About this column
Business basics for brand creators. Because keeping up with the details shouldn’t derail your big dreams.
I meet a lot of new clients with this dilemma: which comes first, the design of my new website, new copy for my site, or “branding” (whatever that is).
It’s the classic chicken-or-the-egg debate: which comes first? What’s the best strategic place to start? And if you start with the “wrong” element first, will it mess up everything else?
I love it when people ask these questions with an open mind. Because, truly, there is a best place to start.
Assuming you’re working with experienced creative professionals who understand content strategy, truly want your project to succeed, and don’t have too much ego on the line (because your creative project is not a p*ssing match to see which creative has the best idea), there is a best flow for bringing a business brand online.
First, understand the business you’re in (or want to be in).
Who are your customers/clients, what value are you offering to them, and how do you deliver that value? Get clear on your Brand Proposition (also called a Value Proposition) and your Unique Selling Position (USP). And yes — no matter what you do and who you are, you do have competitors (other alternatives in the market your customers could choose instead of you). Have a premise of what makes you different from your competitors.
Contrary to what commonly happens when solopreneurs and microbusinesses approach creative service professionals, it’s NOT the job of your copywriter, your web designer, or even your branding specialist to help you figure out what your business is really about. It’s your job, as the business owner, to be clear about your business before you approach. As creatives, we take our clues from you, the client. If you give us insufficient or off the mark input, what we create for you won’t serve your goals (or help you make money) six months or a year from now, and then you’ll want to (and need to) reinvest in “branding” all over again, from scratch.
Second, have an idea of what your Right Person — your Most Likely to Buy client — would respond to in a brand.
Your brand is not all about you — even if you’re a “personality brand.” Your visual brand identity, and the way you message your brand conversation, has to appeal to your Ideal Client.
I’ll use an extreme example to illustrate this.
Say you’re a well-to-do 47 year-old man living in Bali who prefers minimalist design, likes to garden, and is particularly partial to the colors walnut and green. You self-identify as a Thinker. Your Top 3-5 Voice Values are Depth, Intimacy, and Accuracy. But you’re in the organic, sustainable baby clothing business and your Ideal Client is a young American mom with limited disposable income who self-identifies as a Healer. So who do you design the brand for? Yourself, or your very-different-from-you Ideal Client? (Note: the answer is NOT always to change your business so you’re serving people just like yourself, as discussed toward the end of and in the comments on this post.)
Third, put your branding insights down on paper. And/or hire a branding specialist.
You don’t have to be “right” about your first instincts about your brand. You do have to have some ideas, and get them out of your head and into some sort of order before you approach a creative professional. Then be prepared to have them re-explored, finessed, and re-worked in service of your business goals and brand objectives.
Put your Brand Proposition, your USP, what you know about your Right Person, and your hunches as to color palette and other design ideas into an outline or a summary you can give to a copywriter for guidance and inspiration, or use your outline or summary to complete the intake questionnaire your copywriter gives you.
If you’re really stuck on this part, this is the time to work with a branding specialist. (In case you’re curious about The Voice Bureau, this is the type of person we work with best.)
Make sure you vet your specialist. What credentials or (more importantly) experience does this person have that earns him that title? What other projects has he worked on? Do you like the looks of the sites she’s worked on?
A branding specialist will help you get clear on what your brand is about, who it’s for, and why it will be meaningful to them. Most likely, you’ll walk away from your work with a branding specialist with some kind of Creative Brief, PDF, or other written document that can guide your decision-making about copy and visual brand identity.
Fourth, find and hire the right copywriter.
Don’t just hire the first copywriter you follow on Twitter. Take your time to get some referrals from people you know (whose judgment you trust), to follow up with clients featured on the copywriters’ praise page, to read those copywriters’ sales pages and get a feel for their process and rates (if published), and to check out their portfolios or samples. It may sound obvious, but if you don’t like the writer’s writing style on their own blog, sales page, or in their samples, chances are you won’t like what they write for you. Yes, a good copywriter will write your content in a way that will appeal to your audience, not necessarily hers, but if you doubt the talent or the chops of the writer at first blush, that’s a red flag.
Many microbusiness owners choose to write their own copy. That’s a great choice for some people. Others will choose to work with a copywriter to make the process feel surer, smoother, and easier — and of course, so they can take advantage of the copywriters’ experience with helping many other business owners launch their brand online.
Here’s how to know if you’re ready to hire a copywriter to write your website or other marketing collateral:
- the thought of writing your own web copy makes you gag, cry, or fall asleep;
- you really struggle with putting your thoughts into words on the page;
- you have lots of ideas but struggle with organizing them;
- you’re willing to invest time, energy, and thought into the intake and revision process, but are willing to take your hands off the actual writing and let the copywriter do her thing;
- you have the money to hire one (figure that experienced professional copywriters charge at least $250 for a single page of copy, and up to $1000 or more for specialty pages such as sales pages).
As stated before, the copywriter’s job is to organize, structure, and express the ideas your website needs to convey. His job is not to help you figure out what your business really does or who you really serve. The copywriter can only work with the clarity you give her. If you don’t have clarity, neither will she. Copy written without adequate clarity results in low conversion (i.e. people won’t buy what you’re selling, no matter how great the sales page ‘sounds’).
The copywriter will do her own intake based on her internal process. Usually this will take the form of a questionnaire or an interview. It’s helpful to give her the Creative Brief or outline of branding points you already have, but be prepared for her to ask you a few questions you may not have thought of already.
Now, you’ve heard the saying form follows function? This is entirely true with a business website. The web designer generally follows the lead of the branding specialist and/or the copywriter in creating a visual design that will support what the content needs to do to help your offers convert.
Most Voice Bureau clients are in the process of bringing a new brand online, or reiterating an existing brand. We suggest that once the copywriting project is underway, the client then begins to approach web designers, or lets us matchmake her with one we know, like, and trust.
Fifth, find and hire the right web designer.
In this day and age, there’s no need to go to a web designer and a web developer separately. Web designers should also develop (i.e. build and code) your site, or should seamlessly outsource the development so that you’re none the wiser.
As with vetting copywriters (see above), vet your web designer. When you contact her, tell her you’ve already worked with a branding specialist or are currently working with a copywriter and you do have a content plan for the site to share. (Content plan = what pages make up the site, which pages appear in the main navigation menu as opposed to being linked to from other pages, and what’s the most important thing for the site visitor to do on each page.)
The web designer’s job is to create a visually pleasing, user-friendly virtual home for your content to live. She has the ability to see what layout(s) would best support your content and your buyer’s journey through your site. She’s essentially a problem-solver. If you hire a great web designer, you can trust her to see things you can’t see about the way your site needs to look and function.
Her equally important job is to make your brand memorable through telling your brand story visually.
So the best process flow for bringing a business brand online is: 1st — branding, 2nd — copywriting, and 3rd — web design.
If you put design before branding and copywriting, you run the risk of building a visual design that doesn’t support your business goals and brand objectives, doesn’t appeal to your Right Person, and isn’t the right ‘house’ to support the goals of your content.
If you put copywriting before branding and design, you leave the most important elements of your business in the hands of a copywriter, who may or may not have the business development skill set to support you in designing a brand conversation that works.
If you put ‘branding’ last, you run the risk of building your entire business on an unstable foundation — one that’ll cost a pretty penny to redo a year down the road after your first ‘brand’ isn’t connecting or converting. (I put ‘brand/ing’ in quotes here, because every time I’m approached by a prospect needing help with ‘branding’ immediately following the launch of a new website, I know that somewhere along the line there’s been a profound misunderstanding of what branding is and where it comes into the picture.)
At The Voice Bureau, we offer all three services under one astute roof — so you can relax and let the process unfold all around you.
No need for a siloed approach, where you as the client have to toggle between different creative pros, making sure all the I’s are dotted and the T’s crossed. That’s our job.
Need help with a project of your own? Learn more about how we work.
In the comments, would you share with us:
Your experiences with the chicken-or-the-egg debate when it comes to branding, copywriting, and web design. Did you start with the wrong piece and end up with a jumbled mess? (Trust me: most of us have been there!) How did you find your way back to brand clarity?
(Image credit.)
Hello, you.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree 110% with this and I think this is a HUGE problem in our industry. Everyone wants a site as beautiful and as clear as say yours, but they aren’t really ready to have it. It also goes with that myth that a beautiful website = more clients, more popularity, more prestige — this is also a no go. You gotta know who you are and what you are about before you’ll even LIKE what a designer will create for you.
I’ve worked in all three areas and I think copywriters and designers get it the worst BECAUSE everyone skips the branding part and then the copywriters aren’t stylists and interpreters, they end up creating something from scratch out of bits and pieces of what the client THINKS they want and then 3-5 months later they go to another designer wanting a new site that feels more “me.” GAH.
Haha, can you tell I am passionate about this?
I think there is another essential step here and it’s called the testing phase. It’s a website you put online yourself based off of reading and researching and screwing up. People always spend SO much time on clarity and thinking about it and going through the long design process when I think EVERY business needs a few months to not be polished, to screw up and to get a sense of what their brand actually is through engagement. You also get some teeth in the online space and you aren’t so reliant on other people right off the bat.
That way, they’ve done a lot of the exploration work on their own and the branders, the copywriters and the designers are able to help because she knows EXACTLY what she wants.
Thanks for this Abby!
I think EVERY business needs a few months to not be polished, to screw up and to get a sense of what their brand actually is through engagement. You also get some teeth in the online space and you aren’t so reliant on other people right off the bat.
Shenee, I think this is great advice and absolutely what I’d advocate for someone still exploring what he or she wants to do. So much better to start small, simple, and grow organically than to invest thousands in building a castle you won’t want to inhabit in 6 months!
and then there is the branding thing — which is a whole other issue — the word itself is extremely problematic because most people think a website is a brand so often times people use “why” and that’s not really a good fit either, so often times it takes people a long time to realize they have a branding problem and as a result, most people won’t realize it UNTIL they have already spent thousands on a website and by that time they are more concerned with revenue generating investments, so it’s this crazy loop thing.
Very true again! I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding as to what a ‘brand’ really is, and even branding specialists define it a bit differently from one to the other. Client education is where it’s at!
I LOVE this post and was waiting since yesterday (when you posted about it on FB) to read it. I absolutely agree with everything you lay out so clearly here. I think many times we don’t do the (very hard and essential) work of identifying our business mission and who our ideal client is and just want to get a website up so that we can “launch”. Ultimately, as you explain, this experience fails because the foundation isn’t there to hold the brand and the work up. I am currently going through this process myself. Initially, I tried to just create the website, but then stopped that work to go back and build a solid foundation. I’ve done that and now the project of creating a website is exciting, inspiring and energizing instead of a source of frustration and serious anxiety.
When I did the work around creating my brand strategy (and the very important and deep work around understanding who my ideal client is) I could clearly see what my business structure and my best work should look like . I gained deep insights into how be in service to my ideal client while also empowering and serving the generational artisans I work with. I’ve finally come to a holistic understanding that drives every aspect of my business — from the collections I create, how I sell them, how I reach my ideal client and how my brand looks and sounds.
I love the articles you post here and am looking forward to all the offerings you will be launching this year! (I almost never comment on blogs, and this is such a long one, but I really, really, LOVE this post and will be sharing it with my entrepreneur friends!!!)
Thank you, thank you, Sapna! I appreciate you breaking your own almost-never-comment-on-blogs practice to participate here. I’m glad to hear that allowed yourself to pause mid-way into a branding project and regroup and get clarity. You and your business will be so much the better for it, as I’m sure you’re already seeing.
I recently completed a Skillshare course on Creating a Brand Strategy (which was an awesome course that I got so much out of because I had done a lot of deep, deep work around my ideal client already). The skillshare course really helped me to distill down the core values of my brand in a succinct, direct and powerful way — in one word, CLARITY!! My project for the course was recognized here: http://redantler.com/sapna-mehra/
Would be awesome if you were to teach a skillshare course too!!! ;)
Thanks for the link, Sapna. I look forward to checking this out. Believe it or not, I’m not yet familiar with Skillshare. Thanks for the tip!
I don’t think I could agree with this post MORE. It’s bang-on — actual business decisions need to happen before anyone else is hired. And graphic design is information design. So information like content, business goals, customer information… those all help laser-focus the design to so much more meaningful.
You nailed this, bravo!
And graphic design is information design.
YES! Never heard it said this way before. Thanks for the encouragement on this one!
Now, looking forward to the release of your e-book so people can get a foundation in shaping all of this into a viable online business.
Well written! I would also add, sit down with your creative professional before you hire them to just meet…not talk about the project, not review portfolios…I think most of that stuff can be done online or on the phone. But instead sit down face to face (or web cam to web cam) and see if this is a person you can work with, collaborate with, and most importantly find a person you can disagree with professionally and calmly. It’s in those disagreements that innovative work is born.
Good suggestion for those creative pros who build pre-contract face time (or phone time) into their proposals. Not all of us do. Great point about navigating tension in the working relationship!
This post was extremely helpful and very timely for me! I’ve always wondered which of these processes should come first, and in exactly which order they should occur, and now I know. : )
I used the exercises in Michael Port’s book, “Book Yourself Solid,” to get clear on my USP and my ideal client — it took days to do those exercises, but it was well worth it to get clear on my “brand.” And I’ve just initiated the process of working with a copywriter, because, even though copywriting is what I do, I’ve found it really challenging to write copy for my own site that captures who I am and what I do for clients. Go figure! Next up in first quarter 2013 will be site redesign. So without realizing it, looks like I got everything in the right order. What a relief.
One of the best experiences I had when I worked in Advertising & PR was this idea of a “creative brief.” We created these documents all the time when working with clients, and I try to do something similar with the clients I work with. It occurs to me after reading your post here that I need to work up a creative brief for my own business. And since I’m about to start work with a copywriter, now would be the time. : )
Thanks for a valuable, info-packed post!
Hey, Kimberly! —
Yay! Feels so good to find yourself on the right track, doesn’t it? Congrats to you on being right in the middle of lots of great stuff unfolding.
I find the Creative Brief essential to helping set the tone, goals, and intentions of a project. I use them at The Voice Bureau for translating a client’s brand voice to my team of writers and to web designers we refer to.
Every time you post I can almost feel my shoulders drop. Clarifying always, but also confirming. At times teaching me, other times articulating my intuition. What you describe here is exactly I’m how I’m operating, but only after a lot of time-consuming culling and collating of the confusing mish-mash of sometimes contradicting information around the web and putting it in logical order myself. (And okay, I had no intention of all that alliteration, but we’ll just go with it anyway. ;) ) It’s SO nice to have it said so clearly in one place and to find a brand that speaks to my soul so clearly. It’s relief at a deep level. YOUR brand reboot is rockin’ it, Abby. Lead on.
Susan — thanks! Clarifying and confirming — yep, that sounds like what I intend to do. Impressed (but not at all surprised) that you cull and collate contradicting info for yourself so that it makes sense to you.
Very well said. It’s nearly impossible to make a website that will help a company succeed, to really live up to a company’s brand and carry its message in the right way, if you have no idea what the brand or message are. Sites get built, rebuilt, and rebuilt again, often burning through way more than their budget, if they don’t begin with a clear vision and voice.
I do feel that a couple of important steps are missing, though.
Web development – you say that the designer should handle this, and it shouldn’t be a concern. In my experience, quite often it should be. It can make a big difference to the future of the site over its lifetime whether you get a static site or a CMS (which is a whole separate topic). Even with a static site, it’s useful to have a bare ugly wireframe upfront before spending a lot of time and money on design effort that may have to be scrapped and redone. A designer can do that. But if your site will be a CMS or webapp with dynamic content, it’s especially important to work out the data structures, functionality, roles, and workflows since the design will have to work with those. It’s much simpler if the site is first built ugly (using CMS defaults) but complete, with all elements in place and functioning, before doing graphic design. Then the designer has everything to work with (and it’s dynamic, so they can experiment with it and see where they need to allow for that in the design). Also, that way they can see the defaults and which parts will really need some work (things that designers often don’t think about, especially if they aren’t familiar with the CMS).
Unfortunately, it’s very often done backwards. A graphic design will be done first, without taking the CMS functionality into account, and without considering dynamic content. Then there are huge delays and expense overruns redoing the design to fit the CMS and tearing apart and rebuilding the CMS system to fit the static design. This is even worse than designing without copy and images. And it negates the value of a CMS if you can’t edit your content without breaking the design.
The other, and perhaps most important step (other than branding) is the lifecycle plan. How are you going to grow and improve your site? A website often needs to be fed, cared for, and taught well over its lifetime to succeed. This means adding and updating content regularly over time, but also measuring its success rates, doing split testing, making adjustments, and optimizing its effectiveness based on how people respond to it.
All too often, sites are stillborn – the project is considered done when the site is deployed. The owner has no real plan (or budget) to make use of it. It sits and stagnates for months or years, never becoming effective before it eventually gets thrown out and the owner starts all over again. In order to get the most out of your site, a lifecycle plan should be a key consideration, done before development or design, and possibly even before copywriting.
I once read someone describe a website as being like an employee that is on the job 24/7. You should plan to train them, improve their skills, and address any shortcomings in their performance if you want them to become experienced and good. Otherwise they’ll always be like a new, untrained employee on their first day at the job.
Hi, RST —
I’m back to work and happy to receive this comment! This is a great point:
Even with a static site, it’s useful to have a bare ugly wireframe upfront before spending a lot of time and money on design effort that may have to be scrapped and redone. A designer can do that. But if your site will be a CMS or webapp with dynamic content, it’s especially important to work out the data structures, functionality, roles, and workflows since the design will have to work with those. It’s much simpler if the site is first built ugly (using CMS defaults) but complete, with all elements in place and functioning, before doing graphic design. Then the designer has everything to work with (and it’s dynamic, so they can experiment with it and see where they need to allow for that in the design). Also, that way they can see the defaults and which parts will really need some work (things that designers often don’t think about, especially if they aren’t familiar with the CMS).
I was assuming that most web designers today (at least ones who have been practicing in the last 10 years) have a holistic feel for the guts of a website (CMS) and take flexibility and functionality and UX/UI nto account while they’re designing. Thanks for reminding us that this isn’t always the case.
I appreciate your awesome point about the lifecycle plan of a site. I’ve worked with very few clients who are concerned with how their site (or their copy) will work for them beyond a year or so. I personally think it’s because I work mainly with microbusinesses, many of whom are new(ish) to business and/or self-employment, and they don’t have the bandwidth (yet) to be future-thinking when planning this element of their site. Encouraging clients to think (way) beyond initial site launch is a big part of a being a responsible creative service pro.
Glad you’ve contributed here. Thanks!
Thanks, Abby! This is very helpful and a great place to send clients for information. This issue is difficult and confusing, especially when starting out.
Many times, we’ve gotten potential clients come to us for a website design without their business basics ready first. Things like not being sure about their business name, branding, or even products or services. These are the types of things a designer can’t typically help with unless they coincidentally have experience in one of these areas.
On the other hand, we’ve also had clients come to us with a long list of specifications about what exact colors to use, other sites to copy the look of, etc, which can also be like putting the cart before the horse. Especially if they are based on personal preferences rather than sound decisions based on the business’s ideal customer, like Abby mentions.
Designers basically come in two flavors: technicians & problem-solvers. For the first kind, you need to have a close to 95% idea of what you need done along with all of your materials. This type works with best with checklists, very clear visual guidelines, a list of all of the features your site needs, your navigation structure, etc. You can also expect that you will need all of your website content (text, photos, graphics) in hand before starting. This is the type of person you want if you know exactly what you need, but just don’t have the skills or time to do it.
Problem-solvers, on the other hand, work best when being given problems, not solutions. These are the type of people to look for when you need more of a consultant around the psychology of the design, solidifying your website’s strategy, telling your story in a compelling way, and when you need a partner rather than extra “hands”. This type tends to be more serious, more experienced, and more expensive. But, they can help you find solutions you never even dreamed of.
I would say for us, that many of the issues we have with clients is that they don’t know yet whether they need a technician or a problem-solver. It causes conflicts and misunderstandings that are unnecessary. You can’t have both at the same time unfortunately, so you need to be really clear on this upfront.
As far as finding a designer who also does development, that depends. Most designers nowadays should know how to do front-end development with is generally sufficient to code designs into CMS’s like Wordpress and such…however, more advanced functionality (like e-commerce) will often require a backend developer or an advanced javascript developer.
I hope this is helpful. Sorry for the length! :)
Hey, Naomi —
Love the length of your comment! Thanks for being thoughtful and adding value to this conversation.
This is great:
Problem-solvers, on the other hand, work best when being given problems, not solutions. These are the type of people to look for when you need more of a consultant around the psychology of the design, solidifying your website’s strategy, telling your story in a compelling way, and when you need a partner rather than extra “hands”. This type tends to be more serious, more experienced, and more expensive. But, they can help you find solutions you never even dreamed of.
Yes, yes, YES. I’ve worked with designers who market themselves as problem solvers but are actually, in truth, technicians — and that presents a problem when negotiating uncertainties.
I’m committed to partnering with web designers who are problem solvers when referring clients!
A thousand thanks, Abby! I wish I’d had this elucidation of basic marketing components 3 years ago, when I started trying to expand my business beyond word of mouth. Professionals offer parts of this list (like copywriting, web design) but nobody talks about the big picture of how different elements function as a whole. (Nobody except you and one other person, out of thousands of marketing and branding ‘experts’.)
Janina, you are so welcome! Glad you found some clarity around the subject here. Hopefully it’ll be valuable as you move your brand forward.
Is there a way that we can make this required reading for every business owner? If I was creating a syllabus for people embarking on the (often overwhelming) process of laser-focusing one’s business, branding and marketing, this would be the prerequisite text.
I especially love this:
The web designer’s job is to create a visually pleasing, user-friendly virtual home for your content to live. She has the ability to see what layout(s) would best support your content and your buyer’s journey through your site. She’s essentially a problem-solver. If you hire a great web designer, you can trust her to see things you can’t see about the way your site needs to look and function.
Yes, yes, yes! Great design is all about the content within that design. Without a clear brand identity and content, the design process is rather like playing tour guide through a city you’ve never been to without even a map in hand. When a client tells me that they’ve already worked with (or are currently collaborating with) a branding coach and writer, my excitement automatically increases by about 3000%. It’s a joy.
Hi, Allie —
It’s so good to hear that you enjoy working with clients who have already worked with a branding coach or specialist. Sometimes I worry about stepping on the toes of a designer when I send my clients off with a Creative Brief, because some designers have their own internal process that they prefer to employ.
I’m so glad this post landed with you!
Hi Abby
I loved this article. Thank you. When I was starting out I’ve seen first hand the consequences of putting web design before copywriting. It doesn’t work. You need to map out your content strategy first.
I also believe it’s important to consider the search engines before you write too. The reason I say this is because you need to decide what pages to write. It’s about theming your site. If you’ve structured your site correctly, you’ll have a cluster of pages optimised for each keyword phrase you want to target. It would also result in a much more logically structured site.
You must consider your message.. and your keywords, when you structure your website. If you structure your website without thought to the content, you’ll end up trying to squeeze the copy into an inappropriate structure.
This results in much better navigation and a user-friendly experience for your visitor.
Hi, Shae —
You’ve said it! I wholeheartedly agree with this approach and only wish the mention of “SEO” or “search engines” or “keyword strategy” didn’t land with such a thud with values-based solopreneurs. As you and I know, there’s nothing sleazy or scammy about paying attention to what search engines need in order to adequately crawl and serve up your content to your Right People who are searching. Part of my goal for The Voice Bureau in 2013-2014 is to do more client education around this essential aspect of being part of the online conversation. :)
Well said Abby,web copywriting and content are one of the pillars to successfully marketing your products and services online. Make your customers feel comfortable, display a secure server logo, picture, your contact information or a guarantee.These can make your site look credible and the business; legitimate.
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