Words are essential to all of your marketing. No matter how you plan to let people know about your business, you’ll need to learn to write or speak effectively.

• The copy on your website is key to making prospects understand what you’re selling and picture the benefits of your product or service. While your website design must be attractive to be appealing, the headlines and details are what will make a sale.
• What you say in your videos makes a strong impression about how knowledgeable you are or what you care about. Whether it’s a simple video of you talking or a highly-produced video with a voice over script, the words must be clear and engaging to be effective.
• The words that go along with your social media images are where you can really show off your expertise. Eye-catching graphics will definitely grab people’s attention, but if you want them to take action, you need a great headline, too.

Every type of marketing relies on words—headlines, scripts, presentations, captions, hashtags, and every other kind of written copy or spoken word.

Finding the right words starts with learning to tell your story

Many business owners don’t know how to clearly express what makes them unique and better than any other choice. It’s tough to persuade someone to buy from you when you can’t be clear with your words.

If you have a technical business, you may struggle explaining it in a way that’s understandable to others.

If you have a main street business (like a restaurant or plumbing business), you may struggle to express why your business is better than the competitors that your prospects already know.

If you have a new business, you may not know which features or benefits are most appealing to your customers.

Four tools to find the right words for your branding and marketing

Branding Compass can help you find the right words to talk about your business and attract your ideal customers. We have four tools you’ll have access to.

1. Word cloud

In your Branding Compass report, you’ll see a word cloud of the words you used most frequently while completing your discovery workbook. This is like putting a mirror up to yourself to see what you’re writing, talking, and thinking about. 

You might be right on target, seeing words that describe your business, your benefits, or your ideal customers. You may find that other less important words are coming up too frequently, or the reverse, you are missing the most critical points.

2. Brand Alignment Chart

Branding Compass will tell you the best words to use in your marketing and any words to avoid to attract your ideal customer in your personalized report. 

This can be eye-opening to see how you are (or are not) emphasizing the right benefits. 

Here’s an example of a common problem we see with new business startups. If you have invented a new product or software, you may be excited by how ‘innovative’ your product is. But if you are selling to risk-averse people, this will scare them. It’s better to avoid the word ‘innovative’ and focus on less risky benefits such as saving time or money. 

Even if you don’t uncover a glaring problem, this self-reflective exercise is tremendously helpful for many business owners. Often, there are multiple ways to describe you and your business, and using the proper adjective can help prospects envision working with you.

3. Unique Value Proposition (UVP): 

Branding Compass will help you write your UVP using our easy-to-follow process. This is part of your online discovery workbook.

A UVP can also be called a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or a Customer Value Proposition (CVP), but at Branding Compass, we use the term Unique Value Proposition.

A Unique Value Proposition is a clear statement that describes the benefit of what you offer and how it helps your ideal customer. It is one sentence about your product or service’s value to your customers. If you can’t explain how you will help a prospect or how they will be better after buying from you, you will struggle to make sales. Read more about why you need a UVP.

Once your value proposition is written, it can serve as the foundation for other communication challenges. Your UVP is the perfect answer to that question, ‘What do you do?’ A shortened version of your UVP can be the headline on your website. A more expanded version of your UVP can serve as your elevator pitch when telling people about your business.

4. Key Messages Recommendations

When you start getting busy with all of your marketing and communications, you’ll realize that you need to quickly write or say something to help make sales.

Depending on your type of business, you may make in-person (or Zoom) sales presentations. Or, your website may act as your most important sales platform.

When you need to talk or write about your product or service in detail, you may find it hard to know what features and benefits to mention first. If you tend to ramble and not get to the important points to their prospects, the recommendations in your Key Messages chart will be precious to you. 

In your personalized report, you’ll find the top five most important messages to use to attract your ideal client. Branding Compass makes these recommendations based on details of your business, your clients, and your competition.

What you say and how you say it

Both what you say (the content) and how you say it (your tone) make an impression. Branding Compass helps you reflect on how your words will make your product more understandable and appealing. After receiving your personalized report, you’ll have actionable advice on how to write and speak more effectively.