| Most founders think marketing starts when they open a blank document. It doesn't. It starts in a place you don't control. Inside the mind of your customer. Before they ever see your landing page, before they read your email, before they hear your pitch, your customer is already mid-conversation with themselves. Not about you. About their life. Their business. The thing that isn't working. The ambition they haven't acted on. The problem they've been turning over for weeks. Maybe your customer is a new mom thinking "I should be able to handle all of this but I'm drowning and I don't want anyone to know." Maybe it's a small business owner thinking "I'm working 70 hours a week and I still can't make payroll next month." Maybe it's someone who just got a diagnosis thinking "I need to change everything about how I eat but I don't even know where to start." Those conversations are happening right now, with or without you. And this is where most marketing fails. Not because it's poorly written. Not because it lacks persuasion. But because it starts in the wrong place. It starts with the founder. Robert Collier, one of the most successful direct mail copywriters of the early 20th century, described it like joining a conversation at a party. You listen in. You get the trend of what people are already talking about. Then you chime in with something that fits. You don't walk up and start talking about yourself. You enter the conversation that's already happening. He wrote: "Every man is constantly holding a mental conversation with himself, the burden of which is his own interests, his business, his loved ones, his advancement." Your job is to chime in on that conversation with something that fits. 1. You're starting in the wrong place.Here's what most content entrepreneurs do when they sit down to write a landing page or a sales email. They start with themselves. What the product is. How it works. Why it's different. The features. The roadmap. The thinking behind it. And nobody means to do this. When I say it out loud on a coaching call or write it in a newsletter like this one, everyone nods. "Of course. Start with the customer. Obviously." But then they sit down to write and it happens anyway. They default to talking about themselves without even noticing. Because when you're the one who built the thing, your thing is what's on your mind. It takes real discipline to set that aside and start with what's on your customer's mind instead. But your customer doesn't care about what you built yet. They're still trying to answer a much simpler question: "Do you understand me?" If the answer is no, they leave. It doesn't matter how good the product is. It doesn't matter how polished the copy feels. It doesn't matter how many features you've built. If you don't meet them where they are, you lose them before you ever get the chance to explain what you do. This is the mistake I see over and over again. Brilliant products with landing pages that open with "Here's what we built" instead of "Here's what you're going through." The founder is so close to their own product that they forget the customer hasn't caught up yet. The customer is still in their own world. Still wrestling with their own problem. Still trying to figure out their next move. You have to go to where they are before you can bring them to where you want them to be. 2. Logic vs. internal dialogue.This is where AI makes things more dangerous, not less. AI is very good at writing complete, logical answers. It gives you clean structure. Logical flow. Well-formed arguments. And it feels right when you read it. But it almost always starts too far downstream. It writes as if the customer is ready to understand the solution. When in reality, the customer is still stuck in the problem. The difference is subtle but it's everything. Logic says: "Here's a better way to grow your business using AI." Internal dialogue says: "I've tried a dozen things already. I'm not sure if this is just another one." Logic says: "This tool will save you time." Internal dialogue says: "I don't have time to learn another tool that might not even work." When you write from logic, you're talking at the customer. When you write from their internal dialogue, you're talking with them. And that's when something shifts. They slow down. They feel seen. They keep reading. Not because you're more persuasive. Because you're more relevant. And relevance is the real unlock. Not better words. Not more words. Not even more compelling words. Just the right words, at the right moment, in the conversation they're already having. 3. Empathy is not a soft skill. It's a strategic advantage.I want to make sure this doesn't sound abstract. This is the most practical thing you will learn about writing copy that converts. Before you write your next landing page, answer this question: "What is my customer already thinking right now?" Not what should they be thinking. Not what you want them to think. What they are actually thinking. If your customer is a freelancer who wants to start a coaching business, they're probably not thinking "I need a content system and a sales process." They're thinking "I don't even know if anyone would pay me for advice. Who am I to charge for this?" If your customer is a consultant who wants to launch a course, they're probably not thinking "I need a curriculum framework." They're thinking "What if I build this whole thing and nobody buys it?" Those preoccupations, those fears, those unresolved questions they're carrying around every day. That's where your copy needs to start. Not with your solution. With their reality. When you do this well, your customer reads the first three lines and thinks "this person gets it." And once they think that, they'll read everything else you write. They'll trust your recommendation. They'll believe your proof. They'll buy your offer. Not because you tricked them. Because you met them where they were. You entered the conversation they were already having, and they trusted you to keep talking. This is why empathy isn't a nice-to-have in marketing. In a world where AI can generate infinite language, the scarce resource is no longer words. It's understanding. The content entrepreneur who wins is not the one who writes the most. It's the one who listens the best. 4. Put it to workBefore you write your next email, your next post, your next pitch, try this. Open a blank page and write at the top: "Right now, my customer is thinking..." Then write their internal dialogue. Not your talking points. Their worries. Their doubts. Their hopes. The things they say to themselves at night that they'd never post on social media. Write at least five of them. Then look at what you wrote and ask: does my current landing page, my current email, my current content start here? Or does it start with me and my product? If it starts with you, rewrite the first three sentences. Open with their reality instead of your solution. Enter the conversation they're already having. You won't need better copy after that. You'll have something better. A conversation they were already waiting to have. Go move someone. A note from Darrell:This is the exact work we do in the first four days of the 30-Day Bootcamp inside Copyblogger Academy. Before you build an offer, before you write a single piece of content, you get clear on who you're talking to and what they're already thinking. The founding cohort started March 30th, but there's still time to join and catch up. $1 for 30 days. - Darrell from Copyblogger |
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