Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 85: Discovering Your Brand’s Voice
170 Plays5 years ago
Copywriter Kayla Hollatz joins me for today's episode to chat about discovering your brand's voice. Writing about yourself or your business can always be challenging. We've talked about copywriting a bunch on the Brands that Book podcast, but Kayla offers up some helpful insight and practical exercises that anyone can use to discover their brands voice.
Kayla also has an impressive roster of clients that include companies like Showit, Interact, and Convert Kit, so we also make time to chat about how she was able to find those opportunities with some bigger clients.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-kayla-hollatz-episode-85/
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
over time people are usua their offerings and so thi to change a little bit. Th a little bit in terms of a need to restructure some t So I think what's really to work with a copyri feeling like, okay, I'm f good about the foundations
Introduction & Discovering Brand Voice
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:39
Speaker
Copywriter Kayla Hollitz joins me for today's episode to chat about discovering your brand's voice. Writing about yourself or your business can always be challenging. We've talked about copywriting a bunch on the Brands That Book podcast, but Kayla offers up some helpful insight and practical exercises that anyone can use to discover their brand's voice.
00:01:00
Speaker
Kayla also has an impressive roster of clients that include companies like Show It, Interact, and ConvertKit. So we also make time to chat about how she was able to find those opportunities with some bigger clients. Be sure to check out the show notes at DavyandChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. And as always, I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands at Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, head on over to the DavyandChrista Facebook page.
00:01:26
Speaker
or send us an idm on instagram at DavyandChrista. Now, on the episode.
Personal vs. Brand Voice
00:01:36
Speaker
All right, welcome back to another episode of The Brancet Book Show. I'm here with copywriter Kayla Hollitz of KaylaHollitz.com. Kayla, welcome to the Brancet Book Podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Davey. Yeah, I'm excited to dig into copy. We've talked about copy quite a bit on the podcast to date, but it's always among the more popular episodes. I think I know why, because nobody likes writing. That's not true. I guess, obviously, copywriters love writing.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And as a former English teacher, I would say that I enjoy it as well. But even for somebody who feels like they're a good writer, I think it can still be very frustrating trying to write about yourself and trying to write about your brand. And then the other thing too is like even when you start talking about brands and brand voice and how is that different than your personality and your voice? So there's so much to unpack there. So it makes sense that these episodes are among the more popular episodes.
00:02:29
Speaker
Absolutely. I think you totally hit the nail on the head when you were talking about how sometimes it's difficult to write for yourself. Yes, but even more so for your brand personality, since there's probably going to be a few different differences, of course, since a lot of the writing that we do with copywriting is not necessarily just about us, but it's also
00:02:47
Speaker
about our audience and whoever it is that we want to attract. So trying to feel authentic enough with who we are, but then also keeping in mind what it is that our people want to hear. Yeah, sometimes it can be quite the challenge.
Kayla's Journey from PR to Copywriting
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, I think really early on when we were starting a photography business, something that was really formative, I think to hear, I was listening to another business owner and they were talking about how
00:03:11
Speaker
They like as an individual probably wouldn't book their own services, you know, like their brand was necessarily set up to attract people that were just like them and there were obviously some similarities between their brand and themselves, but they were like, we just wouldn't
00:03:28
Speaker
pay for ourselves. We probably want something a little bit different. I just thought that was fascinating. It opened my mind to starting to think through that concept back in the day as we started one of our first businesses. How is our brand different than our personalities?
00:03:43
Speaker
So I'm excited to dive in and talk a little bit about that. However, I don't want to skip one of my favorite parts of each episode, which is really diving into your entrepreneurial story and hearing about what led you to become a copywriter. And I don't want to spoil the interview for anybody, but you've worked with some
00:04:00
Speaker
Pretty impressive clients, right? So you've worked with Showit, the copy on their website, you've worked with Interact, and so many of our listeners are probably familiar with the quiz building, and they do all sorts of stuff beyond quiz building, but I think the quizzes are probably their most popular tool. And then ConvertKit as well, which is a product that I've talked a lot about and we're current ConvertKit users. So you have an impressive client roster, so I also want to hear about that as well. But take us back to the beginning. What made you fall in love with writing?
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I like a lot of people who have been in their craft. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. But I think what's kind of non-traditional about my path is that I actually got started with blogging in college. So I was going to school for PR and was doing lots of different things with social media. And I felt like, okay, in my specific area of Minneapolis, where I'm based, there are not a whole lot of PR jobs. And there were a ton of different people.
00:04:56
Speaker
who are graduating with that same degree. And so I kind of thought, okay, maybe I can create a blog in order to kind of make myself stand out once I graduated. And basically what ended up happening was that I learned about this whole thing called online entrepreneurship. And I still remember the conversation that I had with my parents about like, I'm going to quit my agency job a year out of college in order to pursue this like making money online thing.
00:05:20
Speaker
But yeah, that is absolutely kind of how the path went. I started with PR in social media, did a lot of social media consulting in my first year. But to be honest, I didn't have any training in entrepreneurship. I had no idea what it looked like to build a sustainable business model.
Copywriting for Creatives & Influences
00:05:35
Speaker
I, you know, for lack of a better term, kind of ended up burning out, was working way too many hours and just didn't have that sustainability that I was hoping for. And so I took about three months to really just kind of think about, okay, what is it that I'm really skilled at? What is it that I'm thinking about doing? And just kind of after some of that time just decided, oh my gosh, all I've ever wanted to do is write, but I didn't necessarily know if that would be a marketable skill enough, especially because I think I'm connected to so many...
00:05:45
Speaker
And so
00:06:07
Speaker
And what's interesting too is, especially with so much of what you do, Davey, too, is that, you know, I was connected with so many different photographers and designers and people who were so visually creative. And I was like, well, obviously, there's a huge market for those things. But I don't know about writing. And then where I kind of ended up was remembering that, oh, wait, all these photographers and designers that I connect with day in and day out,
00:06:29
Speaker
they really need help with writing a lot of the times because they do think so visually but they have a hard time actually communicating that in words and so that's kind of where i started in copywriting and from there it's grown to working with some of the staff companies that you talked about and some other clients but i think creative entrepreneurs are definitely my people no matter what.
00:06:48
Speaker
Do you feel like your PR background has just so informed your copywriting career? Yeah, I would say it definitely has in terms of really feeling comfortable from the get-go with putting myself out there, always thinking about brand reputation, brand voice, some of those types of things of like, how do you actually want to position your company? That has definitely landed itself
00:07:11
Speaker
But I always think the interesting thing too is that my minor in school and something that I've done forever too is actually in creative writing and poetry. So I am somebody who loves writing short form poetry. I know that that's always like such a fun little thing to tell people. But poetry actually really informed a lot of what I do in copywriting as well because when you only have a few words to be able to describe
00:07:35
Speaker
what it is that you're feeling or thinking inside a poem like haikus are my favorite which is like 17 syllables it's so much fun but i think what was really fantastic with that was just realizing okay i can use that skill for copywriting because so much of the copywriting that we have to create needs to be pretty short and concise and punchy so yeah that's kind of where i got my start
00:07:55
Speaker
Yes. And what you just said about it being short, concise and punchy, it doesn't have to be this massive rambling novel of a thing. And again, kind of speaking my language when it comes to Facebook ads as well. And as we coach people through clients, especially when it comes to copy, it's like, you don't need to make the entire sale in
00:08:16
Speaker
the Facebook ad, right? You just need to get people to take the next action. And I think that's true of websites as well. I mean, once we're looking at a specific page on the website, that specific page has a purpose, right? And so I think oftentimes, we do err a little bit on the side of having too much. With that said, I think some people would argue, well, no, I don't even know where to start. So that's an issue for people for
00:08:35
Speaker
sure. But I got to imagine that the PR background too has definitely helped. I think it's just one area I wish I focused on really early on starting my very first business. When you think of PR, you think of these movies with these big Fortune 500 companies and their PR person or whatever. But there's just so many elements to running a business that are intertwined with PR and opportunities and getting featured and all of that.
00:08:58
Speaker
But I could go on and on about that.
Building a Client Base & Niching Down
00:09:00
Speaker
I think the haiku thing, that's amazing too. That's just got to be such a great exercise in flexing that muscle, you know, along the lines of being short and punchy. So you took the three months off, you sort of pivoted or took on maybe a little bit of a different direction, a little shift, so to speak. How'd you go about finding those first couple clients?
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I think what was so fantastic was that because I had already built up relationships and I think that's why I'm such a huge believer. And even if you don't know exactly what niche you're going to be in or exactly what you're going to be doing, just get started with like social media, start talking with people and just go in with wanting to build some of those connections because I had some clients at the time that I was working on with social media.
00:09:42
Speaker
and i remember going to some of them with some vulnerability and just telling them like i know that this is not necessarily working out for me right now but i would love the opportunity to be able to work with you in a copywriting capacity if that's something that you're interested in and so i really feel like i had the blessing of being able to kind of
00:10:00
Speaker
decipher whether or not copywriting was going to be a good fit for me before i had to do you know the whole public rebrand and that sort of thing but once the rebrand and relaunch and all of that stuff ended up happening i remember feeling like man you know i have spent years positioning myself again like we're talking about as this social media person are people actually going to think of me as a copywriter
00:10:21
Speaker
And I'll tell you, Davey, it was like almost immediate. It was absolutely insane. And I think it just goes to show that when you share so much of yourself online, and when you are making those connections, people obviously knew me as a writer as a blogger and all of those things. And so I had a lot more of that trust right out the gates. So that definitely helped me getting started.
00:10:41
Speaker
Yeah, do you feel like to just in making that shift because social media sounds like a niche, but there's, you know, so many different social media channels. There's so many different ways in which you could serve a company, you know, helping with social media. So do you feel like switching to copywriting and even getting a little bit more niche in that way, you know, just help people understand what you do?
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think so for sure. And a lot of what I was doing in the social media realm of things was very focused on using social media as a community builder. So I think it made a lot of sense for people too that I would be using my writing skill to be able to also help other brands who are looking to build some of those communities through the different messages and things that they are creating.
00:11:22
Speaker
but i think when i kind of like retrace my steps to i remember when i was in college and had all these different business ideas for the first time really in my life and i just had this whole notebook i think a lot of people can resonate with that and i remember anytime that i started with a new idea i like didn't even spend enough time outlining it i just immediately started thinking about what the website would look like
00:11:44
Speaker
or i would immediately start thinking about okay how do i message this how do i make sure that everything comes together i'm in all of these different like marketing materials and so i think that really was kind of almost like that true north thing for me as i continued going through where i felt like okay this is where my passion is kind of always been so how do i bring some of the skills
00:12:02
Speaker
that i had been able to hone in through some of the work that i had already done but also trying to almost reposition those in a way where people are going to understand that i am a copywriter even if you looked at my resume and maybe technically if you know i was like one year into copywriting or whatever at that point i found that people had a lot of trust in me and buy-in for me and that has made a world of a difference for sure.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that what you're saying about relationships is so true too. I would say that relationship building and creating content and putting it out into the world are two of the most effective ways of building trust with people. And maybe I think it really just boils down to those two things. I think that at the end of the day, pretty much everything fits in one of those two buckets when it comes to building trust and authority in a given field. But I want to know how did you transition from the clients that you were working with?
00:12:50
Speaker
to some of these bigger clients like ConvertKit, Show It, and Interact. I know Show It, for instance, and Todd has been on, Todd, the CEO of Show It for people who are listening, he's been on the podcast before. There's a great episode for those who might be interested in that, but he sung your praises. He was like, hey, do you know Kayla? Have you connected with her? And within 30 seconds, he had sent an email connecting us and that's how we started talking, which eventually led to bringing you on the podcast. But how did you transition to serving some of these bigger clients?
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's such a great question. And it's so interesting to think about too, because I did start, like I said, kind of in the, what I would say, like the visually creative world. So the photographers, the designers, developers, different people. And I think what ended up naturally happening too, is as I was writing for them, there are different SaaS companies where they said, hey, like our target audience is the same as the target audience that you're writing for. You're very clearly good at writing for these people. And you have results behind that.
00:13:46
Speaker
why don't we use your skills as a part of you know our specific tech companies because we're all in the end trying to talk to the same person and so that was really just kind of a light bulb for me cuz I kept wondering I went you know why is it that when I worked at the PR agency that I was working for these very very large companies and just wasn't necessarily feeling it and it was a huge reason why I left
00:14:07
Speaker
and i said okay but then why am i going towards these bigger companies now and then i'm feeling really good about the work i'm doing and i realized yeah it's just because we're all talking the same person so i think what also helped me make that transition is exactly what you said it's relationship you know the first larger company that i was able to work with was convertkit and i met the
00:14:29
Speaker
development lead over at ConvertKit through a random lunch that I ended up going to where he was visiting in town and knew a friend of mine and that's how I met. Todd, it's the same kind of thing. I was at a rising tide sort of event and he just happened to be at the dinner that I wasn't even supposed to be a part of but I ended up getting an invite because a friend of mine knew another friend
00:14:51
Speaker
who was putting it on so there are just so many different stories like that where i have been really lucky to be in rooms that i didn't even expect myself to be into and that's why i think it's so important to just continue building those relationships because you honestly never know where they're going to go but the last thing i'll say that i think has really been just like a great thing that i've done
00:15:14
Speaker
working with some of these larger companies and something i definitely recommend for other people who are wanting to do the same thing is really trying to position yourself at like the point person for whatever it is that you're doing so all my clients know that like websites are totally the love of my life.
00:15:30
Speaker
I love them all but at the same time i love blog post i love email marketing but there's also different projects that these clients will ask me to do that outside of that and really in the end they're looking for somebody that yes might have some specialization in that but once they get to know you and they know that you're somebody that they can trust that meets deadlines that gets them results they're gonna wanna come to you first and so that's kinda how i've positioned myself with some of these larger clients is not necessarily taking on
00:15:56
Speaker
tons and tons of clients like other people may, but instead just trying to make myself like, okay, anytime you think about copywriting and communications, I want you to come up with my name first. Yeah, I just think that's fascinating that a lot of the answers boils down to the relationships that you go and showing up in some of these places and being connected with different people. And I think especially I know I was guilty of this when I was first getting started in entrepreneurship thinking that maybe there was like some super secret ninja tactical marketing strategy.
00:16:24
Speaker
that people were using to come up with these sorts of opportunities. And at the end of the day, I mean, it is just so relational, right? I mean, it's getting that introduction from a friend that knows the product lead at ConvertKit and being at a dinner with, you know, the founder of show it. And we found the same thing is true for Till, you know, we actually share a lot of the same clients, which we've talked about before.
00:16:44
Speaker
And a lot of those come from relationships and then those clients saying, hey, you know, have you heard of Tilla? Have you heard of Kayla? So you just can't discount like you said, how important relationships are. And again, I hear that like kind of PR background coming through when you start talking about like when you think of copywriting, when you think of communications, I want you to think of me. So let's dive into that a little bit because you know, so we'll start transitioning here to talking about discovering and uncovering your brand's
Developing Brand Voice & Guidelines
00:17:10
Speaker
voice.
00:17:10
Speaker
And I think maybe a couple of distinctions are helpful in the beginning that especially with personal brands, and I feel like so many brands, especially among photographers and planners, they are personal brands or at least the owner is very much in the business. Sure. There might be a difference between your personality and then the brand's personality. Could you speak to just starting to discover or uncover your brand's voice?
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. There's a few different kind of facets to brand voice too. And I think what I really enjoy being able to do both with my clients and just when I'm speaking at different workshops and things is to be able to also think about, okay, how do we define it? Yes. But also like, what are some activities and fun things that we can do that kind of shake us out of the normal routine of feeling like, well, I don't know how to define my voice. How does anybody know how to?
00:17:59
Speaker
So one of the first things that I like to do is just think about the tone of your voice. So when I'm thinking about tone, it was something that I really like to have some of my clients do if they kind of feel like they're in the muck of trying to figure out what that is. I try to say, okay, think of yourself as either a fictional family member or a friend or somebody.
00:18:18
Speaker
Somebody who has a brand voice where they want to sound like the crazy fun aunt who just wants to help you live life to the full is going to sound extremely different than somebody who's maybe the wise uncle that has just like tons of wisdom from all of his experiences versus the older sister who's going to give you the tough love if you need it. But she's also going to be like super approachable and personable and stuff too. So
00:18:43
Speaker
I think the more that you can start to get outside of your head and think about some of those things, it might help you with figuring out what is the specific tone and approach that you want to have with all of your communication. And also when I think about tone, I think it can be helpful. Yeah, just to think about like what is it that you actually want to sound like, but it might help to think about what kind of collaborator you are too. I know that this can help for service providers, especially in thinking about
00:19:08
Speaker
Well, how is it that I communicate very naturally with my clients and maybe even look through testimonials that you've gotten in the past too and think, okay, what are some of the things that they commonly say? What is the tone that's coming out from the reviews and the different things that I've gotten? I think that that can help with tone. I think the other thing that's really great and one of my most fun activities is creating a personal brand word bank, so to speak, or even if you're a larger brand, you can do the same thing. The most basic level of it is
00:19:37
Speaker
Thinking about words that you really love to use and then thinking about words that you avoid at all costs and it's something that i ask all of my clients and kind of the intake questionnaire and i'll be honest it is hilarious sometimes to see some of the types of words that people like to avoid some of the ones that never expect at times it's always nice for me to know the copy writer.
00:19:57
Speaker
but yeah people have a lot of different feelings about specific words and so i think being able to start attaching some of that once you have the tone down to okay what are the types of words that we actually want to use and if you have a team of people definitely do this as a team meeting i think it can be really
00:20:12
Speaker
great, just to be able to either use sticky notes or a whiteboard or something to be able to put all the words and then you can always kind of narrow them down from there. And I like thinking, okay, what are like our top 10 words? What are our top five words, even maybe like top three words that can almost become core values, those types of things as you keep going along, but
00:20:32
Speaker
The last kind of thing I'll say too is trying to think about how much your speaking voice actually models your written voice. And I think that's incredibly important, especially for people like we're talking about who want to do podcast interviews, who want to be featured in different ways, maybe even want to create video content.
00:20:48
Speaker
You're going to be speaking hopefully very similarly to the way that you write. It's got to feel like a pretty natural fit in order to feel really authentic. And the speaking voice is also the voice you're going to use when you're talking on the phone with clients. So it's the hard thing for you to be able to like...
00:21:03
Speaker
try to craft into something that's so completely different than how you naturally are. It can have some nuances to it too but I usually recommend for people if they feel like there's a disconnect between the way that they're writing and the way that they're speaking to actually just read their writing out loud. And you can tell pretty easily when you're reading something aloud if it's something that actually sounds like you because I've done it before and I'm like that is not something I would ever say even though it sounds maybe like a fun thing to put in my copy.
00:21:31
Speaker
so i think that that's just kind of a good barometer for you to start using and you know if you need to get feedback from trusted friends who know you super super well who can give you again maybe some of that tough love and also let you know this sounds like you this doesn't actually sound like something you would say or even some of those clients again where you have the close relationships where you can trust to get some feedback from them i think that can be helpful but those are kind of the key things that i think is a great place to start in terms of brand voice
00:21:56
Speaker
Do you have any advice for especially people who work maybe alone, right? And so I've been fortunate because Krista and I worked together pretty much through most of the businesses that we started, certainly the photography business and then Dave and Krista of course as well. So we could kind of bounce ideas off of each other. And for Till, you know, I have two other partners as well. And we actually have a team, we had a team before we had a website, you know, so it was kind of a weird order of events, I think for that business that I've spoken to before on the podcast.
Testing and Refining Brand Voice
00:22:22
Speaker
But there's always been people around to bounce ideas off
00:22:25
Speaker
So we have these exercises, right? My first question is, what should solopreneurs do? Who should they trust? I ask in part because we have people do similar activities for brand questionnaires for their visual identity, right? Sometimes we find that peers in their industry don't always give them the best feedback.
00:22:45
Speaker
You know, like they, they maybe project a little bit of their own business onto the friend. It's just sometimes I think just in general, like looking too much to what other photographers are doing or what other planners are doing flowers are doing, you know, whoever it might be leads us a little bit off track.
00:23:01
Speaker
in that we're not serving our ideal client at that point or we're not really looking to our target market and understanding what kind of language it is that's going to connect with them. I guess how do we figure out, okay, who's the trusted word? Who should I lean on for help with this? Is there anything that you would encourage people to do just to get unstuck and even just going?
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So something that I have done in the past, because I will say I am also a solopreneur. So although you know, I do a lot in the copywriting field, I am constantly somebody who is looking for feedback. And so I will say something that I really enjoy recommending other people do because I do it as well is if you have worked with a few clients that you feel like one fit kind of the ideal client description and all of that that I know a lot of entrepreneurs have done. If there are people that you would want to collaborate with again and again, it's
00:23:47
Speaker
It's likely that you want to be able to attract more people who are like them. And so in order for you to be able to kind of go to them with some of that writing or maybe even some of the things that we talked about with these exercises to get their feedback, something I really enjoy doing is if I have somebody on the call, let's say for 15 minutes and I give them that feedback, I always give them 15 minutes of my time. So I'm like, hey, if you have anything you want me to look over,
00:24:13
Speaker
if you have any copywriting that you want some advice on, maybe even just some questions that you want to ask about running a business, whatever it is, I'm willing to give my time if you are giving me your time in order to help me out with this. I have found that although that's a really grassroots way to do it, you get a lot of quality feedback rather than, let's say, putting out a whole survey to your audience and getting so many different kinds of feedback. Like you said too, sometimes other business owners might project
00:24:40
Speaker
kind of their own perceptions of how you should be positioning things and stuff too. So I think actually going to the people that you want to be able to connect with because they're going to be like other people is helpful too. If you're thinking more about putting your personality into it, it might be helpful to have a very, very small group of friends or even family members, maybe like two people, nothing crazy. But I think that that can help if you feel like your personality is just really not coming out at all. But in terms of feedback and if it's actually going to connect with your people,
00:25:10
Speaker
I say go to your actual people and see yeah yeah for sure and I know I'm probably projecting here you know my bias towards surveys and things like that I am sure I find myself more in the camp of not surveying you know and again I know surveys can provide really useful data but I also think sometimes it provides people too much
00:25:30
Speaker
Oh, you know, and it sends them off chasing, providing answers or solutions to something that they read in a survey when the vast majority of their customer base or, you know, their target market really isn't interested in whatever that is. But I do recognize that surveys can be incredibly helpful and that you can have industry peers that can speak truth into your business. So hopefully, if you're listening, you're not thinking like, Oh, I can't go to my good friend who also runs a business. That's not what I'm saying.
00:25:56
Speaker
No, but I think that's really helpful. So we have these exercises that you've gone through, which I think are super helpful. Any tips on transitioning that and actually like putting it to use in let's say a website or a social media caption? Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the best ways to start, I mean, right? It's like the whole practice makes perfect thing too. And so I think for you to be able to start with something small like an Instagram caption might be really helpful for a lot of people because I think Instagram posts, although they will stay in your feed,
00:26:25
Speaker
It's something where you feel like, okay, I can write this, I can post this, and then we can move on to the next thing. And we can see actually, like you're talking about real time, I can get that feedback based on are people engaging with it? Are people like, oh my gosh, amen. Yes. Like all of those different kinds of comments that we see when we're writing something that really resonates with people. And I think that could be a fantastic way, even if you don't have a website up yet, or even if
00:26:48
Speaker
You don't necessarily feel like everything is refined or exactly what you want it to be. I'm a huge believer in testing things out and experimenting with things. And so I say just practice it, go for it. And I like your tip of maybe doing an Instagram caption or something like that smaller. You could even do a smaller blog post or something too, but I think Instagram captions, you're probably going to get at least a little bit more engagement that way too to get started.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. One of the things that really struck me as I was going through your website was your process or your philosophy rather in unprepared fashion. I actually didn't write down the philosophy, but I think I remember and I don't ever have any web pages up while I do these things because I'm trying to save all the internet bandwidth for the call.
00:27:32
Speaker
you have that or hopefully you know it. I remember testing. Testing was a big part of that and I think that was something that for sure resonated with me. So I'm wondering if you could talk through your philosophy a little bit. I think I remember reading it and just thinking like, I think this is a great approach for anybody who's writing copy and also just other aspects of business as well. So could you go through that a little bit with
Strategy, Testing & Adapting Copy
00:27:55
Speaker
us?
00:27:55
Speaker
Absolutely. So the first one that's kind of in my philosophy is definitely my biggest one, which is that like strategy should come first and then the words come second, because I think so many times what happens with copywriters is that we're immediately thinking about brand voice. We're immediately thinking about like, how do we turn this into messaging right away? And I think so many times what we end up doing is.
00:28:16
Speaker
we're just not necessarily thinking about the strategy and what it is that we actually want people to do and i think that the best copywriting has the call to action in mind like from the very beginning to the very end and i think if we're not thinking about strategy from the get go before we start creating anything it's gonna be harder to put that call to action back into all of the.
00:28:36
Speaker
you know, different types of things that we're writing. And so something that I specifically do inside my process that helps me write copywriting, I know every copywriter is going to have a totally different process. And I actually really love that about our field. But for me, I like to create what kind of we call copy wireframes. So for you, Davey, you guys do such amazing design work. And so you guys have different types of design wireframes and
00:28:59
Speaker
My gosh, they look a whole lot better than mine do in Google Docs, but it really gives a good visual layout as to how the content is going to be organized. And I think it also allows people to kind of strip away all of the different decisions that they might have to make about design and to really look at, okay,
00:29:16
Speaker
what is it that we're trying to communicate and on each and every page are these pages flowing together well is this website structured in a way that is very user friendly so that's why i really like to start from there because not only does it give me a ton of confidence as a copywriter as i'm going into the actual messaging part it also gives my clients a way to see okay this is how everything's gonna work together and then usually i actually get the best comments from my clients on that part and then
00:29:41
Speaker
The messaging just kind of feels like, okay, that's awesome at the end of it. But I kind of knew that that was going to be coming together because of the way that you've walked through all of the different pages and strategically how my website is going to be built to do all these things that I want my clients to do instead of just kind of thinking about, okay, what stories do we want to tell our clients? And then we hope that they'll get to the contact page in the end.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that people when they're looking at copy, that's really well written on a given website or a website that looks really good from a visual aesthetic standpoint, they kind of jump ahead and they're like, Oh, I want something really witty on my website. I want something that looks beautiful on my website. But I think it's such an important nuance, this shift that you not necessarily have made, but this philosophy you have where strategy comes before the words. I think it's so helpful to I mean, this is why we as a brand and design agency love working with copywriters.
00:30:29
Speaker
is because that wireframe, yeah, we can take it and make it pretty, but it provides so many of the important elements when it comes to website design. I mean, really, the content is the meat of the site, right? Sure. It's literally what's conveying the information that somebody needs in order to make a decision about given services. Now, of course, on the website design side, imagery plays a big part in that as well.
00:30:52
Speaker
And the way the website is laid out or just the structure of it contributes to that as well. So a lot of different things contribute to it. But in that content piece, in that wireframe, you can start outlining like these are the sections that we need to go through in order to get people from point A to point B. So really appreciate that. What's next?
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say the other two kind of pillars of my philosophy are pretty similar. The second one is talking about, you know, when in doubt, test it out, which also just sounds fun. But the third one is don't be afraid to experiment. And they're basically saying the same thing. And
00:31:28
Speaker
I think that that's probably pretty apparent with some of the conversation we've already had too but i think that so many times people can be worried about making the wrong decision that they just end up not making a decision at all and then they kinda maybe sit on some ideas that they have or they just feel like they're kinda played by a decision.
00:31:44
Speaker
So I think it's actually best just to be able to create different tests. I know some of you may have heard of the term A-B testing or split testing and basically what those kind of terms mean is it's trying to compare one variation next to another and to say, okay, instead of us trying to guess what is going to be the most successful for us before we actually put it on our website,
00:32:07
Speaker
Let's test it out and something that I think is fantastic is you know again kind of talking about Todd at show it in his wonderful team there I think it's so fantastic to see a company like they are and they are still doing testing you know we created a lot of different headline variations for them and they spent a few months testing out exactly what headline that we had created together which one we wanted to use and so to me that shows okay if testing and experimenting means that much to a company at that level it should mean
00:32:36
Speaker
Lot to me as well and it also gives me permission to feel like okay We don't necessarily have to feel like we need to have it all figured out by making a decision. It's not really about that It's rather actually testing what people feel because I will say I have had plenty of times where I have had a hypothesis of how something is going to go and it's completely different and it's always extremely humbling to me too and I see that less as I know some people would maybe say oh like I
00:33:02
Speaker
You know, do you ever feel like that's a failure or those sorts of things? And I see it. No, like that's definitely a huge lesson because I'm making it now so I can continue building upon that too. So I think for us to be able to change our mindsets a little bit about what it looks like to test and experiment with things, it doesn't mean that you don't have anything figured out. It doesn't even mean that you don't have a good direction. It just means that you want to like learn more from your people and only they can show you what it is that you want to know.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, I think that just speaks to your expertise in your field as well as you being able to admit that because I think it's true at any level in any field. Facebook ads, for instance, I just recorded an episode on audience and targeting with one of my partners from Till, Jesse Marcheccio. And one of the things that we mentioned during the episode is for whatever reason, a certain audience works really, really, really well for one business. Like let's say,
00:33:48
Speaker
that business just kills it using their website traffic audience, whereas that audience completely bombs for another business. I think if we don't leave ourselves open to that occasionally being the case, then really we're doing a disservice to our clients because we're not even giving ourselves room to maybe change course and pivot a little bit and get them better results.
00:34:09
Speaker
I think that just speaks to your expertise in your field. And so I really appreciate that. And the same is absolutely true of websites as well, you know, just whether it be call to actions, or whether it be how a specific page is laid out, for whatever reason, sometimes what works for one business just doesn't work at all, you know, for another and without testing and without a little bit of trial and error, you just can't get them results.
00:34:32
Speaker
Something else I wanted to mention too, just this idea of giving yourself permission to experiment and understanding that you don't have to get it right out of the gate. Sure. How many of your clients would you say you did copywriting years ago? Would you say that most of them continue to grow into that language after that project is over?
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, that is such a good question and I think that it's such a good one to talk about because what I've noticed with my clients is that while kind of the work that we do around their mission statement and some of the core pieces of their copy stay the same, you know, over time people are usually going to evolve their offerings and so things are going to have to change a little bit. They may even pivot a little bit in terms of audience and so they may need to restructure some things there too.
00:35:15
Speaker
And so I think what's really great is being able to work with a copywriter, you are feeling like, okay, I'm feeling good about the foundations of my brand. But once you have the foundations, like you're talking about, you can kind of evolve some of those things over time. For instance, even for my own website, I feel great about it. But I also am still making tweaks.
00:35:33
Speaker
every like six months to a year just to make sure that not only are things fresh but things do change in business too and it doesn't mean you didn't get it right on the first time you know i think as long as we are paying attention to what those changes are and then just continuing to test things doesn't mean you need to test things every like two to three weeks or anything right but i think just having that practice of maybe every like three to six months just assessing how things are going even just looking at the progress from
00:36:01
Speaker
you know quarter to quarter or even like six months to a year I think can be really helpful and you know if it comes time to where you need to update some of your messaging I think that's why it feels so great to spend some time upfront really making sure that the messaging feels good because then you only have to make small tweaks rather than feeling like every time you need to make a change that you need to rehaul your whole messaging because no one wants to do that every time.
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I think working with a professional on any of these things, whether it be design, ads, copywriting, SEO, you know, whatever it might be, just provides really a solid foundation, if nothing else. And it's just become so apparent to me. And it's hard even thinking about ourselves, you know, how much growth there's been since we first started our businesses. And I don't know if you feel the same way, but you can use like the way back machine to go look at like passwords, your website and stuff. So I spending a little bit of time doing that. And I was just cringing. I was like, Oh, what were we thinking?
00:36:54
Speaker
But it was just one more step to where we are now. And hopefully, in the next five years, I feel the same way about where I am right now. Because otherwise, it means I stopped growing somewhere along the way. And I do think that we're that much closer to being where we want to be. And every time we redesign our website, I'm like, ah, this is it.
00:37:14
Speaker
Regardless, a year goes by and it's like, hey, we should make this tweak this tweak and this tweak and it's just a natural part I think of growth. And so for people out there who are working on a copywriting project or a website project or just even like developing a brand for the first time, I think that's such good wisdom from you that give yourself room to start and I think only by starting are we going to kind of grow into our brands.
00:37:39
Speaker
So, really, really appreciate that. Really appreciate just the amount of testing too that you emphasize as well in your process. So, I want to wrap up by pulling things together a little bit here and I know we probably need like 10 more episodes just to maybe to truly do that. But something that has become super clear and I just I guess I haven't really thought about it because when people come to us for branding, we of course build them their visual brand.
00:38:04
Speaker
We're not tackling the same kind of thing that you're tackling for clients. So they get from us a visual brand identity and materials that outline that. And for Till, my paid advertising agency, when we onboard new clients, we ask for their brand materials.
00:38:21
Speaker
And we, nine out of 10 times, we'll get their professionally done brand, PDF, guide, whatever it is, but it outlines colors and fonts and how you can use their logo and submarks and so on and so forth. Very rarely, I think twice now maybe, have we gotten materials around copy.
00:38:42
Speaker
Sure. All right. So like, hey, these are phrases we say, these are phrases we avoid. Now we end up figuring all these things out because we're writing copy for them. And they're like, no, we actually don't say it like that. And I'm like, kind of thinking to myself, you know, it'd be nice if there was like a document somewhere. Yeah.
00:38:58
Speaker
it outlined that kind of stuff. So do you have any suggestions for creating brand voice guidelines and kind of where should those live and what should be a part of them so that you know, even when you hire contractors, they know how to represent your brand and maybe even as a guide for when you're writing a social media caption, you can go back to that and look at that caption through the lens of these guidelines that you've written.
00:39:22
Speaker
And again, for visual brands, it's typically logo, submarks, fonts, colors, you know, those are the sorts of things you'll have in these guidelines.
Brand Voice Guidelines & Cohesion
00:39:30
Speaker
What are the sort of things that you would have in a brand voice guideline?
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that brand voice guidelines are so important, like you're talking about when you are outsourcing something. Anytime you're outsourcing something, even if it's to a VA, like you want them to be able to speak in your language for sure. So I love that you mentioned that. And I also think that it's really important for you to have those brand voice guidelines too. Just anytime that you are
00:39:53
Speaker
Like you're talking about wanting to do a rebrand or something like that too, just to give people an idea of where you started and then you're going to be able to build upon that too. But as far as what you would actually put inside the brand voice guidelines, I usually start by saying you should have a clear idea of what your mission is. Some people call this your purpose, your why.
00:40:12
Speaker
whatever you wanna call it, but having a very clear mission statement, whether it's one to three sentences usually, I usually say that that's a really clear way for you to know how clear you actually are on your mission. Again, like we're talking about, if you can condense it down to that amount and be able to describe all of the things, whether it's what you do, who you are, who you serve, how you do it, your specializations, all that stuff in a sentence or two,
00:40:38
Speaker
you're going to feel probably pretty good to go there. But in addition to your mission, I usually say have your mission, core values, and then some people will call like this your USP, but also just talking about your differentiator. So what is it that makes you stand out specifically? We talked a lot about positioning. How is it that you want to position yourself in the marketplace? And some of this goes in comparison to some of the top competitors that you have either in your area,
00:41:01
Speaker
or just in your niche as a whole. So I think that can be helpful to think about. Another thing is I think it's very helpful, especially when you're outsourcing something and somebody is doing something on your behalf to make sure that you have your audience demographics and psychographics. So demographics are things like age range, gender, you know, some of those specific kinds of things. But the demographics only go to the surface of
00:41:23
Speaker
who your person actually is. So I love being able to focus a little bit more attention on the psychographics type of stuff about what is their ideal day? Where do they like to shop?
00:41:32
Speaker
What are their strengths? What are their motivations? What are their weaknesses? How do they like to collaborate with people? All of those types of things can put inside the brand voice guideline too. And then the last things are very specific to voice in terms of what your tone is. So if you want to add a little bit more information about that. And then lastly, like you talked about, put those words that you really love, the words that you totally want to avoid and any key phrases or tag lines or those sorts of things that you want to make sure that you always lead with too.
00:42:00
Speaker
I can't tell you how much I would appreciate if our clients would provide us with that information on the till agency side for sure as we dig into doing ad development for them and trying to connect with people. With that said, I should say about all of our clients give really, really great feedback. So it doesn't take too long to get to a good spot. But I just think that more companies should put as much effort I think into these brand voice guidelines as they do the visual guidelines as well.
00:42:28
Speaker
But when we work with a client on Web design who has worked with a copywriter, there is definitely something special I think about those websites because you have really all of the pieces coming together and really working together in an optimal way to get whoever the target visitor is to take the action that you want them to take. So we certainly appreciate copywriters. So thank you for everything that you do so that we don't have to do it.
00:42:53
Speaker
right? So that we're not sitting there struggling with our clients trying to get them to write a paragraph. Yeah, no, I feel the same way. And I think what's so fantastic and you know, one of the things I love most about my job too is being able to work with designers kind of like you guys too. And just being able to see how beautiful it is when all of the brand development plus
00:43:13
Speaker
the website design plus the website copy when all of that is coming together at the same time and especially when those collaborators can all have that like open communication between each other to make sure that everything is done in the best interest of the client. Those are always my most favorite projects and they're always the ones like you're talking about that get the best results because everything is creative cohesively.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate your time today. Where can people learn more about you if they're interested in working with you or interested in following along? Where should they go? Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to my website, which is just self titled, it's Kayla Halitz.com. And then you can find me on Instagram with the same name Kayla Halitz. And I believe it turns out if you Google what copywriter for creatives or copywriter for photographers,
00:43:56
Speaker
If you Google website copywriter. Oh, yeah, that's it. That's website copyright. That's got to get some serious search volume. Life's not too bad with that. Yeah, right. And I just think again, so if you're looking for a copywriter who has at least a basic knowledge of SEO, then you got to check out Kayla. And when I say basic, I mean at least a basic knowledge because obviously she knows what she's doing if she's ranking for website copywriter. So thank you again. And as always, the show notes will be at Davian and Krista.com. And thanks for everybody's time.
00:44:30
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.