10 tips to improve your copywriting

Know Your Market

The first step of any great copywriting piece is research. It is important to consider who will be reading your text. You need to understand who they are, what problems they have and how your content is going to help them solve those problems. This first step might seem obvious, but it is often overlooked by even the most seasoned marketers. Your target market should form an intricate part of your content marketing plan where you identify your messages, offers and what voice your copy will speak from.

Keep Your Promises

In creating great offers, headlines and calls to action you will be racking your brains to dream up new selling points and benefits. Make sure that what you deliver on your offerings. Publicising added value, free gifts and limited promotions can be detrimental to your entire brand if there is a lack of follow-through. Under-promise and over-deliver became a common phrase for a reason.

Make Them Nervous

We are all thirsty for knowledge these days. We want to know a little bit of everything and we especially don’t like it when we feel we have a lack of knowledge on a particular subject. As a marketer you can take advantage of this basic human psychology. Your copy needs to make the reader nervous that their lack of understanding will mean that they miss out on something awesome. Consider hinting at negative consequences to not reading your content.

Bite Sized Chunks

Long pages of prose should be the realm of the classic poets, not the modern marketers. In our 5 minute fix world, you must respect your reader’s time and make it easy for them to read and absorb your copy. After you finish writing, read back over your text and see if you can reduce it by a third.

Tell Stories

There is a time and a place for facts and figures. Do your buyers make their buying decisions because of logic or emotion? If you answered logic then maybe numbers and stats are your friends. Most of the time though, people make these decisions based on emotion and want to be walked through an example of a benefit as opposed to being smacked in the face with bullet points.

Be Topical

Aligning your copy with the events of the day will help your message feel relevant and fresh. If you can help me relate to your story with an example that has recently been in the news then all the better. Remember though this practice can make your content become dated. Consider which pieces of copy should be topical and which should be able to stand the test of time.

Be Believable

Offering something truly remarkable should be your marketing goal. When you create that amazing promotion consider the headspace of your reader. Are they uttering the words “Sounds too good to be true?” If so, a clear and confident expression of how you are able to offer something that others can’t is crucial to your believability.

Keep Typing

The backspace button is your enemy. The best tip I have ever been giving for writing copy is to just keep writing. If you are trying to make each sentence perfect you might find yourself half an hour into the process with a grand total of four words completed. Just keep going and fix everything upon review.

Use Testimonials

When you get great results for your clients, when your customers love what they purchase then you need to gather testimonials. The best use of these statements of social proof is to be blended into your copy. Try and tell their story as part of yours, rather than showcasing all of your testimonials in a separate space.

Come back later

Fresh eyes will help you spot mistakes and improvements. Schedule time to strategise what you want to write, separate time to write it and then wait a day or two and review it. A couple of sleeps will always help your brain make some new connections and come up with some fresher, better ideas for your content.