Copywriting Strategies: A No-Nonsense Guide to Writing Persuasive Copy for Your Business

PART ONE

Copywriting 101

I know, you want to know exactly how to write the kinds of headlines, taglines, subject lines, or body copy that will have people clamoring to hire you, donate to you, or buy from you.

We’ll get there, I promise! But if you start trying to write copy without understanding the foundational principles, you’re setting yourself up for failure (or, at least, a very unpleasant experience). So, you need a good understanding of the basics of copywriting, including how copywriting has changed in the digital age. But before you can hit the ground running, let’s bring you up to speed.

CHAPTER 1

UNDERSTANDING COPYWRITING

If you have some knowledge or experience with writing, set aside whatever you learned in seventh-grade English or Intro to Journalism (which is a relief, maybe?). Copywriting is vastly different from any other kind of writing. This chapter covers what makes copywriting different and why those differences are precisely what makes great copy connect with your audience and drive them to take action.

What Is Copywriting, Really?

Copywriting is marketing and advertising writing; in other words, text designed to sell or persuade. Copy is used to influence thinking and get people to take action.

But before you toss this book aside in frustration, moaning, But I don’t want to be salesy! I don’t want to be manipulative or pushy! I have good news for you.

Good copywriting is NOT about being salesy or pushy. By and large, salesy and pushy don’t work in the long run and just leave people feeling kind of icky all over. Fundamentally, copywriting is about connecting an audience who has a want or need with the person, company, or organization that has the solution to that want or need.

We do that by crafting effective copy that makes the target audience say to themselves: "Wow, they get me . . . Hmm, this might be what I need . . . Hey! This is exactly what I need!"

Copy is the messaging used in banner ads, emails, websites, product packaging, direct mail, billboards, videos, TV and radio commercials, and sales webinars. Copy is the messaging on flashy online sales pages and on flyers posted on your local grocery store bulletin board. If you see messaging with the goal of persuasion or sales . . . it’s copy.

So at a basic level, the messaging in any advertising is copywriting. But copywriting is so much more. It welcomes and nurtures your audience to build a relationship with your brand—without you having to interact person to person. Copywriting is how you share your story and make your message matter to the right people. And copywriting is how you offer solutions and opportunities.

A good copywriter understands that people don’t buy products or services, they buy transformations like a life-saving medical treatment or four years of university tuition or improvements like a new T-shirt or a diet soda.

There is no better predictor of whether a venture will succeed or fail than the copy that supports the project. You can have the best product or service in the world and the prettiest photos, but if you can’t communicate how great what you’re selling is, you’ll fail. Let’s put a stake in the ground: Messaging is the single most important factor in the success of any business or endeavor.

Which makes you, as a copywriter, pretty dang important.

GOOD COPYWRITING . . .

•Is focused on the target audience and what they want and need to hear.

•Combines creativity and strategy.

•Makes a genuine connection with the target audience.

•Is well planned and well strategized.

•Uses the language of the target audience.

•Has clear objectives and meets them.

•Is simple to understand.

•Has a consistent brand voice.

•Leaves out the fluff and non-essentials.

•Catches the target audience’s attention.

GOOD COPYWRITING IS NOT . . .

•Pushy or manipulative.

•Clever or funny for clever or funny’s sake.

•About the copywriter.

•Even, really, about the company or organization being written for.

•Only used in marketing or advertising settings.

•Easy to write, necessarily . . . but is worth the effort.

•Always obvious . . . but is always effective.

GREAT MOMENTS IN COPYWRITING HISTORY

Arguably, copywriting has been around as long as humans have been able to read and write and have had something to sell. If that definition’s a little too broad, some put the advent of today’s narrower meaning of copywriting as far back as the 1400s.

This book, though, examines modern copywriting and the tactics still in use today. Some ads of the past represent some standout moments; I encourage you to do some research and see for yourself what makes them great.

They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano—But When I Started to Play!

John Caple’s 1926 ad is widely viewed as one of the first real breakout copywriting pieces. Created to drum up correspondence-course students for the U.S. School of Music, this advertisement was one of the first to reflect the motivation behind a purchase and the transformation a purchaser hopes for. The full ad is shockingly long by today’s standards but is also a testament to how a compelling story and an inspiring transformation can drive people to read an ad and then take action.

Volkswagen Beetle Ads from the 1960s

Even five decades later, this copy-led campaign for the brand-new Beetle remains one of the most interesting and creative you’ll ever come across. The Doyle Dane Burnbach company was tasked with introducing an unconventional car to the market and devised an unconventional method to do so by adopting an irreverent and starkly honest tone. Embracing the vehicle’s small size and comparatively low price, DDB wrote headlines like It Makes Your House Look Bigger and Live Below Your Means. Though not a perfect campaign with plenty of product-of-the-time, cringe-worthy elements (Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things), the ad series is nonetheless fascinating for its ability to capitalize on a counterculture, antiestablishment, truth-telling movement of the day and use those aspects . . . to sell cars.

Got Milk? and Just Do It

Launched in 1988 and 1993, respectively, these two taglines are both effective pieces of copy and cultural markers for the late 20th century (and beyond). As any copywriter will tell you, distilling a brand down to just a few words—and then making those words stick with their target audience—is one of the hardest jobs you can do. Nike created both a brand aesthetic and a rallying cry with Just Do It, inspiring people to take on the mantle of the athlete with each purchase. Got Milk? took the interesting tactic of not overtly trying to get people to purchase the product, focusing instead on the inevitability of wanting and needing it, saying, in effect, You already know you need milk. Do you have some, or do you need to hit the grocery store? The ad represents a fascinating twist and manages to accomplish that pivot with just two little words.

Facebook Ads

In 2007, Facebook launched an ad platform and in so doing suddenly made connecting with millions of members of a target audience possible for virtually any business, anytime, anywhere. Never before could small business play in the same league as bigger competitors—and get access to the same advanced targeting and analytics.

Common Misconceptions about Copywriting

Copywriting has nothing to do with the legal action of copyrighting nor, for that matter, copy editing. You may occasionally come across misunderstandings about these terms and need to correct them. More important, though, are the misconceptions outlined over the next few pages, that run rampant among people who don’t understand copywriting. And if you buy into these misconceptions, they may get in the way of you doing your best work.

MISCONCEPTION: COPYWRITING MUST BE ENTERTAINING

The truth: Copywriting isn’t about entertainment; it’s about communication. Sure, a copywriter may sometimes use a story or humor to make a point. But the end goal must be making that point. Copywriting needs to catch a reader’s attention, but the most effective way to do so is by communicating what matters to the reader. Entertainment is secondary, if even an element at all.

MISCONCEPTION: THE BEST COPYWRITING IS THE FUNNIEST COPYWRITING

The truth: Similar to our previous point, some copywriting may be funny, but humor is not essential—and is never going to be the primary purpose of a line of copy. Think about it: Most businesses have no need for funny copy. Banks, tech firms, clothing brands, grocery stores, health coaches, nonprofits, and thousands of other industries don’t need humor in their messaging. If being funny is within a brand’s style and enhances the effectiveness of the message then, great, humor is useful. Otherwise, it has no place in the copy.

MISCONCEPTION: COPYWRITING ISN’T REAL WRITING

The truth: I’ve found that you’re most likely to hear this one from struggling novelists or poets; successful novelists or poets don’t take any issue with copywriting. Copywriting involves wielding words to convey a message and is just as much real writing as any other type. And I’m certain that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, and James Patterson, who were all copywriters before they were novelists, would agree.

MISCONCEPTION: COPYWRITING IS ONLY HIP TAGLINES AND SLOGANS

The truth: Many people who think of copywriters imagine a cool young writer in some hot downtown ad agency working for months to come up with a single great line to encapsulate a brand. (Matthew McConaughey in the film How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and the horrendously bad Frost Yourself slogan come to mind.) Yes, copywriting can involve writing taglines or slogans to encapsulate a brand or campaign but there’s so much more—emails, websites, direct mail, billboards, packaging; the to-do list for a copywriter goes on and on.

MISCONCEPTION: TEMPLATES OR AI SOFTWARE CAN REPLACE COPYWRITING

The truth: More effort than ever is being put into developing artificial intelligence programs that can write copy. But even a sophisticated AI bot can’t be creative—can’t come up with possibilities that make sense and that no one’s ever heard before. It just can’t. The very nature of an AI program is to be derivative and work from preexisting ideas. And an AI bot certainly can’t come up with a new concept on the fly when someone needs a quick change. Similarly, templates (Just plug in a few keywords and you’ve got a perfect sales email!) have severe limitations. Effective copywriting is about custom-crafting a message based on the unique combination of an audience, a purpose for the message, a benefit for the audience, and an action for them to take. No premade, broad-strokes template is going to be able to accomplish what the copywriter can.

The Difference between