75: Top 6 Copywriting Trends for small businesses in 2024
Happy New Year, sweet friend!
Because it's the New Year, it's the perfect time to celebrate and be grateful for the wonderful things that happened over the past year.
It's also a time to reflect on and grieve some of the heartbreaks we might have had in 2023, and it's a good time to think about the coming year.
That's why in this episode of ill communication, I'm sharing the top six copywriting trends you need to know for 2024.
If you keep these trends in mind and really lean into them and embrace them, it will help you lead the field, stand out, and make your marketing more effective.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
The marketing trend that people are craving right now
How you can be bold in your voice and values this year
Why you need to stop shying away from sharing your offers
Why 2024 is all about playing the long game
The strategy you need during your pre-launch phase
The power of storytelling
So there you have it! These six trends are what I believe to be the big rocks of copywriting and marketing in 2024. You can apply them to all kinds of content and marketing you create.
Get support with your copywriting in 2024. Check out the Joy of Copy Club, or book a call to chat about working 1:1 at www.kimkiel.com/copyclub or email: hello@kimkiel.com.
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[00:00:03] Welcome to ill communication, copywriting tips and sales strategies for small business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist, and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts, and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Hello and Happy New Year to you, my sweet friend. I really hope you had a wonderful holiday season, no matter how or what you celebrate. And because it's the new Year, it's the perfect time to celebrate and be grateful for the wonderful things that happened over the past year. It's also a time to reflect on and grieve some of the heartbreaks we might have had in 2023, and it's a good time to think about the coming year. And that's why I'm sharing the top six copywriting trends You Need to know for 2024. If you keep these trends in mind and really lean into them and embrace them, it will help you lead the field, stand out, and make your marketing more effective. These trends are based on the results I'm seeing in my business, among my clients, and among my peers in the industry.
[00:01:47] So trend number one is relationship marketing. Gone are the days of fast transactional clicks and immediate sales. People are craving connection, conversation, relationship. I read a stat in Forbes magazine that 76% of consumers are concerned with misinformation from artificial intelligence. We are so skeptical about dealing with chatbots. We're getting tired of the run of the mill AI generated copy. So the more human you are in your copy and marketing, the more you will stand out. Relationship marketing aims for conversation over transactions, so infuse more personalization into your copy. And by this I mean personalize your message to your reader or audience in your emails. Maybe refer to the ways people have purchased from you and interacted with you. Use their first names sometimes in your emails, and I want to encourage you to think about how you can be more personal with your community. Can you have personal reach outs to people who connect with you on LinkedIn or Instagram, use voice notes or loom videos to create a more personal human experience and interaction with your subscribers and followers. Create a two way human connection through your messaging and marketing. As people become more skeptical and jaded about the ads and marketing we see, we're going to rely on our personal networks for referrals and recommendations. I've joined a women's networking community this year, and it's because I see the increased value of having people help promote my business, connect me to the right people, and host collaborative events.
[00:03:36] And I love making connections and referrals for others too. In such a digital, disconnected world, lean more into relationship marketing and really try to humanize your communication and have authentic interactions with your audience. Trend number two is to be bold in your voice and your values. Oh, look, I is not going away. Unfortunately, most of the AI generated copy and marketing we're seeing right now is still pretty crappy, pretty beige, and pretty boring. So it's such an easy lift for you to stand out in the market by being bold in your voice and being bold in your values. Share about what you stand for. Talk about what you stand against. Your voice and your values make you human. And we connect human to human, soul to soul. Yes, your unique voice and your values may repel some people, but they're probably not a great fit anyway. But when you're bold in your voice and your values, you will magnetize the right clients to you. And if you're uncertain about what your voice is or how to own it or how to share it, I'll direct you back to episodes 71 to 73, where I shared a mini series, All about Brand Voice. I'll link back to that in the show notes. Now it's kind of related, but trend number three is be bold with your offers. Please don't shy away from talking about and sharing your offers, selling what you do.
[00:05:19] In order to stand out and sell your offers. You gotta believe in them and be bold about selling them. You know, when you first fall in love with someone and you can't stop talking about them and you want to shout it from the mountaintops? That's the energy you need to have behind your business and services in 2024. Be bold in how you talk about your brilliance, your gifts, and your offers. Don't shrink, don't shy away. And I'm not saying always be selling, but always be sharing about who you are and what you do and why you're freaking awesome. Fall in love with your offers and others will too. Now I want to shift gears for a minute here, because 2023 was tough for a lot of us personally and financially, especially with financially tough for me too. My revenue did not grow as I expected it to in 2023. In full transparency, it shrank back to where it was in 2021. Don't get me wrong, I still did very okay and generated a lot of revenue compared to a lot of people who were hit hard by these tough economic times. But I still drastically pulled back on some of the things I was investing in and buying. And I know others have too. And it's probably going to take some time for everyone to bounce back. So trend number four is play the long game. Anticipate longer sales cycles. The people who come into your orbit are likely going to need more time, more touches, more engagements to make a buying decision.
[00:07:05] This means you need to be talking about your offers and services a lot more, so people know what you sell and then they can buy when they're ready. I advise my clients to be transparent about pricing, so be open about your pricing so people can get on board with it. The sooner you share the price and prove the value, the more time they have to enroll themselves into buying your product or service. People are going to need a few more touches, interactions, experience, and more time to build, know, like, and trust and maybe even to save the money up to invest with you. Which leads me into trend number five, the importance of a pre-launch runway. Since people are going to take a little longer to decide to work with you, you want to be extra strategic in your prelaunch phase of your promotions and launches. The golden oldie days is spending two weeks to promote a masterclass or a five day challenge, where you make your pitch and expect people to buy isn't really working anymore. People need more time, so you want to be more strategic with that pre-launch runway. Now the expert in pre-launch and anticipation marketing is Brenna McGowan. I've taken her course on creating pre-launch plans, and they are incredibly effective at walking your prospects strategically through a shift six weeks in advance of your big launch to bring them on board with your offer.
[00:08:41] In the pre-launch phase, you bust objections, shift beliefs, you prove the effectiveness of your program so your audience is wet with anticipation and more ready to buy than if you just gone straight into your conversion event where you pitch your offer. I definitely recommend following Brenna and a link to her in the show notes. And if you want a custom pre-launch plan for your next big launch to strategically help seed your offer and pre enroll your audience, I can help you with that. So please reach out to me. Now, I got to say this. There are always exceptions to the rule. And depending on how warm your audience is, how attuned to them you are, you will find people who will be red hot and ready to buy anything you sell. But it's probably because you've already played the long game and invested in delivering a lot of value building connection and reciprocity with your audience in advance. And now finally, trend number six is storytelling. And let's be honest, like storytelling will never go out of style. We are wired for story, for drama. It's why we get sucked into so many great storytelling series like Welcome to Wrexham, The Morning Show, succession or Ted Lasso, just to name a few of my personal favorites. And as more marketers use AI to generate content, the more important it will be for you to tell your story's personal stories and stories about your clients.
[00:10:18] And these don't need to be hugely dramatic stories either. They can be a little personal story about your daily life, the customer service experience you had at a hotel, the silly thing your kid said the other day, or how you spelled the green smoothie down your crisp white shirt. All these stories, big and small, will be critical to helping you stand out in your market because they help you connect with your audience. Build relationships. Your voice and your values come through your stories. So please share more of your stories in 2024. So these six trends are what I believe to be the big rocks of copywriting and marketing in 2024, because you can apply them to all kinds of content and marketing you create. Whether you're using texting and messenger bots to communicate, creating short form videos on YouTube or TikTok, or investing in your email list or creating long form content, keep these six trends at the top of your mind. Relationship marketing having a bold voice and bold values. Being bold about your offers, playing the long game, investing in the pre-launch runway, and storytelling. And if you need help with this in 2024, I'd love for you to consider joining the Joy of Copy Club, because this will be infused through all of the work we do in this coming year. The Joy of Copy Club is open to any business owner who wants copywriting to suck less.
[00:11:53] Now, don't we all want that? You get access to time saving formulas and frameworks, bite sized mini trainings, and access to live copy coaching every single week. If you're curious about the copy club or you want to claim one of the remaining seats for 2024, hop on a call with me or shoot me an email. I'd love to help you nail your copywriting and marketing, and make sure you get these trends rocking for you in 2024. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll see you next week. Hey, would you like to hang out with me and other women business owners doing rad things in the world, just like you? Then you should join the Joy of Copy Club. It's a group copy coaching experience where you receive access to all my sales templates, writing prompts, and copy recipes so you're never wondering what or how to write. Once a week, you can pop into my open office hours, where we'll live, review and edit any kind of copy you've written. Seriously, you can bring a social post, an email, or even some edits to your home page, and I'll help you optimize it before you send it out into the world. The Joy of Copy Club gives you the tools and the confidence to get your message out there so you can grow your impact and your revenue. Find out more at Kim Kilcommon Copy Club. I'll see you next week.
Resources Mentioned
Listen to the Brand Voice Mini-Series:
Additional Resources
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