How to write copy that matches your brand positioning?

A few days ago, we held a small activity on the fan group, allowing everyone to ask questions about copywriting .

I found that there were a lot of questions about branding and copywriting, most of which were about brand style.

Something like:

How to write copy that matches your brand style?

"Our brand style is OOOO. How can we write copy that matches our style?"

"My supervisor always thinks the copy I write doesn't fit our brand style."

"Our positioning is XXX, but I never know what these people are thinking."

…

Questions like this occur most frequently.

Why do such problems arise? In fact, they mostly come from two reasons.

1. Your view of brand positioning is different from your supervisor's view of brand positioning.
2. The brand positioning you do is actually the same with or without positioning.

Regarding positioning, the book "Positioning" recommended before explains it very clearly. Other modern explanations about positioning are actually mostly imposed. Except for the new positioning field created by technology, I suggest that you read business books or classics and integrate them into your own life practice.

Talking about positioning is a long story, so I won’t go into details here and just talk about the main spirit.

The purpose of positioning is to find a way for you to enter the market and resist competitors. Positioning is not what you do to your product, but what you do to your prospective customers.

There are three positioning directions:

1. Competitive Positioning
2. Brand Positioning
3. Marketing Positioning

These positionings have different strategies, methods and goals.

Many people are not unable to write copy that is in line with the brand positioning, but they simply don’t know what their brand positioning is?

What do supervisors often say?

"We are positioned as high-quality cereal."

But I can’t tell what high quality is, and what is high? What is low quality? What are the cereals?

“We are positioned to give people a wonderful life experience.”

But I can’t say what is beautiful? What does life include? What is experience? Which of the five senses?

"We are positioned to help consumers solve maintenance problems."

But can’t tell which ones are the problems? Who are the consumers? Where to solve consumer problems?

If you continue to dig deeper, you will find that the answer to each question is different, and you will also find that each supervisor says something different.

Not to mention, some positioning is simply something that people say to make them happy.

"Our goal is to sell the best air conditioners."

“We want to position ourselves as the highest-level English teaching service provider.”

"We position ourselves as a hotpot restaurant that uses the most authentic ingredients."

Not only can these positioning fail to stay in the minds of consumers, they also fail to verify their positioning results.

Therefore, the people who carry out the copywriting and design often suffer.

Positioning is an old topic and everyone can say a word or two about it, but in fact this is the dilemma of many brands.

If everyone seems to know how to do something, but no one actually does it, then it will be difficult for that thing to succeed.

If everyone seems to know what a brand is, but no one can really say what it is, then it will be difficult for the brand to succeed.

It is no wonder that many copywriters cannot write copy that fits the brand style and positioning.

A good cook cannot cook without rice, and a copywriter cannot write without a position.

Therefore, if you want to write copy that is in line with your brand positioning, you must first find your position before you start thinking about how to write it.

I won’t go into details about the positioning method here, as there are many books and theories on the market that explain it very well.

Once the positioning is clear, how to write copy that matches the brand positioning can be helped by the following methods:

1. Based on your brand positioning, find 5-10 key words and phrases to extend.

If you are in the catering business, your positioning should be 3-minute vegetarian breakfast.

Then the keywords you might come up with are: efficiency, delicious, healthy, energetic, friendly, convenient, kind... etc.

From this, we can extend sentences and copywriting themes, such as:

"The source of energy for the day starts with a healthy breakfast."

"Even if you get up too late to rush to work, you still need to eat healthily. Quickly prepared in 3 minutes, OO vegetarian food will satisfy your morning nutritional needs."

"We'll start your day with a friendly smile and a convenient vegetarian breakfast, making every day something to look forward to."

Positioning + keywords can help you draw out the thread of your brand, so that the copy you write next, as well as the copy written by everyone in the company, will have a thread to follow.

2. Find out the language of your target group based on brand positioning

Your brand positioning will eventually attract a group. This group may change later, but at least it will not change all at once.

The language style used by this group will be the direction of your copywriting.

There are two simple ways to do this.

1. Just visit relevant forums and communities , and focus on looking at the content of people’s comments, replies, tweets or shares.
2. Join relevant groups and societies, interact, share and discuss with the group, and understand their relevant terms and key points of concern.

These two points are actually just simple understandings of the customer base, but for copywriters, they are very important "situational" experiences.

It is impossible for us to understand the lives of all people, but we can experience various lives through participation.

Most copywriters have better sensitivity and can feel the emotions from the sentences and understand the concerns from the meaning of the words.

So to write copy that is in line with your brand positioning, you must first find your group of people and then integrate into their lives.

This is the lesson we should learn. Copywriters who don’t do this say they can’t write in a style that fits the brand, but that’s just due to laziness.

3. Take people as brand style and make your copywriting a style

Although this last method seems to be putting cause and effect first, it is actually the method used by most people.

Some more experienced entrepreneurs already have their own style and characteristics, so after establishing a brand, they will focus on their own style.

As a copywriter, you should read your boss's past works and sentences carefully and write copy in your boss's style.

Or some senior copywriters have a very clear writing style. Then the copy you write is the style of the brand, so that the brand is wrapped in your style.

The reason I use this method to resolve a problem is actually to tell everyone not to force themselves to do something they are not good at.

If you are a literary person and you are forced to write sales guides, not only will your boss suffer, but you will also suffer, and you will always feel that your talent is not appreciated and you are belittled.

If you are a plain and sentimental person, and you are forced to write classical Chinese in the context of elegant music, then what you write will become delicate and artificial, and incomprehensible.

If you are a Shanghai-style sales fanatic and are asked to write an article on brand conception and style, it will only make you doubt whether you have taken the wrong path in life and how you ended up in this situation.

If you are an entrepreneur , you should have your own brand style. When building a brand in this era, don’t force yourself to follow a style that is very different from your own life. Not only is it hard to do, but it also sounds insincere when you write about it.

If you are a copywriter, it is recommended that you have a good chat with your boss, listen to his stories and the word context in his words. If your boss is writing articles, read more.

If studying the customer base isn’t possible, then studying the boss should be fine.

If you feel that you don’t appreciate your boss and you think that this boss is not good enough.

Then you should change jobs and find another brand.

Conclusion

Nowadays, people are more pursuing speed. They think that everything should be done faster, including copywriting and design.

But we forgot to do the most basic construction, so how can we be fast?

Therefore, the foundation of branding is positioning. If the positioning is done well and clearly, then the copywriting can naturally be faster and every time it can be done quickly. The design will also be faster and consistent every time.

Regarding style, it seems like you all know it, but don’t know how to say it.

That's no style.

As for positioning, you can all say a few words about it, but everyone says it differently.

That means there is no positioning.

Although positioning is not set and cannot be changed, it can be optimized and improved as the market changes and the company develops.

But you always have to have your own direction.

Brand is like life. We are not afraid of competing with others, but we are afraid of losing our own direction.

I hope you all find your place.

Whether it's brand or life.

The author of this article @林育圣 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games