Why Storytelling is THE Tool to Help Your Brand Stand Out
Whether you are selling yourself, a product, or a service, a key component in building your brand is a firm understanding of what makes you stand out, and using that to drive your copywriting strategy. This understanding acts as a building block for two fundamental aspects that influence copywriting: brand voice and identity.
What is Copywriting?
Copywriting is all around us, from the social media caption on your favorite influencer’s recent post to the billboard you pass racing down the highway.
Copy is considered to be words representing persuasive messaging. It can range from short, catchy taglines to lengthy Instagram captions diving into the backstory behind the newest trending brand.
The trick is writing concise, compelling copy that helps your brand stand out.
Brand Identity – Where It All Begins
A good place to start when developing your copywriting strategy is to examine the entirety of your brand identity.
Visual components such as logos or brand colors create your visual identity. Is there a story behind your logo design? Are you a company that relies on specific colors for brand recognition?
Perhaps you’d like to integrate your brand colors into emojis added to social captions or share the story behind the thought-out creation of your inventive logo. Recognize opportunities to integrate visual components into your copy.
Consider what you hope to be known for. High-quality ingredients? For women, by women products? Essentially, what’s the selling point?
Strawberry Milk Mob, a swimsuit company based in Toronto, aims to sell “cute bikinis for cute prices.” This simple copy perfectly encapsulates the brand’s steady flow of new designs and more affordable prices – not to mention their adorable matching men’s and women’s swimsuits.
Together, visual identity and the brand’s ambition begin to craft a story behind the brand. By sharing this story with consumers, you have the opportunity to connect and resonate with your audience and display what’s so special about you.
Finding Your Voice
Now that you know what you’re promoting and why it’s important, these thoughts and feelings need to be turned into digestible copy – you need to find your voice.
Brand voice is the personality you adopt when communicating with your target audience. It should maintain a consistent tone across mediums and contain nuanced language unique to your brand.
It can be helpful to look at competitors’ copy and note the tone they embody. Are you entering an industry categorized by formal language and carefully cultivated sentences, or a market saturated with playful personalities?
Alternatively, you may find that the tone used by competitors doesn’t resonate with you at all, and you’d prefer to break the mold and introduce a new tone of voice.
To make the most of your copy, think of every word you write as an opportunity to show who you are. In addition to establishing your tone, magnetic messaging can help you foster a stronger connection with your target audience.
Together, your tone and your story form your brand voice, and it should be reflected in all the copy you release to an audience.
Where To Tell Your Story
Storytelling is one of the oldest ways used to communicate an underlying message, and magnetic messaging means using relatable stories to resonate with an audience and keep them coming back for more. The more authentic and relatable you are, the more likely you are to connect deeply with your audience.
You can tell your story in many ways. An “about us” page is a wonderful way to do a deep dive into who you are. It is a vehicle for clearly outlining the brand’s inspiration, your founding principles or priorities, and quite literally putting a face to a name.
But sharing your story doesn’t stop there. Taglines and slogans are a way to condense what you stand for.
Nike’s “just do it" slogan communicates a decades-long story in three simple words. “Just do it” represents years of dedication and high-quality products. It encapsulates the courageous attitude Nike strives to instill with its products and the admiration associated with many of its athlete ambassadors.
Social media captions are an alternative way to drive home a message. They present the opportunity to tell a story about a specific product or individual aspect of the brand rather than just the overarching company. They can act as a foundation for launching promotional campaigns with intentional messaging.
Even the names or labels associated with your products present the opportunity to tell a story, it’s one more opportunity to get creative.
Additional Components to Consider
While the content of your copy is often the focus of your attention, there are additional components to consider.
Recognize that although you took the time to craft a beautiful, intentional message, your audience may not always read its entirety. Integrating the inverted pyramid structure, where the most important information comes first, in longer-form writing is a great way to ensure your core message is communicated.
Other factors to consider include the length of your copy and associated visuals. Note in which mediums longer versus short-form copy tends to excel. Ensure that associated visuals are relevant to the accompanied copy.
Remember to include a call to action, while it may be implied having an explicit CTA outlines your goal clearly.
Allocating attention to smaller details such as appropriate grammar and intentional use of language are the finishing touches that polish off a piece of copy.
Craft Copy With Care
After dedicating so much thought into what you want to accomplish as a brand, it can be easy to overlook basic copy. But by treating every word as an opportunity to tell your story, you’re more likely to create a strong brand persona that will connect with your target audience.
About the Writer: Madison Bernabeo is a student at Boston University studying advertising with a minor in business administration. She enjoys spending afternoons reading in the park and dreams of traveling. You can learn more about Madison on LinkedIn.
