Branding is the cornerstone of your business.
If you don’t have a solid brand, no one will remember your product and you will struggle to make consistent sales.
Strong brands are crafted through years of iteration and maintained with years of consistent communication with the world.
If you don’t know how to write brand copy, you don’t have a hope in hell of pulling off a strong brand.
This article is all about how to build a strong brand with timeless brand copywriting principles based on human psychology.
What is Brand Copywriting?
Brand copywriting is a specialized area of writing that involves crafting compelling and persuasive content to enhance a brand’s image, communicate its values, and engage with the audience. The primary goal of brand copywriting is to connect with consumers on a deeper level and inspire them to follow and associate with your brand.
Here’s an interesting fact: Did you know that some of the most successful brands in the world, like Apple and Nike, place a high emphasis on their brand copywriting? Their iconic slogans, “Think Different” and “Just Do It”, respectively, are prime examples of effective brand copywriting.
“Just Do It”
These slogans are examples of brand copywriting because they sum up the essence of the brand in clear and succinct messages.
When you see commercials on TV or billboards driving down the highway. These are examples of brand copywriting.
Brand copywriting aims to give the general vibe or message behind your brand’s vision. This has to be communicated quickly and clearly so as to speak to the largest audience possible. This is opposed to copywriting that is “lower funnel” such as technical copywriting or direct response copywriting.
Together, brand copywriting combines with all levels of copywriting awareness to create a full sales funnel.
Why You Need to Know How to Do Brand Copywriting
Brand is everything.
The essence of your business and what you do is communicated through your brand.
People see the world through grand visions of purpose that bring meaning to their thoughts and actions.
When you can’t develop and communicate your brand, you have no vision or purpose. No vision or purpose translates to no compelling reason to do business with you.
In contrast, strong brands create a nucleus of purpose. People are drawn to your big ideas and how they will impact their lives.
Strong brands are competitive in the marketplace because they understand and communicate their positioning. There is no confusion in the prospect’s eyes about who you are and what you do.
Good brand copywriting also creates internal alignment. As any growing business knows, communicating and aligning teams with common goals becomes more challenging the larger they become.
Brand copywriting propagates your vision down the ranks and gets everyone on the same page.
In short, when you get your brand copywriting down, the rest of your marketing becomes easy.
ARTICLE: Best Tools For Copywriting
How to do Brand Copywriting: 7 Tips
Here are 7 ways to supercharge your brand copywriting:
Tip 1: Positioning
You can’t be everything to everyone.
If you don’t define your brand’s positioning in the market, consumers will be confused about what you offer.
Confusion leads to inaction because the prospect doesn’t have enough certainty to make a decision.
Strong brands define their positioning and make it abundantly clear to potential customers. Before you start writing copy for your brand, clearly define whether you are:
- Premium + High Price
- Commodity + Low Price
In plain language: are you the Ferrari or the Walmart of your space?
Once you decide what your brand is all about, it’s very easy to propagate that positioning strategy into your copywriting.
Tip 2: Use Emotion
People make decisions based on emotion.
To make a lasting impact on your target audience, communicate with an emotional tone of voice. Good brand copywriting imprints an association of positive emotions with your brand.
Take a look at any car commercial – they don’t talk about the technical gobbly gook that no one cares about. They show pictures of you cruising down the road, confident, relaxed, happy, excited.
Emotional messaging speaks to your audiences’ subconscious which makes up 95% of mental processing. Once you hook someone emotionally and associate that emotion with your brand, you can put virtually any offer in front of them and they’ll be looking for a reason to buy it.
Checkout this article about B2B copywriting for a further breakdown on emotional copywriting techniques.
Tip 3: Personalize
Personalization is one of the most important things you can do in brand copywriting.
People would rather deal with other humans rather than a soulless corporate entity. Good brand copywriting uses human faces and utilizes human experiences.
Personalization includes elements such as:
- user-generated content
- testimonials
- employee profiles
- Sponsorships
- Success stories
You want to show people using your products, interacting with your brand, and receiving a positive impact from your services. Over time, this will develop a brand personality that people will resonate with.
Tip 4: Adopt a Big Idea
Branding is top of funnel.
This means that your brand copywriting is speaking to people that typically don’t know you and certainly don’t care about your products.
Therefore, If you start blabbing about the features and fancy doodads of your product, no one will care.
Instead, start at the beginning and introduce the big idea that your brand is based on.
Your brand identity is a reflection of a big idea or premise. This premise outlines the mentality or purpose behind what you offer.
When you’re writing copy for your brand, you have to make sure that you communicate this big vision and big idea.
Flesh it out.
Keep explaining it.
Walk people through every step of the process.
Explain in detail how your big idea relates to their lives and then how your products and services help them improve.
Tip 5: Use Storytelling
Storytelling helps communicate your brand vision.
People think in terms of stories so your best bet is to get them to care about your brand is to tell a story.
Traditional stories typically have the same arc – it goes like this:
- How life was before
- Call to adventure
- Bad things happen
- A guide or epiphany helps
- Finally achieving results
- Learnings brought back from the adventure
- How Life Is Now
The purpose behind your story is what gives it meaning. Meaning is what develops your brand voice. Your brand voice will relate to each and every person who is writing and living their own life story.
Tip 6: Be Clear and Succinct
Branding inspires.
When you’re writing brand copywriting, you need to communicate your big idea as quickly and as powerfully as possible.
Long drawn-out explanations aren’t as powerful as short and succinct messages. Aim to boil down your messaging into small digestible chunks. Here are a couple of examples:
- Elevator pitch
- Tag line
Your elevator pitch is a way to communicate what your business does and who it helps in a couple of sentences. A good elevator pitch should stick in people’s minds so they can reference that memory easily when your brand enters their conscious awareness.
The tagline captures the essence of your brand in a statement. We already covered prime examples of taglines earlier in this article (“Think Different” – Apple and “Just Do It” Nike). You should create your own for your own brand copywriting purposes.
Tip 7: Follow Copywriting Frameworks
It can be difficult to come up with good copywriting. This is where copywriting frameworks are a godsend.
Don’t be a tortured writer sitting in front of your computer typing until your fingers bleed. Instead, lean on copywriting frameworks to get some words on your document – build out the wording from there.
Copywriting has been around for a long time so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I find that using frameworks can reduce my writing time by 30 – 40% while improving the quality of output.
Checkout this article about the best copywriting frameworks and formulas.
Taking it to the Next Level: How to Do Brand Copywriting for Clients
If you start practicing your brand copywriting and think “gee this brand copywriting thing is pretty fun, I reckon I should help other people with this.”
That’s great! You can do work for clients and make some money on the side as a professional brand copywriter!
From my years in marketing, I have found that branding is one of the most overlooked areas of improvement in a business.
Many business owners think that branding means having brand guidelines or redoing the logo.
Brand is the basis of your marketing strategy – marketing without a brand strategy is like sailing without a rudder.
Because branding seems to be a lost art in the modern business world, you have an opportunity to help others build strong and impactful brands.
Checkout this article about how to start a successful copywriting side hustle.
Wrapping Up
There you have it. Brand copywriting is a super important part of any business. You have to be able to communicate your brand vision if you want to generate a loyal fan base and qualified leads.
Hopefully, these 5 strategies have given you some direction to start copywriting for brand awareness level content.
Remember, focus on the high level emotions and reason behind the business. Don’t get stuck in the weeds and talk about features and benefits.
When you get good at brand copywriting, your business and other people’s businesses are set to thrive.
The sky is the limit!
