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15 Copywriting Tips That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level

Take your content marketing to the next level with better writing. Julia McCoy's 15-point list features the best copywriting tips for online marketers.

15 Copywriting Tips That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level

Copywriting is an art. One that many writers have managed to hone over years of dedication to the craft.

Every copywriter has managed to come up with their own version of copywriting tips that enable them to create well-crafted content that gets the job done, whatever that job may be.

Copywriting tips vary from individual to individual, meaning that everyone has come to some conclusion regarding how they develop their copy.

15 Awesome Copywriting Tips to Start Crafting Better Copy Now

The masters of the art tend to have the same formula for success—and it’s these highly effective copywriting tips I am going to focus on here.

Copywriting Tips to Take Your Content to the Next Level | SEJ

1. Do Even More Research

The “Father of Advertising” David Ogilvy is known to have said you should “stuff your conscious mind with information” so as to always have material to work with. In the world of copywriting, the more you know the better off you are. To this end, you should try to learn as much as you can about as many things as you can. When you think you’re done, research a tiny bit more. This will give your content the edge of great research. The thing about creating good copy is the more places you can draw on for inspiration, the better your final product is likely to be.

2. Write Intriguing Copy

Although you might think copywriting tips like this are obvious, creating interesting copy is more than just developing copy that draws an audience. To make copy truly compelling, you have to include things to push the user’s buttons. Make it controversial or make it visually appealing. In the modern world where attention spans are shorter, developing engaging copy requires you to make that copy bite-sized and scannable so your reader can get the gist of it in an instant. Fascinating copy isn’t easy to write, but is sure is rewarding when you get it right.

3. Use and Integrate Your Personality

Creating a persona through which you can reach out to the audience is important in developing great copy. As far as copywriting tips go, this one is particularly important tin the twenty-first century. The reason why is because a lot of people think that ad copy is “lame”. They have an aversion towards being sold to. By developing a persona, you jump this hurdle by making your interaction with the user more about what they can gain out of your product. Developing a rapport with the audience is key to closing a sale — and writing great copy helps you do just that. 

4. Craft Compelling Headlines

Many users simply scan a headline, and the vast majority of them skip reading it if the headline is boring or plain. Many professional copywriters include developing stimulating headlines as part of their copywriting tips. In order to get in touch with your audience, you’re going to have to put together headlines your readers are going to want to read. You can do this by writing the copy first then pulling out the most powerful phrases to develop the headlines. A great test for how interesting a headline is this: If you see that headline posted as a classified ad with a phone number at the end of it, would you call?

5. Don’t Get Too Complex

Most fiction writers have heard the acronym KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid. In copywriting, the aim isn’t to dumb it down as much as possible but to make it able to appeal to a wide enough audience. Obviously, if you start including jargon in your copy on the first line and confuse the reader,  it’s unlikely they will feel the urge to continue reading. You are a writer first and foremost, which means your communication should be clear and concise. Keeping it that way ensures more people are able to understand what you’re saying.

6. Incorporate Storytelling

The importance of storytelling to developing great copy is well documented. Most professional copywriting tips include a point where they inform you how effective storytelling is for inducing an emotional response. Storytelling allows you to interact with your audience and give them something that they want. Offer them a place in their own story that resonates with their emotional core and drives them to do something about it. Storytelling is the most effective way to unlock a reader’s emotional response.

7. Focus on Benefits, Not Prices

Once upon a time, if you wrote a piece of copy selling a business and didn’t mention how affordable their prices were, that copy would have been rejected. Now, partially as a result of the fact that people hate being sold to in this generation, price of a product doesn’t matter that much. Instead, tell your audience WHY they’re paying that price. As most business and management students realize early into their career, if you create a demand for a product, people will be willing to pay more for it.

8. Don’t be Afraid to be the Devil’s Advocate

All customers have doubts. If you were spending your hard-earned cash on something you’d want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. That’s why many copywriting tips lists tend to include a section on playing the devil’s advocate. This involves meeting the queries a customer usually has head on. Probably the most obvious example of this type of marketing copy is through new car sales. Scientifically, users tend to agree with your position when you play devil’s advocate and illuminate their side of the argument. This makes them more sympathetic to your copy and more likely to spend money on whatever it is you’re selling.

9. More Doing, Less Describing

In an analysis of persuasive college application letters to Harvard, it was found that students that describe their actions in verbs as opposed to adjectives tend to be the ones that are more highly considered for admission. Verbs are more decisive and more specific, giving sentences more of an active feel than a passive one that adjectives tend to do. Don’t describe what something is. Instead, spend your copy describing what it does and how it helps the user.

10. Don’t be Too Crazy Clever

If you’re a writer who was trained in the original art of writing, with long, sweeping prose that goes on to describe the very nature of a scene, this copywriting tip is for you. As a copywriter, you’re less concerned with clever wordsmithing and more concerned with being clear enough to be understood easily. There’s a time and place for showing off your mastery of the English language in all its glory, but that time and place is nowhere near your copywriting jobs.

11. Get a Swipe File

Fiction writers walk around with a small notebook in order to jot down ideas as they pop up in their mind. The equivalent for a copywriter is the swipe file to organize all the impressive copy you’ve come across (or at the very least a link to them) so if you’re stuck on a headline or simply in need of some inspiration, you can turn to your swipe file and find what you’re looking for in minutes. This helps jumpstart your creativity and keep you motivated from the start to finish of a job.

12. Create With Purpose

When you develop a piece of copy, it should be purpose driven. Some copywriting tip lists say you should create as much content as possible. This is the opposite of that, telling you to create copy when it has a purpose, not just for creation’s sake. Copy exists as a cog in a larger machine, your overall content plan. If you start creating content all over the place without a mind towards how it affects your content strategy, then the result is a ton of mediocre content that does nothing to help you achieve your overall content goals.

13. Keep Distractions to a Minimum

No Facebook or Instagram-ming when you’re supposed to be writing.

Although it would be nice to shut yourself away and simply create content, the fact of the matter is many of us simply don’t have a sequestered study dedicated to writing. The result is we’re limited to cutting our distractions down to a minimum. I suggest you avoid using flashy programs when constructing your copy. Instead, use programs that are simple word processors such as Baara’s Q10 or Notepad++ to keep distractions from the program you’re working on to a minimum. For drastic measures, disconnect your internet connection so you aren’t tempted to end up on social media – the number one killer of productivity. 

14. Use Hard Facts to Backup Your Claims

This only applies to topics that have hard facts relating to them. If you’re lacking facts then you can’t make up statistics to support your position (as inviting as that might sound). If you do have hard facts, it becomes easier to write good, truthful content that focuses on the benefits you get from your product as supported by these hard facts.

15. Start With Your Strongest Point

Chess players learn from an early age that the strength of your offense depends on the strength of your strongest piece. The same goes for copywriters. The point with the strongest argument behind it should be your leading point. You can build on the hard-hitting success of that point to convince the reader and increase your credibility.

Conclusion

These copywriting tips represent a compilation of some of the best ideas that professional copywriters have when it comes to developing good, interesting, and efficient copy. I’ve used all of them myself.

As you spend more time in the field of copywriting, you’ll end up developing your own tips and tricks in order to create great copy that sells. The most important piece of advice I can give is to take lessons from both your successes as well as your failures. This will help you grow as a copywriter, and I’ll even venture to say, mature as a professional.

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: BONNINSTUDIO/Shutterstock.com
In-post Photo #1: marvent/Shutterstock.com

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VIP CONTRIBUTOR Julia McCoy Founder, Author, Educator at The Content Hackerâ„¢

Julia McCoy is an 8x author and a leading strategist around creating exceptional content and presence that lasts online. As ...

15 Copywriting Tips That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level

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