How a brand-new idea (adopt a pistachio tree, share in its harvest) went from a pitch-deck sentence to a brand people could understand, trust and buy as a gift.
This is how Abdi Moinian first described his business to me: “A company that generates social, environmental & financial benefits by creating a new agro-farming crowd platform, where adoption of trees and investment in agriculture is made accessible to the masses.”
Every word of it is true. And unless you’d already decided to invest, you probably drifted off somewhere around “agro-farming”.
He knew it, too. When I asked what worried him most about talking to his audience, he said: “Them understanding the concept in a few seconds…how do we get them interested?”
That rare thing – a new idea, but only a few seconds to explain it
MyTreehood lets people adopt a tree on an organic farm, follow how it’s growing, and take a share of what it produces, either as income or (eventually) as the harvest itself. You could be closer to nature without having to buy a field or don wellies. You could start with just one tree.
There was a lot to fit into those few seconds. Abdi’s key messages covered the fun of adopting a tree, a way to diversify your investments, learning about orchards and agriculture, organic farming that’s good for the soil, a share of one of the healthiest nuts going, and jobs for the people who work the land. All of it mattered to him, and he was trying to say it all at once.
Two very different people, one tree
The audience research narrowed Abdi’s “anyone, really” into two people with very different reasons to buy.
The first I called the Non-Conformist. She has money to invest and no interest in taking the traditional route. She wants her investments to be environmentally and socially credible, she’s nervous about risk in a new area, and (honestly) she’d quite like something better to talk about at parties than her pension.
The second was the Thoughtful Gifter, looking for a present that isn’t mass-produced, that shows she put some thought in, and that lasts longer than a box of chocolates. She may not know much about investing at all, and she’s not really interested in learning loads about it right now.
The same research turned up three reasons either of them might walk away:
trust and financial risk,
not understanding how it works (the investing or the farming),
and a healthy suspicion of anything calling itself “green”.
Everyone else was telling one story
Then I looked at where else those people might go.
Treedom sold tree gifts with a personal touch
Ecologi was all about doing good for the planet, with no investment angle at all
Ecotree talked about sustainable forestry
The Walnut Fund focused on the money, leaning on jargon like “generational wealth” and “democratize investments” to sound credible.
The other brands were each telling one story about trees. MyTreehood could tell the whole story (the money and the meaning) without the jargon.
So the Brand Messaging Guide set out a voice that was educational, friendly and fun, and three key messages to carry everything else:
Invest in something more interesting than tech stocks, and more tangible than bitcoin
Get closer to your food
Do something good for the planet with your money
It also set out how to answer the three barriers.
Explain the whole process, from handing over your money to the end of your tree’s life, as simply as possible
Use trust markers (partnerships, credentials, clear numbers on risk and return, behind-the-scenes content from the orchards)
And be honest about farming’s environmental limits, because that’s what makes the green claims believable
Trees with Benefits
Then we put the Guide to work on the website, including my favourite headline I’ve ever written.
The MyTreehood homepage headline
When the site launched, the homepage spoke to both buyers. For the Non-Conformist, a section called “Break free from boring” asked why you’d invest like your grandad. For the Thoughtful Gifter, there was a gift route right there on the homepage. “Farm without the wellies” brought in the part about getting closer to your food. And “How it works” walked through the whole thing in five plain steps, from choosing your tree to receiving your share of the harvest, because the Guide said the simpler the explanation, the more likely people are to trust it.
A long-lasting investment
The Brand Messaging Guide gave MyTreehood a clear sense of who it’s talking to and what they need to hear, so that three years on, every new piece of work still has something to stand on.
Over the last 3 years, Abdi and I have used it to build social media strategies, reach out to influencers, and create a gifting guide.
So more people can get closer to the soil (without wellies), and munch on their very own pistachio nuts!
Got an idea that’s hard to explain in a sentence?
If you’ve built something that does lots of good things at once, there’s a fair chance your audience is getting all of them at the same time (and remembering none of them). A Brand Messaging Guide sorts out who your thing is really for, what they need to hear first (the rest can wait), and how to show them they can trust you.
How a coach with a decade of happy clients realised her message was no longer working, and how a messaging audit discovered what her audience needed to hear instead.
Pippa’s first message about working together was a lot like a lot of messages I get from people…steeped in frustration that her business didn’t fit traditional marketing “rules”.
She’d been told, by more than one person, that a mastermind needs to promise specific, tangible results. She agreed with that in principle, she said, but also “I’ll be buggered if I can articulate the results.”
A decade of happy clients and no way to say why
Pippa runs The Disobedient Business Co. with Lucy, and the Disobedient Business Mastermind is the main event. It’s for ADHD and autistic business owners who’ve been at it a while. People join and then stay. One member had been there since September 2021, and others for well over two years. Pippa knew it worked, partly because “none of the people that are in the mastermind are dickheads, and they wouldn’t stick around if we weren’t doing something right.”
The trouble was selling it. She wanted to get it back to being “an easy sell”, and she told me straight that it was “def not landing in the current marketplace at all.”
The advice she’d been given was to hang the Mastermind on one thing, so it became a sales mastermind or a launch mastermind. But that was too narrow for what the Mastermind does, and a bit disingenuous. She was stuck.
Which was why she needed me.
Five years of tweaking at the edges
She’d written the messaging a couple of years earlier, and since then she’d tinkered with different sections, sharpening and tweaking, without changing the structure underneath.
She could feel the gap, too. “We’re definitely missing the mark in terms of speaking to people the way that they need to hear things now, as opposed to maybe the way they needed to hear them in 22, 23.” She needed some kind of golden thread that would run through everything – something suited to the new context we found ourselves in in 2025 – a bin fire globally, cost of living crisis nationally, and everyone in the online business world finding selling more difficult.
Send me everything
The Messaging Reset is a week-long messaging audit for businesses whose messaging used to work and has stopped landing. I work out what’s still doing its job and what’s drifted, then map out what to say first (and who to say it to) right now, in a doc you can copy and paste straight from.
It starts with me reading everything, and I mean everything. Pippa took me at my word. She sent the website pages, her welcome email, a filtered view of every email she’d sent since April, her draft framework, onboarding answers from Mastermind members, a testimonials spreadsheet she was embarrassed about, and a brand-new doc she’d pulled together that morning.
Then we talked it through on a kickoff call, and I sorted what her people were dealing with into three groups.
There’s their brain, and the judgment, self-doubt and shame that come from being told one-size-fits-all and finding it doesn’t fit.
There are their ethics, and the bro marketing, manipulative tactics and toxic productivity they keep being told they need.
And there’s the vibe they’re looking for, which is a space where they can be themselves and find people like them.
Her voice was already doing its job for all three, and that part of the Reset map simply says “Do Not Touch!” The humour, the swearing and the generosity of it all stayed exactly where they were.
What needed work was the order things were said in, and who they were said to.
Knackered, and just trying to stay upright
Pippa’s people were the same ADHD and autistic business owners, allergic to blueprints and drawn to her for the same reasons as ever. What had changed was their context.
The old messaging assumed a reader who was angry and ready to burn it all down. Five years ago they wanted to rage against the system. Now they’re knackered, and just trying to stay upright. Most had spent a lot of money on coaches and programmes, and the cost of living had made every decision feel heavier. What they wanted to know was whether this could finally work for them.
Yes, they still wanted the world and unjust systems to change. But this Mastermind couldn’t just give them that – it actually had to make their business work, too. They were in a “put your own oxygen mask on first” situation.
So the Reset moved the lead from rebellion to relief. The core shift went from “This is a space for business rule-breakers” to “This is where your business finally works, because it’s shaped around your brain, not someone else’s formula.”
What you put in place of the rulebook
The ideal Mastermind member needs to believe two things before they’ll jump in:
“You can help me get the results I want.”
“I won’t have to leave part of me at the door to get them.”
Everything else in the map hangs off those two lines.
There’s a new value proposition for the Mastermind, the messages to lead with and the order to use them in, a clear signal that this is for people with three or more years in business, and a sales page opener written for someone who’s tired rather than furious. There are before-and-after rewrites of her existing copy, a swipe bank of lines she could lift straight into emails and posts, and five mini case studies built from what her members had already told her.
It all arrived as a Google Doc with a video walk-through, so she could copy and paste from it rather than squint at a shiny PDF.
“Ohhh, yeah that makes sense'”
“It all makes total sense,” she wrote, “and to be honest, both comfortingly and also fucking annoyingly (on me not you), 97% of it is stuff I’ve been circling for aggggges.”
That’s the bit I hear most often after a messaging audit. Most people have been circling the answer for a while, and they need someone outside the business to point at it and say yes, that one.
After years of the industry shouting about launch numbers and revenue, she’d come to believe her clients’ results were “too squishy” to count, even though she knew how much they mattered.
So we used the implementation call for exactly that. We triaged the sales page so the new messaging could go in without a full rewrite, planned content around each part of the messaging shift, and worked through how to show results from the testimonials and feedback she already had, without sounding “bro-ey”.
Seven weeks
The last time Pippa had torn her business down to start again, her website was offline for eighteen months.
This time she rewrote the whole thing, copy and design, in seven weeks. When she got to the two pages she’d been avoiding (the Mastermind page and the homepage), she brought me back in to red-pen the first and write the second. The Mastermind page she’d drafted was already a long way from the old one. It felt like a significant shift towards what the Mastermind offers, and the struggles her audience were dealing with right now, and I didn’t change much.
A few months later, Pippa joined me on an Instagram live to talk about the Reset. Without being asked, she made the case for it better than I ever have.
“Downwards of a thousand quid, I cannot think of another thing that would be better to invest in at the moment. If you are not saying the right things to the right people in the right way… you can put all the content out in the world that you like and it’s gonna be an absolute load of nonsense.””
Pippa Parfait, The Disobedient Business Co.
Circling the same answer for a while?
If your business works, your clients stay, and you still can’t quite say what you do for them.
Or selling has gotten more difficult, but you’re not sure why.
A Messaging Reset is a messaging audit that keeps what’s working, shows you what’s drifted, and gives you the words to put your messaging back where your people are.
Brilly’s Tone of Voice Guide: How a sports bra brand with a patent, lab results, and too many ways to describe itself found its positioning, its voice, and a customer journey that carried women from “not another sports bra” to checkout.
Claudio Storelli’s team designed their sports bra the way you’d design a trail-running backpack. You cinch a good backpack so the weight sits exactly where you want it, loosen it off for a walk, tighten it up for a run, and adjust each side on its own. When Claudio first told me about it, he described the moment the idea clicked as a slightly mad realisation: “we’re sending people to Mars”, and women with bigger busts still can’t get a sports bra that’s comfortable.
So they engineered one. It wraps around you, each side adjusts independently (because nobody is perfectly symmetrical), and in lab testing it outperformed every sports bra on the market. They called it Brilly, because the product is clever and they wanted the brand to be a little bit clever too.
Plenty of ways to describe it, none that landed
Claudio had the patent and the test results. He also had a problem. “I have many ways of describing what this does,” he told me on our first call, “but we need a way to nail it.”
The science was the obvious place to start, and the trouble was that the test results were, in his words, “very dry”. Look at how everyone else sold sports bras, and you got two options. At one end, the hardcore athlete running two marathons back-to-back. At the other, women having pillow fights with clouds in the background. Neither was the woman Brilly was for: “the smart, busy woman who squeezes a workout when she can”, then picks up the kids, grabs a coffee and meets her friends for brunch, all in the same bra.
Underneath it all was why the brand needed to exist. Women had told the team they’d stopped doing certain workouts, or stopped working out at all, because of what happened to their chest. Claudio wanted a brand that told them “you don’t have to hide, just go do it”, and put a smile on their face while it did. (He was also very clear it shouldn’t be pretentious. He hates pretentiousness.)
Finding the space between the lab report and the pillow fight
We started with strategy, because a voice with no position behind it is just a nice tone.
Everyone on the team filled in the brand discovery questionnaire. There were no customer interviews to draw on yet, so I went message mining for the words women with bigger busts already use about their sports bras: the uniboob, the straps digging in, wearing two or three bras at once, and the sweaty fight to get the thing off afterwards. The competitor research showed brands promising comfort or support or style, and nobody claiming all three at once, so that became Brilly’s ground.
The positioning gave Brilly a cause. Brilly rebels against bad bras on behalf of all women, and its lead message puts the blame where it belongs: “Your body is right, the garment is wrong.” Angela, Brilly’s fractional CMO, called the “on behalf of all women” idea “a powerful connective tissue community statement”, and summed up the strategy better than I could: “We want to create the community out of these people, not just spray and pray.”
A voice that can explain engineering over a martini
Then we ran a brand voice workshop with the whole team, sorting a long list of tone words into the essentials, the nice-to-haves and a pile we called “no, heck no”.
Brilly came out as a blend of two voice types. The Translator handles the science, so a patented engineering design becomes something you’d happily read on your phone in the queue for coffee. The Friend at the Bar keeps it human, a bit cheeky, and on your level (the Guide describes it as chuckling at the bar over a couple of martinis). Claudio had asked for copy that would “smirk like your clever, smart, cool friend”, and this is the voice that does it. The never list mattered just as much: Brilly is never embarrassed (boobs are natural, and the language says so) and never judgmental, because every body is worthy of a bra that fits.
Who she is, and what she needs to hear when
The first draft of the personas talked about bodies changing through the month, and Angela pushed us wider. Bodies change across a whole life, and a bra that adjusts can go with you through all of it, which also gives a customer a reason to come back for a new size. So the personas follow life stages: before children, pregnancy, postpartum, mums wrangling small children, perimenopause and menopause, and the women who practically live in their running kit. Each one has her own story and her own reasons to need Brilly.
Then we mapped the key messages to where she is in the buying journey. When she’s fed up but not looking, “Your body is right, the garment is wrong” and “We ripped up the rulebook” are there to stop the scroll. When she’s comparing options, the Translator steps in with science-backed support and engineered comfort for real life. When she’s ready to decide, “Move freely, live fully” shows her what changes, with the science repeated for reassurance.
Putting the strategy to work
The Positioning, Messaging and Tone of Voice Guide became the brief for everything that followed, and Brilly’s team brought me back for most of it.
The homepage and product page follow that same journey: the problems she recognises, how each one is solved by the design, everyday use cases from the school run to the sofa, and a route into the full engineering for readers who want the geeky detail. An ad landing page and personas for their ad campaigns came next.
Angela expected most people to need a few visits to the site before they bought, so the welcome email sequence was built to carry them there. Six emails move from Brilly’s story to real wearers, then the product, the engineering, a day in the life, and finally the guarantee, which opens on a line that came straight out of Angela’s comments on the Guide: “We get it, you’ve been burnt before.”
Then came naming the product, its technology and the new category Brilly wanted to own. I built two complete naming architectures from category design principles and tested every name against the Guide, plus guardrails we agreed early on. Nothing that sounded like constrictive shapewear, nothing that told women what shape their bodies should be, nothing cutesy or patronising about bigger busts, and nothing that would sound odd coming from a friend at the bar. (One strong contender fell at the last hurdle, after a certain billionaire decided to rename a social network after the letter X. Naming is a contact sport.)
What the team said
Angela read the Guide slowly, leaving comments as she went, and told me on our feedback call:
“I feel like you really understand what I think we’ve all been trying to put into words.”
Angela, Brilly
Tyler said: “I felt like I knew what the brand was now, and the story we’re trying to tell… it really helped me kind of visualize it.” Tom’s verdict was that it “seems really spot on”.
Claudio read the whole thing within half an hour of it landing in his inbox and replied, “I just read through it and it’s awesome!” A few weeks later he emailed again: “we LOVED working with you and are so proud of your work. I have already bragged about you to a couple of fellow CEOs and will continue to do so.”
Got something brilliant and no way to nail it?
If you know your work is good (you might even have the proof), and every way you describe it comes out too dry or sounds like everyone else, a Brand Messaging Guide is where I’d start. It gives you the position, the voice and the messages, and a plan for which message goes where. Brilly’s went from first questionnaire to draft Guide in about two weeks.
Comments Off on Inside a brand messaging guide: two coaches who couldn’t say why someone should choose them
by allwordsbypeta
A real brand messaging guide example, from two coaches who could describe their work but not why someone should choose them. What went into their Guides, and what changed once they had them.
A brand messaging guide is the document your marketing works from. It sets out who you help, the words they use, why they should choose you and how you sound saying it, so every page, post and proposal tells the same story. Executive coach Susan Sutherland and relationship coach Krystle Hearley each used theirs to write the copy they’d been stuck on.
“My brand is in a shift mode,” Susan told me. “I know who I work with and what I stand for, but my message hasn’t caught up.”
Susan Sutherland had spent nearly three decades in corporate leadership, climbing every rung of the ladder until she left as a senior vice president, and was now coaching executives standing at the same crossroads she’d once faced. She was very good at it. Most of her clients came through referrals, which meant she’d never needed words that could travel further than a conversation (referrals are lovely like that, right up until you want to grow beyond them).
Then she started planning a new website and a bigger presence on LinkedIn, and the gap got very hard to ignore.
“I can describe what I do,” she said, “but not why someone should choose me. I’m not bold or explicit enough.”
Krystle Hearley put it differently when she came to me with The New Way To Date: “I kept trying to explain everything, and ended up saying nothing at all.” Her business couldn’t have been more different from Susan’s, and the problem sitting underneath was exactly the same.
At a glance
Susan Sutherland
Krystle Hearley
Who
Executive coach, nearly 30 years in corporate leadership
Therapist-turned-coach, founder of The New Way To Date
Where she was
Established practice, mostly referrals, about to build a new website
Launching a new online dating community in a crowded market
In her words
“I can describe what I do, but not why someone should choose me.”
“I kept trying to explain everything, and ended up saying nothing at all.”
Inside her Guide
Two client personas, a competitor map, her voice type and archetype, elevator pitch, USP, bio, brand story, key messages and content ideas
Positioning statement, the tagline “Dating with Depth”, brand voice, customer avatars, copy templates and bios for press, profiles and podcasts
What she did with it
Finished her website, wrote new email sequences, kept LinkedIn and proposals consistent
Wrote her website, email funnels, blog posts and event descriptions
What is a brand messaging guide?
A brand messaging guide is the reference book for everything you write. It sets out who your clients are and the words they use, how you’re different from everyone else they might be considering, how you sound, and the key messages you’ll repeat across your website, emails, social posts and proposals. Once it exists, you stop starting every piece of writing from a blank page.
Mine are called Brand Messaging Guides (capital letters and all), and the two in this post are real ones.
Why do coaches struggle to explain why someone should choose them?
Most coaches can describe their work in detail, because they do it every day. Saying why someone should choose them is harder, because it means looking at every other coach a client might find and saying out loud what makes you different. Referrals hide the gap for years, because someone else has already done the explaining for you.
Susan’s version of this was a tone problem as much as a positioning one. She’d been torn between sounding “corporate enough” for the executives she serves and “authentic enough” for herself, and every time she sat down to write (on her website, in proposals, even in conversation) she’d pick one and feel she’d lost the other.
Krystle’s was louder. She had a therapist’s understanding of emotional safety and a properly different idea about how dating could work, and like a lot of people launching something new, she was trying to say all of it at once.
Neither of them was doing anything wrong (I promise). It’s just very hard to read the label from inside the jar.
What’s inside a brand messaging guide? Susan’s, section by section
Susan’s Guide works from the outside in. It starts with her audience, then her competitors, then her voice and personality, then the brand statements and key messages she uses everywhere, and finishes with the search phrases and content ideas that carry her message beyond referrals. Each section feeds the next one.
Her audience
We started with the two clients who turn up most often in her work. Alex, the Established Executive, is late 40s to early 60s, accomplished and privately wondering whether this is all there is. Jordan, the Restless Leader, is mid-40s to mid-50s, on the edge of a big shift and unsure what comes next.
Demographics are part of the story, sure. But a small part. The client interviews gave us the tension Susan sees every day (success without fulfilment) and, just as usefully, the exact phrases her clients use to describe it. We took some of those phrases straight from the Guide and put them on her website, so the right visitors knew within seconds that they were in the right place.
Her competitors
Next we looked at the rest of executive coaching, plus the therapy and wellness people her clients might also be weighing up. Susan spotted something straight away: almost everyone focused on performance or on healing, and hardly anyone did both. That became the heart of her differentiation, coaching the whole human inside the executive role.
Her voice and archetype
I map voice using Justin Blackman’s framework (I trained with Justin, who is frankly the king of brand voice), which sorts writers into nine voice types by cadence, rhythm, tone and vocabulary. Susan is a blend of the Yogi, calm and contemplative, and the Translator, clear and precise.
Then I use the twelve Jungian brand archetypes to get at who you are underneath how you sound. Susan’s dominant archetype is the Sage, the truth-seeker and mentor, which suits an audience of experienced executives looking for meaning.
This was the section where everything clicked for her. Once her voice had a name, the corporate-or-authentic tug of war stopped. “It gave me permission to sound like myself,” she said. “Before, I kept wondering if I should be more corporate or more spiritual. Now I don’t have to choose.”
Her brand statements
Built on that voice, the brand section gave her an elevator pitch, a USP statement, a social bio and a brand story, all ready to copy and paste, plus example phrases she can use as prompts for emails and social posts.
Her key messages
With the audience and voice in place, the messaging almost wrote itself. Three of her key lines:
“Holistic executive coaching that looks beyond your KPIs.”
“You don’t have to burn everything down to be happy.”
“It’s lonely at the top. I’ve felt it.”
They now run through her homepage, sales pages, emails and LinkedIn, so her audience gets used to her themes and knows exactly what they’ll get from working with her.
Her search phrases and content ideas
Finally, we mapped the search phrases and blog ideas that carry her message beyond referrals, like “Beyond KPIs: how holistic leadership drives both personal and professional success”. (No keyword stuffing. Susan wasn’t interested, and neither am I.)
Feeling extra nosy? Flick through Susan’s Guide below.
What does a brand messaging guide look like for a brand-new idea?
For a new business, the Guide has to define the thing before anyone has heard of it. Krystle’s pinned down what made The New Way To Date different and gave her ready-to-use copy for press, profiles and podcasts, so she could explain it the same way every time.
Krystle Hearley, a therapist-turned-coach, knew dating apps weren’t working, for her clients, for the people she saw repeating the same patterns, or for herself. So she built The New Way To Date, an online community that blends personal growth with meaningful connection. Less swiping, more self-awareness.
Over four weeks we worked through founder-led discovery (unpacking her vision and her own experience), voice of customer research to find the real pain points and the right language for them, and a competitor analysis to find the gaps The New Way To Date could own. Her Guide included:
A positioning statement and the tagline “Dating with Depth” (I’m still really proud of that one)
A warm, grounded brand voice
Customer avatars built around the emotional and practical reality of dating today
Messaging that holds emotional safety and self-trust alongside the wish for connection
Copy templates and bios she could use in press, on profiles and on podcasts
What changed once they had a brand messaging guide?
Both coaches started writing the things they’d been putting off, and stopped second-guessing how they sounded while they did it. Krystle wrote her website, email funnels, blog posts and event descriptions from her Guide, in language that finally matched the care behind her offer.
“It finally gave me the language I’d been reaching for,” Susan said.
She’s used her Guide to finish a website she’d been stuck on for too long, write new email sequences and content themes, keep her tone consistent across LinkedIn and client proposals, and get better results from ChatGPT, which now has her voice and messaging to work from. She also spends less time writing content and proposals, because the lines, phrases and whole paragraphs are already there to copy and paste.
Krystle said:
“You helped me go from having the whole world of dating and personal development to talk about – to having something clear and focused to say. That made a huge difference in my confidence, and in what I share now.”
Her audience noticed as well. The new positioning gave people something to believe in, and something to connect with.
How is a brand messaging guide different from a brand voice guide?
A brand voice guide covers how you sound: your cadence, vocabulary, tone and the phrases that are recognisably yours. A brand messaging guide covers what you say and who you say it to: your audience, your positioning, why someone should choose you and your key messages. My Brand Messaging Guides include both, because a voice with nothing clear to say is just a nice tone.
Where does the Regenerative Story Framework come in?
The Regenerative Story Framework is my messaging framework, built on the Heroine’s Journey. It treats the change your clients go through as something collective and ongoing, and it shapes how every Brand Messaging Guide I build now maps your audience and your messages.
Most story frameworks in marketing (StoryBrand included) are built on the Hero’s Journey, where one person conquers one problem and claims the prize. That’s an odd fit for coaching, where change is usually slow and rarely happens alone. I’ve written more about why the Hero’s Journey is the wrong model for your brand story, and the Regenerative Story Map is a free way to try the framework on your own messaging.
Questions people ask about brand messaging guides
How long does a brand messaging guide take?
Usually about four weeks, from the first discovery session to the finished Guide. Most of that time goes on research: client interviews, competitor analysis and listening to how you talk about your work. Two rounds of revisions are included.
How much does a brand messaging guide cost?
My Brand Messaging Guides range from $1,350 to $3,450, depending on how deep the work needs to go. We scope it together on a call, so you know the price before anything starts.
Do coaches need a brand messaging guide or a brand voice guide?
If you know what you want to say and just can’t make it sound like you, a voice guide may be enough. If, like Susan, you can describe what you do but not why someone should choose you, you need the messaging, and a Brand Messaging Guide includes the voice work too.
What do you do with a brand messaging guide once you have it?
Write from it. Use the key messages on your website and sales pages, the bios on your profiles and the example phrases as prompts for emails and posts. Give it to anyone (or any AI tool) writing for you, so everything sounds like the same business.
Ready to sound like the business you’ve grown into?
If you’ve built a business you’re proud of and your words still sound like they belong to an earlier version of you, a Brand Messaging Guide is where I’d start.
Comments Off on How to use strategic messaging to increase website sales
by allwordsbypeta
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.
Most business owners, even those looking to increase website sales, think, “I don’t need a copywriter.”
When I introduce myself at networking events, I can see the thoughts forming: “She seems lovely, funny, and articulate; do you think she’ll be my friend?” (lol)
But also: “I can write pretty decent copy myself. And, you know, well – I can use ChatGPT…Do I really need her?”
I get it. These are both reasonable questions.
If you’re capable of writing sentences that make sense, shouldn’t your money go to things that seem more urgent or obviously revenue-generating? Like a high-performing website, or a bigger ads budget?
Sure. But, for example, if your website is getting traffic and not converting it into leads or sales, the problem might not be your website, or how much you’re spending on ads. It might be those sentences you’re writing (or pasting from ChatGPT), and the messaging strategy behind them.
The words on your website can increase website sales – or not…
I don’t just write pretty sentences. I craft strategic messaging that drives measurable results for your business.
What if I told you that changing the headline on a client’s homepage led to $40,000 in additional quarterly revenue? Or that tweaking the copy on another client’s services page increased their qualified leads by 40%?
Strategic messaging isn’t about being clever or creative for its own sake. It’s about writing copy that:
Connects emotionally with your ideal client
Differentiates your business in a crowded market
Moves people to take action
Let’s explore what that really means – and why it’ll increase website sales.
Good copy vs strategic messaging: why “good enough” is costing you
Let’s look at a common section of most websites: the About page.
“Good enough” copy might be readable, even engaging. But, in my experience, it’s:
Focused on you, not your client
Lacking a clear connection to your offer
Not guiding readers toward action
Strategic messaging, on the other hand, transforms that same page into a powerful sales tool.
Let’s take the example of a baby products company I worked with. Their original About page was well-written, friendly, and factual. But it was a dead end – it didn’t do anything to connect emotionally, build trust, or move readers towards making a purchase.
Here’s how we changed that:
We told a story their audience could see themselves in. The primary buyer was a time-poor, sleep-deprived parent. So we spoke directly to that experience. Because people want to be seen.
We validated their worries. Rather than glossing over the chaos of parenting, we acknowledged it with warmth and humour. We made space for the stress, the guilt, and the overwhelm – because people want to feel heard.
We showed that this brand genuinely gets it. Instead of just saying “we make great products,” we built empathy into every line. We understood why softness matters. Why easy-clean designs matter. Why fast shipping can be the thing that tips someone from browsing to buying. People want to feel understood.
We kept the tone light, warm, and reassuring. Like chatting with a slightly more experienced friend at soft play. No jargon, no corporate fluff. Because people buy from people.
So we ended up with a page that didn’t only “tell the brand story” – it created an emotional bridge between the customer and the company. That’s what strategic messaging looks like in action.
For this client, the result was a 15% increase in sales, a lower bounce rate, and a fast-growing email list of loyal customers who felt like they’d found their people.
The real cost of low-converting website copy
Ok, so what does having “good enough” copy look like in real life?
If your messaging isn’t intentionally crafted to connect and convert, you’re probably experiencing at least a few of these:
Decent website traffic, but few enquiries or sales
Social posts with likes, but little meaningful engagement
A constant battle over pricing instead of value
Struggles to explain what makes your business different
Lots of tire-kickers, few ideal clients
And guess what? They’re all signs that your current copy is leaving money on the table.
A simple messaging framework to increase website sales
When faced with an underperforming page, here’s a messaging technique I often turn to:
Problem: Name your client’s biggest challenge
Not just any problem – the one that’s keeping them up at night. Instead of “We help people manage their money,” try:
“Feeling overwhelmed by your finances?”
Agitation (or Empathy): Dig into that challenge
“Every time you look at your accounts, you feel that knot in your stomach. You’re trying to save for retirement, put kids through university, and keep enough cash for emergencies – but you’re not sure you’re making the right moves.”
Just a little note: I often refer to this as Empathy instead of Agitation – because the goal isn’t to manipulate. It’s to:
Remind people it’s worth solving the problem
Show that you understand exactly how it’s affecting them
Solution: Show your offer as the path forward
“With our personalised financial roadmap, you can balance today’s needs with tomorrow’s goals – so you can stop worrying and start living.”
This kind of copy makes people feel seen, understood, and motivated to take action. That’s what moves the needle.
Real clients, real results
I’ve worked with clients from a whole range of industries, all with different voices. And they all want their website to work harder for them. It should be your online home – your shop window – but it should also be the open door and salesperson that encourages people to actually buy.
Here are a few examples of how I’ve used strategic messaging and conversion-focused copy to increase website sales:
Elewa Media: Say what your audience is thinking
A Bay Area video production company was struggling to stand out.
We rewrote their About Page to start with this line:
“In the Bay Area, you can throw a stick and hit a video production company. So why work with us?”
By naming the elephant in the room, we positioned them as thoughtful partners – not just another vendor (and then we jumped right into the reasons they were actually different).
Result: More qualified enquiries. Higher-value projects.
Design Desk: Speak like a human
This exhibition design firm had impressive work – but generic, formal copy.
We changed the home page headline from “Your partner for European exhibitions” to “Fresh designs that make your brand unforgettable”
We rewrote their messaging to speak directly to client desires (stand-out, memorable exhibits) and pain points (recycled, boring designs).
Result: Enquiries up 50% within 3 months of the new site going live.
Katie Gale: Embrace what makes you different
Katie, a bridal hair and makeup artist, had no clear user journey or standout messaging.
We embraced her alternative vibe – referencing the bands, books, and cultural markers that she and her ideal clients loved.
Result: Amazing feedback and an inbox full of ideal client enquiries. One person said: “Your website was a breath of fresh air.”
When website messaging has the biggest impact
After working with dozens of brands, I’ve noticed patterns. Messaging work has the greatest chance to increase website sales when:
Your site gets traffic but few conversions
You’ve recently evolved your offer or niche
You’re constantly explaining your value on calls
These inflection points are prime opportunities to fix the gap between traffic and sales.
How to invest in website copy that converts
If you’re ready to increase website sales, here are three ways we can work together:
Brand Messaging Guides
A 20 – 30 page blueprint for your brand. It includes core values, audience insights, positioning, and key messages.
Debbie Danon from Rebel Leadership calls her guide “a goldmine of messaging that glows with integrity” that she uses daily to sharpen proposals and inspire her content creation.
A detailed guide defining your brand’s unique voice, including characteristics, tone guidelines, and channel-specific adaptations.
Clients like James Lee from Evolution Engineers have freed up 10 hours weekly by eliminating the endless loop of content corrections. Now his team can confidently speak in the brand’s voice without constant supervision.
A focused, 60-minute session where we solve specific messaging challenges and unlock clarity. If your goal is to increase website sales, then we can zero in on what will make the most impact.
After our session, Olivia said:
“Peta is an absolute wizard. She got to the heart of my message in under 30 minutes—something I had been struggling to do on my own for years! Plus, she gave me actionable and reasonable next steps to bring this vision to life.”
The first step is booking a free, no-pressure strategy call. We’ll talk about your goals, dig into your messaging challenges, look at how we can increase website sales, and see if we’re a good fit.
Comments Off on 7 Copywriting Tips for Social Media. How to easily craft an account that’s aligned with your values
by allwordsbypeta
Maybe Instagram is your happy place. Maybe you love nothing more than pouring your heart out to your followers and watching the little heart icon light up with notifications. Or maybe you find yourself sitting at your computer far too regularly…staring at the blinking cursor and wondering how you can cram into 4 inches why and how you are the best in your niche. If the latter is you, then you need these copywriting tips for social media.
But, before you scroll on by, they’re not your common and garden social media tips. If you’ve been around for a while, then you’ll know I believe in the power of sharing your values. Your politics, principles, or whatever you like to call them. I believe in the power this brings to your business. The way it helps your audience connect with your brand. The authentic gleam that it gives your content.
And so, here we’re going to go through 8 ways that you can use your social media copywriting as a window into your brand values. So that your followers can be confident you share in the things that are important to them. And be happier opening up their wallet.
Why social media copywriting matters
When a tragedy happens, do you feel like you have to stop selling “out of respect”, but then you realise tragedies are happening every other day and you need to pay your bills?
Do you want to talk about the issues that matter to you, but don’t feel like you know enough, and what if people ask you questions you can’t answer?
Do you worry about being polarising because the last time you had a political conversation with someone Aunt Stephanie stopped sending you Christmas cards?
Our businesses don’t exist in a vacuum. And on social media, our posts jostle for space in between the campaigning organisations our followers are keeping an eye on and the latest influencers peddling shapewear. It can be tricky to find the line where sharing the issues you care about becomes shouty preaching about recyclable coffee cups.
That’s the power of copywriting. By taking some of the key principles I use when I’m writing for clients, you can speak about the things that matter to you with empathy and conviction. Even when you’re nestled between videos about cats.
Bored of following all the social media copywriting best practices?
There are about a million guides to social media for business. This is not another one of those. Because most of those will tell you to pick 4 key pillars to talk about online – your brand’s most important messages. Then rotate between the following:
Behind-the-scenes content (you know, “look how untidy my desk is, I’m just like you”. Or “we’ve asked everyone in our marketing department what their favourite cat was and these are the results”.)
Educational content (explaining things to your audience that they need to know so they can engage with your product better)
Promotional content (Look how great our stuff is!)
Social proof content (look how great other people say our stuff is!)
This is all useful stuff to work out when you’re designing a social media content strategy. If you have a clear idea of who you’re talking to, what you want to say, and how you want to say it, then you’ll have a more engaged audience.
But it’s getting harder and harder to fight the algorithm. And if everyone else is following these strategies, then how do you stand out?
By making your values a key part of your message. Values that your audience connect with, that get them excited, and that leave them wanting to know more about what you offer.
Social media copywriting is a tricky beast. You have limited space, you’re competing with a million other colourful squares on an endless scrolling platform. You have to grab people’s attention, engage them, and get them to take an action. All while they’re sitting on the loo or trying to get their baby to eat porridge.
Work out what really matters to you
Let’s face it, there is no shortage of things to get annoyed about right now. But what are the issues that you just can’t stop thinking about? The ones that keep you up at night or directly affect those you love? Those are the ones you need to be talking about in your social media content.
So, rather than trying to address every single thing The Guardian puts on its front page, here’s what we do:
Grab a pen and paper,
Write down the 3 issues you want to start discussing.
Brainstorm what you want to get across to your audience – what do you want them to know about the issue?
Start practising what you want to say and how you want to express yourself on the issue.
Get to know your audience
Now you’ve got your values ironed out, you need to think about the people you’re speaking to. If you’re running a business, then you should have a basic idea of who you’re marketing to already. But ask yourself this: What things do they care about? What are they always talking about? What’s going on in the world right now that affects their lives?
The answers to all of these questions influence how you talk to your social media followers. And how they’ll engage with your value-based content. This is good old Voice of Customer research – a cornerstone of copywriting practice. And it’s sooo important if you want to connect with your ideal people online.
Be prepared for dialogue
You’re talking to actual people, not shouting into the ether. So you need to be prepared for someone to talk back. This might just be one of your followers asking a question, or it might be a loud disagreement. How you deal with this is important.
The thing is, we’re not used to seeing people disagree agreeably anymore. Social media algorithms have reinforced this “us vs them” idea. And we are much less likely to have thoughtful conversations with people who think differently.
It is possible to have a constructive dialogue with people who disagree with your post, where each of you goes away having learnt something. It might also be the trigger for you to go away and rethink some parts of your brand messaging. And the easiest way to get to this point is to keep in mind that you’re talking to a human being.
My tip? Pretend they’re your nan. Sure, you might think she’s wrong, but it’s almost impossible to shout at her!
Don’t try and cover everything
We all have a LOT of things we care about. And, if you dedicated your brand’s social media platform to every one of them, then people might not know you were selling anything. Which kind of defeats the point of having a business at all.
You do not have to address every single issue or event that pops up on your breaking news notification.
This is why I advise you to pick 3 (ish) and focus on those. That way your messaging stays consistent. And your audience knows what they’re getting when they engage with your brand.
Consistency is key
One of my biggest bugbears is companies jumping on the latest “international day of” bandwagon. There are a few reasons this sort of thing has become more common.
With the algorithm changes, it became easier to be seen if you posted more often. Coming up with quality content more than twice a week can be tricky. Social media gurus have encouraged smaller brands to use these “international day of” calendars to plan their content, so they don’t run out of things to say.
Larger brands saw the opportunity for increased visibility by using hashtags associated with things like Black History Month, or Pride Month, and would put out content during these times to take advantage of the event.
The problem is, we’re not as easily fooled as we used to be. If you’re posting about LGBTQ+ rights today, and you’ve never mentioned it before, then your audience knows you’re not really committed. Also, if you’re a larger brand, then the internet has made it pretty easy to find out if you’re putting your money where your mouth is.
Sticking to a few key messages or causes means you can be consistent all year round. Not just because your calendar says so.
Take breaks
In addition to helping with your consistency, choosing a few key causes helps your mental state. The world is a busy and stressful place. And there are a lot of things going on that can cause much anxiety and stress. Keeping up with them in real life is hard enough, but keeping up with them in order to weave them into your messaging adds an extra layer. There are also particular issues that may hit us hard.
So, it’s important to be realistic about how much you can engage. If things happen, like a school shooting for example, that you just can’t talk about. Then don’t. You are not a journalist. You are allowed to take a step away and come back when you’re ready.
Be kind to yourself.
Be a human
Which brings me to my final tip. Be a human.
When you’re talking about a cause close to your heart, or a value you hold, you don’t have to pretend you’re Stephen Hawking. You don’t have to be the expert who knows everything.
Write your posts like you’re talking to a friend. As if you were explaining to someone you care about why this thing is so important to you.
Write like a human. And the humans who read your posts will feel so much more connected with you and your brand.
Want more support?
If these copywriting tips for social media whetted your appetite and you’d like to find out more about weaving your values into your messaging, then you’re in luck.
I’m building a membership to help businesses share their politics without chasing away their audience. So you can feel authentically you when crafting your social media, your blog articles, and your web copy.
Comments Off on The welcome sequence that sells (without giving you the ick)
by allwordsbypeta
Get your nurture sequence to do all the work for you, while you sip on your latte.
Let’s talk about first impressions…
I sign up to a lot of email lists.
Partly because I’m nosy. I like to know what people are saying, and I like to see different lead nurturing email sequence examples.
But it’s also because I like to know a brand if I’m going to spend my money with them. And what better way to do that than to sign up for their list, and devour the 4-5 emails they send me introducing their brand, their ethos, their origin story, their funny little foibles, and what their dog did in the office that one time…
Except that often doesn’t happen.
Why you need an email nurture sequence
When I discover a new brand and sign up to their email list, I’m not just after the discount/freebie/special offer. I’m motivated (excited even) to find out more. I’m ready to get to know them, to dive into the story, to become one of their people.
Which means I’m waiting to spend money with them (and tell my friends about this great new business I’ve found).
When there’s nothing…except for maybe a 2 line templated email saying: “Here’s your discount code”…then I’m left deflated. I want my email nurture sequence. I want more!
This was their opportunity to make the perfect first impression. To pick me up in my excitement and plonk me in front of all they had to offer. So that I’d jump in and become their newest customer.
Without it…if I’m honest…they end up in the graveyard that is my Promotions tab, only to be noticed if they send a particularly interesting subject line in a month’s time.
That’s why I nag every business I work with to write a proper welcome sequence: the four or five emails that greet a new subscriber.
It’s your one chance at a first impression. An opportunity to develop the initial excitement of a new visitor and turn them into your newest convert.
Increased sales, increased customer LTV, increased organic referrals, you name it: your welcome sequence can hand it to you.
What’s the story of your brand?
You’re sat, staring at the blinking cursor, your discount code already entered into your Stripe backend.
How do you sum up years of mulling over your idea in your head, the late nights struggling with tech stacks, or tying down your USP, the bookkeeping, navigating that first refund, how you’ve made people’s lives better, what you want every one of your clients to feel like when they hear from you…
What can you write that will make them feel like they know you, and want to be a part of your story?
Well, that’s it really – you need to give them a story to be part of.
Sit them around the campfire
Human beings love stories, and we share the good ones. We used to share them around campfires at the mouths of caves, then we traded them in return for food and shelter as we travelled to new towns and lands. We wrote them in books and wove them into songs and turned them into multi-movie franchises.
Now we click tiny arrows as we scroll through our phones, sharing the best stories with our friends and followers. And our reach is endless (well, it might be if Instagram stopped messing with the algorithm).
Story nurtures connection – and that is how you get customers that buy from you, stick around, tell their friends (and Insta followers), and take your brand off into the stratosphere.
What’s your story?
How an email nurture sequence is your dinner party opener
Sipping your warm glass of Pinot Grigio, you glance nervously around the room. Couples and small groups are scattered across the space. Some are staring at the comfort of their phones, some checking their watches, some trying to work out the best place to sit.
School performances, college reunions, company parties… Life is full of situations where we have to make artificial connections with people we just happen to be thrown together with.
And what is the first thing everyone asks? “So, what do you do?”
Your stomach seems to have made its way towards your knees. As an entrepreneur, you often don’t have the luxury of an easily explainable job title or field. “I’m a doctor!” is easy. Everyone fills in the rest. “Oh, I refurbish antique furniture and sell it to rich women at craft fairs” is understood.
“Well, I own a business that helps female entrepreneurs find their joy” is likely to elicit a confused furrow of the brows and a nervous sip of wine.
What do you say to people who ask what you do?
What are the important things you want people to know about your business?
What do you wish you had written down when you were trying to work out the best place to put your name tag?
Those things are what your welcome sequence of emails should be made up of.
A primer for your business, how it helps people, and why they should care
You can’t make a connection with someone you haven’t met
Imagine walking up to someone at a party, and launching into a heartfelt story about how Airfix models have been the thread that pulls your life together. And expecting that to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship/romance/lifetime filled with the smell of glue and balsa wood.
I mean, there is a chance that they delight in opening a new model aeroplane too. But you’re taking a pretty big gamble. Surely a safer way would be to start a general conversation, and maybe ask if they had ever heard of Airfix models? Before you commit yourself to going all in!
Emails are the same. Before you can build the connection that turns a subscriber into a client (and a client into someone who tells their friends), you have to know who you’re writing to.
Who is your audience?
Were they die-hard Friends devotees who’ll spot a Ross reference a mile off? PIVOT!!! Are they convinced they’d absolutely kill it on the Traitors? Are they spending their weekends trying to work out how to stop the pigeons eating their tomato plants? Or are they balancing caring for their aging mum who refuses to have outside carers, whilst supporting their teenagers through exams?
This is why so much of my work with a new client starts with research, not writing. There are a hundred ways to say who you are. Finding out about your audience is how you pick the one that lands.
The importance of providing value
For me, marketing will always be about the long game.
Your welcome emails, your nurture sequence – they’re what draw new people in. You give them a taste of who you are, and a story to dive into – be part of.
But then you need to get them to stay. And that’s where your ongoing emails come in. I’ve been on too many email lists that shift from an endearing welcome email, straight to “BUY MY STUFF!” with a shedload of high res images and templated sales language you can see a mile off.
Now, I know that I am a customer. A way of making money. But I’m also a person. And I want to know that a company has thought about how they can serve me, as well as sell to me. I want them to play the long game.
So keep showing up with something worth opening: a story that makes them laugh, an article they’ll actually use, the odd tip that makes their week easier. Mix the asks in with the giving.
Because, when you do this, they feel less like a cash cow, and more like a valued part of your business.
And then they’ll give you more cash.
Where money goes missing
A welcome sequence is the start of this, not the whole of it.
You don’t lose the opportunity to sign a new client after 12, or 27, or even 45 days (no matter what the latest LinkedIn bro is telling you).
I’m willing to bet that there are places in your business where you have missed sales. Places that are an easy fix – a prospect who said “not right now” back in March and then heard nothing, for example. Or people who put their hand up once and could put it up again, with the right nudge at the right time.
If you want to find where your sales are going missing, and fix the biggest gap first, that’s what the Email Profit Leveris for. I look at the whole setup, work out the one change that’ll bring the most back, and put it in place for you.
Fancy a poke around yourself first? The free guide, The Email Revenue Formula, walks you through the gaps to look for.
And, if you’d like more ideas on how to play the relationship marketing long game, then you probably want to sign up to my newsletter. I send it out once a week (sometimes twice if I’m feeling flash), and it’s packed full of value, funny stories, and things I think you’ll find interesting (see what I did there?).
Comments Off on How to keep up with politics without your head exploding
by allwordsbypeta
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.
Comments Off on Why you know too much – how to communicate your brand effectively.
by allwordsbypeta
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
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!”
And your political beliefs are a huge part of that story. You’d love to stand up for what you care about. You’d love to use your platform to make a difference in the world. But, the problem is, you don’t know how to talk about politics as a business owner. And so you avoid it.
You might have noticed some of my own politics woven into my content. (And if you didn’t then a quick scroll through my social media will get you up to speed)
And you may have thought:
“Well done her! There’s no way I have the confidence to do that. And what would I even say? What if I put off potential customers? What if the social media gods decide they object to my values and throw my posts into the darkest depths of the algorithm, never to be seen again?”
All valid concerns!
And none of them a reason to keep your content politics or principle free.
Why should I talk about my politics in my business?
You see, the professional/personal divide we carried with us from the office to the online world is dead.
That’s why you get people posting selfies on LinkedIn (to massive engagement), and why behind-the-scenes content does so well on Instagram.
It’s also why companies have spent the past month telling everyone how wonderfully accepting they are of LGBTQ+ rights (whether they are the other 11 months of the year is a conversation for another day).
We expect people and brands we buy from to have principles, to have opinions, to be made up of actual people with principles and opinions.
So it’s not a “nice to have” for people (like me) who don’t mind putting themselves out there. It’s a necessity if you’re running a business in the 21st Century. (You can read more about my thoughts on this here)
But if you’re not used to putting your political and personal beliefs out there (even amongst your Facebook friends) then how do you talk about politics as a business?
*theatrical flourish *
I’m here to help with…
My framework: How to Share Your Politics Without Pissing Everyone Off
(disclaimer – you will piss people off if you’re honest about what you think. And that’s ok. There will always be people who disagree with you. But there will also always be people who have been waiting for someone to speak out. They are your people.)
Follow all the steps and you’ll feel confident and comfortable telling your audience what you really think – without worrying that they’ll all run for the hills.
SPOILER ALERT: They won’t.
Step One: Get comfortable with the space
We’re taking baby steps, because this is a big deal.
So, before you jump in and write a mini-essay on LinkedIn about everything political you’ve ever thought, you want to get the lay of the land. And giving your audience whiplash is never a good marketing strategy. So, here’s where we start:
Write down 3 things that are important to you (there may be more than 3, but it’s a good start). These could be abortion rights, LGBTQ+ equality, child poverty, or climate change. Anything that you’re passionate about.
And then start sharing what other people are saying about these 3 things on your Stories, or in your Feed. You don’t even have to comment, and you don’t need to make anything up yourself. Just start sharing.
Why? Well, this gets your audience used to seeing you and these issues in the same space. And get’s you familiar with the current discourse on your chosen issue.
Baby steps, remember?
Step Two: Honing your message
You’ve dipped your toe in the murky waters of political social media, sharing content from other people that you agree with. But you don’t just want to be a parrot. You want to use your own words to share your passions.
So Step Two is working out what you really think. Vague rants coming from hot white anger at the latest news are not your message. They are the source of your message, the passion you can feel through your posts. But they are not enough.
If you are going to put your politics, your principles, whatever you want to call them, out into the public sphere as a business, then you need to nail them down. You need to be able to articulate what it is you believe, and why you believe it.
Because people are going to ask. And the quickest way to lose people is to be vague (that is literally why people hire me to work on their copy – well…one of the reasons…I’m pretty talented…).
Imagine you were sat opposite your ideal client here, and you had to explain to them why microplastics were so important to you. Or why you are so passionate about Early Years nutrition. Take the 3 issues you picked yesterday and lay out your thoughts, your reasoning, and your argument clearly. Put together the jigsaw pieces.
And write it all down.
That’s a message that you can start communicating to your audience. Ready for questions or objections that come your way.
Step Three: Bring people with you
This is where you actually start sharing that message with your audience.
But, and here’s the key, not in a preachy “this is the final word on this subject and if you have nuances then you can go follow someone else” way.
The most effective political conversations – the ones that have the potential to change hearts and minds, to inspire action, and to impact the world – are just that – conversations.
Two-way dialogues that invite questions, agreeable disagreements, and new ideas.
If you’re sharing your politics in your messaging as a way to use your platform, and to connect more authentically with your audience, then you need to encourage this sort of conversation.
You can do this on social media with question stickers, polls, invitations to send you a DM, or even Lives where you share your platform. You can do this through your email list, giving your subscribers an opportunity to reply – and replying back!
However you choose, give your people opportunities to talk to you, to share their thoughts, and to offer up their stories.
Step Four: Walk the talk
It’s time for a little reflection. Because it’s one thing to tell people what you believe, but you also have to take a look at the way your business acts.
Authenticity is a word that gets thrown about a lot (and I do it too!), but in this new online world it is so important. To build a long-term connection with your audience, to bring them along with you, you need to build trust. And so your business’ actions need to align with your business’ principles.
So here are some questions to consider:
Do your business practices match your principles? (do you talk about climate change but bank with someone who invests in the oil industry, for example)
Are you open to criticism? (not trolling or vitriol, but people pointing out where you could improve)
Are you always learning? (there’s always room for learning more on any issue, so are you making an effort to stay informed?)
One last point. While we strive for perfection, we never reach it. You need to be realistic – and open about this. Not all of us can completely ditch plastic, we might want to leave some social media platforms, but right now our business relies on it…
Being open about where we’re still working is an important aspect of that authenticity.
Step Five: Be in it for the long haul
And here we are: the final step.
This will not be news to you, but in marketing as in exercise – consistency is key.
Take Pride month, for example. I’ve been revelling in the rainbows all over my feed, the marches popping up all over the country, and the opportunity it has given some people from the LGBTQ+ community to speak about their experiences on social media (yes, even on “This isn’t Facebook” LinkedIn).
We’ve also seen a LOT of companies jump behind the Pride banner. Adding rainbows to their logos, donating proceeds of particular products to supporting LGBTQ+ people, and highlighting policies that help the community.
And then we’ve seen some other companies pop up, spray rainbows and “love is love” quotes all over their platform… only for it to disappear from their branding (and the way they actually do business) for the rest of the year.
If you jump on every international month, only to not mention it for another 12 months, those people you’re trying to draw to you will be confused, annoyed, and even betrayed.
Step Five involves staying the course, and being true to the principles and politics you’ve identified as important to you. Because if they are important to you then they should be on your radar all year round.
Now, a little disclaimer. I don’t mean that you have to be inserting them into your content plan every week. But you do have to think about how they fit into your content plan! If you’ve chosen to use your platform to speak about your politics, then you need to carry on doing it – not just when everyone else is, and not just when there’s a tragedy/SCOTUS judgement/Daily Mail trending article.
What next?
So, there we have it. My gift to you. 5 easy steps for when you need to work out how to talk about politics as a business owner. Or, come to think of it, as a human being.
Now, go forth and tell the world what you believe!
Need some help? All my brand messaging offers encompass your politics and values as part of your foundation.
