Welcome to the Before You Build Your Website Series, where we talk to a few people in the design and marketing industry about some of the overlooked aspects of good web design. From copywriting to visual branding to finally building your site, this blog series will give you an inside peek at all the value packed into a powerful marketing tool: your website.
Monica Schrock is a marketing consultant based out of the Pacific Northwest. With over a decade of copywriting and marketing experience, she strives to help brands and people find their voice, and create a business that truly speaks to who they are and what they want to accomplish.
Marta Gravier: How did you get your start in copywriting?
Monica Schrock: When it comes to writing, it’s something I have always enjoyed since they taught us how to write stories in second grade. This was always something I like to note that I definitely was naturally inclined to do, which was cool. So I always enjoyed it. When the opportunity came up, I seized it. When I went to university, I played basketball. And they were like, you gotta choose a major, a focus. And I thought, oh my gosh, I don’t know what I want to do.
I went the logical route and thought, well, business school seems like the most beneficial to going out in the world and getting a job. So I decided, I’ll go to business school. And then when they asked, what do you want to do at business school? I was like, what? Marketing sounds like the least dull situation. I basically went down the list and thought, this sounds more fun than the other options. So I went to school for marketing.
There’s a lot that goes into marketing when it comes to copywriting, like marketing messaging, brand messaging, websites, copy and any campaign messaging. So it was just something I started really early. And even though it’s not something they necessarily pinpointed in my schooling, I came out and said, I like writing. I like marketing, I love telling people why something’s great and why they could choose this and what their options are. So I just kind of went with it.
I got thrown into a lot of situations where copywriting was a part of the equation and just made sure to seize those opportunities when I got them. So I was pretty much self taught in a way where I just learned in a trial by fire type of way, and seized the opportunity to do things pro bono when I could. I strengthened that copywriting muscle until it was something that I was able to say I had experience in because I’d done it.
Marta: You talked about brand messaging, and that does lead into the next question. A big part of copywriting is based on brand messaging. Can you speak to the importance of messaging when it comes to achieving a business mission?
Monica: That’s funny that you said brand messaging leads into the next question, because I feel like brand messaging leads into everything in your business. So the importance of messaging is, I don’t even think I can put it into words, but I’m going to try, because that’s what we’re doing here. But a lot of the time, brand messaging can seem like it’s something that is optional, or maybe something that you only do if you’re a big brand, or brands that we see commercials for and things like that. But every business is a brand, whether we’re being intentional about it or not. Brand messaging is a foundation that all your copywriting, marketing messaging, and social media, email, and website copy comes from; it’s the core of everything you do.
And what it does is makes those supplementary items outside of the brand messaging flow so much easier. If you don’t have a brand messaging guide in your business, you should definitely have one. That’s the only “should” I’ll ever say. Imagine just knowing what to say, because you’ve established the foundation of your brand so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s there for you to talk about your purpose, your mission, your vision, everything that you’re in business for and to relay the value, the results, and the reason you’re here to help the people you’re here to help and even who those people are.
The importance of brand messaging to achieving a business mission is that the people you want to help, or your ideal client, will know what you’re about. They’ll know how you can help them and they’ll know what you offer to do so. And brand messaging speaks to all of that: why you’re different, who you’re helping, what it is that you do. I work with a lot of introverts, or a lot of us who are more mission-driven. Sometimes that means we are less inclined to do the hard sell. A messaging guide gives us this really warm container to be able to pull from when we’re feeling those sweaty palms when we have to talk about what we do, or what we’re selling. You always have this deck that is beautifully laid out, that tells you exactly what you need to say. So you don’t have to sweat it, you can just let it roll off the tongue super smoothly, in whatever you do.
Marta: What might people see in a brand messaging guide, whether it’s taglines or when you think about giving people the right words, how do you package it up in a brand messaging guide? But what does that look like for you?
Monica: That might differ from person to person. Generally, there are core items that are always in there. Like I said before, the mission of your business, a really concise, one to two sentence mission, the vision for your business over the next like several years or decades, whatever you’re looking at. It could be your unique selling proposition, which is jargon for what makes you stand out, what you might do differently, that makes people want to choose your company for something over what else is out there.
There could be an elevator pitch in there, your core values, which are really important for you to live throughout your business. If you’re hiring people, it’s important for them to know what your core values are, so they can live those core values within your business. There would be a breakdown of who you help – your ideal clients. There would be your brand voice, brand tone, brand personality, the greetings that you use for your audience, and taglines. That’s pretty much what’s in my version of a brand messaging guide.
You could see how much content there is that you can just pull like an elevator pitch when you need to say something. Or when someone’s like, “what makes you different?” You can pull from your unique selling proposition. And when anyone writes for your brand, they have this guide. Your messaging and your communications match across the board in your marketing or outreach, and people can recognize your brand when it’s out there in the world.
Marta: Why should businesses both big and small care about copywriting when it comes to their marketing strategy?
Monica: That’s a great question. Copywriting sometimes takes a backseat and even brand messaging takes a backseat to visual brand identity and design and color palettes and typefaces, which I get, because that stuff’s more fun, right? In general, it feels like a bigger deliverable. It feels like it’s real. Usually when I work with visual brand people, it’s the brand messaging that can spark ideas for your visual brand identity. It’s the copywriting that can spark ideas and the flow of the website for your web designer or developer.
Words and messaging are the foundation of visuals, in my opinion. When you’re creating all these wonderful platforms or materials or web pages, you’re spending a lot of time and probably money to do so. You want the writing on those pages and those materials and those platforms to do some of the work for you when it comes to selling people on what you have to offer.
So I think for me, why businesses both big and small should care about copywriting is that copywriting is strategic. It will do some of that legwork for you so people can see your things and want to take action without you having to do so much hard convincing.
Marta: Who do you love to work with and why?
Monica: I love working with people who are mission-driven, just like you, Marta. I think I always attract people who have a bigger purpose to what they want to do. I always want to say that there’s no shame in wanting to make money, because it’s something that we all have to do here in this system we exist in. But I do like it when people have a bigger vision and mission, and they really want to change people’s lives, or their community, or the city they’re living in, or even the world with what they’re doing.
I also love working with people with a little bit of rebellious nature, people who like to do things differently, to see their industry and are willing to challenge the status quo a bit and just be like, I’m gonna do it my way. And that’s who I end up attracting, because that’s who I am. They get excited to actually implement the marketing strategy or talk about what they have to offer to speak their messaging into existence.
Marta: And that’s why that’s why you’re the mellow marketer – you do things a little differently.
Monica: Yes! I always tell people marketing and branding are essentially exercises in repetition. My goal is to help people book out their services or sell their stuff without doing the most because I don’t think we need to do the most. I know people like me and the people I attract don’t want to be working 24/7. And when we recreate and recreate and recreate and keep making content that’s different and possibly confusing to our audience – that’s us doing the most and it may not be as effective.
I love creating a marketing strategy and frequency that people can do, with messaging that they can pull from, so it’s just easy. You can keep saying the same things because that’s what will get people acclimated, familiar, and interested with your brand.
Marta: What advice would you give to business owners for starting out and building an online presence?
Monica: I think as a true marketer, I would say, think about your foundation outside of social media. And I think this is probably the perfect interview to do this, because I think there are so many accessible ways to create even a simple website these days. It’s really important to have what I like to call a mothership that isn’t Instagram or another platform that you don’t control, because that platform could just disappear at any moment. Creating a space online, that is yours, is really important.
Also, feel out how you want to spend your time and what makes sense for you, because there’s a lot of advice flying around out there about where you should be and how often you should be there. These are all the things that are helpful to do because diversifying your marketing is more sustainable. Generally, if we start adding free value and doing free content all the time, we’re going to burn out super fast. So think about what you want to be doing in your business, and start on the foundation of what you want to be doing so you don’t get burned out by things that other people are telling you to do.
I think another third piece of advice I would give is if you’re going online to do an online business, I would keep following a bunch of business people or coaches or people who do what you do to a minimum. Follow a few that you like, but if you get too many voices coming at you, it fills up your head with things that you’re not doing, and often doubts. And if you don’t have that stuff in your face, overwhelm doesn’t tend happen as much. This is another thing that helps me – follow people I like, but not just following a lot of business and marketing people, because it really stifles my creativity.
Thank you for tuning into the Before You Build Your Website series! I hope you found this interview as helpful as I did. If you haven’t already, sign up for my newsletter to get notified when the next part of this series is released.