It’s quite literally one of my rules for running a business, and maybe *the* most quoted line of my website – so when you hire me to write your website copy, I’m focused on exactly ONE thing:
WHOLE ASS ONLY.
I don’t half-ass any part of any project, especially when it comes to your message.
It’s the first step of my Message to Momentum™ approach to copywriting for a reason: if you don’t do the prep work correctly, you’re not going to get results out of your website (or your business as a whole).
What is brand messaging?
Brand messaging is the strategy behind your marketing content – it’s why you say what you say, and how you say it. Website copy is what you say, as is any content (like captions, posts, and marketing emails).
When I create brand messaging guides for copywriting clients, they include:
- Who you’re selling to (your ideal client), what they want, and what they really want
- Your market landscape – the blind spots in your industry and how you fill the gaps, so you can differentiate yourself without resorting to, “I’m not your average [YOUR JOB HERE]”
- Your positioning and tagline – the quick, repeatable lines that explain what you do, why it matters, and stick in your audience’s head.
- Your brand voice guidelines – the tone, rhythm, and language that make your business sound unmistakably like you, across every channel.
(This is NOT an exhaustive list, but it would do my clients a disservice to spill their full messaging strategies in public – so you’ll have to inquire and get your own to find out what else is included)
Including a brand messaging guide with every website copy project means my clients can stop fumbling for words, across every platform.
If there’s a gap between how you talk about your offers outside of your website and on your website, people are going to feel catfished – or at the very least, confused.
Confused people don’t buy. Period.
My clients use their brand messaging guides to help them:
- Create more effective content that resonates with their people (and keep them from being confused)
- Show up consistently across platforms, without second-guessing what to say
- Train and sharpen any team members they lean on for content creation
- Train and sharpen any AI assistants they use for content creation
- Build ACTUAL trust with their people – and in what many are calling a “trust recession,” this part is key
Confused people don’t buy, but confused people also don’t sell.
It would be easy to talk only about the cut-and-dry benefits of brand messaging, because there are many – but we can’t do that without talking about the snowball effect that good messaging has on you, as a business owner.
When you aren’t sure why your brand is different, it’s easy to resign yourself to being “the same kind of different” – using everyone else’s frameworks, scripts, hooks, and message. Because technically, you are creating content and that’s the most important thing, right?
But inevitably, that content starts feeling ‘off’ – to you and the people consuming it. You’re not excited to post it. You constantly feel like an imposter in your own business. People aren’t enjoying it, and they’re certainly not buying from it.
Brand messaging puts all of the things you’ve been struggling to say (and the things you’re too close to see) into one place, in a way that often ends up re-energizing your entire business.
You’re not only excited to create again, but you know what to create. Your marketing content gets better results. Your inquiries become more aligned, and you get the continued feedback you need to keep creating content you enjoy, while getting better results from it.
It’s the epitome of a spiral up.
And if you’re ready for yours – I know a girl.
