Are you a beginner in the copy writing business and you’ve been wondering how best to go about it? Here’s the good news! Copy writing is an art that does not necessary need a very big English grammar. Copy writing is used in all businesses (offline and online) for their marketing materials. For an online business, copy is used in marketing venues such as website and landing pages, sales letters, and ads. For example, when you write a tweet to promote your product on Twitter, you’re writing copy. Once you are copy writing, your main objective should be building an empathetic rapport with your readers. You should write the way they speak. It is absolutely okay to use slang, sentence fragments, contractions, colloquialisms, and so on but all these depends on your on the circumstances and your intended audience. You should also understand that when copy writing; you’re walking between informality and incomprehensibility. Don’t confuse the design of your copy with the intent of your copy. The primary focus is telling someone how your product or service is going to benefit them.
So how do you go about copy writing as a beginner?
Use clichés or buzzwords like such as, now, here, at last and today. Use actions words too like buy, get, try, and taste and so on. When you use emotive words use adjectives. You could alliterate, repeat sounds pleasing to the ear but do not overuse. Watch your punctuation and grammar. You may be uncomfortable with the word “sell,” but persuading someone to do something is a form of selling.
When you want to write a headline for possibly a print ad, you should; make your headline majorly persuasive, appeal to the reader’s self-interest and limit your headlines to about 5-8 words. Make sure you include the brand name in the headline and use common words.
Your subhead should reinforce the headline if you have resorted to having subheads. They should entice the reader to go on to read the body copy. Then note that the longer the body, the more appropriate the use of subheads.
For your body copy, use more of present tense, singular nouns and verbs. Use active verbs and familiar words and phrases. Try to provide support for the unbelievable and avoid superlatives and clichés here. Avoid vagueness, generalization of words or imprecise meanings. Prevent wordiness; a copy has fit within limited space and time before it bores the audience. So be careful
A copy must remain true to its primary responsibility: communicating the selling message. Know that Comparisons are as easy as pie. You can compare anything to anything, but that doesn’t make the comparisons meaningful or even desirable. For example, “Our graphic design software hits a home run every time.” Well, no, it doesn’t unless you regularly hit baseballs with your laptop. Sports comparisons are especially tempting. Yet, the more you insist on them (“life is like a football game”), the more likely you’ll bore your audience, even the ones who like sports.
The best comparisons go beyond clichés to help a product or service stand out from the competition: “Our graphic design software lets you match any color in the rainbow. And wait until you see our rainbows.”
Comparisons are tricky but at least they are positive. Threats of doom are both tricky and negative. Most customers recognize that they have a problem. They come to you for a solution and are ready to pay for it. Avoid lengthy threats of doom in your opening paragraphs. If you must educate your customers about their problem so that they understand your solution better, save the details for later in your marketing copy.
For your very good copy writing, it requires research; don’t proofread your own work. Yes, of course you should go over everything you write and make corrections before submitting your writing. In fact, reading your work out loud is a terrific way to uncover some typos, grammatical errors, and perhaps some misjudgments in rhythm and tone. But the writer’s review should never be the final check before printing and publication. Writers are too close to their own work, and they’ll either replicate their errors in the editing process or “read” into their review what they thought they wrote, instead of what’s actually on the page. If you can, have a professional proofreader review your work. At the very least, have someone with excellent English language skills review it.
People make decisions as much on emotion as they do on logic. A time-tested persuasive technique is to express how inaction or the wrong action can jeopardize your reader’s well-being. If you are copy writing, make sure you are doing it well.
