Chapter 8

Writing Copy That Supports Your Brand Messaging

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Using various types of content to promote your brand

check Choosing to write your own copy or outsource it

check Staying on track with an editorial calendar

check Writing copy that attracts and engages your target market

check Driving search engine traffic to your content

To build and launch a successful brand, you must be able to produce good copy — text — either by writing it yourself or collaborating with editors and copywriters. After all, nearly all marketing content requires copy — web pages, blog posts, social media, advertisements, white papers, podcasts, even videos. They all start with concepts and words and must do the following:

  • Entice: To be effective, copy must capture the attention of the audience. If your audience isn’t interested, you have zero chance of leaving a positive impression.
  • Engage/entertain: To engage or entertain simply means to hold a person’s attention. Engagement/entertainment can range from creating content that is viewed in storytelling form in an Instagram story to running a workshop that engages with your audience.
  • Educate: Most marketing copy educates customers in some way. It may inform customers of a new product/service or a new technology they weren’t already aware of, for example.
  • Impress: Good copy leaves a positive impression of the brand in the minds of customers.
  • Influence: Ultimately, all marketing copy is designed to influence the customer’s thoughts or behavior. You can also think of it as persuasion.

In the following sections, I introduce the types of content for promoting a brand, help you decide whether to write your own copy or outsource it, lead you through the process of creating an editorial calendar, offer some suggestions on how to write copy that meets the five criteria described above, and explain how to integrate search engine optimization into your copy to get it in front of more people.

Exploring Types of Copy You Can Use to Promote Your Brand

When I mention writing copy, you may wonder what I’m talking about specifically. The copy I’m referring to is marketing copy — any text used to promote your brand or influence a person’s thinking, behavior, or decision process. It includes everything from advertisements and email messages to podcast and video scripts, white papers, and books.

In the following sections, I cover the entire spectrum of marketing copy you can use to promote your brand.

Remember Whatever you write is probably going to end up online at some point in some format, so as you write, be sure to include keywords that people are likely to search for to find that type of content. For more about including keywords in your copy to make it more search engine–friendly, see the later section “Maximizing Your Reach with Search Engine Optimization.”

Advertising copy

The most obvious type of copy used to promote a brand is advertising copy, text used in a paid advertisement, which includes the following:

  • Headline and subheadline
  • Slogan
  • Body copy

When writing advertising copy, you don’t have much space or time. Copy must be relevant, concise, and catchy to achieve maximum impact. See Chapter 15 for more about increasing brand awareness with paid advertising.

Audio/video scripts

Copy for audio and video marketing must account for the fact that most people will be hearing the words, not reading them. Here are a few suggestions for taking advantage of this important difference:

  • Include voice directives to cue changes in voice inflection, such as italicizing or underling words and phrases that should be stressed.
  • Tell stories to express yourself in an engaging and entertaining way that’s easy to understand.
  • Use metaphors and similes to illustrate your point by comparing the unfamiliar with the familiar. Metaphors and similes are useful in any copy but particularly in scripts, because when people are processing audio content, keeping it simple is key.
  • Use mirroring, when relevant, to demonstrate that you understand the listeners’ needs and concerns. You might tell a story about a common challenge you faced, one that resonates with your audience, and the solution you discovered or developed to overcome it.
  • Engage listeners in a visualization exercise in which they imagine having overcome the problem or challenge you describe.

Warning Don’t assume that everyone will be listening to the words. Many people who are hearing-impaired rely on written transcripts. When posting audio or video content online, be sure to include the written transcript.

Blog posts

Blog posts provide a valuable means to impart information while building trust and credibility. They’re also helpful for building a strong web presence because search engines love blogs. And what’s not to love? Blog posts tend to feature fresh content that speaks directly to a specific audience’s needs and desires.

Remember With blogs especially, quality content is the key to success. People are drawn to blogs that deliver fresh, relevant, and informative content — tips, tricks, techniques, insights, entertainment, guidance, and inspiration — that matters to them and that they can’t get anywhere else. But blog posts must also be well-written and carefully edited to demonstrate the care and consideration that went into writing them. See Chapter 12 for more about blogging.

Tip Guest blogging (contributing content to other relevant blogs) is another great marketing tool, enabling you to extend your brand’s reach to audiences built by other bloggers, establish yourself as a thought leader, and network with others in your industry. To get started with guest blogging, take the following steps:

  1. Create a list of the leading blogs in your industry — the blogs that appear near the top of the search results whenever you search for a topic related specifically to your industry.
  2. Read and follow the blogs on your list that you’d like to guest-blog for so that you’re familiar with the content that’s typically posted and the audience being served.
  3. Obtain contact information for every blog on your list, including the blogger’s name and email address.
  4. Write your value proposition, which explains what you bring to the table by describing how you can benefit the blog and serve the needs and interests of its audience.
  5. Email your value proposition to the blog’s owner.

Whenever you contribute content to another blog, post about it on your own blog and social media accounts to drive traffic to the other blog. This technique serves two purposes: It increases traffic to the other blog to demonstrate the value you deliver as a guest blogger, and it advertises that you’re available for guest blogging gigs, which can begin to generate requests for you to share content on other sites.

Books

Most people don’t think of books as marketing copy, but they can be very powerful for that purpose. Some marketing experts refer to books as business cards on steroids. If you want to be known as an expert and thought leader in the carbon-capture industry, what better way to do that than by writing a book on the topic and having a leading publisher behind it? Then you can post about the book on your blog, sell or hand out copies at major industry events, and use it as leverage to get speaking engagements and media appearances.

Remember When writing a book to establish yourself as an expert or thought leader, the key is to present valuable information, insights, and guidance in a way that’s easily accessible to your audience. If you’ve ever wondered why the For Dummies brand has been so successful, that’s why.

Catalog copy: Product descriptions and listings

Whether you sell products or services online or in person, you need to be able to describe them in words. The most effective product descriptions are generally those that enable the customer to envision not only the features, but also the benefits of the product or service. Your product (or service) description must answer the customer’s burning question: How is this going to improve my life?

Tip Most product/service listings are dull. They merely describe the product’s features. Look for ways to jazz up your listings by helping the reader envision the potential improvements to their lives. Instead of describing a device that saves electricity as a “performance booster,” say something like “Slash your electric bill by 30%” or “Imagine paying 30% less per month on electricity.”

Email messages

Email is a very effective and cost-efficient way to keep your brand in the minds of existing and prospective customers. Many sales teams use automated email campaigns to lead new customers gradually through their sales funnel — the path customers take from initial awareness of a solution to their purchase decision. You can use a similar approach to generate awareness and interest in your brand and then lead customers to perform your desired call to action, whether it’s purchasing your product or service, signing up for your monthly newsletter, joining your cause, or something else. See Chapter 14 for more about email marketing.

Press releases

Whenever you write a press release, you’re creating marketing copy for other content producers, especially journalists. The relationship is mutually beneficial: You give them something to write about (or talk about on radio or video broadcasts or on podcasts), and they publicize your brand … for free!

As you write a press release, follow these guidelines:

  • Keep it short — a single page, 500 words maximum. The recipients can contact you if they need more info.
  • Make their job easy. Write your press release as a news story so that journalists can use it pretty much as is, expanding it if necessary to meet their word-count requirements.
  • Include a compelling headline that clearly and concisely describes the topic. Keep the headline in the range of 50 to 150 characters.
  • Include the location and date of the press release.
  • Write three to five paragraphs, leading with answers to the questions Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? Follow up with supporting material, such as statistics and quotable quotations from people in the know.
  • Add contact information at the end, including your name and title, telephone number, email address, and website/blog address.

Tip Approach each press release as an opportunity to express your brand’s personality, whether it’s button-down professional, fun and sassy, gritty, or something else. See Chapter 3 for more about brand personality.

Social media profiles and posts

When using social media to promote your brand (see Chapter 13) all text is marketing copy. Obviously, this maxim applies to the content you post and your responses to your followers’ comments, but it also applies to your profiles. Everything from your brand name to your bio to your website or blog URL is an opportunity to reinforce your brand identity in readers’ minds.

Web pages

Creating and managing a branded website is an excellent way to promote your brand, especially if you treat all your website copy as marketing copy. As you create web pages, follow these best practices to ensure that all copy projects the desired brand identity:

  • As you write, pretend that you’re carrying on a conversation with your customer avatars — your imaginary “ideal” customers. This technique helps make your copy engaging, clear, and relevant to customers’ interests and needs.

  • Follow your brand’s style guide regarding voice and tone. If you’re projecting a playful image, avoid wording that sounds dry or businesslike. Read about creating a brand style guide in Chapter 6.

    Remember Voice and tone express your brand’s personality.

  • Include keywords that are indicative of your brand so that search engines can properly index and rank your site in their search results for those words.
  • Edit and proofread carefully, and ask someone else who’s skilled with spelling and grammar to check all your web copy. As professional journalists often advise, “Never proofread your own work.”

Although all copy on your website is marketing copy, three pages in particular provide ideal branding opportunities: the About page, the product page, and the frequently asked questions (FAQ) page, as discussed in the following sections. (See Chapter 7 for more about building a website.)

About page

If you have a website, blog, or online store, it should have an About page, typically called “About Us.” This page provides you a golden opportunity to tell visitors about your business and brand, information that goes beyond what you’re selling, including the following:

  • Your brand’s story/history
  • Your mission statement (see Chapter 3)
  • Your qualifications and areas of expertise (for a personal brand)
  • Your bio and bios of any team members, along with a photo of each person
  • Location and contact info

Products/services page

Your product/services page showcases what you’re selling, whether it’s all-natural ice cream toppings or airboat tours of the Louisiana bayou. Here, you describe your product(s) or service(s) in words, pictures, and maybe even video, incorporating words and phrases consistent with your brand’s identity.

Tip Be concise. If you think that visitors may want additional information about a feature or benefit, you can create a link to your FAQ page, discussed next.

FAQ page

Your FAQ page answers questions that people commonly ask about your brand or that you expect them to ask, such as the following:

  • When can I expect to receive my order?
  • How do you handle returns, refunds, and exchanges?
  • Where can I go for product support?

Remember Write a clear, concise answer to each question in your brand’s voice and tone. If you have the resources, consider including a live chat option or an email link that visitors can use if their questions aren’t included in the FAQ. Keep a record of these questions and add them to your FAQ if they’re asked frequently enough.

White papers

A white paper is an in-depth, authoritative report on a specific topic that typically educates readers about a challenge and explains or promotes a technology or methodology for overcoming it — the technology or methodology the business just happens to sell. Businesses often use white papers to generate leads and capture contact information. A business may offer a white paper as a free download to anyone willing to hand over their name and a valid email address. (You can use the same strategy with a brief e-book.)

Remember White papers are a form of content marketing — giving away valuable information in the hopes of generating business. They’re thoroughly researched technical documents that include tabulated data, charts, graphs, infographics, and other data visualizations and are often used in consulting, financial, and technology by businesses or people trying to position themselves as thought leaders.

Warning Avoid any high-pressure selling. Using white papers to generate leads is all about soft selling; your goal is to provide valuable information that improves some aspect of the reader’s life or business. Any reference to what you’re selling should be very subtle.

Deciding Whether to Fly Solo or Hire a Copywriter

As with most branding tasks, the decision of whether to write copy yourself or hire a copywriter comes down to time, talent, and money:

  • Do you have the time to write the copy yourself? If you have better, higher-level tasks to perform, such as developing new products or establishing profitable partnerships, outsource your copywriting to others.
  • Do you have the talent to write quality copy? If you’re great at writing and have a passion for it, you may want to do it yourself, especially if you tried to hire someone in the past and didn’t receive copy that met your standards.
  • Do you have the money to pay someone else to do it? If you’re just getting started, you may be a one-person show. Finances often dictate what you’re able to do, regardless of what you think is best.

Remember You can rarely outsource copywriting entirely. Usually, you need to provide the copywriter information and direction, which is — you guessed it — copy. Also, initially, you should carefully review all copy before it’s published or posted so you know it’s accurate and consistent with your branding guidelines. When you have a well-established relationship with a copywriter who has intimate knowledge of your industry, brand, and customers, you can begin to relax your oversight.

You can find freelance copywriters on sites such as Upwork (https://www.upwork.com) and Fiverr (https://www.fiverr.com). If you’re looking for a full-time or part-time copywriter, consider posting a job opening on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com) or Indeed (https://www.indeed.com).

Whether you hire a copywriter as a freelancer or employee, provide the writer a copy of your branding guidelines (see Chapter 6). Whenever you delegate a writing project, be clear about your audience, word-count requirement, deadline, and payment, and allow sufficient time for some back-and-forth conversation during the revision process.

Creating an Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a schedule for creating and publishing content (see Figure 8-1). It ensures that you post or publish content regularly so that your brand is continuously and consistently reinforced in the minds of existing and prospective customers.

Snapshot of a sample editorial schedule.

FIGURE 8-1: A sample editorial schedule.

At its most basic level, an editorial calendar contains the following details for each post or publication:

  • Title or headline
  • Publishing/posting date
  • Author name (who’s responsible for writing it)

Tip Consider adding details to your editorial calendar, such as the audience for the piece (if your audience is segmented), keywords to include, status, and the name of the campaign each content piece is tied to.

Crafting Brand-Boosting Copy

When you’re writing copy to promote your brand, your primary goal is to shed a positive light on your brand. Depending on the piece you’re writing, you may have other goals as well: encouraging readers to place an order, capturing their contact information, educating the audience on a topic of interest, persuading them to adopt a certain point of view, and so on.

To increase your chance of achieving your goals, take the following steps before writing any marketing copy:

  1. Identify the purpose (goal) of the piece.

    What do you want the audience to think, feel, or do when they’re done reading it?

  2. Define your target audience.

    To whom are you speaking? Imagine one member of your target audience sitting in front of you. See Chapter 5 for details about defining your customer avatars — fictional characters who represents the people in your target market.

  3. Choose the voice and tone you want to use.

    What are your brand’s voice and tone? Review your branding guidelines (see Chapter 6) to refresh in your mind the voice and tone of your brand. Also consider the topic and think about the tone it calls for (serious, gritty, sympathetic, or playful).

  4. Write down your call to action.

    What do you want readers to do after they finish reading the piece? Should they contact your office for an appointment, register for your newsletter, post a comment, or answer some survey questions?

I can’t possibly cover everything that goes into writing effective marketing copy in a brief section on the topic, but I can offer the following suggestions:

  • Be clear and concise.
  • Choose the best words. Use a dictionary and thesaurus in tandem to find the words that most clearly and concisely express what you’re trying to say. The more precise the words you use, the fewer words you’ll need.
  • Write in active voice. Try to start each sentence with a descriptive noun followed by a specific action verb (other than is or was). Avoid starting sentences with weak constructions such as There is/are or It is.
  • Pretend you’re speaking to a customer sitting right in front of you.
  • Even if you’re not technically telling a story, think about each piece as a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
  • Express or evoke emotion, especially if you’re concluding your piece with a specific call to action. People are most likely to think, feel, or do what you want them to if they feel compelled by a strong emotional response.

Here are a few formulas for writing marketing copy that may help you structure pieces that have a clear call to action:

  • Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA): Grab the reader’s attention, build their interest in what you’re selling, increase their desire (imagine how their lives will be better with your brand), and then deliver your call to action.
  • Problem, Agitate, Solution (PAS): Describe the problem, agitate the reader into feeling how frustrating or painful the problem is, and then deliver the solution.
  • Features, Advantages, Benefits (FAB): Describe your product/service, showcasing its unique features; explain the advantages of the product or service (over competing brands or older versions of the product); and demonstrate how the features and advantages benefit customers by improving their lives in some way.

Tip If you’re creating a playful brand, consider using cheeky words and phrases to reflect its personality. At Girl Gang the Label, we’re primarily targeting strong, confident women who have a sense of humor, so we address members of our target market as “babe” or “girl.” When we’re leading shoppers through the purchase process, instead of using phrases such as “Add to cart” and “Check out,” we use “You got this” and “Keep going.” Creating a branded language within your community can boost engagement and sales.

Maximizing Your Reach with Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is anything and everything that’s done to increase organic traffic quantity and quality from search engines to specific websites. (Organic means natural, as opposed to traffic from paid advertisements.) Another way to look at SEO is as a way to increase a website’s search engine ranking when users search for keywords relevant to the website.

As you write copy, you want to weave keywords into your text that are relevant to your brand so that when people search for those keywords, your site will appear at or as near as possible to the top of the search results.

Remember SEO is about much more than keywords. It includes making your site mobile-friendly, getting other sites to link to yours, posting quality content that’s in high demand, and doing so regularly (at least twice a week). See Chapter 7 for general coverage of SEO.

In this section, I focus more on integrating SEO into your copy.

Recognizing the difference between discovery and search

Before I dive into the topic of SEO, I want to call your attention to the distinction I draw between discovery and search. Both are part of a marketing strategy, but knowing the distinction can help you prioritize your time and focus:

  • Discovery occurs when someone encounters your brand by happenstance, either physically or digitally. Customers can discover your brand when passing by your retail location, hearing about it from a friend or influencer (word of mouth), or having a recommendation pop up on their screens based on their past purchases. Discovery tends to feel seamless and natural.
  • Search occurs when someone actively seeks out what your brand offers. Depending on the product or service, search varies in importance. If you’re a hairstylist in Santa Barbara who specializes in weddings, search is a huge priority, because people in and near Santa Barbara are likely to search for “hair stylist near me” or something similar. On the other hand, if you’re introducing a revolutionary new product to the market that nobody has ever heard of, search wouldn’t be very helpful.

Remember If no one is searching for the product or service you’re offering, spend your time on discovery. As brand awareness grows and demand increases specifically for what you’re selling, you can transition to more of a search (SEO) strategy.

Strategy time!

Building a successful online marketing strategy that incorporates SEO isn’t tremendously challenging, time-consuming, or costly. All you need to do is cater to what search engines like to see. Here are a few suggestions based on my experience:

  • Build your site on a platform that’s search engine–friendly. Look for a platform that features quick load times, mobile-first themes, secure servers, and an easy way to add meta text (descriptive text that visitors don’t see but search engines use to index web content properly). Search engines such as Google often display the meta description in search results, which tends to increase click-through rates.

    Tip My favorite platforms are Shopify (https://www.shopify.com) for e-commerce and Squarespace (https://www.squarespace.com) for everything else.

  • Identify and prioritize the value you plan to bring to your target market. For my Girl Gang brand, our priorities are (1) community, (2) content, and (3) merchandise. Merchandise is our main revenue source, so why isn’t it our top priority? Because we’re not in business just to make a profit. But placing community and content first is also a solid approach to generating sales. By building a strong community and offering valuable content, we can drive more sales than by focusing solely on selling our merchandise. Community and content are the soul of Girl Gang. In a way, the merchandise is just window dressing. By building a thriving community of ambitious women in creative fields, our opportunities for growth and for making the world a better place are limitless.
  • Seize every opportunity to create and share engaging and relevant branded content. Post content to your website, blog, online store, and social media accounts; make yourself available to journalists for interviews; and offer to contribute content to popular blogs in your industry. Every chance you have to create and share relevant content is an opportunity to increase your brand’s reach and awareness.

  • Use a variety of keywords in everything you write — web copy, blog posts, social media posts, product descriptions, white papers, everything. I recommend combining popular keywords with more unique ones that have a narrower focus. Your content may not show up in as many search results with narrowly focused keywords, but when someone searches for those keywords, your content is more likely to appear at the top of the list.

    Tip You can use a variety of keyword search tools to find out which keywords are most popular. If you have a Google Ads account, you can access its keyword search tool at https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner (see Figure 8-2).

    Table shows using a keyword search tool to find common searched words and phrases.

    FIGURE 8-2: Use a keyword search tool to find common searched words and phrases.

  • Make your images and videos search engine–friendly too. Name your photos with descriptive keywords instead of something generic like pic0001.jpg. Use alt text (text that describes the image for people who can’t or choose not to view images and video). Use meta tags to add a title, caption, and description. (A meta tag is text inserted into a website’s source code that’s not visible to users but is used by search engines to index and rank a site’s contents.)
  • Post content to all the popular social media platforms. These platforms include Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. See Chapter 13 for more about promoting your brand via social media.

Search engines do a great job of analyzing content to determine how to index and rank it in the search results presented to users, but they can always use a little help. Use keywords both in the front end (the content) and the back end (meta tags) to accurately describe every piece of content you post.

Warning Be careful about repeating keywords in one content piece. Search engines discourage keyword stuffing — artificially repeating keywords in the content and meta tags to gain an unfair advantage. Search engines will penalize suspected content and either assign it a low ranking or not include it in the search results.

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