What's up brand builder Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this
video you're going to learn 10 copywriting hacks that you can use to grow your brand
so you can give your audience the exact message that they need from you
to not just influence how they see your brand but also their decision making
now if you're new to the channel and you want to build brands that go beyond the visuals using
strategy psychology and creative thinking then you're in the right place hit that subscribe
button and the notification bell if you want to fast track your results make sure you grab the
pro brand strategy blueprint the link is in the description now when we tend to think of branding
we jump towards the visuals and that's the association that's ingrained within the industry
there that branding is a logo and even those who understand that branding is a lot more than a logo
we tend to associate the word branding with those visuals but when we break down what branding is
it's actually the attempt to influence our audience as to how they're going to see our
brand and our business that's what we're trying to do by branding our business we're trying to
influence the minds of our audience as to how they see our brand now you might have the most visually
appealing brand in the world and if you do that's great in fact it's non-negotiable today you have
to have a visually appealing brand but even if you do have that if you even if you do have those
visuals ticked if you don't have the copy if you don't have the messaging to back up those visuals
then it's all for nothing the reality of it is is that the copy and the messaging that we receive
that we hear that we see in videos that we read on websites this holds the most influence for
us because it taps in to our emotions yes we can see the visuals through a logo yes we can
see the visuals through imagery and that's really important but if you really want to connect with
who your audience is if you really want to tap in to how they're feeling and resonate with them then
copy is one of the most important and one of the most influential elements in building a brand now
copywriting for me personally anyway was one of those tasks that i just assumed it was because my
audience my clients they expected me to provide them with the visual brand and the website and
within the website you have copy and as i said that was just a role that i assume but really
it wasn't until i started to study marketing and to study copywriting did i realize
the importance of that actual task did i realize the importance of the discipline of copywriting
and the more i studied the more i read the more i realized how influential it was when it came to
building a brand when it came to influencing the minds of the audience and to go one further the
more i read about science and neuroscience and how the brain actually works the more i then realized
just how important it was so now that we've gotten the importance of copywriting out of
the way i want to give you 10 hacks that you can use within your own copywriting and your own brand
building to influence exactly how your audience sees your brand number one tune your language so
your audience is out there in the marketplace and they're looking for something and they're in
a certain state of mind when they're looking for that now if they're looking for a jumping castle
for their child's birthday then they're gonna be in one state of mind if they're looking for
a lawyer for some kind of criminal offense they're going to be in a different state of mind you need
to understand what state of mind your audience is in when they're looking for your kind of service
and then you need to really tap into how they're feeling within that state and use that within
your language so really understand the role that you want to play as a brand in the lives
of your audience and use that to influence the language that you use in your messaging
number two inject characteristics into your tone now if you've followed my stuff before
then you'll have probably heard me talking about characteristics and the importance of
characteristics when it comes to painting an image in the mind of your audience you want to use those
characteristics to align yourself with a certain type of image so it's really important here that
first you understand the role that your brand is going to play which we briefly covered in the
first step and once you understand that role align the role to the characteristics that will attract
your audience that your audience will be attracted to so once you have those characteristics then you
can use them within the tone of your brand so that when your language goes out when your messaging
goes out when your copy goes out you have those characteristics through the tone that you're using
number three treat your headlines as hooks now one of the roles of our reptilian brain
is energy conservation so that is your 500 million year old brain scanning everything
all the time and really what it's trying to do it's trying to minimize the work that your brain
has to do in order to conserve energy so if an attack comes along you have the energy to get
away so that's pretty much how it works and it's scanning different information
all the time and it's dismissing most of the information it comes across when you think about
all of the marketing messages that we receive all of those ads in our feed we dismiss 99
of those because the reptilian brain is helping us to conserve that energy so you need to think
of your headlines as hooks and give your reptilian brain an easy way to scan those headlines and to
appeal to that emotional brain as you do that so think about what the reptilian brain is after what
it's looking for and use those headlines to really hook them in number four be ruthlessly efficient
now before i study copywriting and before i learned about the best techniques for copywriting
i was absolutely awful i remember reflecting on my copy previously and thinking how bad it was and
essentially what i would do i would take 20 or 30 words to write something that i could write
within 10 and again thinking about that reptilian brain and thinking how we work as people we're
really scanning for what we want and we want it in as little energy consumption as possible so
be ruthlessly efficient with your copywriting and don't use more words than you need to number five
format for micro commitments now when you learn about writing in school it's all about correctness
so it's all about writing paragraphs the way paragraphs should be written but today things are
changing the way we read it's changing and we have to be open to the idea that the way people consume
information is changing as well if you think about reading information on a website if you
come across a big block of copy what that big block block of copy is going to represent to you
is a commitment you have to commit to reading that big block of copy to get the information
that you're looking for if on the other hand you see just a single sentence then that's less of
a commitment so you don't really think about how much information you're going to have to read you
just jump into reading that information so think about your audience think about how you digest
information as well and format your information to make it easy for your audience to make it so
that it's a simple micro commitment of a single sentence rather than a big block of copy so
ditch those big blocks of copy think about how you read think about those little micro commitments
and spread out the information so it's easy to read number six use visual support now
this may or may not be possible depending on the environment that you're in if you have a
message on your website then you have control over that environment and if you have control
of the environment you should use visual support wherever possible and the reason for that is that
if we read a message and we're able to align that to a visually appealing image and those two align
the visuals align with the message then we're able to store that in part of the brain that's
much easier to remember it's much easier for recall and that will help to build the image of
your brand in your audience's mind so wherever possible use visual support to solidify your
message number seven check your grammar now i'll be the first to admit that this is not my strong
suit i really love writing and i really love the creativity of writing and i kind of get lost in
it my wife calls me the octopus because i'm this i disappear into my own world and i'm hammering away
on my keyboard but i do go back and i do check my grammar but it's really important that you
get into that habit it's really important that you go back through and you check your grammar because
you can have a beautifully crafted message and a misspelled word can completely derail
that message and derail how that comes across in the mind of your audience so really
get into the habit of going back through your writing and checking that grammar number eight
throw more jabs now this comes directly from gary vaynerchuk's book jab jab jab right hook if you
haven't read it i definitely recommend that you read it but essentially the jabs are all about
giving value and the right hook is about to ask and this point is all about throwing more jobs
it's all about giving more value because when you think about it your audience has a problem
and they're out there looking for help if you're able to focus on giving them help if you're able
to focus on how they're feeling what they're going through the challenges that they have and just try
to be there for them to help them along the way without throwing too many right hooks then they're
going to be far more open to the right hooks when they come so this point is all about throwing more
jabs it's all about being as helpful as you can be thinking about about the challenges that they're
going through and being there to help them number nine don't be salesy now i'm gonna throw this
out there and some of you may agree with it but i'm banking that 99 of you will agree with it
nobody likes sales we don't like sales more specifically we don't like being sold to we don't
like feeling that somebody has an agenda behind what they're actually saying to us so really
remove the sales speak from your copy try and pull that out all of those superlatives all of those
you know fan angle words that really make it seem like you've got this hidden agenda really pull
all of that out because look your audience just like you just like me just like everybody else
they don't like to feel like they're being sold to so scan your copy scan your messaging for a
sense and a feeling that you're selling to your audience and remove it where possible and number
10 be as real as you can possibly be now the word authenticity is definitely been a buzzword for
many years now in branding but really if you strip away the fact that it is a buzzword authenticity
is just about being real it's about being as real as you can possibly be so that your audience feels
that they can actually connect with you that you're not trying to spin anything
you're not trying to sell them down the river that you're being a straight shooter and that's
what we're really looking for as people when we're talking to somebody we don't want to feel like
they're not being themselves it's only when they are themselves that we can really feel connected
to them and a great way to do this is to let down your guard a little bit show a little bit of
vulnerability and you know allow the person allow the audience to see inside the brand a little bit
and that the brand is not perfect you are not perfect and don't try and come across like you
are perfect so be as real as you can possibly be and let your audience let your customers
see inside your brand a little bit now although copywriting is less associated with brand building
than let's say the logo it's arguably the most influential tool that you have at your disposal
as a brand builder so whether you're going to get into copywriting for yourself and kind of take on
the copywriting task or you're going to hand that off to somebody else it's really important
that you have a solid relationship and a solid understanding of the importance of copywriting
when it comes to building a brand and it comes to influencing the minds of your audience so take
these hacks into your copywriting make sure that copywriting is in your repertoire and keep that
sharp and solid so that you can influence the minds of your audience in the way that you want
your brand to be seen but i'd love to hand it back over to you i'd love to hear your experience
when it comes to copywriting is it something that you've taken on yourself without really
having any kind of training and is it something that you're really looking to develop now within
your skill set as a brand building skill set or are you struggling with it is it something that
really doesn't come natural to you and you're really looking for ways that you can improve your
copywriting without actually doing it yourself i'd love to hear from you in the comments below
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but as i said i would love to hear from you about your challenges about your experiences i'll do my
best to answer all of those until next time brian like a master and i'll see you in the next video