Often overlooked, copywriting plays a crucial role in all forms of business marketing. This is evident today, as digital marketing seems to have overtaken the traditional method of advertising and reached the target audience. Such neglect—despite the availability of many copywriting tips—explains why many businesses still couldn’t compete given the equal opportunities digital content marketing offers to all.
Now, are you wondering why you haven’t reaped the fruits of your marketing efforts after applying new strategies? Have you checked on the business message you put in your promotional materials? Was the message too persuasive for people to take action?
It might be time to revisit your message, especially if you are new to digital marketing. Whether you’re a business owner or a budding digital marketer, you have to ensure your campaigns feature great copywriting. Know what a good copy—a blog post, a social media graphic, web banner, or online ad—can do to your business without having to go hard-selling.
Copywriting Tips for Beginners
While it really takes good copywriting skills to get people read the entire message of sales copy and catch their interest, neophytes can still level the playing field only if they get the hang of this task. Learn how industry pros do it with these SEO, e-commerce, and social media copywriting tips.
SEO Copywriting Tips
If you are writing an online copy, make sure that it’s both reader- and search engine-friendly. Your goal is to rank high on online searches through the keywords you placed in your content. These keywords must be relevant and scattered on your business’ homepage, profiles on review sites, product pages, and blog posts.
An ideal SEO-friendly copy is the one that’s informative and valuable, especially for Google, today’s widely used search engine. Effective search engine optimization tactics offer these perks: organic traffic, optimized keywords, and increased domain authority.
Here’s how you can achieve better SEO rankings:
- Perform keyword research to set a realistic keyword goal.
- Look at how others make it to the first page of search results. Study everything on the page, from length to page titles and meta descriptions.
- Create a content based on the target search intent.
- Make an outline and include keyword targets strategically for proper on-page SEO practices.
- Always choose quality above all. Make your content comprehensive, relevant, original, and error-free, with proper citation of sources.
- Consider Google’s Passage Ranking for your content to rank for more than one query.
- Maximize the use of online optimization tools to guide you with topics and trends.
- Include questions people frequently ask—and answer them in the content.
- Use keyword’s synonyms and semantically related terms.
- Keep the copy short. Blog posts in long form should have brief sentences and short paragraphs.
- Break long passages of text with an image, video, or any other visual content to keep the readers engaged.
- Put links with anchor texts that are relevant to the destination page.
- If likely, include navigational elements on a page for better user experience.
E-commerce Copywriting Tips
Whether you’re writing a business tagline or a product description, you need to know first who you’re writing for. With the target audience in mind, you’ll be able to produce a message that carries the personality of the brand and resonates with would-be customers.
So, what makes a good retail copywriting? Here are a few vital factors to ponder to make it persuasive:
Unique, Catchy Headlines
The first line or the large text of a copy is a crucial part as it determines whether or not the reader will go through the entire piece and act in favor of the brand. Yes, it’s a battle between your headline and readers’ attention span. In fact, Sleeknote.com cited Copyblogger’s surprising statistics: 8 out of 10 people read headline copy, and only 2 of the 10 will go on to read the rest.
Targeted Keywords
Copywriting headlines should be anchored on keyword research. With buzz words placed on the business ads, you’re sure to satisfy the search intent of all site visitors, would-be clients, and search bots.
Best Value Proposition
Citing the benefits your prospects will get from what the business offers is but a surefire way to catch their attention upon reading the copy. Gone are the days when promoting highlights the product’s features as many people now pay attention to the benefits they would get from using the product. Hence, when citing your value proposition, ask yourself, “what’s in it for them?”
Specific Target Buyer
To whom is the advertisement for? A good copywriting specifies who the ideal buyer is through their headline. This helps the readers grasp whether it’s truly for them, and eventually making them think of its relevance to their needs or interest.
Urgency in the Copy
Instructive and compelling words and phrases used in business messages have proven to be effective with readers, consequently contributing to the increase in conversions. People’s fear of missing out nowadays explains why time-sensitive or time-bound ads are a thing in online marketing. So, strike while the iron is hot.
Maximized Brand Storytelling
If there’s too much space to promote your product or service, make the most out of it. Mind you, story-driven ads can truly go a long way. When going for it, don’t just tell a story; do it to inform, educate, and influence your prospects instead. A good story paints a picture of how the product or service could help change the readers’ lives, or at least how such commodity leaves them with mental “imagery” that ultimately impels them to make a purchase.
Fewer Adjectives, More Verbs
Using descriptive words in a copy is good. But when done excessively, it may annoy the readers, thereby defeating the real purpose of addressing their needs above anything else. With action words in it, you’re initiating an action—asking the readers to move toward your goal. If using adjectives can’t be avoided, be sure to use sensory adjectives to help readers visualize what the “story” is all about.
Moving Call to Action (CTA)
Creativity is everything in copywriting. In fact, clever phrases used at the end of retail copies determine how effective the copywriting is. Beyond being specific instructions, an ad’s call-to-action offers personalized interaction that inspires people to take action.
Social Media Copywriting Tips
Social media copywriting is all about building or strengthening a brand’s social connection with existing and potential customers. Hence, it requires a personal approach and friendly wit to subtly drive action through campaigns and contents.
At Outsource-Philippines, we do copywriting as part of our social media marketing not just to boost a brand’s social media presence and widen their reach. We also aim to drive customer satisfaction through engagement with them, a crucial factor for better brand recognition and customer retention.
Here are some copywriting tips from pro social media marketers:
- Set the brand’s engagement goal.
- Get your target audience involved.
- Create relevant/shareable contents.
- Mind the visuals and other content types to produce.
- Join the current “trend.”
- Publish contents that are appropriate to the platform.
- Include captivating CTAs in the captions and descriptions.
- Use the brand’s hashtags often.
- Engage with people.
- Tailor the brand tone.
- Use emojis wisely.
Copywriting Ideas
There may be no definite copywriting formulas in online marketing. Even so, marketers and business owners can always look at case studies and guides to help them write copies that sell.
Outsource-Philippines gathers and shares some of the most useful copywriting ideas that you may want to explore. Ultimately, we encourage marketers to bear these pieces of advice when writing their copies:
- Have it simple—no gimmicks—while maintaining a good balance between facts (features) and benefits;
- Make unique headlines;
- Relate a good story—one that connects to people’s emotions;
- Write as if two people are talking to each other;
- Use superlatives sparingly; and
- Keep the branding alive.
Copywriting headlines that can persuade people contain any of these “power” words: Free, Save, Best-selling, Special, Limited, Offer, Discount, Exclusive, Coupon, Code, Extra, Sale, Download, Gift, and OFF.
Study the following good headline ideas:
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Which Best Copywriter Will You Follow?
Likewise, you may want to heed the tips from these well-known best copywriters for some traditional copywriting ideas, which remain valid these days.
1. John Caples (1900-1990)
In his 1932 book, “Tested-Advertising Methods,” author John Caples shared 16 formulas that made him successful. In particular, he outlined the most effective ways of writing a marketing headline. Here’s a quote on a vital mistake that many marketers still commit in recent years:
“The most frequent reason for unsuccessful advertising is advertisers who are so full of their own accomplishments (the world’s best seed!) that they forget to tell us why we should buy (the world’s best lawn!).”
2. Victor O. Schwab (1898-1980)
Schwab had an inspiring story as a worker. He first served as Maxwell Sackheim’s secretary and became a copywriter. Then, he got his promotion when he helped his boss change the business’ copywriting style, which worked well for the company.
A former content marketer, Schwab authored “How to Write a Good Advertisement: A Short Course in Copywriting.” Further, his book aided many businesspeople and copywriters because it gave them details on how they could make their products and services “tempting” to consumers. Although it may sound too good to be true, many expert copywriters became masters of their craft after using Schwab’s tips as guide.
Through this book, he advised marketers, “Now, to get action, you’ve got to ask for it.”
3. Robert Collier (1885-1950)
A best-selling author who sold over 300,000 copies of The Secret of the Ages in the mid-1920s, Robert Collier was one good copywriter. He honed his skills in writing, researching, and editing when he worked at his uncle’s printing firm.
He excelled at creating direct-mail letters. In fact, he told how he made them through his eponymous book, The Robert Collier Letter Book. With this book, Collier was named “one of the greatest minds in history.”
What was behind the success of his sales letters? He addressed his readers’ needs through them. To explain it, he said, “Before you put pen to paper, before you ring for your stenographer, decide in your own mind what effect you want to produce on your reader — what feeling you must arouse in him.”
4. David Ogilvy (1911-1999)
A copywriter who gave importance to titles or headlines, Ogilvy once wrote: “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” For him, writing a headline that can’t sell is equal to wasting a large sum of marketing budget.
5. Fairfax M. Cone (1903-1977)
One of the famous promoters of the 20th century, Cone had a sterling career, which he gained in a short span of time. In 1929, he took his first job at Lord & Thomas and became its office manager. After a decade, he was already its vice-president.
Known for favoring honesty and clarity in copies, Cone made one by offering an answer to the problem “real” people experience. With this principle, he once stated: “Good advertising is written from one person to another. When it is aimed at millions, it rarely moves anyone.” Cone meant marketers shouldn’t write to millions of people, but to one person alone. In particular, let that one person share the news unless what you wrote isn’t worth sharing.
Copywriting Services at Outsource-Philippines
Copywriting is just a part of a big content marketing strategy, yet it plays a crucial role in keeping the brand in the minds of people. Unfortunately, many businesses can’t get it working to their advantage. More likely than not, they have good plans as regards the techniques but they employ the wrong person who does the task.
Know that there are many content creators out there working on a common goal—to help grow a business. Since content creation is broad, jobs are focused on the content types to do. Bloggers and social media content writers can produce exceptional outputs, but they may not be good at copywriting.
At Outsource-Philippines, we offer a wide range of content marketing services which include copywriting.
We employ content marketing specialists who are not just equipped with words but also knowledge about digital marketing and its best practices to help translate business ideas into contents that sell.
Outsource this task to us! Browse through our website to know more about our offers and request a free quote.
