Insights
24/10/2024
Anyone can write. But few can write compelling marketing copy. At Craft Words we write for websites, social, advertising, events, UX, and anything else where clients need our help. We’ve been writing for many years, with a lot of success and lots of happy clients. Here are our magnificent 7 great copywriting tips.
First and foremost – what are you selling? What are the benefits of the product or service? What does it do? Why is it better? How do you get it? What’s the story behind it? What is the brand’s tone of voice? Before we start writing we always make sure we’re fully immersed in our client’s business, answering all the above and so much more. So read everything you can, ask questions, and become an expert.
Who are you talking to? It’s important to have a picture in your mind of your reader. Of course, there may be more than one audience but it’s crucial to know what will interest, engage, and motivate each of them. If you put yourself in their shoes you can connect with them, not just in terms of what you’re explaining but tonally too. After all, people buying sportswear will be in a very different mindset to those buying medical imaging equipment, so your tone needs to adjust accordingly.
Next, think about a hierarchy of benefits for your client’s product or service, and create a logical flow that makes a convincing case. There’s a lot of blather on LinkedIn about storytelling, but the truth is you’re taking people on a journey. Your job is to make a compelling case for your client’s brand, in other words, an argument.
The ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about this and they labelled the elements of an argument: Logos, Ethos, Pathos, and Kairos. (Don’t worry, we’re not taking you back to school.) In copywriting the most important three are pathos, ethos, and logos (in that order).
Pathos: sympathise with your audience. Identify a problem, need, or challenge. Recognise their situation and show you ‘get’ them.
Ethos: establish your brand’s credentials – where it came from, who’s behind it, why it was created. Build trust in your brand’s through testimonials, sales success, history, fame, popularity, scientific proof, (or whatever else you discovered in step 1).
Logos: give the reader a logical reason to choose your brand. Make it a no-brainer. (There’s a reason a logo is called that.)
By the way, Kairos is about the timeliness of the product or service. If it’s especially relevant to a moment in time, maybe prioritise Kairos over ethos. For example, if you’re offering a solution to a problem that’s in the news.
At all times try to keep things as simple as possible. Reduce, reduce, and reduce so you avoid repetition. Make sure one point leads naturally to the next. But don’t let stylistic tricks cloud clarity. Remember George Orwell’s advice, “’Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane”. In other words, get out of the way. People should remember the brand, not your clever writing.
This relates to the brand’s tone of voice and personality. If you sound exactly like anyone and everyone else, why should anyone choose you? The skill of good copywriting is to describe a brand’s consumer offer in an ownable way. Even if there is no clear product or service difference, a brand ‘halo’ can create loyalty and preference, simply because the audience feel an affinity towards it. Originality goes a long way. Are Nike’s products really that different to others? Most likely not, but the brand and the copy are.
Hemingway said, “Write drunk, edit sober”. (Not advice to be followed literally.) This is where the copywriting really happens. For us, that means giving yourself the freedom to write a sloppy first draft that contains everything you want to say. Like screenwriter Syd Field said “don’t get it right, get it written”. After that, you can shape it into a thing of beauty. A sleek, spare, and irrefutably convincing argument that will charm your reader into buying without a moment’s hesitation. Be brutal, you’ll thank yourself for it later.
Novelist James Michener said, “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m a terrific rewriter.” So ask yourself if you’re sure it can’t be any better. Give yourself the overnight test and look at it again. Where can you tighten? What can you improve? How could it be more original, efficient, convincing? Better still, share it with a trusted colleague for their feedback. (We do this a lot at Craft – we’re lucky to be a company of writers.) Tell them to be brutally honest, because politeness won’t improve your copy. (William Faulkner advised writers to ‘kill your darlings’.) The key thing is not to be kicking yourself, if you spot something when it’s too late to change it. Make it good. Make it great. Make it bulletproof.
So there we are, our seven copywriting tips. We hope they’re helpful, whether you’re an aspiring copywriter or a brand in DIY mode. And if you’re in that second category, it might be worth finding out how Craft can write for you better, faster and more painlessly than you might ever have imagined. Interested? Get in touch.
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