Copywriting is so much more than words thrown together on a page. Good copywriting paints a picture of what your business is all about; it represents your values and creates a lasting impact on your audience.
Well-written copy builds brand familiarity, evokes emotion, and conveys a key message. Not to mention, it helps drive your ROI, SEO, and credibility.
How to Leverage Good Writing
Good copy can bring an ad campaign or marketing collateral to life. A clever headline or catchy slogan draws the audience into your content. Writing techniques such as repetition, rhythm, and alliteration are both attractive and memorable.
Copywriting is also the foundation of effective content marketing. Whether it’s your website, advertising, social media, or blog posts, meaningful copy has a tremendous impact on organic engagement resulting in more potential customers discovering your brand.
Here’s an example of great social copy resonating with an audience
On the left is a very wordy and technical tweet about a product offering. Their direct competitor contrasted the poorly performing tweet with a concise and clever response that generated much more engagement.
What to Consider When Crafting Copy
- Type of Message
- Know Your Audience
- Organize Your Content to be Scannable (Headings, Bullets, Callouts, etc.)
- Keep it Relatable and Relevant (Not too technical – unless it’s a technical article)
- Solve the Problem
Type of Message
First and foremost, you must consider what type of message you are trying to convey with each piece of content you create. Is your piece intended to be persuasive, informative, or authoritative? The intent will determine your copy’s tone, length, and placement depending on the audience or the channel. For example, your writing in a light-hearted social post will differ from a detailed brochure. However, no matter the channel, a clear and consistent message is key to effective copywriting. Writing with the same words and personality while adapting to the context creates a lasting impression on a customer. It builds the brand experience that ultimately drives engagement and brand equity.
Know Your Audience
Knowing the audience you’re trying to target is essential to connecting with them. For example, if you’re trying to attract a technical audience, your copywriting will likely need to be very detailed and specific and typically use larger, more complex industry terms. In contrast, if you’re launching a new product to a broad demographic, you’ll want to use short sentences and paragraphs made up of easy-to-understand word choice to create a more inclusive message with mass appeal.
Organize Your Content to be Scannable
Using headings organizes your content and makes it easy to scan. They lead the reader on a journey through your copy. They divide the page into easy-to-understand chunks and let the reader quickly skim the article to decide if it’s worth a read.
Proper headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) have many benefits when writing for websites or blogs. Not only do they break up the content and make it scannable, but they also aid in SEO and accessibility.
Bulleted and number lists and callout text or blockquotes take the organization further. We’ve all seen magazine or newspaper articles with a large, highlighted piece of text to draw you into the content. These proven techniques improve readability and make your copywriting more engaging.
Keep it Relatable and Relevant
Developing connections with your audience is essential to boosting sales and increasing engagement. Create and maintain those connections by tapping into your audience’s emotions with clear and convincing language that entices them to take the next step in their buyer’s journey.
Solve the Problem
Most website visitors are searching for answers, solutions, or to satisfy particular wants and needs. You might just have what they’re looking for, but there are several factors to get them to your site and engage with your content. As discussed in much of this article, copywriting is key to your success. With keyword research and proper use of headings, along with the content being helpful, you’ll be a step ahead of the SEO game. To solve the problem, your copy should be well-informed and follow a known pattern of success. Forbes lists eight elements that comprise a quality blog post. There is no silver bullet, but following these guidelines can attract more visitors and perhaps garner the currency of the web, which is backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, proving that your content is valuable. The more quality links you get, the more weight search engines will give your content.
Don’t Write for Search Engines However
This has long been a mantra of content experts, but even more so now. Google has announced the Helpful Content Update, which favors content written for people by people. That said, remember to structure your content so it’s easy to follow and contains language designed to address the needs of your audience as it pertains to your product or service.
Conducting keyword research is still an essential element of any SEO strategy. Uncovering the words and phrases your audience searches to find what you offer is vital to your discoverability. As users engage with your content by reading, sharing, and linking to it, your SERP ranking will be higher, bringing more credible leads to your site.
SEO is a broad and technical topic we discuss further on this site. The takeaway is that while it’s important to follow the practices of technical SEO, at the end of the day, we are trying to connect with other human beings. It’s not enough to have a solution to their problem. They want to believe that you care and want to solve their problem. The tenor and tone of your writing allow this to come through.
Be the Authority
When discussing SEO, we often reference the foundational concept of Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritative, and Trustworthiness). Checking these boxes is essential as a core measuring stick of whether to index and rank your content. Being an authority has value beyond SEO. You’ll find a better response to social posts, product claims, and general marketing when the audience trusts that you have earned the right to make certain statements.
Social Media Today explores this subject. While it skews toward social media strategy, you can apply many tips to your copywriting. Great content is a sum of many parts. Quality copywriting allows you to communicate effectively when you are an authority on a topic. Proving authority is also an excellent opportunity to use social proof. Social proof typically comes in the form of testimonials or reviews. Awards and certifications can also go a long way to establishing you as an authority.
Keep Writing
The constant need to feed your audience content requires those who may not be formally trained as writers to learn as they go. Over time, you’ll see what works and what doesn’t. When your marketing, social media, or blog posts perform well, take note of the methods used and apply them to other content. If something is not performing as desired, update your content and see how it does. Google loves fresh content, so updating older articles or repurposing content can go a long way.
The more you write, the better you’ll get!
