Like it or not, being accessible online is the easiest way for people to find your services or your work.
Design, content marketing, SEO, and growth hacking are all parts of a complete digital marketing plan, but copywriting is the glue that ties it all together. Copy gives your design meaning and lays the foundation for your content marketing, SEO, and growth hacking. Writing better copy enables you to convert more readers into customers, and we wanted to provide a guide that would give you an advantage when writing copy both on and offline.
What is Copywriting?
Copywriting is one of the most critical elements of any and all forms of marketing and advertising. Copywriting consists of the words, either written or spoken to try to influence people to take an action after reading or hearing them.
Copywriting is the art and science of strategically delivering words that get people to take some form of action.
To truly excel as a copywriter, continue reading. Or you can save some time and hire me! (Andrew). Keep it simple for yourself!
What to incorporate in writing your copy
Make sure it has a captivating lead.
The following are all headlines or leading sentences that draws attention to new products, experiences, and eateries.
“Bad things happen to the husbands of Widow Elkin.”
"Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel among the stars, or ride in a space shuttle and be a part of NASA's famous astronaut team?"
“Ryan Lochte is the dumbest bell that ever rang.”
What's common among each of these leads? They make us want to read the next line.
There's an adage in copywriting that's credited to copywriter Joe Sugarman, which roughly states that the purpose of the headline is to get you to read the first line. The purpose of the first line is to get you to read the second line, and so on. In summary, if your first line doesn't immediately captivate your readers, then your copy has failed.
Keep in mind, writing a captivating lead can also lead you down a black hole. Avoid doing these with your leads:
Clichés and terrible puns
Long, rambling sentences
Straining to be clever
Being boring
Avoid technical terminology
End-user perspective. Tachycardia. PWA. Targetable Scale. Ideation. Evidence-based approaches. Blue-sky thinking.
The list goes on.
When writers struggle to articulate what is truly special about their company, product, or service, they sometimes fall back on jargon or buzzwords to emphasize their point. This can usually backfire and produce the opposite the effect of turning off a potential client or customer. The fact is, good copywriting doesn't need flowery words to resonate with the reader. Good copywriting should speak to the reader in human terms.
Trim the fat.
Good writing gets to the point and that means cutting out excessive phrases, and rewording your sentences to be more direct. How do you rid excess words from your writing? It's half practice, half knowing where to trim the fat. An article from Daily Writing Tips provides one of the most effective summaries on precise writing. Some tips include:
Limit verb phrases: For instance, turn "The results are suggestive of the fact that" to "The results suggest."
Change wordy phrases to single words: You can change "in order to" into simply "to." Or in another example: Change "Due to the fact that" into "because."
Drop vague nouns: Phrases formed around general nouns like "in the area of" or "on the topic of" clutter sentences.
As a general rule of thumb, if you can afford to trim copy fat without losing the meaning of a sentence, you should do it. Push yourself to strip down your word count. Turn an 100-word homepage copy into 50, then push yourself again to make that 50-word paragraph into 25 words. But remember, it's not about deleting words so much as it is about making sure every word counts in your copy.
I'll keep this short: Words matter. Period. Every time you sit down to write a story, web page, movie script, or other content, you have the opportunity to use words to reach people. Make sure you make the most of that opportunity.
Originally posted at neotypewriter.com