If you're an online entrepreneur and you have amazing products and amazing services, but when it comes to the marketing, specifically the copywriting, you just go blank. You don't know what to put in your document that's going to end up being your opt-in, your sales page, your follow-up email sequence. It just gives you a headache. You don't know where to begin. Then this episode is just for you. We're going to simplify everything about copywriting, and I'm going to help you improve your copy by adapting it to your marketing strategy. In this week's Resilient Faith Online podcast, episode number 17. Welcome. I'm Marissa Shatterick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm a digital strategist and certified copywriter, but more importantly, a woman of faith. In this podcast, you'll find a biblical perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we let our faith shape our work to create positive change online. To connect with our private Facebook group of faith-based online entrepreneurs, go to Marissa Shadrick.com forward slash faith. I am a Ray Edwards certified copywriter, and learning about copy transformed my business literally. I'm so glad I made that decision. Many of you know that I started way back just writing articles, wanting to improve the craft of writing. I imagined myself in the future writing a book, but I really wanted to cut my teeth on just writing articles, publishing them, and I figured if I can get them published in magazines, I have a good chance of writing a good book. And I ended up in that journey, and it followed with five years of blogging, really sharpening my skills and really coming to the conclusion that the next step for me beyond public speaking was to really understand what you write when you market something. And that led me to want to understand copywriting. There's different types of marketing and it's called different things. You'll hear a lot of jargon out there, but I'm going to put it in the most simplistic way as possible because I can't do complicated, right? And I'm going to break it down into three. The three that I'm going to focus on is brand marketing, content marketing, and direct response marketing. If you're an online creator, an online business, and you sell any type of information or educational-based products, you're going to be dealing with brand marketing, content marketing, and direct response marketing. Now, the overall premise of this podcast is copywriting is an essential marketing skill, and we're going to start first with what is copywriting. Now, when you think of copywriting, it's words that will entertain, engage, or convert a reader. It's persuasive writing. So let's break this down. What does it look like when we're talking about brand marketing? So we want to make sure that whenever we're starting to write something, we want to have this in mind. We want to think what is it that we want people to believe? What is it that we want people to feel? And what is it that we want people to do? And depending on the type of marketing, we're going to adjust it to be able to fit one of those three. Do we want them to believe something? Do we want them to feel something? Or do we want them to do something? And that's when copy changes a little bit. Now, for brand marketing, that is more of a long-term strategy. That's really positioning yourself in the market for what you want to be known for. Now it can start with your website. Some people even call it website marketing, but I'm going to include that because the website really tells someone what you're all about, what you stand for, what you provide. And that can include your logo and the culture and so forth. But brand marketing is more the long game, long-term strategy. It creates awareness and you want to make sure that you are remembered and then recognized when you're online. So it's not necessarily to get that click, it's to bring that awareness. Why do you want to build that awareness and be remembered and recognized? Well, you're trying to build trust and you're trying to build your reputation so that you can get more engagement. It doesn't necessarily have to have a call to action. And we see a lot of this in many brands. When you think of Apple, when you think of Disney, when you think of Nike, all of those often have brand awareness. They don't necessarily say, click here or buy this yet. They're not necessarily creating a campaign for you to go buy the latest phone or the latest computer, but they'll have other messaging that is simply about the brand and what they stand for. Apple has done this in the past, Disney has done this, and so is Nike. So they want to position themselves. Apple wants to position itself as being the best in electronics. Nike wants to position itself for being the best in shoe wear. So when you see anything that's brand marketing, and sometimes we see this maybe on commercials, even a website. Oftentimes a website, although you might have an offer on your website for them to download, it really is brand marketing. You're really telling them who you are, what you stand for, how you serve people. You might have a hybrid where you have maybe some type of call to action to download a free resource, but it really is bringing that awareness and beginning that journey with people. There's a great example of brand marketing. Marriott, they have a studio. They created this film. It's about 17 minutes long. And it is just simply made for entertainment, but they have a definite message about their culture, about who they are, their positioning themselves as far as hotels as being a five-star hotel, excellence. And they convey all this in a very subtle way and story form with this movie called Two Bellmen. It's made extremely well. And this these two bellmen who are sort of at odds with each other come together when they are threatened by the Purple Panthers. So this whole video is funny. They have Hollywood stuntmen, it has an incredible cast. It includes Henry Simmons, who was in the Marvel Agents of Shield show. They have top actors and it's well done. And it's all for your entertainment, but it is explaining how Marriott rises up above the fold. And at the very end of the movie, it simply has a quote. JW Marriott. That in essence is brand marketing. And it's memorable and it they'll be easily recognized when they see Marriott logo. They'll remember this video. It creates awareness and it also says something about their culture, how they treat their employees, how their employees are dedicated to serve all the guests at the hotel. So if you want to know more about brand marketing, I did an interview with Mike Kim. That's episode seven, what it takes to build a thriving personal brand. He has a book out. I really highly recommend you listen to that episode. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can see how this plays out with your individual brand. Now, getting back to copy, when we're writing copy for brand awareness, it's going to be different than the next category, content marketing. Now, content marketing is probably what you're most familiar with. That provides helpful information, valuable content that solves maybe a small little problem or answers a question. It can be a blog post, it can be articles, it can be videos, it could be a live stream, it can be an infographic. I have some infographics that I've been posting on my Instagram, and you can see some of those. You just go at Marissa Shadrick and you can find my Instagram account and you can see what I post on there. But it can also be a free webinar. This podcast is content marketing. It's offering a resource for you. So it increases credibility when you start writing content marketing and it solves a small little problem and answers a question. It builds trust. It appeals to your audience and it grows your email list. I will have a free offer at the end of this podcast in the show notes that I'm going to offer you that'll help you maybe with your marketing. That's all content marketing. That's exactly what we all do. Day in and day out, every week we create content to be able to serve our community. And typically, content marketing has a call to action to download some free resource. So the copy is going to vary depending on what it is that you do. If it's a blog post or an article or a video, you can create themes for this. You can create maybe QA sessions where you answer questions. Even in this podcast, I have a place in the show notes where you can record a question so that I can answer it in a future podcast. Content marketing helps build that relationship and engagement. So the copy might seem a little different than something that you would see for brand marketing. Now, the final one is direct response marketing. Now, direct response marketing is a short-term campaign with a call to action. It can be the sales page or the checkout page or the opt-in page, the email sequences. It's all aimed to be able to get a response from the audience. It's measurable. We can tell how many visitors are there. We can tell how many clicks, the open rate. There's a direct message and there's one call to action. What is it that you want them to believe, feel? And in this case, what do you want them to do? Click here, download now, register, join, buy, schedule, whatever it might be, you're asking them to take action. And there's typically some urgency in that call to action as well. Direct response marketing is really important when you're trying to launch a product or a service. It needs to be crafted very well. And you need to be able to know your target audience when you want direct response marketing. But like I said, it's usually a short-term campaign. So while content marketing and direct response marketing attracts and converts prospects into customers, or maybe to your email list, depending on which it is, the brand marketing keeps them as customers. The brand marketing, the culture, the way you treat your customers, that's where you begin to build that loyal following. But let me just say this you need both. You need brand marketing and you need the content and direct response marketing. You can't just do one without the other. And you need to work on your website too and make sure it says exactly what you want it to say and how it represents you well, because this is your reputation. The one thing I will say that all of them have in common, and I will make this bold statement that no matter what it is you're doing, whether it's brand marketing, whether it's the title of a little entertaining video clip, whether it's your headline on your website, whether it's the content you create every week, whether it's a campaign for direct response marketing, the one thing that they have in common is that you need to be sure to start with an engaging headline. The headline is what's going to start everything. If you don't get them at the headline, you're going to lose them because they're not going to read the rest of it. That's the one thing that's really important. And I'm going to share a tip from one of the great copywriters, Eugene Schwartz. And he just connects the headline with client awareness, whether it's cold audience, whether it's a warm audience, or whether it's hot traffic. So he says this, and I'm going to read it just the way he phrases it. He says, if your prospect is aware of your product and has realized it can satisfy his desires, your headline starts with the product. I'll read it again. If your prospect is aware of your product and has realized it can satisfy his desires, your headline starts with the product. The second one is if he is not aware of your product, but only of the desire itself, your headline starts with a desire. I'll read it again. If he is not aware of your product, but only of the desire itself, your headline starts with a desire. So let me read that one again, the last one. If he is not yet aware of what he seeks, but is concerned with the general problem, your headline starts with the problem and crystallizes into a specific need. The headline is so super important. And what I recommend and was recommended to me when I was going through my copywriting certification with Ray Edwards is to write lots of headlines. That starts the ball rolling. When you write lots of headlines, you get into that inner stream, and I would say at least 50 headlines, and you begin to see things from different angles, different perspectives, and all of a sudden something surfaces and it begins to take shape. And then you can take a lot of it that you've researched, because copy means you've researched a lot, you begin to assemble it. And that's something that Eugene Schwartz always says too, copy is not just sitting down and writing something, it's really the process of extensive research and assembling the message together. But the headlines are really, really important. And the nice thing about doing that exercise is when you write those headlines, some of those can become subheads as well. So I just want to offer you a little freebie that I have on how to create effectively generating content to build your online visibility. I'll put that in the show notes for you. If you want to take a look at that, you're welcome to it. But I want to leave you with this thought about copywriting, whether it's brand marketing, content marketing, direct response marketing. I just want you to just keep in mind that words are very, very powerful. Words can tear down and words can build up. So I want to make sure that as you build this craft, and it is a skill that you can build and cultivate and develop, I want you to consider the fact that the people that are reading it, we don't want to use that gift or the magic of copywriting to manipulate. We don't want to embellish, and we certainly don't want to lie. If there's, you know, 50 slots available, we don't want to say there's only three slots available if it's an untruth. We just lean on God and we commit the outcome to God and we trust God for the outcome. And we are going to be as honest and straightforward about what we're offering because people deserve that. They deserve the truth. The copy that we write shouldn't be manipulative and it shouldn't, it shouldn't embellish. So in closing, when you serve the right people and you know who your target is, then you do a lot of research so that you can give them the right message. So when you have the right people and the right message, you're gonna have the right outcome. It's a good match. So use your skills in the meantime as you're writing for different types of marketing strategies to encourage along the way. That's a beautiful thing to use words to encourage people. So as you're creating content, encourage people. If you put some type of post on Instagram and you're writing copy for that, encourage them. Leave them with some nugget that they can digest immediately and maybe it'll improve their day. Because, like I said, writing can build up and writing can can tear down. But I think as we write copy, it's important to realize that we have an opportunity to encourage people. So until next time, if you're listening to this podcast and you found it helpful, I would love it if you would go to Apple Podcast and give it a rating and a review. I get lots of people that email me or let me know that they're enjoying the podcast, but it would really help if you would actually go to Apple and do that. That would give me a larger reach, and I would be so thankful, so thankful, so appreciate it. So until next time, I'll have everything in the show notes. You can watch that wonderful little video I've referenced earlier about the two Bellmen, and you can also access the free resource. And I will talk to you soon. Until next time, take care. If you found this podcast helpful, then subscribe from wherever you're listening today so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. So keep them coming and share this with a friend. For more free content, go to Marissa Shadrick.com and remember keep cultivating resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.