“It’s anonymous,” he said. “They never see me or find out who I am.”
I took my face out from the little plate filled with different cheeses. I leaned back in my seat. “So how do you deliver it?”
“It’s just audio of me talking. They don’t see me. And I never say what my name is.”
I was getting excited. “But what about your high-end coaching clients, the ones who are paying you a grand?”
“Yeah, we get on a Zoom call. They do see my face, and I tell them my first name. But they still don’t know who I am.”
During the Gdansk conference, I met a copywriter who’s kind of a big thing on copywriting Twitter. But his Twitter account is anonymous. He only goes by Mercure.
A couple months ago, he launched a couple coaching offers.
The quirky sales page for these offers reads and looks like a detective pulp novel. It’s red font on black background and there’s an mp3 clip at the top, hosted on Soundcloud, that sets the mood with a kind of film noir soundtrack.
The “beginner copy camp” offer sold on this page is 200 euro. The “intermediate copy camp” is 1000 euro.
A bunch of people have bought, at both levels. And they keep buying. Even so, they don’t get to find out who Mercure is.
I’m telling you this for two reasons.
One, because Twitter might not be the meme-filled sewer I always assumed it was. I spent much of the farewell dinner at the Gdansk conference grilling this guy about what he does on Twitter and how. It all sounded very positive.
Reason two is, to remind you that you can do things your own way, and it can still work.
This guy never shares his name online, either on Twitter or to his customers. He never shares anything personal about himself, beyond the fact that he’s a successful copywriter. He says he also never engages in drama or mud-slinging or taking sides.
He has a sales page that looks like it was made by a teenager in 2001 using raw HTML… he makes people submit proof they are actually intermediate copywriters if they want to join his higher-tiered thing… he kicks people out of the coaching if they don’t do the work, and he doesn’t refund them — it’s part of the deal.
And yet, it works.
Maybe you don’t want to get on Twitter. Maybe you have no problem sharing your personal life online. Maybe you like engaging in drama.
All that’s fine. I’m just telling you there really are options. Lots of things can work, as long as you get some of the basics down.
If you want to see some of that in action, then I’ll point you to Mercure on Twitter.
He and I didn’t talk about doing any kind of cross-promotion. He doesn’t know I am writing about him. In fact, we haven’t talked since the farewell Gdansk dinner.
I’m just telling you about him because I think you might benefit from knowing about the guy — either directly, via what he does, or just as inspiration, via how he does it. In case you are curious: