willing to go on all of this. Insights, ignored struggles, triggers, distinctiveness, positioning. These are things that don’t always come up when we’re talking about writing copy. But if you add these skills to your writing process, you will stand out from the writers who only think about words. Guys that are calling themselves wordsmiths.
As we started talking, Louis mentioned the problem of getting people to care about your offer. This is where knowing how to write emotional copy becomes a valuable skill set. We have a masterclass that teaches you how to do that. It’s called the How to Write Emotional Copy Masterclass, and you can learn more about that at thecopyrighterclub.com forward slash emotion. Rather than me telling you what it covers and includes, simply just go to thecopyrightedclub.com/emotion and see for yourself what you get there.
