The Power of Empathy-Driven Copywriting with AI - Summit Preview with Francis Ablola

Full video transcript

Hey, what’s going on guys? Darby here, joined today by Francis Ablola, who is the CEO of Real Advisor, a four-time Inc 5000 winner, and a copywriter and marketing strategist who is going to be presenting with us here at the upcoming Scale with AI Summit, which you can register for free at scalewithaisummit.com — free registration gets you the live events, the replays, the recordings, and all the bonus resources. I wanted to bring in Francis today to talk a little bit about what you can expect from his presentation, because he’s been doing this since 2001, guys — he’s been doing this for a long time at a very high and effective level.

Francis, I would love to hear you share a little bit of a high-level overview of your background — what have you been doing since 2001 as a professional marketer and copywriter? You’ve had huge impact over the course of your career, and I’m excited about what you have to share with us through the years and experience you’ve gained.

Since 2001, and being in the market for that long, I didn’t start with AI, I didn’t start with online marketing — in fact I started with direct mail and newspaper ads and radio ads. When I look at the evolution of what we’ve been doing in marketing to what we’re doing now, back then if I made a mistake or had to test something in a newspaper ad, that’s a $10,000 to $30,000 test. Today we have a lot more ability to test faster, and now using AI — I spent the last 20 years of my life as a direct response copywriter learning from some of the very best, working for some of the largest companies behind the scenes as a marketer, a media buyer, a marketing director, a copywriter. Now AI is really taking that time frame and shrinking it down. I like to say I’m going to teach you 20 years of my experience and how to do it in 20 minutes, and that’s not an exaggeration — we’ll walk through Claude and show you how to write copy that sounds good, that sounds real, that is actually market-aware.

From a copywriter standpoint, when I first looked at using these AI tools I was like, “That’s not going to work, that doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t really identify the empathy of a human market.” But I did a whole 180 on that. What we’re producing with AI, what we’re producing with market research tools much like MarketSauce, shortcuts the time frame of being able to see what’s in a market, see what’s in someone’s head, and enter the conversation already happening in the prospect’s mind — that famous quote — and turn that into something you can actually profit with from your copy. The evolution from 20 years ago to now is astonishing, and it makes it easy for a business owner, marketer, coach, or consultant who has been struggling and frustrated with their marketing to accelerate getting something really good out into the market.

You mentioned the word empathy, which I want to focus on for a moment — it’s a word that maybe isn’t top of mind for everyone coming in and thinking about marketing. What does empathy even mean, and what does it mean as it relates to meeting your prospects where they’re at? I think if you overlook something as important as empathy, while AI has the ability to make us go fast, we can also go fast in the wrong direction. How do you align yourself, even at a high level, to empathize with a prospect or market you have no prior knowledge of, before we even bring AI into the equation?

That’s a great question, and empathy is my secret sauce behind creating winning promotions and campaigns, because it all comes down to understanding the audience, that individual customer, where they are right now, building that know-and-trust factor, and making them understand: I was just like you, but I found a better way, and here’s how to do it. Even without AI in the conversation, my job as a copywriter and marketer for years was getting into that prospect’s mind and understanding their wants, their desires, their needs, and why it’s important to them — dialing into that famous radio station, WIIFM, what’s in it for me. It’s easy to use AI and ignore that part, because you come out with copy that sounds really good, but the missing element is that nuance, that humanization of understanding where that person is right now and their deepest pains, desires, and wants. When somebody reads it, it’s not just nice-sounding copy, it’s copy that hits them logically and emotionally in a way that makes them want to move.

I learned that the hard way — I had to do tons of research. When I started, it wasn’t going online and Google-searching everything, though there was some of that. I also looked at newspapers, found articles and old out-of-print books, went to seminars and met with people in my market, took them to dinner or lunch, and had full conversations. I’ll tell a story at the event about Gary Halbert, one of the greatest copywriters to ever live — I went to one of his seminars when I was a brand new copywriter, around 22 years old (I’m 41 this year), and I had the honor of doing a hot seat at one of his events. He tore me to shreds because I didn’t know my product and I didn’t know my audience — it was almost traumatizing. I actually met someone ten years later who was at that event and remembered me going through it, so it wasn’t just in my head. From that experience I learned the importance of knowing my market and my product, what’s unique and different about it in a way nobody else does, and that’s what makes my marketing stand out. When we drive into the concept of empathy, it’s feeling what that prospect is feeling and communicating to them in a way that feels like their own voice, like it’s coming from someone who understands them. It’s often hard for us to communicate our own problems, and prospects are the same way — they can’t communicate their own issues, it just shows up as frustration, anxiety, and overwhelm. If you’re someone who can reach into their hearts and minds and communicate a message that makes them feel like no one has ever talked to them the way you have, you become their savior, their friend, their solution provider. That’s what empathy means from a marketing standpoint.

I love how deep you go in that description, and clearly that understanding comes from years of experience in the trenches — reading newspapers, paying to go to seminars, back when the internet was nowhere near what it is now. Now there’s so much content everywhere — how are you cutting through that noise and connecting with people at an emotional level?

Empathy is more important now than it’s ever been — not that it wasn’t always important, but being able to connect at that human-to-human level is what people crave, and how effectively you can do that as a marketer or business owner is critical to making sure your products land with the right target audience.

I’m excited to see how your process works — we talked briefly before recording about your process and how it works. If there’s one big outcome someone could expect to come through your presentation, what would that be?

One specific outcome: I’ve been studying copywriting and working in direct response marketing for 20 years. As a working copywriter I’ve helped generate over $50 million in sales, online and offline, through my own companies and for clients. I’m going to give you the ability to take that 20 years of experience, working with mentors, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for mentorship and training, and turn it into usable copy in whatever time I have at the summit — copy that’s going to turn into profit, with the help of AI making it sound like it’s you, in your voice, giving it the clear direction and sales protocol needed to make the sale while still sounding human and effective.

Did I hear you mention Claude earlier — is there a specific tool you’ll be demonstrating in your presentation?

I like to use Claude — I use Claude Sonnet 3.5 right now, using Poe actually, because I have more token ability there. We’ll walk through that and use a few tools to scrape the web and see what kind of information is out there. I think the greatest thing about the online marketing world right now is that people aren’t afraid of sharing what they actually feel behind a keyboard, and as a marketer we can use that information to really get inside someone’s head, find their pain points, and dig into what they’re looking for so we can become the solution providers.

That’s great — and for those who want to watch this live, it’s happening about a week from today. November 6th is your session in 2024, going on live, and it’s going to be a Power Hour. You’re going to learn a lot about the empathy, the research, and the processes for creating this content that gets inside the market’s mind. Those registering for the event will get access to some free resources from MarketSauce, our own AI-powered market research tool that can work in combination with your process to make it that much more effective, which I think is a really cool synergy between what you’re teaching and a tool we’re already using and getting great results from with our own customers and clients.

MarketSauce is a great shortcut to what I’m doing, so I love that, and I look forward to putting more of it into my own processes.

It’s going to continue to iterate, and I think it’s going to show people how to approach marketing from the lens of empathy and then use AI tools to accelerate the process. It’s going to enable so many business owners and entrepreneurs who have an idea they want to get out into the world but don’t know the right words or the right language to actually land on the ears of their exact target audience — which is what I’m hoping everyone will walk away with at the very least from this entire summit: knowing exactly who your target audience is, the language that’s going to resonate with them, and the words to convert that copy into actual dollars you can put in your bank account and use to grow your business.

I love it — I look forward to the session and to listening to the other sessions as well, because I’m excited about what everybody is bringing to the table. For those of you who want to join us live, go to scalewithaisummit.com and register to get access to the live sessions, the recordings, and all the bonus material. All of our content will be recorded and reproduced back here on our YouTube channel, so make sure you’re subscribed so you get notified as we get more of this content out there, and so we know what’s resonating with you. Thank you so much, Francis, for joining us here today at the preview — I’m looking forward to your session at the summit, and until then, keep calling AI on.

We’ll see you on the other side.

Thank you, I appreciate it — looking forward to it.