Marketing is like being a well-paid juggler—you’ve got social media in one hand, marketing in another, and somewhere above you is your content strategy.

And that’s just to name a few of the marketing channels you’ve got on your plate. With all of these platforms, it can start to get really hard to keep your copy consistent.

We all know how important copy is—it’s the thing that defines your brand and moves prospects through the Customer Value Journey. But what happens if someone reads your copy on social media, opts-in for your offer, and is met with totally different copy? 😧

Leads won’t be able to get past the “trust factor” that’s essential for them to trust you enough to buy a service or product from your business. Just like any other relationship in our lives, the customer to business relationship requires consistency.

Here are 5 questions to make sure you’re creating consistent copy across all of your platforms.

Question #1: Does this copy abide by my brand guidelines?

Your brand guidelines are the blueprint of your brand. They’re going to help you figure out what’s a “Yay!” and what’s a “Nay…” in your copy. Brand guidelines are going to be a huuuuge (serious emphasis on the huge here) help to keeping your copy on brand, especially if you have a larger team.

Think of them as the SOP for writing your copy and content. If your copy doesn’t check every mark that it needs to on your brand guidelines then it’s going to create inconsistency across your platforms and funnels. Use this checklist to make your life easier—if the copy can check every brand guideline on that list, green light it! If not… ask yourself—what needs to be changed?

Question #2: Would my customers expect this from me?

Your copy is your brand voice. After engaging with your business on social media, through your articles, or your emails your prospects are going to be used to hearing a specific voice from you (ahem, think of your brand guidelines). They want to keep hearing that voice…not unexpectedly read or hear a new brand voice.

If your brand voice is always fun and playful, but you come out of nowhere with a call to action that’s formal and professional, your prospects are going to be confused—and a confused person never buys. In a confused state, your lead is feeling hesitant. By reading or hearing copy that they would expect from you, your leads are in a confident state—and a confident state does buy.

Question #3: Would my customers recognize me if I took away my branding?

Let’s take away your brand colors, fonts, and images…can your customers still see you? This might be tough for some brands, but it’ll help you make sure your branding is consistent from socials to products. If the only thing holding your branding together is your color palette and fonts—there’s a big problem. While this stuff is all icing on the marketing cake, your copy is the actual cake. 🍰

If your copy is so on point that without any other clues about your brand your followers, subscribers, and customers can tell it’s you, you’ve nailed it. You’ve made a delicious cake that people want to bite into…and you’ve added the icing on top that makes people even more excited to grab their fork.

Question #4: Does this fit in with my other copy?

Every brand has a different way of asking their followers to engage with their content, their website visitors to subscribe to their newsletter, or their subscribers to click on the offer. Each time you write copy for a new offer you want to look at it in the context of the copy you’ve written for your other offers. Is your new copy so far off that your customers are going to feel like they don’t know you as well as they thought they did?

New copy should fit in well with the other copy you have live right now. This isn’t to say that you can’t A/B test your copy and do something totally left-field—as long as it’s still coming from the same field. Think of this in the context of your brand colors…if you usually brand with a medium-color green but you want to highlight something with a lighter green, that makes sense. Your leads and customers aren’t going to be totally off-put. But, if you decide to scratch the green and go with yellow…they’re going to be asking—is this *insert your company name’s* website?

Use these questions to make sure your copy is consistent from the first touchpoint all the way through to the day your customer buys your highest ticket offer. This consistency is what your relationship is built on—so make it a strong foundation.