Ok, so get this. Copywriting is undeniably important to the overall success of a marketing campaign or program. We know this.
Yet, most businesses don’t take too much time or focus out of their day on producing good copy.
This could be due to many things, whether it’s that fact that readers only consume 20% of a page (600 words of a 3,000-word article), or whether it is because the formulation and psychology behind copywriting is still a mystery, most organizations don’t put too much into it.
And according to the Content Marketing Institute, 73% of companies hire someone to do their content marketing strategy for them.
So, today, I want to help you with that!
What is Copywriting?
Copywriting is defined as “the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy or sales copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group to take a particular action.” – Wikipedia
Ultimately, it is the ability for you to put words together in a way that makes your product stand out and increase the desire for that product or the relative solution that it provides to the lives of consumers.
Sounds almost easy, right? All you have to do is ramble about the great things about your product, right? WRONG.
Consumers nowadays, and especially in the online marketplace, are becoming increasingly aware of “sales speak” as well as the agenda of companies.
Rambling about your product does nothing to inspire action without first inducing the reason why they (the consumer) should care in the first place.
“They won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Theodore Roosevelt
So, today we are going to look into the 5 best tips for creating better copywriting, and what you can do to implement them into your own marketing strategy or plan!
Without further ado, let’s begin!
Tip 1: Know Who Your Buyer Is
“Buyer” in this case is just a blanket term for your audience or the group of people you are trying to reach, whether you are actively trying to sell something or not.
Knowing who your buyer is in terms of a few key characteristics is going to be absolutely crucial to your success in creating good copywriting.
Let me give you a relevant, yet rudimentary, example to put my point across.
Would you feel motivated to buy a product if the message sounded like it was marketed towards babies? Or, really, anyone BUT you?
Probably not.
In this case, there is inconsistency among the brand’s message and the dedicated audience, likely because the brand created a message without first considering the audience that the message was intended for.
Unfortunately, this happens rather often. The brand will often create a message while keeping their own interests in mind and simply neglect the actual value and needs or wants of their audience, thereby presenting an inconsistent message to their consumer base.
So, how do you get over this? The answer is rather simple.
You need to define your audience very specifically so that it can act as a reference whenever you write your sales copy (or email copy) and keep your brand message on track and consistent.
In fact, this should have been done for you in your brand’s marketing plan. Creating a buyer persona or a “target market” of some kind is essentially the exact same thing as I am discussing here.
Keep in mind your key audience with the following points:
Interests/Hobbies/Passions: These things are called “new characteristics” because the internet allows for the gathering of people based on these interests as opposed to the “old” characteristics.
Age: You need to know what kind of language to use to contact, relate to, and or persuade your audience.
Gender: Although increasingly irrelevant in today’s world, gender still separates certain products into two very polarized categories. This may be a characteristic for you.
Location: Certain demographics reside in certain locations, this will give you a much more narrow field of vision with which to target your message.
Income: This characteristic will affect things like location and perhaps interests and hobbies. This will also help you describe the people who would willingly pay for your service because they have the ability to.
Family: In the case of young people, perhaps you need to target the decision-makers as opposed to the actual users of the product (selling toys to PARENTS and not children).
All in all, these characteristics will help you form a good basis on which you can develop a great buyers persona with which to narrow your target search and create better sales copy that is more relevant to the end decision-maker.
Tip 2: Copy Needs to RELATE
Here is one of the primary reasons why copywriting can’t be all about your product or service as if it were the answer to all of the world’s problems.
Your sales copy needs to RELATE to the consumer. Meaning that your audience needs to feel as though you are speaking TO them and not to “We” or about your own brand.
This is often one of the hardest things to keep in mind as you create your content, copy or otherwise, but it is integral to your success.
Start using the pronoun “you” and keep it that way. Tell a story in which you can relate a negative “now” to a beneficial “then” by relating to your audience’s problems.
Essentially, you want your audience to believe that you are a person, NOT a brand, and that you are merely explaining how you were in the same boat as the audience was, and you were able to fix it by taking action and using whatever product/service that helped you.
Your audience wants to know first and foremost that their concerns are #1 on the brand’s “to-resolve” list. And to do that, the brand needs to communicate that it recognizes those issues or concerns and that it can help annihilate them as it has done for others already.
Instead of a brand that writes about their product, wouldn’t you feel better if the brand wrote about YOUR specific situation and how the product can help?
Wouldn’t that spur you into action far more effectively than copy that stated mere features of the product and its “general” usage?
This is why tip #1 is so important when combined with tip #2. You must know who your audience is and what you are targeting before you can begin to relate their problems to your solutions.
Tip 3: K.I.S.S
Ok, this one is important.
Everyone has heard of the ever popular acronym K.I.S.S or “keep it simple, stupid” or “keep it stupid simple.”
Either way the principle is the same.
Piling your copywriting with too much information or hard-to-understand jargon will only reduce your conversion rate or your ability to lead the consumer to take action with your CTA.
Why was Steve Jobs so successful? Because unlike other MP3 manufacturers, he didn’t merely list off technical mumbo jumbo like “it has 4 gigabytes of storage space.”
No. That’s boring. Those are features.
Steve Jobs made things simple to understand by relating the features to results that benefit the lives of the audience.
Jobs said, “It’s 1,000 songs in your pocket.”
After all, it was true, and it was easy to relate to, easy to understand, and didn’t rely on technical knowledge that required special expertise or jargon to fully comprehend.
Keeping it simple is about avoiding anything and everything that is “Fluff” and is not necessary for your consumer-conversion process.
“Fluff” can mean too much information, technical information, jargon, or other info that your audience doesn’t need to spark desire and take action upon the product or service itself.
Too many extraneous details will only jumble up the mind of the audience, leaving too many questions unanswered. In fact, it can be rightly summed that the purpose of sales copy is to answer enough consumer questions to reduce their inhibitions of engaging with your brand.
If you leave them with too many unanswered questions, in any capacity, it is harmful to your conversion rates.
In essence, provide only what is absolutely necessary to spark desire in the minds of the audience without inspiring unanswered or irrelevant questions.
Tip 4: Quality
I know that words can slip through the cracks. In fact, I doubt that any single one of my blog posts is free from some kind of mistake, grammatically or otherwise.
That being said, you wouldn’t believe how many ad copies I’ve come across that looked like it was written by monkeys. And not well-trained ones, either.
Consumers expect quality. That quality is what tethers there trust and perception of legitimacy to a brand and that brand’s ability to provide services or products professionally.
And after all, all consumers want is an easy solution to their problems. Dealing with an unprofessional brand usually does not give the impression of easy or reliable.
In fact, according to RealBusiness, 74% of web-readers pay attention to the quality of spelling and grammar. Which is a lot of your potential audience.
Let me give you an example of copywriting that exhibits two distinct levels of professionalism and let me know which one you think will ensure the trust of the audience.
1: The truth was, my business was failing. Not because I wasn’t working hard, but because the world was moving to fast for my marketing team to keep up. That was when I discovered the amazing (and often free!) benefits of good copywriting. Nowadays, whether I am using on-site or promoted content, I can ensure the livelihood of my business and my profits also!
Or…
2: Yeah, my bsuines was failing. I worked hard, but the world moves fast so I can’t keep it up. That was when I discoverd copywriting techneeks that cahnges my bsiness sometimes for free. Now, even when i post to the website, or pay for ads, my business is cool.
I had a hard time writing that second one, to be honest.
Even then you can see how the logical flow and the professionalism just walk out of the door in that second particular example. Not just because of the spelling and grammar, but because there was so little logical progression and connection between ideas that it (likely) left you wondering what it was even about.
The good news? This is an easy fix.
Just keep at least 2 extra eyes on your content if you can. If you have the resources, try hiring a copywriter to proofread and gauge the logical flow of your copy! This alone will help you and your business create excellent content!
Tip 5: Understand the Placement of your Copy
The placement of your copy makes a HUGE difference to the nature of the copy itself.
For example, the way you relate to an audience and the natural demographic of Facebook is going to be entirely different based on the natural demographic of Instagram.
Facebook’s main demographic is people between 25 and 40, living in rural areas. Instagram hosts a younger generation: between 18 and 25 years old, and in urban areas.
Ultimately, the way you communicate to and niche your content to meet the experiences and demands of these people may be completely different depending on your message and offer.
Ultimately, the channel through which you have your copywriting seen is important in grasping the nature of your audience.
You wouldn’t target TikTok if you were selling to seniors, would you? That is simply NOT where they are.
That being said, the reasoning, the language, and the connectivity of your copy needs to match the formality of your promotional channels and brand message.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, writing good copy is about considering your audience in more unique and exact detail, and customizing your copy-language and promotional channels to reach those audiences!
Keep in mind the quality and professionalism of your content and how it matches your brand message! Keep the message simple and you’ll see amazing results!
Thanks for reading!
Work With Austin
-Austin Denison is a management consultant and coach from Southern California and founder/CEO of Denison Success Systems LLC. He is the author of The Essential Change Management Guidebook: Master The Art of Organizational Change as well as The Potential Dichotomy: The Philosophy of a Fulfilling Life, and, coming soon: KICK*SS Content Marketing, How to Boost Your Brand and Gather a Following.
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