The Design Business Show 110: Tips for Marrying Design and Copy with Zafira Rajan

Zafira Rajan is a strategic launch copywriter and soulful strategist committed to helping coaches and course creators build, grow and scale a meaningful digital empire by wielding the power of their personality and intuition to tell stories only they know how.

Here’s what we covered on the episode:

How Zafira and I met at The Copywriter Club #TCCIRL Event in March 2020
Zafira shares that she always wanted to be a writer but there was always a side of her leaning towards the arts
Early on in her career Zafira was a digital communication specialist, designing ads and graphics for billboards, agencies and universities
While designing, Zafira also did the copy so people would rather hire her versus paying for a designer and a separate copywriter
Zafira started out in higher education, working with a university in Vancouver, Canada where she managed the communications for a school within the university
After 2-3 years, Zafira realized a 9-5 job was not for her and wanted to do her own thing
Zafira shares that when she was first starting to think about becoming an entrepreneur it was to marry design and copy into one solution for clients

How Zafira took a one year contract where she was both the designer and copywriter and how she told herself when the contract was up she was going out to do her own thing
Zafira explains how the contract job she took allowed her to scale back and only work 3-4 times a week and how that allowed her to start building her business and get clients
Zafira ended the year doing a campaign where she got to use her copy and design skill, and did that for a few years working with agencies and clients
How in the end, Zafira realized she was doing too many things and would have to give something up if she wanted to be the best and niche down to really know who she was serving
When Zafira decided she needed to call herself a copywriter which lead to the discovery of The Copywriter Club and how she joined a couple of their programs to figure out where she wanted to specialize
Zafira shares that she has brought her design eye along through copywriting and how it’s valuable to be that extra pair of eyes for her clients
Zafira tells us that she’s never taken a copywriting class up until this year when she decided to upgrade her skills
The best way to learn about copywriting is to give yourself space to do it
Early on in Zafira’s career she want to a Laura Belgray workshop in Italy where they spent three days just writing, which changed the way she approached her writing
Zafira shares that there’s not a one solution, but things like copy school, group programs and being in the company of other people trying to do the same thing can be very powerful to help with your copy skills
Zafira’s group program called, The Intention Infusion that she launched this year, walks people through writing their website copy, welcome emails and more
What holds most people back from writing isn’t the skills, it’s the confidence
Zafira shares a website called, 750 Words that helps you commit to writing every single day
How after any event you attend you should then create a mini commitment plan to yourself to catch the information while it’s fresh
If Zafira’s clients are doing the design work themselves she takes that into careful consideration and offers a design audit after she implements her copy
Zafira’s goal is to make sure the design is in a place where it can evolve with the client if they ever work with a designer in the future
If clients are working with a designer, Zafira asks to meet them early on in the project and makes she she knows all the branding elements they’ll be working with
Zafira shares that she tries to make it a team effort so everyone is very involved and makes sure to have meetings at each stage the designer is involved
How making it a team effort will save your client stress because the copywriter and designer are collaborating and communicating effectively
A walk through of what The Intention Infusion is and how it helps entrepreneurs gain clarity and confidence in their voice
Zafira’s signature offer, Launch & Let Go where she works with people on their sales page, strategize their whole launch, and email sequences
The Day Spa, Zafira’s most popular offer which is her copy day rate where she can write up to two pages of website copy or a couple emails in half a day
How some people hire her for a whole day to write a sales page or write an email sequence
How Zafira launched Quiz Funnel in the last year that helps clients create an interactive, high converting quiz, where she writes all their results pages, brainstorms fun topics and writes the follow-up email sequences
How Quiz Funnel will launch again in October
Why Zafira feel that a quiz is the best lead magnet an entrepreneur could have and how it’s a great way to grow your email list
Zafira shares that she’s always treating her business like an experiment and has combined services to lighten her load and limits herself to how many projects she takes on at one time
How Zafira hired a team for the first time this year, which makes her feel really supported and how she couldn’t have launched a program or have managed clients and leads without them
What’s helped Zafira is getting really intentional with her offers and getting clear on her values so she can be her best for clients
One way Zafira has built her audience is by joining masterminds and building a strong referral network
Why Zafira thinks it’s important to have a strategy in place to build your audience in other ways than just referrals
How being a guest on podcasts, teaching in a mastermind group or offering to run trainings can help you build a strong audience
Why you should pick one platform to show up on and do it well instead of trying to be everywhere
Zafira explains that by joining copywriting programs, it helped her niche down and now she primarily works in the personal development and course creation space
Why you should dedicate your energy to building your email list
How through quizzes, Zafira has been able to segment who she’s talking to and uses those segments in her own launches and marketing
Zafira’s advice for designers who are looking to use quizzes as a lead magnet
The program Zafira took called Grow With Quizzes with Chanti Zak that helped her learn how to develop a quiz funnel
Zafira recommends using Interact Quiz Builder as a quiz platform because they have a ton of free information and resources
Quiz suggestions for designers and how you should look at what pain points your audience has and pair them with things that make you, you to create a fun topic
Connect with Zafira on her website, take her quiz which will help you discover your brands core essence, or follow her on Instagram and shoot her a DM