I’m currently working on an email sequence for a memory enhancement supplement.
The spokesperson for this supplement is a doctor — male, white, I estimate in his mid-60s, with a pleasant Southern drawl and a wise grandfatherly demeanor.
“I’ve always had a love of nature and natural remedies”
I wrote up the first batch of emails and delivered them to my client (the supplement company owner, not the doctor).
“The angles and topics are all good,” the client said, “but can you work on adopting the good doctor’s voice a little more?”
Honestly, I was a bit miffed at this, because I already had tried to adopt his voice (as I do with all copy that I write). I had gone through the transcripts of an interview I had with the doctor, as well as several videos he had done on YouTube where he talked about health and supplements.
The trouble was, while the doctor did have a characteristic “voice” while speaking, when written down, there wasn’t nearly as much there. He wasn’t really using any unique slang, or technical terms, or telling lots of personal stories.
What to do? I swallowed my pride and rewrote parts of the emails. Here’s what I did:
1. Use some generic conversational patter
I always try to write in a conversational way. In this case, I amped it up even more using generic conversational fluff, such as:
“You know”
“Well, what I’m talking about here is”
“Now I’ve got to warn you”
2. Search more closely for stories and phrases
I went through all the transcripts a second time, and I did find some phrases that were subtly unique. I wrote them all down, and one by one, I made sure to find a place in the copy to add each of them in. Here are a few examples:
“I’ve had an awful lot of success”
“Boatloads of medicines”
“It’s a jewel” [when describing something valuable]
3. Add parenthetical remarks
These are simply moments to step back from a story, an explanation, or a pitch, and you talk one-on-one, give an opinion, a personal comment, or insert a tiny other story.
For example, when talking about one of the ingredients in this supplement, I took a step back to have the doctor say, “You see, since I was a youngster, I’ve always had a love for nature and natural remedies. That’s why…”
4. Insert consistent stories and illustrations
This is perhaps the most impactful of all of these techniques.
I decided to simply add in stories and illustrations and images that are consistent with the persona of the doctor, even if it’s stuff I never really heard him say, and even if it’s stuff he might not actually ever say.
For example, I told the story of a “beautiful and stately old tree” down the street from where the doctor lives, which happens to be a ginkgo tree, one of the ingredients in the supplement. And I used grandfatherly images like the following:
“His anger issues started disappearing like mist in the morning sun”
“She had a vice-like grip on her intelligence again”
So did all this work? Who knows. But the client was happy, and he wrote back right away to say I had nailed the doctor’s voice perfectly.