Writing a copy is the art of crafting catchy texts to persuade a particular demographic. “A copy” is the written content aimed at converting impressions to clicks and converting clicks to high sales. Any form of writing that persuasively requests an action from your audience is called copywriting.
Aspect
Explanation
Definition
Copywriting is the art and science of crafting persuasive and compelling written content, known as “copy,” with the primary goal of influencing the reader or audience to take a specific action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or engaging with a brand. Copywriters use words strategically to convey messages, build brand awareness, and ultimately drive desired outcomes. Copywriting is prevalent in advertising, marketing, sales, and various forms of communication. It plays a crucial role in creating effective advertisements, websites, email campaigns, and more.
Key Concepts
– Persuasion: Copywriting aims to persuade and influence the reader’s behavior or decision-making. – Audience-Centric: Effective copywriting focuses on the needs, desires, and motivations of the target audience. – Clarity: Clear and concise language is essential to convey messages effectively. – Call to Action (CTA): Copy often includes a CTA, prompting the reader to take a specific action. – Brand Voice: Maintaining a consistent brand voice and tone is important for brand identity.
Characteristics
– Creativity: Copywriters use creativity to craft engaging and memorable content. – Research: Understanding the audience, product, or service is crucial. – Versatility: Copywriting applies to various media, including print, digital, audio, and video. – Impactful: Effective copy has a significant impact on marketing and sales efforts. – Adaptability: Copywriters adapt their style and approach to different projects and target audiences.
Implications
– Brand Perception: Copy can shape how consumers perceive a brand. – Conversion Rates: Well-written copy can improve conversion rates and drive sales. – Communication: Copy is a primary means of communication between a brand and its audience. – Reputation: Poorly written copy can damage a brand’s reputation. – Engagement: Engaging copy encourages readers to interact with content.
Advantages
– Higher Conversions: Persuasive copy often leads to higher conversion rates. – Effective Marketing: Copy is a cornerstone of successful marketing campaigns. – Brand Building: It contributes to brand identity and recognition. – Customer Engagement: Well-crafted copy engages and retains customers. – Versatility: Copywriting skills are valuable in various industries and roles.
Drawbacks
– Subjective: Effectiveness can be subjective, and what works for one audience may not work for another. – Competitive: The field is competitive, requiring constant improvement and creativity. – Time-Consuming: Crafting quality copy can be time-consuming. – Skill Development: Developing strong copywriting skills takes time and practice. – Adapting to Trends: Copywriters must stay updated with evolving marketing trends and technologies.
Applications
– Advertising: Copy is essential in advertising campaigns for print, radio, TV, and online ads. – Content Marketing: Content creation, including blog posts and social media, relies on effective copy. – Email Marketing: Engaging email copy drives open rates and click-throughs. – Product Descriptions: Copy is crucial in product descriptions for e-commerce websites. – Sales Collateral: Sales materials, brochures, and presentations benefit from persuasive copy.
Use Cases
– Nike Slogan: Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan is a classic example of memorable and persuasive copywriting. – Apple Product Descriptions: Apple’s product descriptions use concise and persuasive language to highlight features and benefits. – Email Campaigns: E-commerce companies use compelling email copy to promote products and drive sales. – Website Landing Pages: Effective landing page copy encourages visitors to take action, such as signing up or making a purchase. – Print Advertisements: Magazine and newspaper ads rely on concise and persuasive copy to capture readers’ attention.
Many companies, firms, and establishments venture into copywriting to persuade their existing customers and potential customers by delivering content that, first of all, catches their attention before anything else. A good copy will attract the audience’s attention, and it will keep it throughout to ensure many people finish reading enough to take the necessary action required.
During reading through the copy, it appeals to the audience’s emotion while justifying the price and making the potential customers understand that they are getting the best available deal (even if they are not). This appeal to emotion is significant as many purchase decisions are influenced by emotions rather than logic, and copywriting helps exploit this weakness in humans.
Copywriting is an art; it requires a lot of creativity to carefully combine words to grab attention while sounding natural and pressing the right emotional buttons in your audience, taking them beyond the stage of doubt without sounding like a robot.
Copywriting is used in various content types as you can reach out to people via several digital means. Through video scripts, YouTube video descriptions, Blog posts, Social media Flyers, Billboards, Email marketing, podcast descriptions, Website Homepage, Landing pages, “about” page, and many more media. It will bring about more impressions, engagements, conversions, and hence more revenue when done correctly. A well-written copy can improve your sales by more than 500%.
What Makes A Good Copy?
Correct Grammatical Construction
Whether you write your business copy by yourself or employ a copywriter to do the job for you, it must be error-free, and the grammatical construction is almost flawless. Your business copy is an image of your business, and you do not want to portray the wrong idea to your audience. Mistakes might be inevitable for humans. Still, it is excellent to double-check documents for grammatical errors, if possible with software. It will be a huge setback if you portray your business in a bad light rather than persuading your audience.
Persuasive Tone
With the brilliant combination of words, it is essential to persuade your audience and convince them that you stand out, you are unique. Know the right buzzwords to use, and you will be able to win them over to yourself quite easily. Words like “We’re not just a travel agency that takes you around the world… we bring the world to you”. Use sentences that make them convinced about your ability to deliver, and boom! You’re in their head.
Clear call-To-Action
One mistake common to many brands and businesses is that they do not indicate what they want their audience to do. You have successfully convinced them about what you offer, you have convinced them about what you can do, but what do you need them to do? Your copy’s goal should be clear as crystal to whoever is reading it so that they take the necessary course of action in the end. Using words like “Learn more” is quite a cliché; why not use more expressive words like “Register now with You ‘n’ Me and Start Chatting with friends.” CTAs are what drive conversions. You should avoid making the mistake of leaving your audience to wonder what to do or want to “make awareness.” If your post is just for awareness, you may request your audience’s email addresses to remind them when you launch or go live. People have many things on their minds, and if you can steal their attention for a while, you should milk as much as you can. Every single lead is important; hence have a clear Call-To-Action to get the necessary conversions. One CTA per copy is fine; aim at getting your audience to do just one thing. If you try to get them to do too many things at a time, they may end up doing nothing.
Ensure that your CTA button is clear, as it is usually the last step that precedes conversion, ensure that it is large enough and could even be of a different colour or text format.
Make Clear Points
You don’t need to dillydally. People are busy, and they will most likely scan through your content. You don’t need long talks; go straight to the point. Use short sentences that carry weight and highlight the importance of your copy. Short separated sentences will make the reader pay attention to each line, and hence you can easily pass your message across in just a short period. Lengthy sentences may bore the reader or take too much of his time, so he may only take a very quick scan at the copy without really understanding your offer. And if your audience fails to get the information in your copy accurately, they won’t take the necessary action.
Write Conversationally
You must sound very natural to your audience as they will primarily be reading in their head. Format your texts such that it will appear as if you are talking to them. Use exclamations where necessary!!! – Usually, to indicate a loud tone and CAPITALIZATION to indicate emphasis, you can also use bold texts and italicized texts where necessary. This special text-formatting is easily caught by the eye and makes the reader pay attention to why those texts are specially formatted, and even in their mind, they read aloud the texts with exclamations. Hence you are making them see the content, the exact way you wrote it.
Use Catchy Leads
If you want to write a high-converting copy, you must have attention-grabbing leads. Use irregular words, figures, facts, or statistics that will intrigue the reader. When you capture the attention of the reader, then he can read the first line. If the reader reads the first line, they will most likely check out the rest of the copy. Your copy will be a failed one if the first line cannot captivate your audience. There is a rule called the 80/20 rule. “Put in more efforts to your headlines, sub-headers, and your introductory phrases – which is usually the smallest part of your copy” If you can get them to read the first 20%, then they will most likely read the remaining 80% of the content.
Write To A Specific Audience
Your copy should not be aimed at targeting everyone. That’d be an own goal in reality as it will hardly capture the attention of any demographic. Identify your copy’s purpose, select the target audience it would be best for, and write for them. If you write a copy for email marketing, don’t send your existing subscribers the same messages you will send to convince new subscribers. They have already moved past the stage of convincing them with your brand story. Instead, let them know the brand new offers you have for them that are better than what they have previously gotten. This will help generate conversions better as it feels like the email is tailored for them, rather than something that may not catch their attention because it is directed to everyone. “If you write to everyone, you write to no one,” and you won’t appeal to the attention of your audience. Any copy that doesn’t grab attention is a failed copy, no matter how great the content is.
Avoid The Use Of Professional Terms
Your audiences are not your colleagues, so they may not understand your profession’s technical terms. If you offer the best cosmetic surgery services,you don’t need to write a copy filled with professional medical jargon. It is unnecessary to say, “We perform the best processes in abdominoplasty and liposuction.” Use simpler words, easy to understand for the most basic of readers. Some may not even have English as their primary language, so just keep it simple. A more appropriate sentence would be, “We know how excess fat ruins your body shape, and we are specialists in giving your body the perfect shape you desire.” It is also important to do away with unnecessary abbreviations, acronyms, informal words, and slang. Not everyone is familiar with you, and just one non-relatable word may make the whole copy irrelevant for your audience. Hence use clear, highly comprehensible words that even a child will easily understand.
Key Highlights of Copywriting:
Definition and Purpose: Copywriting involves crafting persuasive written content to influence the audience to take a specific action, such as making a purchase or engaging with a brand.
Key Concepts: It focuses on persuasion, audience-centricity, clarity, call to action (CTA), and maintaining brand voice.
Characteristics: Copywriting requires creativity, research, versatility, impactful messaging, and adaptability to different projects and audiences.
Implications: It shapes brand perception, impacts conversion rates, facilitates communication, affects reputation, and drives engagement.
Advantages: Effective copywriting leads to higher conversions, supports effective marketing campaigns, contributes to brand building, enhances customer engagement, and offers versatility in various industries.
Drawbacks: Effectiveness can be subjective, competitiveness in the field demands continuous improvement, crafting quality copy can be time-consuming, skill development takes time and practice, and staying updated with trends is necessary.
Applications: Copywriting is essential in advertising, content marketing, email marketing, product descriptions, sales collateral, and various digital media.
Use Cases: Examples include Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan, Apple’s product descriptions, email campaigns, website landing pages, and print advertisements.
Technique
Description
When to Use
AIDA
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action – a formula to guide the creation of persuasive copy.
Use when introducing a new product or service to lead the reader through the sales process.
PAS
Problem, Agitation, Solution – addresses the problem, amplifies it, and offers a solution.
Effective for identifying pain points and presenting solutions in problem-solving content.
Features vs. Benefits
Highlighting the features of a product or service and translating them into benefits for the customer.
Use to demonstrate the value proposition of a product or service to potential customers.
Storytelling
Using narratives to engage and connect with the audience emotionally, making the message memorable.
Effective for brand storytelling, creating rapport, and conveying complex ideas.
FOMO
Fear of Missing Out – leveraging the fear that others are benefiting from something the reader isn’t.
Useful in limited-time promotions, sales, or events to drive immediate action.
Urgency
Creating a sense of urgency to prompt immediate action, often through limited-time offers or scarcity.
Use when offering time-sensitive deals or promotions to encourage prompt responses.
Social Proof
Using testimonials, reviews, or statistics to demonstrate credibility and build trust with the audience.
Effective in establishing trust and credibility, especially in e-commerce and service industries.
Call to Action (CTA)
Prompting the reader to take a specific action, such as making a purchase, signing up, or subscribing.
Essential at the end of marketing content or sales pages to guide the reader towards the desired action.
Power Words
Words that evoke strong emotions or create a vivid image, such as “free,” “exclusive,” or “guaranteed.”
Use to emphasize key points, evoke emotions, and make the copy more compelling.
Headline Formulas
Structured formulas for crafting attention-grabbing headlines, like “How to [Benefit] Without [Pain].”
Ideal for blog posts, articles, or landing pages where the headline plays a crucial role in attracting readers.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
