Copywriting is hard! Believe me, I know! Regardless of the size of your company or your project, if you don’t create outstanding copy, you will lose your audience and their spending power. And once you’ve lost them, there’s a good chance you won’t get a second opportunity to engage them again.
So, how do you keep this from happening? How do you create compelling copywriting? Here are my top ten steps to write copy that captures your audience’s attention:
1. Know Your Target Audience
Last week I wrote a blog post about determining who is your target audience. Well, this week, it’s time to take that profile and write copy directly to that person. As you begin to write your piece, think about this specific person. Make your writing as personal and direct as possible. Learn your audience’s language and speak to that.
2. Create Your Objective
Before you even begin to write your actual copy, you need to formulate your objective for this particular piece. In marketing verbatim, this would be your “call to action.”
In fact, your call to action is the most important element of effective copywriting!
You are telling your reader what action they should take after reading your piece, such as buying your product, signing up for your newsletter, raising awareness about an issue, or visiting your website. Your call to action should elicit a particular response by creating a sense of urgency and giving your reader instructions for their next step.
3. Provide a Solution
Once you have established your objective, you are ready to start writing. To begin the process, you must define your reader’s challenge and then provide a solution that will resolve it. Address their biggest problem. Show them that you really understand the issue and the emotions behind it. Clearly define your reader’s problem, then amplify the consequences of not solving this issue, and finally provide them with a solution to this problem. This might sound callous; however, it actually demonstrates understanding and empathy for your reader by giving them a way to overcome their hurdle. Keep your focus on that singular issue; and by the end of the piece, your reader should be ready to act on your solution.
4. Be Specific
If you want your reader to choose you to resolve their biggest problem, help them see why they should! Why would they want to hire you or buy your product? Give them specific benefits that your service would provide to enhance their life and solve their problem. Paint a beautiful picture for them of how choosing you will change their life for the better by saving them money, time, or energy.
5. Use Your Brand’s Voice
Use your brand’s voice! This creates consistency on how you present information and makes your brand more recognizable. Can you define your brand’s voice in three simple words? Take those three words, create voice guidelines, and then write your copy based on that information. For example, if your voice is funny, use quirky examples and light-hearted interjections. However, in the midst of the comical, do not use obscure references and lose sight of your core message. Creating guidelines like these will help you create consistent copy that sets your brand apart from your competitors.
6. Grab Your Reader’s Attention
When you are writing, do you want to keep your audience engaged in the piece? If so, you need to grab their attention with a strong introduction that is comical, unique, or gives a sense of urgency. Then throughout the piece, intersperse little stories, quotes, graphics, or bold statements that keep your reader focused on your writing. Use words that display vivid imagery or appeal to your reader’s senses.
7. Use Active Voice
Using active voice in your writing is more powerful and concise. By definition, active voice is action-oriented. And isn’t that the point of effective copywriting—to make your reader take action?! In addition, it eliminates wordiness by getting your point across with more direct language.
Active voice is the subject performing the action of the verb. In contrast, passive voice is when the subject receives the action of the verb.
For example, this is active voice: The mighty lion defended his pride! And this is passive voice: The pride was defended by the mighty lion. Active sounds much more powerful, right?
8. Talk to Your Reader
Your copywriting should not be about who you are and all of your accomplishments. It should be about what you can do for your audience. Make the narrative more outward. You want to compel your reader to act, not give them a history lesson about you or your company.
9. Engage Your Reader with Questions
Using questions within your writing can shift a reader’s thinking and lead them to where you want them to end up. It can even make your reader discover something that they didn’t know they were missing in the first place. Questions are engaging and keep your reader thinking about your solution to their current problem.
10. Remove the Fluff
Finally, once you’ve written your piece of copy, go back and edit it (and edit it some more).
You can never edit too much! By the way, if you need help with editing, I know a great editor…hint, hint…me!
While assessing your grammar, punctuation, and spelling, you also should look at your wording. Remove all of the fluff. This means removing overused buzz words, unneeded adverbs and adjectives, and general wordiness that does not add to your message.
So…Now What?
Creating compelling copywriting is an important challenge for any business. Once solved, it allows you to reach new customers as well as forge deeper relationships with current clients. I am here to help if you want to outsource your copywriting or just need a little supplemental assistance in this area. Reach out to me at The Inspired Copy for a complimentary consultation. I would love to help you take your copy to the next level!
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