What do blog posts, ebooks, signs, brochures, and website pages all have in common? While there’s probably a few answers to this question, the most obvious is that they all require words.
Copy is at the heart of nearly every aspect of your marketing. Communicating through the written word is a clear necessity. But unfortunately, creating compelling copy is not quite as simple as it may seem. Here are 8 copywriting tips to help take your marketing copy from boring to brilliant.
1. Know Who You’re Writing For
If you don’t know who your audience is from the very beginning, it is going to be nearly impossible to write something compelling that speaks to their needs. Copywriting is only partially about how well you write. It is essential for a copywriter to have excellent research skills and a solid understanding of psychology in order to write copy that gets results.
2. Determine an Objective
Now that you know who you are writing for, you have to know the reason behind why you are writing. What is it that you want your audience to do? What is the key point you want them to walk away with after reading your copy? Having a clear objective not only makes your job easier by giving you a clear purpose, but it also makes the copy itself much clearer and more understandable.
3. Be Clear and Concise
Being clear goes back to having a specific objective. You don’t want to bog your reader down with too much information that is poorly presented. Instead, by focusing on a key point or two, it is much simpler for you to convey your message with clarity.
A key component of clarity is keeping your copy as concise as possible. Copy that includes too much verbiage becomes difficult to read and uninteresting to your audience. A good practice is to read through your copy sentence by sentence and edit out any unnecessary words. This keeps your sentences simple, easy to understand, and ultra focused.
4. Be Visual
Yes, yes, I know you are writing words on a page, not painting a picture or creating a graphic design masterpiece, but that doesn’t mean that the presentation of your words doesn’t matter. In fact, the visual representation of your copy can make or break your message.
Using white space, bolding, bullet points, headers, and italics throughout your copy focuses the reader’s attention on the most important bits of information. Too often readers merely skim copy, so if your message isn’t clearly accentuated by these methods, your point will get lost in a sea of text.
5. Make Your Audience Feel Something
Making your audience feel something is a sure way to make your copy compelling. Whether that emotion is humor, horror, or perhaps a more sappy emotion, creating that connection keeps your audience reading on and can help better convey your overall message. Using stories and a variety of verbs and interesting adjectives in your copy is one way to improve in this area.
6. Offer Evidence
Every single business brags about the number of clients they have, their satisfaction rates, how much better they are then the competition, and so forth. While this may be one hundred percent true, your audience sees right through these generic statements. Give them something more meaningful by providing specific numbers and stats. Instead of saying “over 100 delighted customers” say something like “121 delighted customers and counting.” Those specific numbers create a greater impact and will stand out more to your audience.
7. Address Common Objections
Writing beautiful, crisp copy can only get you so far. If your copy avoids grappling with the real issues, your audience is going to move right along. Addressing common objections to your company or your product / service upfront can result in better leads, simply because they have a clearer understanding of what your company has to offer and why you may be the best choice for their needs.
Never shy away from the tough conversations. Your audience will respect your forthrightness and, if done correctly, will feel more comfortable with what your business has to offer.
8. Incorporate Strong Calls-to-Action
The best copy has a point. And that point is reinforced by a strong, clear call-to-action. Whether that action is buying a product or service, calling a number, filling out a form, or signing up for a trial or consultation, making that action clear and obvious throughout the copy leading up to the CTA and in the CTA itself is of the utmost importance.
Your copy should be written in such a way that it builds up to the CTA. But it is also important to choose the write words for the CTA itself. Focus on a clear, strong action verb and ensure your CTA clearly states why the reader should bother completing the desired action.
These 8 copywriting tips can get you started on your journey to improved marketing. From blog posts to website pages to brochures and ads, copy is key to every element of your marketing strategy. Getting the copy right is half the marketing battle.