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.
Why copywriting matters
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distributionstrategy, 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.
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.
Inbound marketing is a marketingstrategy 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 marketingstrategy 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 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.
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.
