In this Issue
🧱 Concrete Words
🚏 Make Strategic Choices
🗓️ Brand’s Best Before Date
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🧱 Concrete Words
Hello Fresh became wildly popular during the pandemic with their meal-in-a-box service. They provided all the ingredients and recipes you needed to feed your family for a week.
What I love most about this brand is the precision of their copywriting. Look at this statement, “Meal Kit Delivery Service. Farm-fresh, pre-cut ingredients delivered to your door.”
Every word is packed with visual meaning. You can see this statement in your mind and know exactly what they deliver. It’s brilliant!
This is an example of “concrete words.” Concrete words are words or phrases that stimulate visual images in your mind.
When you can, write your brand messaging with concrete words. It makes your brand stickier and more memorable.
“Abstract words” like innovative, world-class, or artisanal are more common in marketing. They sound good, but they lack a visual anchor.
When you can’t picture a word in your mind — like innovation — it becomes wholly forgettable.
To make your marketing sticky, replace your language with concrete words. Paint a picture in your customers’ minds.
Learn how in our upcoming course, Simple Clarity.
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Join me for a 2 week course on Simple Clarity. You will learn how to create super clear and effective branding for your business. Use promo code: CLARITY25 for 60% off! Act soon because this offer expires on January 15. Click here for more details.
🚏 Make Strategic Choices
Struggling with your brand messaging is often a sign you need to make choices. The words aren’t your problem. It’s your brand positioning and strategy.
When your strategy is clear, the words come easily.
Simple Clarity asks three key questions:
- Category: Your brand is…
- Service: Your brand does…
- Market: Your brand serves…
Clarity requires making choices. Who does your brand serve brilliantly and how do you serve that niche brilliantly?
When you target four or five market segments, have multiple product and service lines, and run customer surveys to figure out what your customers really want… you’ve got a branding problem! No wonder finding the words to describe your brand is a challenge!
Sticky Brands make choices on who they serve and how they serve them. That’s positioning! They understand their customers’ needs, and deliver products and services that solve known issues.
If you’re struggling with the words, go back to your brand positioning. Do you need to make strategic choices?
🗓️ Brand’s Best Before Date
Brands have a shelf life. You can see the aging process every time you redo your website. For example, a corporate website needs to be overhauled every three to five years.
A website starts looking tired in the second year and dilapidated in the fourth. But the challenge with a new website project is it’s just the tip of the brand problems.
Your website is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. It’s easy to see when it’s out of date. But as soon as you start updating the website plenty of other branding projects start to pop up.
It’s a little like a home renovation. You start with your kitchen, and soon you're renovating the whole house.
If your website is looking a little tired and ready for a refresh, use this opportunity to revisit your brand messaging. Do you have the story and language that positions your brand and website to win?
PS. Don’t forget to sign up for the Simple Clarity course! Use promo code CLARITY25 for 60% off! 🥳
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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