Marketing Junto - Take off the passion glasses

June sucked.

I watched 5 years of my passion, hard work, and sheer willpower crash into one sentence...

"People don't like to write scripts".

It's true. And I knew it.

When I first started my newsletter, I didn't care if it made money.

I just wanted to offer value.

But at some point I realised my newsletter had to give something back.

(And it wasn't).

I suspected my newsletter friends (aka subscribers) just weren't scripting marketing videos. Not enough anyway.

So I decided to test this.

I offered to write someone's script. FOR FREE.

All they had to do was let me use their script as a case study...

AND NO ONE TOOK ME UP ON THE OFFER.

That's when it was time to call it.

I sent out an email the last week of June to tell my 185 newsletter friends that the Script Tips I promised them had to go.

It stung. Like lemon juice in a papercut (owwwwww).

Because I knew I didn't have product/market fit. And you can't force it (but I tried).

Definitely not good for my copywriter street cred. But hey, who hasn't put those horse blinders on for a passion project?

(I'm not looking I swear)

The blinders can't stay on forever though.

So I told my newsletter friends I was taking a break.

And that I'd be back. BUT. I had no idea what Script Tips would become.

That's why I invited them to unsubscribe before the "adventure" began. They didn't sign up for this adventure.

These were my stats:

2 people unsubscribed

HOW DARE THEY?

Kidding.

I was surprised only 2 people unsubscribed. Clearly I have more friends than I thought. Or...

People got VALUE from Script Tips.

Maybe it was tips about scripting videos.

Or maybe it was an idea of how they could use video in their marketing.

OR. Maybe my emails are just entertaining.

So now I just need to make my readers an offer they can't refuse...

JK.

My takeaways from this:

1) Marketing is a giant test. And you gotta keep on testing.

2) You gotta take the passion glasses off and look--objectively– at what's going on. Because you can't force product/market fit.

3) Every time you write something, it's your chance to be you. And people like you. They'll stick with you through your experiments if they like you enough (don't take that for granted).

About Ame

Ame is a B2B copywriter for tech/software brands and entrepreneurs. She also writes Script Tips-- a weekly newsletter about copywriting, marketing videos, and other stuff Ame's doing. As Bowie once said, "I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring."