Copywriting & Marketing

Here are three concepts you can use when it comes to doing your own marketing copywriting.

Establish Your Brand

Each business needs a brand to distinguish itself from every other business in the world and your marketing copywriting can use that as its key concept. Think about some of the brands of large corporations, from the stylized icon of the Roman centurion of American Express or the simple color “brown” of UPS. Those companies have spent millions establishing their brand and your marketing copywriting is the first step for you in establishing yours.

Know Your Audience

One of the most important concepts you should establish prior to doing any marketing copywriting is uncovering who is your audience. Who are the people that buy your products? What can your business give them that will improve their lives? Find the answers to these questions so your marketing copywriting can be more effective in communicating with your customers.

Get a Second Opinion

When you are crafting your marketing copywriting, make sure you have someone else look it over before you release it into the world – either online or to the printer. No matter how good a writer you are, you must always have a proofreader go over your marketing copywriting. Even if you have to pay someone to do it for you, it’s safer in the end.

Doing your own marketing copywriting is not the easiest thing to do, but if you keep these few things in mind then you’ll be sure to have a measure of success.

What’s it take to be a great ad writer? You might be surprised to learn that you don’t have to be a marketing expert. And you don’t need a MBA to be a writer for advertising. Here are a few steps to get you started on your way to becoming an ad writer.

What is an Ad Writer?

An ad writer is someone who prepares advertising copy for use in publications - either in print or on the web. Any ad writer works closely with the client to learn as much about them and their products and services as possible. When doing your own copy you should know everything about your business. Now many businesses, even ones that have been around for decades, sometimes can’t tell someone who their competitors are. If you’re going to act as your own ad writer though it’s important to find out everything about YOUR business, but also your COMPETITION.

Get Creative

Many times when people decide to be their own ad writer they first encounter writers block. In fact, the hardest copy I’ve personally had to write was for my own site, www.wintersproductions.com, and that’s what I do for a living! The best advice to get the creative juices flowing is stepping into your customer’s shoes. Consider what they’d like to know and what’s important to them. Then jump into a first draft. Keep writing and re-writing until you take that boring factual copy into something engaging.

But if all else fails, and you find that being an ad writer is a lot harder than you ever expected (or if you lack the time for tweaking to get it just right) that’s when hiring a professional ad writer should be considered.

Writing successful advertising copy doesn’t have to be as hard as you might imagine. Here are seven things you can do to make sure your advertising copy is the best it can be.

1. Define your Goal
   Before you even start typing your advertising copy, make sure you know exactly what it is you wish to accomplish. A phone call? An email response? An order? Laying out your advertising plan will get you on your way.
2. Know Your Audience
   Ask yourself – who will read my advertising copy? You might want to write for the broadest possible audience, but don’t forget to target just one group now and then. Why? You’ll have a better ad response rate when you can address a particular group’s precise needs, which is something you can’t do quite as well with general advertising copy.
3. Appeal to Their Interests, Not Yours
   Yes, you’re writing advertising copy to generate leads and sales for your business. The problem is the people who control that money, the customers, simply don’t care about what you want. Saying something like, “We’re the best lawn service in town’” means very little to your customers. However if you say, ‘You can have a lawn that will make your neighbors envious,” that puts the focus on them. See the difference? When that happens you have a much better chance at winning them over. So keep your advertising copy focused on the benefits your business can provide and NOT the business itself.
4. Be Emotional, Not Logical
   Mr. Spock would have been a terrible salesman. Emotion always trumps logic when it comes to buying. That means you must focus on the emotional appeal of what your business offers if you expect better results. Let’s look at perfume as an example. Women buy perfume to smell nice (logic). Women buy a particular perfume, like Calvin Kline or DKNY, because it makes them feel beautiful (emotion). Get your customers emotionally involved with your advertising copy and you’ll see results.
5. Keep it Simple
   Don’t talk down, but keep your advertising copy simple and to the point. This is advertising copy, not Tolstoy. Use short sentences, simple words and be clear. The power of the message comes through with the words you choose rather than the amount of words you use. So follow Thomas Jefferson’s advice and never say something in ten words when you can say it in two. It worked for the U.S. Constitution and it works for advertising too.
6. Limit Options
   Once you’ve played up to the customer’s interest and emotions focus them taking a particular step. This is known writing a call to action. Tell them exactly what to do next to get the benefits you’re offering. It might be clicking a link for web copy, picking up the phone in a newspaper ad or filling out a registration form on a postcard.

Do you have a professional SEO copywriter? How much is a well-written web page worth to your business? If your pages are not attracting and keeping visitors to your website with the intent of having them take action, then you need a professional SEO copywriter.

What is a SEO Copywriter?

A SEO copywriter is someone who designs and optimizes web page content to maximize your site’s chances of appearing higher on search engine lists. There are three major search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN – and a professional SEO copywriter can use keyword techniques to improve your site’s rankings on them. Most importantly, only an expert in SEO copywriting can make your pages seem “natural,” without using any tricks to fool the search engines.

What are the Benefits of Hiring a Professional SEO Copywriter?

Advertising is one of the greatest expenses that a business has, but a professional SEO copywriter can earn you more money by giving you a website that attracts visitors and search engines by focusing on the content. By targeting specific keywords, the SEO copywriter will bring in the most traffic from people who are looking for exactly what you offer, instead of paying for ad linking.

Your website traffic can increase so you’ll get more customers and best of all, your profits can explode. You and your business will be better off when you hire a SEO copywriter rather than trying to travel the uncharted waters yourself.