Marketing

  • Business, Marketing

    How to keep up with politics without your head exploding

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    A white, dark blonde woman faces a brick wall. She's wearing a wide-brimmed brown leather hat, a blue denim jacket with an applique image on the back, and a flowery dress. She is writing on the brick wall with blue chalk. The word "FREE" can be seen

    I talk a lot about UK politics.

    I sit here sipping my Earl Grey tea and polishing my monocle, aware that my sphere of reference is ridiculously narrow. Even as I make a concerted effort to look beyond my borders.

    The fact is, it’s impossible to stay up to date on every issue and event currently kicking off around the world. Unless it’s your full-time job. And as the internet makes our world smaller, it brings home just how interconnected we all are – for good and bad.

    So, if you want to acknowledge in your messaging that you are a citizen of the world, affected by Roe V Wade, grain supply lines in Ukraine, and the melting Arctic ice…

    How do you possibly stay in the loop?

    1. Work out how much you can handle.

    If you have the time and headspace to devour the entire Guardian website, and follow it up by listening to Radio 4 while you do your burpees then more power to you. But if (like me) both time and headspace are limited, decide the amount of content that will make you feel informed without feeling overwhelmed. And be OK with that.

    Got 5 minutes, but still want to be informed? The Knowledge is a free daily email collated from across the media on all the issues of the day.

    2. Take breaks.

    I am a politics junkie. I will sit down at a party with someone I’ve only just met and spend 2 hours talking about how the PFI policies of the last Labour government paved the way for NHS privatisation. (And then regret it the morning after!). But even I need a break. Sometimes it all gets too much. When the world is tough, or your life is tough, or both – have the confidence to step away for a bit. We’ll catch you up when you get back.

    3. Vary your sources.

    Mainstream Media is not the balanced information Mecca that it used to be (well, if it ever was). And the Facebook algorithm does not provide a one-stop-shop for everything you really need to know. If you want to make sure you’re getting the whole story, and you want to be aware of what other groups are also thinking, then you need to triangulate your sources like a good little orienteerer! Mix it up, step out of your box, etc. etc.

    Tortoise Media is another relatively unbiased place to find decent information. Especially on important issues that the mainstream media have moved on from.

    4. Listen to people with lived experience.

    Professional commentators are paid to have opinions on things. Journalists are paid to write interesting stories that make you buy their newspapers. The good ones do their research, and talk to the people actually affected by an issue. Those living it. But a lot don’t. If you want to know what it’s like being a poor single mum juggling childcare and DWP assessments, or a middle-aged mechanic who’s just been made redundant and is walking to the Job Centre every day, then seek them out.

    Head to Twitter, find them. And LISTEN.

    5. Don’t fall into the “what about the dolphins?” trap.

    You’re a lovely person. You care about a LOT of things. And occasionally you might post about one of them. On your personal or business social media. Only for some plonker to come along and say “I can’t believe you’re talking about this! It obviously means you don’t care about these 3 other things!”

    And of course, it doesn’t mean that you don’t care about those other things. Only that it’s impossible to talk about all the issues you DO care about all at once, within the character limit of your favourite social media platform.

    It’s important that idiots like this don’t put you off voicing your opinion and advocating for important issues. You can talk about the importance of good sex education in schools, while also caring about the plight of bumble bees but not talking about it today.

    And it’s important to remember that we can’t all campaign for all the things all the time. Share the load. Don’t feel you have to jump on every campaign that comes along. It doesn’t make you a terrible person if you don’t go on the dolphin march.

    “But I’m so adorable!”

    So, there you have it.

    5 steps towards staying informed, and using that information to speak out about the issues that matter to you. Take this knowledge and use it wisely!
    And if you really want to get started, but you have no idea how you can fit this into your business, then we need to talk.

    Start with my “How to talk about politics without pissing people off” Framework.

    And then, let’s chat about how you can make your brand speak for your politics, as well as make you money!

    Book a call

    Carry on reading

  • Marketing

    Why you know too much – how to communicate your brand effectively.

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    How to communicate your brand.

    Every founder needs a good USP, a compelling elevator pitch, and a Product-Market Fit. This gets you your investment, sure. But your investors aren’t the only people who need clarity about your offer. If you want to sell anything, then you need to know how to communicate your brand effectively to your potential customers.

    Even if you know exactly:

    • what you offer (and how it hits your customer’s pain points),
    • how it works,
    • the customer journey (every single step they go through),
    • your brand values (why you make the decisions you do), and
    • your target audience (who you’re talking to)…

    That’s not the end of the story.

    Because while you’re the expert on your company…your ideal consumer isn’t.

    “Why does that matter, Peta?” I hear you cry, “I can still talk to them!”

    And you can. But you’re going to find it a lot harder to put aside all your expert knowledge, the hours you’ve spent obsessing over the meaning behind your brand logo, or the particular reason you chose this app layout.

    Why being an expert on your business is a problem for your marketing

    Ok, so maybe that’s not quite what I mean. 

    Obviously, knowing the ins and outs of your business, being an expert at what you do, and having the skills and information you need to help your ideal customer are super important.

    But, all this prior knowledge stops you from putting yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes – inside their brain – and communicating your brand from where they are. What they know NOW.

    You need to take these complicated ideas and make them accessible.

    Not in a dumbing down “you’re too stupid to understand this so let me explain it with lego” way. But in such a way that, even without all your background knowledge, your ideal customer will grasp why your offer is so groundbreaking and be able to relate to your brand.

    Whether it’s about:

    • shedding light on the benefits of your product,
    • giving an example of why you’re a better bet than your competitors,
    • talking about nuances of different sustainability options, or
    • breaking down a complicated tech or scientific concept to show how it helps you in real life

    Your messaging needs to do all that without overloading them with information, or making them feel like they need to put down the playdoh and head to the nap corner.

    And that’s hard for you, as the resident expert, to do.

    How to speak to noobs – how to communicate your brand to the people who need it

    “But Peta! I know exactly what my customers need, because I’ve spent hours, days, weeks, years of my life developing the perfect product/service/offer for them!

    I’ve researched and honed and gone through beta testing. I’ve got a comprehensive breakdown of why it’s excellent and how it helps. I’m all set!”

    But do you know how you’re going to start explaining all that to someone who knows nothing about your brand?

    Do you know how to talk to a noob? (there is a LOT of Minecraft talk going on in my house, and some of it was bound to sink in!)

    Here’s something to ruminate on:

    Your customer isn’t stupid (but they know less than you)

    A few months ago, I wrote a lead magnet for a Tech Security firm (yes, I am THAT versatile). Framed as a checklist, it outlined the things you needed to do to make sure your business was safe and secure. The audience was companies with 25-250 employees, who didn’t have their own IT departments.

    Now, I’m not a tech security expert (surprisingly), so I needed to rely on the client’s knowledge of what businesses should do to stay safe and secure.

    He sent me a document outlining the most common risks when it came to The Cloud, data storage, etc.

    And it. Was. Dense.

    No personality. No real way to make a connection or build trust. No compelling brand story.

    There was no way that the majority of his ideal customers were going to get their heads around any of it, let alone work out why they should care. This was not a sensible brand communication strategy.

    And so I got to work.

    This is why you hire a copywriter (well, one of the many reasons – we’re pretty useful people to have around!).

    You have a wealth of expertise and knowledge. But your ideal customer probably doesn’t. A copywriter bridges the gap between you. Explaining your concepts from the position of a non-expert. Helping them see why it matters to them. Showing them how you can help them.

    Without overwhelming them with jargon, or being patronising.

    It’s a fine line. But it’s a line I’m very good at staying on the right side of.

    Why a copywriter is your secret weapon:

    Have you gone too far down the rabbit hole of your brand messaging and can’t figure out a way to communicate anything to your audience? Then you need a copywriter.

    A good copywriter and messaging strategist (so, someone like me, perhaps) will be able to bring the following invaluable skills to the table:

    An outsider’s perspective

    how to communicate your brand effectively. pulling all the puzzle pieces together

    You know when you’re doing a jigsaw, and you’ve been sitting there for ages, staring and stuck? And then your mum/partner/4-year-old child prodigy nephew wanders over, picks up a piece and immediately puts it in the right place?

    Yes – it is very annoying.

    But you know how they did it? They looked at the problem from a different angle.

    I bet you’ve spent days going over the problems in your messaging. Trying to find a content strategy that your ideal customer will relate to. Trying to strike the right tone between “buy my stuff because it’s, like, really cool!!” and “Here are 17 pages on our company culture, sales channels, and why this product is so amazing!”

    Pulling in an outsider, someone who is probably learning about your offer too, means you benefit from a different perspective. You get someone who will see things you don’t, and make sense of it from the perspective of your customers, because you’ve been looking at the puzzle pieces for too long.

    A strategic overview

    Getting lost in the weeds of your messaging means missing things that might be even more important. 

    A good copywriter leads you away from the tiny piece of wonky bark on the sycamore in front of you, hikes with you up the nearest hill, and shows you just how far the forest reaches, the impact it has, and how many things it touches.

    And then you are better placed to be able to communicate that impact to your audience, with clarity.

    A window into the brain of your ideal customer

    Not only is a good copywriter great at getting to the bottom of what it is you offer, and why it’s so great, but they also excel at getting into the minds of your perfect customer. 

    Copywriting isn’t just the writing bit – it’s a whole mess of research before we even put pen to paper (or fingers to crumb-covered keyboard). Taking the time to get to know the people you’re trying to reach, working out what problems they have, and why they’re looking for your solution. All these things are integral to crafting a message that will make an emotional connection with the people you want to speak to, get them to buy from you, and build customer loyalty.

    A bridge between your knowledge and your customer’s understanding

    And then we have the final piece. Where a good copywriter will take the storage unit of stuff that you know about your brand and your offer, pop it over a bunsen burner, and distil the chemicals that will make the most potent message possible. Ready for you to put out on your website, slosh all over your social media channels, and even help you craft your brand’s visual identity.

    We’re the scientists bottling the perfume that will draw your perfect customer towards you.

    We’re also pretty good with the words, too…

    How I can help you communicate your brand

    Yes, you have your pitch deck (if not, we can talk about that as well).

    But a good pitch deck does not make a good brand message. Especially a brand message that your future loyal customers identify with.

    My Brand Guides are the blueprint to your brand identity, your messaging, your content strategy, your go-to-market plans, your website copy, and even your packaging (if that’s your thing). It’s one (meaty) document that becomes the Bible for all your brand communications.

    I take the expertise in your brain and make it relatable to your audience. And it’s just as relevant for a start-up as it is for product-based small businesses, or a personal brand.

    If you’re serious about what you offer. And you want the world to understand how it can help them. Then you need a Brand Guide.

    One client said:

    “This is so what I needed to move forward. You have totally banged the nail on the head!”

    Find out more about it here:

    Carry on reading

  • Marketing, Business

     7 Voice of Customer Best Practices to Make Your Audience Feel Seen & Heard

    How voice of customer best practices bring you and your audience closer together.

    Voice of customer best practices in action. A white woman in her 30s wearing a dark green jacket and whiite top sits at a table smiling at another woman, who can be seen parshly from behind.

    My copywriting philosophy is…..

    Hang on, that sounds a little pretentious, doesn’t it? A little like I’m standing in front of a lecture hall wearing a jacket with leather elbow pads, pushing my glasses back up my nose, and asking you all to “take a journey with me”.

    Let’s not do that, shall we?

    If you’ve read my About Page (And if you haven’t then what are you doing here? Start at the beginning like a normal person!), then you’ll have read about the 3 superpowers I gained from being a youth worker that I use to transform your relationship with your customers.

    If you skipped it (and you really don’t want to go take a look) then here they are:

    1. Listening
    2. Empathizing
    3. Directing

    If your brand wants to build a stronger relationship with its audience, then you should be doing every one of those things on a regular basis. They should be woven through your content marketing strategy (we can talk if you don’t have one of those yet), and written on faded yellow post-it notes around your workstation. Whether you decorate them with doodled hearts or not is your own business.

    Today I want to talk about why listening is important for a brand. The key is this:

    Everyone wants to feel heard.

    Have you ever had one of those nights where you sat down with another person and the conversation lasted until dawn? That evening where you felt you’d found your soulmate? When you told your friends about it the next day and you said things like “It was as if we’d known each other forever”, or “It was like he was inside my head”.

    Why was this different to a normal conversation over dinner? I’m willing to bet it was because you felt listened to. You felt as though someone was paying complete attention to you. In a world where we’re all constantly distracted by phone notifications (I’ve glanced down at about 8 just writing this paragraph), having the complete attention of another person for more than 2 minutes is a rare and intoxicating thing. It makes us feel important; like we matter.

    Your customer, your email subscriber, your website browser, your Instagram follower. They all want to feel important. They all want to feel as if you’ve heard them. They want to know that you read their comments, take notice of their reviews, and pay attention when they unsubscribe.

    The more someone is listened to, the greater a connection they feel with the person doing the listening. And people spend more money with brands they feel connected to (That’s why I love a good About Page!).

    Voice of Customer questions to ask

    Market research should always involve spending time learning about your perfect customer – your avatar if you’re going all “marketing geek”.

    Us marketers call this Voice of Customer research – spending time in real life and on the internet paying attention to where, when, and how people are talking about your brand. Marketers love having fancy names for things, it means you can make up acronyms and have conversations with other marketers where no one else knows what you’re talking about.

    But really, it’s just listening. Jump on the message boards your customers hang out on. Do they love your new product but wish that it had a different name, or handle, or box? How are they comparing it to other brands who do similar things? What problems are they using your product or service to solve (and are these the same problems you designed it to solve)? Do they have nicknames or shorthand for the things you do? Are they recommending it to others, and how are they doing this? What are they complaining about, and is this something you can fix?

    And, if you can swing it, actually talk to your ideal customer.

    The benefits of Voice of Customer research

    Once you’ve done your “Voice of Customer research” (bleurgh: buzzwords), then you have to actually do something with the information you’ve gathered. Otherwise you’re just nosey.

    The simplest way to start is to use similar language in your communications to how your audience talk. If people reading your social media posts, emails and webpages consistently see words and phrases they connect with and recognize, then they will feel a greater connection with your brand. You “get them”. And, you know, they’ll be more likely to open their wallet and throw some cash at you.

    If you’re not sure how to weave this new information into your communications, then give your friendly local (or not-so-local) copywriter a call. It’s what we do best. Give us your reams of data copied and pasted into a Google Doc, and we can give you the words that reach out to your audience like a cup of coffee and a warm hug (if that’s what you’re going for).

    Voice of customer best practices

    You can also use the information to make changes to your products or services. These can be tiny tweaks, like the name or packaging, or adding in an additional element (say a module on time management to your online nutrition course). It could be a wholesale rethink of your product line. As an added bonus, acknowledging that it was feedback from your customers that caused this change, doubles down on the feeling of importance and being heard that they get.

    Want a hands-down fabulous example of a brand that speaks like their customers do? Check out Tom Insurance – and be amazed!

    I’m all ears

    Access to your target audience (whether current or potential customers) is your biggest resource in building relationships. If you take nothing else in from the beginnings of my copywriting philosophy (oh, wait, we weren’t calling it that, were we…), then remember this:

    Be the one that sits down next to them on the skate park wall and asks them how they’re getting on. Then they’ll be yours for life.

    (You can take the girl out of youth work…)

    Want help with your listening? Let’s chat.

    Carry on reading