The best way to write marketing copy for your business is to make sure you stay in line with brand guidelines, comply with the voice you’ve established and adhere to the marketing plan your team innovatively created to get the message of your company across to your target audience. No matter what kind of company you are, there is always a place for great copywriting to create a compelling message for readers.
Let’s back up, however, and ask ourselves one very important question before going further: what is marketing copy? According to Indeed, marketing copy is “content written to promote or sell a product or service or to persuade readers to take a certain action.” Copy is writing. Basically, good marketing copy rests on the ability to convey a persuasive message quickly to an audience.
Making Sure Your Marketing Copy Reflects Brand Guidelines
Your marketing copy should fit within your brand guidelines.
The first key in creating good marketing copy is to make sure you know your brand guidelines and how to write within that framework. Yes, writing grammatically correct sentences with the right font and graphics is important, but before any of that, there must be consistency in the way you present information. Do you have a concise representation of your brand guidelines that you can base this off of? If not, here are a few quick things essential to establishing these guidelines:
- Brand essence: This is the feeling you place at the center of all that you do and want to achieve. According to Momenta, brand essence is “The core characteristic which defines a brand. It is an intangible attribute that separates your brand from your competition’s brand by your audience. It is emotional and based on feelings.”
- Brand pillars: Brand pillars define you even further than the essence. They are not only what you communicate to your audience, but how your audience sees you as well. HubSpot defines them as “the values and characteristics that make up your brand. Your brand should be about how you communicate your message to the world. Brand pillars help you do that by defining the fundamental points that set your company apart from your competitors.”
- Brand archetype: Iconic Fox provides a very thorough explanation of all of the brand archetypes. Essentially, they represent all personalities a customer or brand can have. They state that to use them effectively, “The trick is to identify your customer’s personality, then align your brand with the archetype that would most appeal to a desire within your customer.”
Once you have found what you think is your brand’s archetype, ask yourself some of the following questions: Is that where you want to fit? Do you think that is the kind of work you want to be doing? Is that the way you can most ideally impact your audience the way you want to? The good news is that if you find any uncertainty in these answers, you can change your archetype or tweak your brand to better fit what you want it to look like.
Establishing A Target Audience For Your Marketing Copy
Marketing copy should be written with your target audience in mind.
The next thing you want to do is establish your business’s target audience. For this, make it as specific as you can.
For example, if you are an outdoorsy company that is trying to sell a new kind of traction-heavy flip-flop, you might say that your target audience consists of young, middle-class men that enjoy mid-level hiking and are always on the cusp of new trends. The point here is that just saying “hikers” isn’t enough. Consider every aspect of who your marketing target is — who do you want walking around with your product?
Establishing your target audience is key because it directs your voice in everything your company writes. Defining a specific target audience allows you to reach not only the people you have defined, but those that want to be like them or those that fit one or more aspects of the traits.
Establishing A Voice For Your Marketing Copy
Once you have your target audience established, your brand is almost ready for marketing copy. First, you need to make sure you have an established voice recognizable to your audience.
CoSchedule breaks down brand voice as “the personality and emotion infused into a company’s communications.” Overall, the idea is to make sure that everything is consistent and makes sense cohesively. Every piece of writing that leaves your business should adhere to the tone you created internally — which should of course, in every sense, reflect your brand essence and pillars.
By following this method of creating a company voice, you have the potential to make your product or service highly recognizable to any potential audience member or consumer. This creates a strong brand for your company because the deeply rooted message you established affects every aspect of what you do.
Do’s And Don’ts Of Copywriting
Keep in mind the do’s and don’ts of copywriting.
Now that you have everything you need, you can confidently go forward and develop marketing copy that is genuinely reflective of what your company does, aspires to do and stands for.
Getting down to the nitty gritty, tangible things can you do to write marketing copy that stands out? Backlinko’s guide to copywriting discusses tips for copywriting to consider:
- Write like you talk (read your copy out loud to check for this)
- Use short sentences
- Write in active voice
- Write for skimmers
- Include a strong call-to-action
- Create a sense of urgency
We’ve covered some copywriting “do’s” but what about copywriting “don’ts”?
Even with all the tools to create the best marketing copy product, it can still be easy to fall into sticky situations when it comes to writing for your business.
Copywriting Course goes over some common copy mistakes that copywriters tend to fall into:
- Too many CTAs on a page
- Confuses the reader and makes it hard to make a decision
- Makes it hard to write a focused message
- Too many buzzwords
- Vague and confusing
- Doesn’t tell the reader about you or your business
- Busy pages or graphics
- Tough to read
- Distracts from your copy
- Taking ideas or content from other sources
- Ends up being shallow and not useful
- Boring and forgettable
- If you’re not careful you run the risk of plagiarism.
- Subheadings don’t guide the reader through the article
- Makes the content hard to scan
- Skimmers will not bother reading
- Writing “How To” content without giving the reader clear actions to take
- Makes it hard to act on the content
- Fails to help the reader
- Forgettable
Now that you have all the tools, you’re ready to go write perfect marketing copy for your company and target audience. The work that you put into your brand will reflect in the final product of writing that you produce, as long as you stay true to your essence and pillars. Use them to guide you toward creating copy that will engage and create trust with your target audience and beyond.
Contact Us!
If you need help with writing marketing copy for your brand or have questions about marketing, PR or social media, contact us at Three Girls Media for a complimentary consultation. We have a full staff of seasoned marketing professionals who are eager to help you reach your marketing goals!
Special Offer:
Sign up for a complimentary consultation during November and receive a Social Media Management Guide valued at $475! We offer a 30-minute phone consultation with our CEO, and can answer your questions and discuss your specific marketing needs - no strings attached. Call 408-218-2391 or contact us today to arrange your consultation!
The post How To Write Unparalleled Marketing Copy For Your Brand appeared first on Three Girls Media.