What are some great copywriting hacks?

An amazing website with fabulous graphics and a beautiful design can so easily come unstuck when it comes to quality of writing. Properly planning and proofreading your copywriting is well worth the time and effort, as it's these words that will stick with your potential customers. It's the first impression your customers will have of your care and attention that you give to your business and you don't want that to include dodgy spelling errors or clumsy sentences. Regularly reviewing what is written about you and your business will ensure your content is always fresh and in line with your branding and values. Copywriting is certainly an art form in itself; but below are a few tips and hacks to make your next adventure into the world of copywriting as productive as possible.

Before You Start: The Concept Phase

Know Who You Are Writing For
Spend time getting to know your audience. Who are your customers? Who are you trying to persuade to try your product or service with this copy? Is it everyone or is this copy being used to inform a new group that you haven't reached before? It is important to know who you are writing to as this will tell you of what type of language and terminology are most suitable.

Have an Objective in Mind
Seems straightforward enough to know what the purpose of your copywriting is but it's a step many copywriters skip. Is this website informing customers or selling to them? Is your email about a competition, a sale or a new range of products? This will keep your copy clean, clear and specific.

Research, Research, Research
Do your research. Having ten times the amount of information that you are going to need for your copy will make your life easier. This will ensure you deeply understand your topic before you launch into explaining it to others. Rather than having just the bare bones all of that extra information will inspire you and you'll be happy to let go of useless extra pieces of writing if you've got something brilliant to use instead.

Brand Consistently
Some of the big companies out there have their branding down to a fine art so that you can guess something is written by them just by the language they use. Think of companies like Virgin Atlantic, eBay, Amazon or Google. The language they use is unique to them and represents their values.

By creating a set of loose 'rules' for your copywriting your customers will begin to recognise your values and aims through the language that you choose to use. This also makes it infinitely easier to pass a copywriting brief to an employee or outsourced resource, and provide the guidelines to best fit into your existing brand and message.

Provide a Great Takeaway
Decide what is the one key idea that you want your reader to take away from your piece. This will be one of the first things that you will mention and you will want to repeat it at the end as well. You'll find people won't absorb more than one or two pieces of information from your writing and this is particularly true of online content.

As counterintuitive as it sounds when you’re trying to create a long form copy piece, often the strongest point to a piece can actually be summarised in a paragraph or less. If you find you’re spending half of your word count explaining the point itself, you’re probably too diffuse with your aims, and it will be beneficial to revisit what you were originally trying to address in the article.

While You're Writing: The Creation Phase

Create Interest
Be imaginative don't just explain what your company, business or organisations can do. Why are you the best around? What makes you different from your competitors? Keep your language lively and creative drawing in the reader and holding their interest.

Draw on Emotions
Describe how your product or service is going to make your customer feel. People find it much easier to remember emotions over words so let the reader know about the emotions around your subject and you will keep your brand in their mind. Describing what the emotional rewards will be from purchasing your product or service is a great positive emotion to concentrate on.

Punctuation
Don't go overboard and it's best to keep things standard by avoiding numbers and symbols that are not commonly used by your customers. Generally, it's best to avoid emojis in all of your copywriting as you might find plenty of your customers have no idea what you’re going on about.

Be Concise
The death of good copywriting is waffling on filling your website or email with unnecessary information. Keep things concise and to the point ensuring that your readers come away with your most important points. You want to make sure that anyone searching for how to purchase from you can easily spot what to do.

Provide the Proof For Your Adjectives
Try not to just say that your product or service is amazing and that you have excellent after sales support. Provide examples and proof by finding customer reviews and quoting them. You can go one step further by directing your readers to review sites or other places where customers have made positive comments about your business.

Subheadings and Lists
Lists and subheadings are great ways to divide up lots of information and make your copy clear and concise. By dividing up information this way you will avoid repeating yourself if you have lots of facts and figures to tell your readers.

Language
Use positive upbeat words such as ‘can’ and ‘will’ - especially if you are selling something. Avoid passive words and wishy-washy language like ‘maybe’, ‘might do’ and ‘should be’ as this will put doubt into your reader's mind and can turn a possible customer away from your business.

Be Authentic
With all your branding and positivity make sure that you are being true to yourself and your company. If you have built your business from the ground, then you will want it to reflect you and your values as it will quickly become apparent if the values of the business and copywriter differ. Your customers will trust you more as an organisation if they feel you are being yourself and you will be more comfortable as well.

After You've Written Your Copy: The Proofing Phase

Looks Are Important
It's not just about the flow of the words, sentences and paragraphs but also about how it appears on the website, email, letter or leaflet. Take a look at the spaces around the text as these are just as important as the actual words. Your copy should look visually appealing and seem easy to read.

Spelling
Seems easy but it isn't so simple. Obviously, avoid any basic errors but you need to think about common words and phrases if you are appealing to British audiences over American ones or Australian readers rather than English speaking South African ones. There are lots of words that have different implications in different parts of the world so it's best to get a native speaker from the part of the world you are aiming for to check your writing.

Proofreading
Tightening up your writing to make it flow and neatly describe all you intend is done quickly and easily with professional proofreading. A pair of outside eyes will let you know what and where to change your text. The next best choice after a professional proofreader is to find a trusted colleague to read through everything before you publish it.

Review Your Copy
Not just right before you publish it or send it to the printers but you should regularly update and change what you write about yourself as this will keep your website and sales material looking fresh and up to date. It's also a sign that you are still open for business and available to contact if your website has been recently updated.

Ensure People Will Trust Your Copy
This is easy. Don't lie. By being honest about your organisation or business you will gain far more loyal customers than if you exaggerate the benefits or down play the costs. This will only give you disappointed one time only customers who will give you poor reviews and never come back to you.

Still Struggling?

If you’re spending more time than you can justify and still banging your head against the proverbial brick wall, perhaps it’s time to consult an expert.

Whilst this isn’t a hack as such, it’s certainly a shortcut to a great result with the right copywriter (and of course, when your budget allows!). You'll only get what you put into it, so even when outsourcing it's all about how you work with your expert. The more detail you provide them about your brand and what you are looking for the better the chance that you'll get copywriting that you love. Developing a relationship with a copywriter is the best way to get the sort of copy you're looking for.

Writing or getting great copy isn't difficult and with a few tweaks, you can have copywriting that will inspire and encourage your customers to choose you. Make sure your copywriting is true to your business and as representative of what you do as the images you display. Spend time planning what you are going to do and regularly reviewing your copy will pay huge dividends with excellent relevant content.