You made a great choice to be a copywriter. There’s no other time in history when the demand for copywriters has been higher than it is now. Think of a total of 1.5 billion websites on the internet, but only 200 million being active.
Might that be due to a shortage of copywriters? Probably yes! Anyway, whatever the case, the business world is in need of bright copywriters who can write highly engaging content that clearly communicates ideas to the readers.
Here are 12 tips and tricks to help you raise your copywriting skills to the next level:
1. Focus On Your Customers’ Needs
The customer is the royalty. You may have always heard people say this. So, when it comes to copyrighting, focus on your customer’s needs and desires.
- What issues are affecting your customers?
- What is the solution to these problems?
These are two important questions you need to answer in every piece of content.
Suppose you deal with eyeglasses. First, remind your audience how difficult it can get to study, travel, or carry out their daily chores if they’re short or long sighted and yet don’t have spectacles.
Move on to the need to wear spectacles to improve their vision while also enhancing their looks. And finally, disclose that you manufacture state-of-the-art spectacles that they’d love to try.
Avoid bombarding your readers with a lot of information about your company. Actually, customers focus more on getting answers and might really care about what you do. The main reason they read that email or article is to solve their problems.
2. Take A Copywriting Course
It’s very easy for you to assume that you can write well. That might be true. No one is disputing. But there’s a great difference between writers who’ve taken professional courses and those who haven’t.
Recommended Reading: The Inverted Pyramid Style of Content Writing
You see it on news sites and blogs. While professional copywriters could clock in millions of views every day; the novices struggle with barely a hundred views. And that goes on for years despite their marketing efforts.
Would you like to be in the masters’ league? Find a suitable course for copywriters and marketers and work your way to the top.
3. Research More Than Ever Before
Your readers will right away detect a shallowly written piece. They read the first two paragraphs, scan the rest of the content, and conclude that you either copied the text from somewhere else or you’re a novice in your trade.
Do you think they’ll come back to your site for more or open your next email? The chances may be very thin!
For that reason, make it your habit to dig for information like a gold miner looking for gold-rich ore. Prove to your readers that you’re a master in that particular trade. Transport their curious minds to a whole new world with well-articulated facts and figures.
4. Explain It Simply
Something that you can’t do so, is maybe something you don’t understand well enough, said by a famous physicist.
This is not at all contrary to the previous point. Being informative doesn’t mean you exhaust your readers with industry-specific jargon.
Understand that most of your readers may not be deeply versed in the field you’re writing about. They too are trained in other specialties or may be simply common persons out there in search for information.
Recommended Reading: 4 Powerful Styles of Writing For Content Marketers
Imagine trying to convince a doctor to contract your house construction company using words related to finite element analysis. That’s best suited for academic papers. Instead, tell them about how your designs can ensure that the house doesn’t collapse even in the face of strong winds, heavy rainfalls, and earthquakes.
5. Make Your Content Scannable
Your readers feel drained whenever they meet an entire page of paragraphs without anything to break the monotony. The honest ones skip the entire page without a second thought. The more tolerant ones painfully struggle through the ordeal.
To make your content scannable:
- Write short paragraphs; two or three sentences is great
- Bold, italicize, and underline certain phrases to place emphasis
- Use bulleted and/or numbered lists
- Break your content with appropriate sub-headings
- Use an easy-to-read font like Montserrat
- Use plenty of white space
- Add images, graphics, screenshots, quotes, and illustrations that support the written text
Attention spans are currently at an all-time low. You’ll be surprised to learn that most of your readers spend less than one minute on your article or email. They simply glance at it to get the main points and off they get to the next business. Making your content scannable caters to even those readers with the lowest attention spans.
6. Write For Humans and Not Search Engines
It’s true that you want the mighty search engines to rank you highly for certain keywords. The mistake is that you focus so much on the machines that you forget how your human readers will feel.
They usually can tell when your interest is more on the keywords than it is on them. Your sentences end up not being natural. That translates to a dull article. Very few people will read such pieces to the end.
Focus on passing the correct information in the most natural way. In actual fact, search engines have so far evolved to a level that they can distinguish between an informative and a keyword-stuffed article.
7. Call Your Readers To Action
A big chunk of copyrighting involves converting your readers into your customers. You, therefore, need to be clear about what you want them to do at the end.
Recommended Reading: Everything You Need to Know about Calls to Action
Use persuasive and relevant call-to-action words. Try phrases like:
- Pick your city
- Join now
- Sign up
- Download now
- Get it now
- View products
- Try it free
- Create ad
- Swipe up to try
- Visit my profile
- Install now
- Buy
But don’t limit yourself to such short phrases. You have the liberty to lengthen your CTAs to phrases like:
- Sign up and reserve your spot today
- Confidence starts here
- Shop Angy’s surprise sale
Your creativity will help a lot here.
8. Use Active Voice
- Your blog should be written in the active voice.
- Write your blog in the active voice.
Which of the two sentences above is smoother, faster to read, natural, and impactful? The second one, definitely.
The first one is in passive voice. When you use such, the reader doesn’t feel that you’re speaking to them.
And that’s yet another point to note. Speak to your readers directly. Use ‘you’ and ‘your’ instead of ‘he, she, his, her, them, their’. They’ll emotionally connect to your content. It won’t be difficult to convince them to buy your idea.
9. Be Authentic, Genuine, And Trustworthy
Remember, your readers are smart. Don’t imagine it’s easy to convince the masses to pull out their credit cards and make a purchase.
You need to establish a high level of trust with your potential customers. Be genuine. Don’t make false promises and claims about your product. The first one to use it and get disappointed will spread your lies like wildfire.
So, take time to work on your product until you’re 100% pleased with it. Next, present the facts to your readers in a truthful but persuasive manner. Avoid copying content from your competitors. Your readers will easily tell that you’re a fake.
10. Focus On Benefits, Not Features
Suppose you’re reviewing a given laptop model. It’s not enough to simply state features such as:
- Processor type
- RAM
- Number of USB ports
- Touchscreen capability
- HDD or SSD capacity
- Aspect ratio, etc.
Someone who is new to computer technology may not really understand how these features help them. And for that reason, the best practice is to accompany every feature with a related benefit. For instance:
- 3:2 aspect ratio allows you to arrange multiple windows on the desktop, which is ideal for multitasking.
- Core i5 processors enable you to run multiple resource-heavy applications without making the computer slow.
- 1TB SSD enables you to store as many documents, pictures, video, and audio files as you wish.
Doing so immediately captivates the attention of your readers since they see how their problems are being addressed.
11. Prove Your Case With Reliable Data
Your aim when writing is to build trust and credibility with the audience. Whenever you make claims, say X% of the world population being overweight, make sure to back up such claims with proof. Quoting and linking to a scientific study that was done may suffice in this case.
You can also use the following strategies to back up your claims:
- Case studies
- Success stories
- Testimonials
- Methodologies
- Facts and figures from renown statistical agencies
- Screenshots from web searches
12. Take Your Time To Write
Mean business when you sit down to write. Avoid distractions like the TV, emails, chats with friends, and aimless surfing of the internet.
Focus on the work at hand. This way, you’re able to generate a logical flow of ideas. For long-form content, you may want to take breaks between sections so that your productivity isn’t compromised.