OK, I don’t have five reasons to give you - just one. Marketing copy should never lie. There are thousands of daily blogs and clickbait tweets that offer you five/ten/twenty/fifty tips, keywords, “strategies”, and/or products that will allegedly help you write better marketing copy. My problem is that most are built on hyperbolic language that will have very little to do with what you are actually selling. Unless you are selling actual snake oil, it seems unlikely that your company, product, or organization is “shocking,” “epic”, “game-changing,” or “in a class of its own.” If it is, kudos - but I suggest the #1 rule for marketing copy is that it must be truthful.
Hyperbole, grandiosity and bullshit may have worked in the pre-internet world (for a while, anyway), but people are now one click away from discovering the truth about you. Hyperbole may sell your product once, and “180 Power Words” may earn some clickthroughs, but will those clicks accomplish your goals? Will you earn referrals? Will you build trust? Will you get repeat customers? If social media traffic is your end-goal, by all means go for it - but traffic is meaningless for most if nobody is retaining your message.
For most brand communications, empty hyperbole won’t provide a sustainable return. Lies and insubstantial rhetoric rarely work in business or in politics beyond the impulse buyers. Isn’t it preferable to be truthful at the outset? Wouldn’t it be better for your growth and the achievement of your goals if you were able to reveal a resonant, compelling truth about yourself, rather than share some flowery words that don’t actually represent who you are, and what you do?
Truth is a difficult thing to articulate, which is why there is so much crappy advertising. In fact, I frequently argue that bad advertising is what gives my chosen profession such a bad name at times. There are scores of lazy marketers and bad advertisements out there, which sucks doubly for those of us who are trying hard to do good work, say good things, and actually accomplish the marketing goals of our clients.
Truth can be hard to tell, and there aren’t many shortcuts to getting there. It takes a deep understanding of your brand to be truthful. But, when you have revealed the core truths about your brand, you also reveal differentiators that competitors can’t touch. Everyone and everything has core elements that are theirs alone, and I don’t care what you’re selling - those unique attributes will resonate with someone. Guess what? That “someone” is what we call “your target audience.”
I cut my teeth in the beer business, and I often say that if you can pull truthful differentiators out of any particular brand of blonde lager, then you can do it for anything. Of course, most beer marketers focus on “lifestyle” rather than “product” - or worse, they’ll focus on attributes that have nothing to do with the core product itself. What does being “the coldest” have to do with beer quality? Congratulations to the consumer on their refrigeration choice, but that beer didn’t chill itself - so why is it a selling point? It obviously works on some level because it keeps coming up again and again, and it’s an approach that may achieve the brewer a quarterly result, but it’s a rickety platform to build a brand upon.
I tried very hard in my early days of beer marketing to get past temperature and/or bikinis to tell a better story about our products - one that was competitively unassailable, and one that would sell more of our product, without being completely embarrassing. I was sometimes successful, and often not - especially when shitty marketing agencies and/or senior managers got in the way (including some dough-heads who believed that “women don’t influence beer purchases”). I had to write strategy and ad copy about “ice cold taste” (whatever the hell that is), but I also had the opportunity to tell some unique truths, and I still see those messages resonating behind those brands over a decade later. I’m also pleased to say that the “ice cold taste” copy hasn’t been used in years - and you won’t find those clips on my C.V.
My point is - there is a better way. Your brand already owns core assets and attributes that will tell your story, tell it well, and you will own that story - and ownership of any segment, no matter how fine, is a critical advantage. You can’t appeal to everyone, and trying to do so is nuts - so focus on the elements of your specific segment that you can truthfully own, and beat the hell out of it. Make your communications hyper-compelling to your target audience, be truthful, and you will win their loyalty for life when your truth matches their experience.
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