category oscprofessionals - Blogs - Killer Copywriting Tips to Transform Your Business

Killer Copywriting Tips to Transform Your Business

Aug 31, 2021 | 8 min read | Guest Post

Overview

Every business, regardless whether it’s a small neighborhood store or a multinational corporation, depends upon publicity to attract as well as retain customers. And to serve this purpose, they use various methods. These include advertisements in newspapers, magazines and other print publications, hoardings on roads and highways, flyers and banners that can be easily be sent online or even given away physically.
Other means of publicity include standees, sign-boards, websites and blogs, online ads, Short Messaging System (SMS) text messages, WhatsApp, Facebook ads and many others.

The Role of Copywriting

However, if we notice any kind of publicity that companies engage in, one thing becomes very clear. That all of them use words to reach out to people, regardless whether they’re business clients or individual consumers.
To ensure that words are carefully chosen and appeal to customers and stakeholders, businesses depend on a skill or science known worldwide as copywriting. Because copywriting focuses on the importance of words and uses them carefully to generate excellent publicity for the business.
Indeed, words are very important for every business. They can define the fine line between failure and success of any business regardless of its nature, size and location.

Importance of Words

There’re several reasons why words are important. The main one is that copywriting involves delivering a message that directly aims at influencing a customer or stakeholder. If words aren’t impressive enough, chances are a client would move to someone who’s using better copywriting for publicity.
Secondly, words have the power to generate emotions. It’s a well-known fact in psychology that words generate thoughts that translate as emotions to eventually culminate as actions. The ultimate goal of every copywriter and publicity is to get leads and readers to take actions which directly benefit the company as higher sales and profits.
Thirdly, words are important because people remember them. Therefore, a good copywriter would write in a fashion that people will remember the words long after they’re read a copy or content or ad.

Killer Copywriting Tips to Transform Your Business

The above examples clearly prove the importance of words and the significance of killer copywriting to transform your business. Generally, larger corporations hire a team of copywriters. Smaller businesses can either hire freelancers or ask one of their marketing staff that has the necessary skills to do copywriting.
Regardless which category of business you’re into or its nature and location, here’re some killer copywriting tips that could transform your business for good. You could definitely try them to make your business successful.

Research Well on the Subject

Research about the company, brand, product or service is the first and most important necessity for killer copywriting for any business. Because, without astute knowledge about something, it’s impossible to do excellent copywriting that has an impact on the market or readers.
Generally, copywriters research well and understand what they’ve to write about before starting to actually write. They comprehend points that’re important to be highlighted to influence the reader. And once they have such information, they write copies that can make a difference to the business and help it gain more customers.

Help the Customer to Research

When a copywriter researches about the company, brand, product or service, they can also help a buyer to better understand what’s on offer. Studies in content marketing clearly reveal that between 75 percent and 90 percent of all consumers, research about something they wish to buy before arriving at a final decision and placing an order. They do such research from various platforms including ads, newspaper reports, reviews, blogs and press releases.
Therefore, while copywriting to transform your business, help your customer to also conduct research. This means including relevant points about the company, brand, product or service that would interest a customer. A superb copy should answer all questions that a consumer or stakeholder may have and is likely to ask. Therefore, it’s imperative to pack in as much information as possible in the copy, in a manner that a consumer finds engaging, interesting and relevant to their needs.

Keep Online Business in Mind

Microsoft founder Bill Gates says: “If your business is not on the Internet, soon your business will be out of business.” Therefore, if your business too isn’t online, it’s best to start a blog. In the “new normal” as we call it due to the Covid-19 pandemic ravaging the world since early 2020, ecommerce or online buying has grown exponentially around the world.
Now you might wonder how this is related with superb copywriting. A lot in fact. There’s a difference between writing for print media, ecommerce or online platforms. Generally, people will read something in the print media only when they’re at home or office. However, when it comes to online platforms, people would most likely read your copy on their smartphones, especially during commutes or spare time. The manner in which a copy is written for online readers differs vastly from the ones for print.

Check Your Word Count

Keeping your word count in check is one of the most important copywriting tips for transforming your business. That’s because of psychology again. The average human attention span is pretty shorter than we believe. That’s the reason newspapers present news in as few as 300 to 500 words only. And news copies, if we observe are always packed with information that was available at the time of writing and before going to press. The reason for this is that people will never read anything longer than 300 to 500 words, unless it’s immensely interesting.
Therefore, I would suggest that you first decide on the number of words for writing a copy. And follow the first tip of researching well about the subject. This helps you to keep your copies shorter, precise and yet interesting, engaging and relevant to the reader. While online content can stretch to 1,500 words of beyond, that’s mainly for digital marketing’s SEO purposes. However, for copywriting it’s not really necessary to extend the copy merely to increase the word count, unless you wish to perform Search Engine Optimization and other processes to promote it.

Use Stories Where Possible

Copywriting is a science or art, as I mention earlier. And one of the best ways to do copywriting that could transform your business is by telling stories. If you have an experience or interview with a happy customer or satisfied stakeholder, you could use it to weave a wonderful story about the company, brand, product or service. People love reading real-life stories and identify with them. Better still, they wish to have a similar, superb and enjoyable experience that provides them value for money for what they buy.
At the same time, you could also create a fictional story if necessary. However, while copywriting with a fictional story, it is best not to distort or conceal facts or make tall claims merely to impress a buyer. One of the best examples of copywriting that involves a story that I often quote is from none other than Parker pens. The print ad that was popular a few decades ago, starts with the headline, “Now a Millionaire’s Pen” with the strapline saying: “That you can afford to carry and not afford to miss.” This ad tells the story behind Parker Vacumatic, one of the innovative pens launched by the company. Till date, this ad remains one of the superb examples of storytelling for killer copywriting.

Proper Paras and Subheads

The use of proper paragraphs and subheads is very essential for effective copywriting, regardless whether you’re writing for a print or online platform. That’s because paras and subheads make your copy reader friendly. It allows you to guide the reader through various salient features of the business, brand, product or service. The tip I would provide is never exceed four sentences in a para. Each sentence shouldn’t exceed 20 words at best. And write each feature under a different sub head.
At the same time, do not write more than three paragraphs under a single subhead unless absolutely necessary. The purpose of copywriting is to attract clients. And to attract clients, creating an attractive, reader friendly copy is the key to success. Another tip here is to select and use fonts that’re soft on the eyes and easy to read for people of all ages. Any copy written with wrong fonts, though superb, can turn off potential customers. To find the best font, you could check what other successful businesses are using. Often, you’ll find these fonts readily available on Microsoft Word, Google Docs and other software that copywriters use.

Make Customers Feel Special

This might come as a surprise to you. Every customer in the world, regardless of their geographical location, income and other demographics, wants to feel special. And it’s the job of the copywriter to make them feel special. Therefore, whenever you do copywriting, put the customer first.
This doesn’t imply that you can cater to all sorts of people around the world. It starts by identifying a niche audience for whom a specific brand, product or service is made and marketed. It is this niche audience that you need to make feel special. That the brand or product or service is something they can identify with and join an elite club of sorts.
This helps the marketing and advertising departments too. Because, these departments will use your copies to pitch products and services to leads and returning consumers. The marketing team will focus on what you say in the copy while promoting the product while the advertising team will create ads that blend with your words.

Never Make Tall Claims

The greatest undoing of any copywriter is making tall claims about a company, brand, product or service. I’ve seen countless such instances during my career in advertising and corporate communications.
Understandably, a copywriter comes under pressure from top brass of the company to write what they wish to see while ignoring what the consumer wants to hear and read. Often, this translates as false or tall claims. Obviously, there’s no malice intended in such cases on part of the top brass: instead, they’re only anxious about creating a good image in the vast and competitive market we see nowadays.
In such cases, it is better to put your foot down firmly and refuse to make tall claims and fake promises. Because these will translate as unhappy and dissatisfied customers over a period of time. And this has a cascade effect because unhappy and dissatisfied customers can generate more adverse publicity that all your advertising and marketing budget would fail to squelch.
Sticking to facts and presenting your copy with real brass-tacks is a trick you’ll need to master. Of course, you can take suggestions from the company top brass, marketing team and advertising agencies or those within the company. However, it’s worth remembering that you as the copywriter should have the final say in these matters. At times, it may be necessary to present your case for a writing a specific copy, if it’s written with full honesty and diligence.

Use the Simplest Possible Language

Copywriting is all about reaching out to consumer and company stakeholders. It is not about showing off your expert level fluency in English language. Therefore, use the simplest language possible while copywriting.
Your target audience should not have to reach out for a dictionary to understand what you’ve written or words you’re using. In fact, it should be simple enough for even a fourth grader to understand while driving home the message to consumers.
Here I would recommend that every copywriter to follow what’s commonly known as the Flesch English Readability Test. The Flesch mode uses simplest language that’s often in the present or future tense and can be easily understood by an 11-year old.
In fact, American and other governments use language that conforms to the Flesch standards and can be understood easily. Also nowadays, insurance companies, banks and other organizations use this standard to reach out to customers.

Write with Budget in Mind

That’s right. Every good organization that wishes to transform its business and make it successful will have a budget for advertising and marketing. Therefore, copywriters have to ensure that what they write will fit into the budget of the business and there’re no additional costs.
To explain a bit more: if you’re writing for a brochure, keep in mind the printing costs and limit your word count. Also, write in a manner that the bulk of the message goes on the front page and all other details follow later. Here I suggest you to try the Inverted Pyramid technique that news reporters use to present news. They put all the hard facts in the opening paras and follow up with other lesser relevant details and perspectives where necessary.
Here, it’s also worth noting that the human attention span is very short. If your brochure, ad or copy is too long and not interesting enough because facts are dispersed around, a reader or Internet user will lose interest and move away. The message that you’re trying to get across to transform your business would be lost. This means that the business will end up spending more money on generating leads and promotions than actually necessary.
Killer copywriting also involves keeping copies short and concise. They take human attention span into consideration and cut out all fluff from the copy. Instead, only hard facts as they exist are given on the copy.

Sync with the Mission & Vision of the Business

Killer copywriting also means creating copies that’re in perfect synchronicity with the vision and mission statements of the company. Therefore, you can use some parts of the vision and mission statements indirectly in the copy. This helps consumers to develop some level of confidence in your business.
When your copies are in sync with the vision and mission statements, writing also becomes a lot easy. You can present how the brand, product or service is part of the commitment given by the business through its vision and mission statements.

Avoid Negative Phrases

And finally, the best way to create a killer copy that really transforms your business is to ensure there’re no negative phrases. Because nobody likes to read negative stuff. Especially during our times when everyone is undergoing lots of stress. Instead, write your copies on a positive note always.
A negative phrase for example can be something like this: “We didn’t promise this but we’re giving it to you.” Human psychology proves that negative phrases have a longer lasting effect on people’s though process compared over positive ones. Therefore, the task of a copywriter is to make a consumer or stakeholder feel good about what they’re reading or seeing on Internet, TV or in print.

In Conclusion

As we can see from the six tips above, killer copywriting that can transform your business isn’t something difficult. It would however involve some extra efforts for research, selecting right font and arranging the information in the proper sequence. Yet, with these efforts, you would be able to easily do copywriting that helps generate interest in the business while enabling its growth.

2 Comments

  1. digitalwithme July 4, 2022 at 11:46 am

    Thanks for sharing a very informative blog

  2. Finacus July 25, 2023 at 12:02 pm

    I really enjoyed reading your blog! Your writing style is engaging and kept me hooked from the beginning to the end.

Leave A Comment