Content design vs SEO copy writing are both important for drawing the audience in and leading them to take action. They both require a keen understanding of the audience and written content that’s direct and easy to consume.

Although at first they may seem quite similar, there are some key differences that are important to understand so you know where to employ each for best results.

Content Design vs Copy Writing – Right Now vs. the Customer Journey

SEO copy writing delivers a message to the reader.

It lives in the moment, with one clear purpose: to get the reader to take action. When someone lands on a sales page, there’s one thing you want them to do and that’s click “Buy Now”. It is singular in its mission.

Content Design Focus

Content design is different in that it focuses on the entire customer journey. Rather than a sole purpose, it could serve any number of purposes depending on where this piece of content fits in your overall content strategy.

For example, designing your blog in this way means that you know whether the person landing on a post is a loyal reader or a brand-new audience member. If the post is aimed at current readers, you might focus on building a relationship with them or offering them value, not just getting them to buy.

TIP: For this approach, the creator has to map the customer journey.

This is the story of someone’s relationship with your brand from initial awareness to brand advocacy. Along the way, you identify touch-points where they have contact with your brand. Each piece of content is placed at one of these touch points.

Content Design vs Copy Writing for Search Engine Optimization

While content design focuses on the reader and their journey, SEO copy writing also takes into account the search engines. It’s optimized with keywords and phrases related to the topic that will bring traffic from Google.

SEO copy writing is also different in that it casts the net wide. It’s the entryway to your sales funnel, bringing new leads in and qualifying them. No matter what topic or product, all sales copy follows this same basic approach.

Content Design Focus

Content design doesn’t focus on keywords and SEO.

You might use keywords naturally in text, but your audience members are human beings, not search engines. You’re trying to create the best user experience and your material is custom-tailored and personalized just for them.

Where SEO and Content Design Come Together

Now that you know the difference between these two approaches, there are some ways they can link together to become more effective.

You can employ copy writing techniques in your content to make it more effective at meeting your audience’s needs and expectations at each touch-point with your brand.

Furthermore, good content design will naturally boost your SEO. Your website will attract more searches if it’s easy to navigate and it meets visitors’ needs.

Do you want to learn more about creating the right content for your audience?

Join my business membership, the B.O.S.S Society, where I teach all the ways you can create better copy, implement effective content strategies and learn how to create the right content.

I also created a 6-Step Framework to help you implement a strategic content marketing plan for your business.

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In this blog post, I share the key to effective re-branding – Tell YOUR Story.

Storytelling is highly effective in any kind of business.

Brand Stories capture the attention of your audience and make your business relatable. This is why they’re so useful in re-branding. An essential part of any re-branding strategy is to develop and tell a good brand story.

Why We Love Storytelling

Your Brand Story creates a journey for your customers.

They relate to you and your brand personality by how your brand story make them feel. Emotional selling is the key to successful selling. When we can create brands that triggers emotional elements during the buying cycle, we can successfully convert followers into buyers.

Why is storytelling so important in branding?

Your brand needs to be memorable and relatable.

It needs to impart your company’s personality and emphasize how you’re unique. These are all things that can be done through a good story.

In fact, some people are loyal to brands solely because of their story.

You might love a local coffee shop that stands up against the big nation-wide chains, or a healthy organic restaurant with a mission to offer ethical and environmentally-friendly food.

These brands are strong because of stories that emphasize the values they share with their customers.

Stories work especially well in the digital age where people are flooded with advertising and marketing messages all day long.

Your story helps your brand cut through the noise.

What’s YOUR Brand Story?

Your brand story is the genesis story of your company.

It tells why you founded it and how you grew it to its current state.

The key to effective Re-Branding might include things like:

• How you grew from humble beginnings and overcame overwhelming odds
• How you stuck with your principles when selling out would’ve been easier
• How you solved a problem and then decided to offer this solution to the world at large
• How you want to change the world and why you’re trying to do it

Like any good story, yours starts with a “why.”

It has ups and downs, plot twists and drama, and a vision for the future, all centered around your company and its brand.

How to discover YOUR Brand Story?

You’re not starting from scratch with your brand story.

It’s already there, you just need to figure out how to tell it.

Start by following these steps to help you discover how to tell your Brand Story:

• Identifying your “why.”
  • Why does your company exist?
  • What is your mission?
  • What motivates you to do what you do?
  • How do you contribute?
• Brainstorm several story ideas.
  • Write a few different versions of the basic story that emphasize different aspects of your business.
  • If you’ve already clarified what your unique value is, write a story that explains this along the way.
  • You may also write a few different versions to appeal to different segments of your market.
• Once you’ve chosen the right one, simplify it so it gets straight to the point.
  • Give it the “so what?” test.
    • When people are reading your story, they’re thinking, “so what?”
    • In other words, “What’s in it for me?”
    • It should be about your company, but it should also tell the reader what you do for them.
• A good brand story is straightforward and easy to understand.
  • Once you have it finished, decide when and where you’ll use it, and create shorter and longer versions.
  • Integrate it into your branding and it will drive home the unique value you offer.

Do you want to learn more about re-branding your business the right way?

Join my business membership, the B.O.S.S Society, where I teach all the ways you can create a better brand story, implement effective brand strategies and learn how to create the right branding content.

I also created a 6-Step Framework to help you implement a strategic branding plan for your business.

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A strong brand identity can become powerful with these key elements. You can do more with fewer resources to reach your audience by creating an image in their minds by using key elements of how you uniquely meet their needs.

Branding that speaks to your Audience is the key element to show up as a Powerful Brand.

Your brand is a major source of value for your company.

Building a strong brand identity, you might consider re-branding your business if you recently realized your brand identity is not as powerful as your competitors.

But branding is about SO much more than just logos.

Here are the 5 key elements of a Strong Brand identity:

• A Purpose
• Market Position
• Company Personality
• Consistent Design Elements
• Audience

A strong brand identity can become powerful with these 5 key elements.

Let’s Define these key elements by diving deeper

• A Purpose
  Your branding tells people your reason for doing what you do.
  • It explains how you want to change the world for the better.
  • At a glance, people can understand the values that are at the core of your philosophy and products.
    To start creating your brand identity, spend some time thinking about your “why.”
    • Why does your business exist?
    • What is it you hope to change in the world to make it a better place?
    • What is the story behind your brand?

Finding your reason for existing is one of the most important elements in defining your brand identity.

• Market Position
  A powerful brand identity tells people what position you occupy in the market.
  • It says not only what you do, but
  • how you do it uniquely from anyone else:
    • “We’re the ones who __.”
  • In a market full of competitors, it shows how you stand out.
    Part of successful branding is to understand your competitors and the unique place you fill in the market. It involves getting in touch with your natural strengths so you can play to them.

A strong brand identity can become powerful with these last key elements

• Your Company’s Personality
  Company personalities should be likable and relatable that resonates with your audience. To ensure your brand communicates this personality to your audience, speak to them in their voice and tone.
  • The personality also makes it memorable.
  • What is your brand’s personality?
  • You can figure this out through research on competitors and natural strengths, but also by asking your customers why they prefer buying from you and not someone else.

Using your personality (whether corporate or personal) will ensure your engagement and interactions with your audience becomes more relatable.

• Consistent Design Elements
  Although branding is more than just logos and colors, design elements are important. They work on a subtle level. Wherever your audience member encounters your brand, they see the same design features, which tells them it’s you and shows that you’re consistent.
  • Design elements includes:
    • name,
    • logo,
    • colors,
    • banners,
    • fonts, and so on.

Visual content, like video and graphics, can get your brand message across to your ideal audience. By using a Brand Identity Board, you will not only stay consistent in all your designs, but it will help to be memorable.

• Your Audience
  Branding content is targeted to a specific audience, talking about their problems and addressing their needs.
  • For a strong brand identity, you need to know your audience well and
  • Focus on your audience, their wants and desires and not only on you or your products and services
  • Your branding discusses your offerings in terms of the unique benefits to users

Many experts talk about the paradox in selling:

“Sell them what they want, give to them what they need”

Alexis Paquette

How to Create a Strong Brand Identity by using 5 key elements

Branding isn’t second nature to most companies and many entrepreneurs can make costly branding mistakes if they do not exercise key processes.

It requires some planning and strategic thinking to develop a strong brand identity.

Creating a strong brand starts with:

• clarifying your business goals and
• your strategy for achieving them

Your brand needs to be in line with your core values and unique value proposition. If you need to build a more powerful brand, read my latest blog post on the 6 Steps you can implement today!

The next step is:

• to research your audience, industry, and competitors, so you can understand what position you occupy in the market.
• A detailed customer profile (also known as “avatars” or “buyer personas”) helps you understand your target market so you can address their needs and speak their language.
• Once you’ve clarified the fundamentals of your business and gained a thorough understanding of the marketplace, you’re ready to create a branding message and unique value proposition.
• With this in hand, you’re ready to go about implementing your brand and monitoring your results.

To help you get started, use a Brand Identity Board, to keep all your design elements in one place.

Want more branding hacks?

Join my business membership, the B.O.S.S Society, where I teach all the ways you can create a powerful brand, create better copy, implement effective content strategies and learn how to create the right content to align with your brand goals.

I also created a 6-Step Framework to help you implement a strategic content marketing plan for your business.

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In this Blog Post, I share the 6 steps to building a powerful brand for your business.

Branding has an enormous impact on every aspect of your business.

Whether you’re just getting started creating a brand identity or you’re in the process of re-branding because of changes in the market, you need to spend some time clarifying the messaging you want to create and deciding how to implement it.

Here are the 6 steps for Building a Powerful Brand:

1. Create your Brand Goals by Building a Strategy

Your branding strategy clarifies which direction your branding should go.

It means creating your messaging with an eye toward the future of your business.

This step in the process starts with identifying your business goals and how your brand fits into them.

Ask yourself “How does it help you to achieve them?”

2. Research Your Market for Building a Powerful Brand

Before you start making any major decisions, you need to understand where your business fits into the market and the position it plays in the minds of your audience.

Research needs to be conducted in a few key areas:

Your Target Market

• You need to create a detailed customer profile and identify the needs that your offerings fulfill for your audience.
• You also need to understand how your audience sees you, since “brand” is essentially an image that exists in their mind.

Your Products and Services

• Branding revolves around a promise you make to your audience.
• What is your promise?
• What need does your offering speak to and how does it uniquely solve the problems of your target market?

The Competition

• Research the market and see what your competitors are doing in order to clarify your unique position in relation to them.
• People will love your brand because of its uniqueness.

3. Create Your Messaging and Unique Value Proposition

Now that you know the market and your position in it, create a message that explains to your audience how you uniquely fulfill their needs.

This message in some form will be conveyed through everything you do and at every touch-point with your audience.

• This message should focus on the customer and the benefits your offering provides them.
• How does using your products make the customer’s life better?
• It should emphasize what sets you apart from other, similar businesses.

4. Build a Brand Persona for a Powerful Brand

Now, choose the following to design your Branding Persona:

• the personality,
• tone, and
• design elements that will help to convey this message to your audience

Your brand persona should include:

• where you will communicate with your market and
• what content you will offer them

For branding to work, everything should be consistent and in harmony with the message you outlined in the previous step.

5. Implement Your Brand Identity

The process of branding is never truly finished.

Once you implement it, you’ll need to monitor and keep gathering feedback from your market to make sure the message is hitting home.

From time to time, you’ll also need to consider re-branding.

• Companies re-brand when there are significant changes in the market,
• changes in their company, or
• a new segment of the market they need to target.

In order to keep up to date with these changes, they have to tweak or overhaul their branding so that it will achieve their new goals.

Do you want to learn more about developing the right Brand Identity?

Your 6th STEP to Building a Powerful Brand is to JOIN my business membership, the B.O.S.S Society, where I teach all the ways you can create a powerful brand, implement effective strategies and learn how to stand out from the crowds.

I also created a 6-Step Framework to help you implement a strategic branding plan for your business.

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In this Blog post, I share 8 Branding Mistakes you might be making.

To establish a brand, it requires a great deal of time and effort, along with some strategic thinking.

What if you put in all the work and it falls flat?

Since this is an area of business that’s easily misunderstood, here are the biggest mistakes people make with branding so you can avoid them:

1. Failing to Think Strategically
   Branding is part of your overall business plan, so you need to think strategically about it. It needs to connect to your “why” and your broader business goals. Go back and review the reasons why you’re running this business. Take some time to clarify what you hope to achieve and how your branding will help you do this.
2. Your Brand Is Not Your Logo
   Many businesses make the huge mistake of thinking a brand is a logo or a set of design features. While consistent design is an important part of branding, what it’s really about is your messaging and the image you’re creating in the minds of your target market. This message tells people how your offerings uniquely benefit them.
3. Being Generic
   The whole point of your brand is to differentiate your business from others in the market. If you can do this successfully, you can compete with bigger companies that have more resources to spend on marketing and advertising. Focus not only on what you do but what you do differently than the competition.
4. Assumptions Instead of Facts
   Don’t make the mistake of building your brand based on assumptions. You think you know how people see your company, but this isn’t good enough. You need to conduct thorough marketing research and base your decisions on facts and feedback from your audience.
5. Inconsistency and Disconnect
   If your branding is giving people mixed messages, it won’t work to engender trust. The message needs to be consistent wherever you have communication with your audience. The design features, the tone, and the unique benefits of using your products all need to be consistent.
6. Clever But Not Clear
   While it’s nice to have a message that’s unique and clever, the most important thing is for it to be clear. Branding is a form of communication. People should understand your message easily at a glance. Don’t get so creative that it becomes hard to understand.
7. It’s All About You
   While you’re talking about your products and services, the real message of your branding should be what using your products does for your customers. Focus on their needs and how their lives will be improved by using your product.
8. Forgetting to Update
   The needs of your market and the competitive landscape change over time. Your business might also change, offering a new product line or reaching out to a new segment in the market. When this happens, your branding needs to reflect these changes. Sometimes, you need to assess and update.

Do you want to learn more about getting your branding right?

Join my business membership, the B.O.S.S Society, where I teach all the ways you can create a better brand, implement effective branding strategies and learn how to create the right brand content that aligns with your brand goals.

I also created a 6-Step Framework to help you implement a strategic branding plan for your business.

See you online!

In this blog post I share the benefits of re-branding your business.

In a world where things are always changing, your business needs to stay current.

Many companies make the mistake of holding onto their old brand long after it’s no longer effective. Your brand needs to be up to date in order to meet the changes in the market.

Is it time for a re-brand?

Communicate Your Current Business

• Re-branding may become necessary in order to reflect a big change in your business.
• This could be a merger or acquisition, or a change in company strategy.
• It could be something smaller like the launch of a new product line or a period of considerable growth.
• Whatever the change, it necessitates a brand makeover.

Getting Serious About Your Branding

Like many companies, you may not have done your branding correctly to begin with.

It’s often hard when you first get started to fully grasp your customers and your unique position in the market.

As you start to grow, you may feel like you’re lacking a strong brand identity compared to major players in your niche, and now’s the time to develop one.

Connecting with a New Audience

Companies often decide to re-brand in order to connect to a new audience.

In order to grow into a new segment of the market, your brand needs an update in order to focus on the needs of this new segment.

Since you’re reaching new customers, you need to reassess the needs your company meets so your branding can communicate this.

Changes in the Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape might have changed.

If there are new players in the market, you might need to re-brand in order to show your audience how you’re different.

Re-branding can help you stay relevant against competitors that are growing. It’s a low-cost and relatively easy way to compete even if you don’t have the same resources.

More Earnings and Higher Value for Your Company

Brushing up your brand makes your company more profitable.

Most companies find that they earn more after their re-branding. The process adds value to your business and makes you more attractive to investors.

How Do You Know It’s Time to Re-brand?

Re-branding is a major step that takes considerable resources and effort.

Here are the signs that it may be time:

• Your messaging seems outdated or unclear; you feel stuck and like you’re stagnating
• Your branding is attracting the wrong customers or business partners
• There are major changes in your market, your competitors, or your business
• You’re seeing a slip in earnings or your profits are hitting a plateau
• You’re creating a new business strategy to reach out to a new segment of the market
• You didn’t really put the time and energy into your branding at the beginning

Re-branding starts with clarifying your business’s vision and goals and performing a brand audit to determine how well your current branding is communicating your unique value to the market.

It’s a great way to reinvigorate your business and meet new challenges.

Do you want to learn more about re-branding your business?

Join my business membership, the B.O.S.S Society, where I teach all the ways you can re-brand your business, implement effective branding strategies and learn how to create the right brand identity.

I also created a 6-Step Framework to help you implement a strategic branding plan for your business.

See you online!