ESOP Marketing: 4 Ways a Professional Copywriter Can Improve Your Website Messaging
One of the most common struggles our clients have is getting their website messaging just right. It's almost never a matter of not having enough to say…it's most often a matter of simply being too close to the business. Business owners and leaders just know too much about their businesses!
This is particularly true of companies with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), where employee-owners tend to have much stronger connections to the business than traditionally structured companies.
It can be overwhelming for business leaders to try and distill what they know about their business into effective and informative copy. Some ESOPs give up and don't even try while others just toss it all out there and hope it sticks. Neither is an effective marketing strategy. What is an effective marketing power move is getting help from a professional copywriter.
How a Copywriter Can Improve your Website Messaging
1) Hone Your Message.
Professional copywriters help ESOPs hone and improve their messaging by cutting through the clutter. They are skilled in researching, selecting, and organizing relevant information to create the desired messages, which change from customer to customer, page to page of the website, and from platform to platform (email vs. website vs. social media). Professional copywriters can remove industry jargon (especially true for ‘ESOP-speak’) and rephrase concepts into layman's terms that customers understand and react to. They know how to drive customers to act, get potential talent to apply, develop consistent messaging, and how to integrate that messaging into the overall marketing strategy.
2) Generate Brand Exposure.
ESOPs are like any other business in that they thrive when customers do business with them. But first, those customers have to actually know about the business. What if you're so focused on the internal messaging and communications of your ESOP that you neglect your external messaging? Customers won't know about your business and you miss out on potential new customers or clients.
Professional website copywriters can help improve brand exposure in several ways. We've already mentioned honing the message. Another way they help improve brand exposure is through search engine optimization (SEO). A skilled SEO copywriter will infuse keywords and terms into the website copy in such a way that the message is on-point, the keywords are accurate, and the content supports your marketing goals. Taken together, these three elements all support good SEO practices, which will boost your online profile, improve your rankings on search engine results pages, and, ultimately, help your brand connect with customers.
3) Educate on ESOPs.
We love ESOPs here at HeiPro Digital. We think the concept makes tremendous sense and love the fact that employees at all levels of the organization have some "skin in the game" so-to-speak. But there is a huge swath of the population who have no clue what an ESOP is. Why does that matter to your ESOP? Because being an ESOP is a competitive advantage in your marketplace!
Modern consumers are more cognizant than ever about where their money goes. We've gone well beyond a simple "Made in the USA” preference. Today, consumers want to know who they are doing business with and what kind of business it is. There is a strong preference to support local businesses, family-owned companies, and organizations that treat their employees well. Many ESOPs are all this and more, but they fall short in promoting themselves or making this information visible. A professional copywriter will look at your business from an unbiased, outside perspective, identify all the factors that make it unique, and turn them to your advantage in compelling copy that educates, informs, and (most importantly) converts.
4) Attract Talent.
Just as being an ESOP can be attractive to consumers, it can be attractive to talent too. Like consumers, people are more and more interested in working for a place that is different. They don't want to be a nameless cog…they want to work for a place that treats them well, that cares, or that is doing work that they find important. Again, ESOPs fit the bill. We've seen too many ESOPs neglect to market themselves as an ESOP to their talent pool and we think that is a big mistake! Instead of informing talent about their ESOP benefits in the interview or upon hire, use those benefits as part of your recruitment strategy. A professional copywriter can turn your ESOP status from a benefit of working for your company into a reason to work for your company. The ESOP status becomes the draw, not an afterthought.
Do You Do You Need to Improve Your ESOP's Website Messaging?
If your website messaging is out of date or underperforming, reach out to me (Alex) or Elizabeth. A quick website audit will help identify areas that need fresh content or that could be improved with help from a professional copywriter.