What Is Copywriting?

Cindy King — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:00:41 +0000

Copywriting is any type of writing that offers products or services for sale.

Writing For A Call To Action

Copywriting skills are needed whenever you have a call to action, even if this is not a sale. Calls to action can be:

Press this button… for any reason
Sign up here… for anything
Give me your support
Call me
Read more
Come see me
Ask for a free trial, report or anything else
Buy my product

As you can see, a call to action can take many different forms. Most of these calls to action are part of a lead generation or sales strategy.

Writing For Sales

Beginners are often confused about what is involved in copywriting. This is because there are different types of writing for sales:

Feature article copy – editorial writing, a little more formal, but also uses conversational writing style.
Big ad agency copy – short and clever copy, used to build awareness and does not have a sales order device. Success performance is not tracked and you cannot measure exact response to see how well the ad worked.
Direct response copy – asks for an immediate action with a strong call to action. Success of this copy can be tracked and measured. Direct response copywiritng is personal.

Good Web Copywriting

Writing for the web is closer to direct response copywriting than any other writing style. Whether it is for profit or not.

To understand this, you need to understand how people use the internet. Their behavior online is linked to the action of search.

Your website needs to keep your readers:

Attention, to get them to stop and stay on your website.
Interest, to get them to read and look at your website.
Desire, to spend more time on your website, and even to come back again
and calls them to Action, to read more, to visit more of your web pages and to click through your links.

This formula, AIDA, is the first basic formula copywriters learn to write sales letters.

There are a few differences between Direct Response Copywriting and Web Copywriting. But the principles of good Direct Response Copywriting correspond to good Web Copywriting by over 90%.

When you think about it, there is no coincidence that you can use the same copywriting principles.

You can track and measure results for both Direct Response Copywriting and Web Copywriting.

When people refer to Web Copywriting this usually also involves SEO Copywriting. More on the differences between these two in a later article.

It Is All About Conversation

Conversational style writing skills are what makes great copywriters. Conversational skills that connect with target markets. And these are the two reasons why conversational writing style works:

Empathy – You talk to your reader as a friend. You show that you understand your reader. This is empathy.

Not Selling – You provide solutions. In a conversational writing style you do not sell, you provide solutions to your readers problems.

Conversational copy is quick and easy to read. It hits the emotional buttons that will get your readers to respond to your call to action.

This is why conversational copywriting is a proven sales technique.

Layers Of Marketing

In fact, a copywriter relies on marketing skills just as much as writing skills.

Let’s look at a typical copywriting project.

Professional copywriters usually spend their time as follows:

40% – detailed market research
20% – writing
40% – editing copy for sales objectives

As you can see, marketing research is a vital part of good copywriting. This happens before the actual writing.

Marketing guidelines also come into play. These guidelines look at the whole communication experience for the reader and also include:

How the reader responds within a specific market
Where your reader is when he finds your copy
How the copy works with your reader’s specific environment
How the copy works with the graphics

And the copywriter also refers to these guidelines when editing his copy.

And… Intimate Knowledge Of Your Readers

When you fully understand your reader, you are able to call him to action.

You use the same vocabulary and buzz words as your reader.
You know how to talk to your reader to get him to listen to you.
You know exactly what his deepest fears, motivations and desires are.
You understand how he will respond to what you say.
You know how to respond to his objections.
You know which emotional buttons to push to get your reader to respond immediately.

With a little tracking to measure results, copywriting skills are a valuable sales tool. In fact, all successful marketers online have invested in good copywriting skills. Either by taking the time to learn copywriting themselves, or by outsourcing. And usually a mixture of both.

Marketing Is An Integral Part Of Copywriting

Cindy King — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:00:54 +0000

International Copywriting

I recently came across a few people who did not realize just how much marketing expertise is involved in effective copywriting. I landed into copywriting after 20 years in sales and marketing. Copywriting was an obvious and natural choice. Not because of my writing skills. But because of my marketing skills.

Most copywriters pick up their marketing expertise through their copywriting assignments. Copywriters are trained to look into the motivations and reasons for results. It’s natural for us to pick up marketing skills.

Marketing has a very large element of research to it. So does copywriting.

Although copywriters and marketers may spend more time researching different angles, they do basically cover the same areas.

Todays Web Copywriting requires quite a bit of market research as well as marketing strategy. Let’s face it, the copy you need on a web page may appear to be short. But you will only be able to find the right web copy through careful research and marketing strategy.

This is why most people with a sales or marketing background find it easier to get into the copywriters mind-set. Copywriters continually strive to think, feel and react exactly like their ideal client.

It is true that most outsiders think of copywriters as writers. From this side of the fence writing often seems like the minor element to copywriting. Marketing is such an integral part of copywriting it permeates all aspects of the skill.

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