“What is copywriting?” Would you know how to answer that question if we posed it to you?
What if we asked you to consider different styles of marketing campaigns?
You would probably come up with several ideas, like TV and radio commercials or printed store posters. Whether the marketing approach is audio or visual, what do they all have in common? Words. Marketing at its most basic level is choosing the best words to capture your audience’s attention. This is what we in the marketing business call ‘copywriting.’
Here’s the dictionary definition of Copywriting: “The act or occupation of writing text for the purposes of advertising or other forms of marketing.” Marketing is the same as talking to someone; you think about conveying your message and choosing the best words to get your point across.
When you’re picking apart marketing strategies, you are essentially doing the basic steps of copywriting.
That being said, doing well in marketing doesn’t mean you have to be a master wordsmith. It’s about knowing what you want to say and how you want to grab the attention of your target audience. There are many ways you could go about copywriting to best fit your business’s branding and the level of interaction you want with your customers. Copywriting is just using your written words to promote your business and all it has to offer your customers, which can be done in campaign ads or even newsletters which we discussed in a previous article.
You might find it helpful when coming up with the wording for an ad campaign to research how other businesses in your market niche chose to promote themselves. Obviously, you want to be unique and stand out from the competition so put your own creative spin on what you learn.
The simplest way we can describe writing copy is that you are telling a story, and at the end of it, your goal is to have your audience convinced by your pitch.
It’s OK to be unsure of what copywriting looks and sounds like since it isn’t something you will use in your everyday life unless you promote a business or product. There are very easy ways to remember how to be a great copywriter when you are expanding the horizons of your company’s marketing strategies.
Here are the basic things to keep in mind:
- Write short and engaging copy.
- Use specific facts whenever possible.
- Choose your fonts carefully. (We know this doesn’t seem important, but it is!)
- Use everyday language that your audience can relate to.
- Avoid grammar and spelling errors at all costs!
- Be original and creative.
If you want to learn more about how to Copywrite effectively and do your best, you can check out how others approach it and look into some tutorials available on YouTube like this one.
