Creating a distinctive brand is a key challenge for business owners, especially considering that many focus exclusively on the visual aspect of their brand. They soon find they can’t tell the whole story behind their company and often fail to attract their target audience.
Copywriting is the key branding element many business owners neglect until it is too late. However, once you integrate it into your marketing strategy, you can develop a strong, unique brand for your business.
Related: How to Make Your Brand More Human
Why Copywriting Needs to Be a Part of Your Brand Strategy
Copywriting is an important element that communicates your company’s values and personality to the world, which then in turns increases brand recognition, your presence on the market, and sales in general. Here’s how:
Resonating with Your Target Audience
Your language, tone and voice can connect your business with your audience or miss the mark completely, making you sound out of touch, bland or even unprofessional. You wouldn’t speak to a group of teens the same way you would to a group of lawyers, and the same principle applies when crafting a copywriting style appropriate to the target audience of your brand.
Related: How to Use Brand Storytelling to Resonate With Your Audience
Brand Consistency
Effective branding combines powerful visuals and effective writing to create a cohesive experience for customers. Copywriting that is too generic or inappropriate to your business can create a jarring experience for customers that can make them doubt the quality of the products or services you offer.
Increasing Conversions
People don’t just decide to spend money on a product or service, no matter how awesome that product or service might be. Most of the time, people make purchasing decisions to fulfill a need or minimize a point point. Writing around customer pain is a sure-fire way to convince them that your product or service is right for them.
In addition, copywriting can allow your business to better communicate its values to potential customers, which can be a deciding factor when studies show that 64% of buyers say they shop with brands that share their values.
Grabbing Attention
Effective branding creates an emotional connection between your brand and target audience. Copywriting can provide a powerful tool to help you accomplish this by integrating buyer stories, aspirations, and successes into your marketing.
Copywriting: How to Develop Your Brand’s Voice
If you’re ready to take the plunge and see what effective messaging can do to strengthen your brand, keep these things in mind:
Know Your Audience
While many businesses think they know their customer, a lot of it is a general “anyone who is willing to buy.” You can’t market products or services to everyone; focus on the ones that are your ideal and write around their personality and pains.
Knowing who you are writing for makes it much easier to find the right voice and personality for your copywriting. Failure to do so could cost your customers and could require expensive and time-consuming re-writes of key content.
Related: Defining Your Brand Voice: What Does Your Brand Have to Say?
Create Your Visuals First
It’s easier to find a writer who can fit copy to your company’s visual aesthetic than it is the other way around. It’s difficult for a copywriter to capture all of the elements that you want to include in your brand in only a sales page. If they have an idea about your visuals (and perhaps your company values in general), they will be far more effective.
Create a Style Guide
Consistency is vital throughout your brand, and copywriting is no different. All writing associated with your brand should follow one set of conventions to convey professionalism and to not confuse customers.
Related: How to Build a Branding Style Guide in 5 Easy Steps
Work with a Professional
It may be tempting to do all of this on your own, but let’s face it: Why ask a lawyer to fix your plumbing, or a plumber to represent you in court? A professional copywriter can work with you to sort out your ideas and make them part of a coherent brand. Once you find a few copywriters whose resumes speak to you, ask to see their work to see if you like it before making any commitments.
Copywriting is a key component of a successful branding strategy and can vastly expand the possibilities for your business when done correctly. Effective copywriting means your business speaks in the language your target audience understands, allowing it to better connect with and reach customers.
