With five years of copywriting experience under my belt, I know a thing or two about copywriting. There is always room for learning and improvement. I also believe that, if you know how to write good copy, you have the foundation for anything you could work on as a marketer.
Copy is everything. Copy is life–the life of any marketing tactic and strategy.
Even when you’re not reading the copy, as you would in an ad or a blog post, there’s copy behind everything: a podcast discussion, video script, and radio jingle.
Now here are several tools, books, and tactics I’ve relied on over the years to hone my copywriting skills.
Before You Write Copy
Read The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
No copywriter has an excuse for not reading this book. It’s about 100 pages long in its paper form, and it’s chockfull of rules to follow when you write. Even if you only apply 25% of what you learn after reading this book, you will be far ahead of your copywriting peers.
Read On Writing by Stephen King.
I read this book ages ago, but here are a few nuggets I remember from it that impact my writing to this day:
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Kill your darlings. Many times we write things that we love the minute ink meets paper. It’s brilliant in your opinion. But after you sleep on it, you realize that your brilliant copy extraneous to your main message. You have to be prepared to get rid of—or delete—bits of writing that sound awesome to you but don’t add anything to the finished piece.
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Get rid of the adverbs. Stephen King hates them. I don’t have a problem with adverbs, but I figure that anyone who is a best-selling author knows better than me.
Refer to your company’s style guidelines.
Want to make sure your copy is on brand? Always take a look at your company’s style guidelines before writing any copy. The guidelines will take a lot of the guesswork out of trying to figure out whether your target audience requires a casual or formal voice or whether product names are capitalized.
If your style guidelines are nonexistent, this is your time to shine as a content marketer by volunteering to create them!
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You can find a style guidelines template online and modify as you see fit.
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Once your stakeholders approve your style guidelines, be sure to share your guidelines with the rest of your team to make sure everyone upholds your writing standards.
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Review your style guidelines regularly (e.g., once a year) to ensure that they are up-to-date and reflect how you and your team write.
Be a good listener.
All of us are consumers and buyers of food products, clothing, home goods, and so much more. Likewise, we all see and hear ads to day in and day out—coming from radio, TV, online retargeting ads, direct mail, etc. Listen and observe your fellow marketers’ and advertisers’ tactics. Ask yourself:
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What copy resonates with me?
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What copy got me excited about wanting to buy a product?
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What copy turned me away from a product?
Consume a lot of content.
Reading other content allows you to see how other people say things. It’s cliche but true: Knowledge is power. Even if you don’t think that reading will help your copywriting, you never know when information you consume will come in handy and make its way into your future work.
When You Write Copy
Start your writing with an objective in mind.
Disclaimer: Your objective may change in the process of writing, and that is OK. However, having a goal in mind provides direction for any research and preparation you need to do before getting started. Ask yourself:
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What value is my copy going to add to my customer?
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What is my customer going to learn after reading my copy?
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What do I want my customer to do after reading my copy?
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What do I want my customer to feel by reading my copy?
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How will my customer perceive my brand after reading my copy?
Spoiler alert: Copywriting is marketing strategy. I don’t think many people—even seasoned marketing leaders—get this. I love it when people ask me to “write words.”
Copy is not just words.
Copy influences the visuals and design of the finished marketing product. Copy is the voice of your brand. Copy is the vehicle for delivering your company’s message to your customers.
Kick off your long-form writing with outlines.
An outline is a skeleton of your finished piece to make sure you:
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Capture the discussion points you want to touch on within this piece.
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Organize the discussion points in a way that flows as the piece progresses.
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Think through supporting information for your discussion points.
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Figure out whether you can even cover everything you want within this piece. Maybe you need to write multiple blog posts or even an eBook instead to fully tease your topic.
Once you’re happy with your “skeleton,” flesh out your piece. Break up big blocks of text with images, quotes, and statistics that illustrate your points. Remember, add no fluff.
Communicate your idea in as few words as possible.
People have limited attention spans. Get rid of the fluff. Get to the point.
Write the introduction last.
It is hard to know what you’re introducing when you haven’t written it yet. If anything, trying to write the introduction first can inhibit the creative process. Or the introduction ends up having nothing to do with the rest of the copy. Jump right into your content, and then go back to write an introduction that will get readers excited to dig in.
Always have a call-to-action.
Don’t make your customers have to guess what they have to do next. Don’t forget what you’re selling. Marketing fulfills its goal when it pushes—and leads to—sales.
Try not to copyedit as you’re writing.
I’m guilty of it. I’ve already done it as I’m writing this blog. Copyediting as you write is worse than having to kill your darlings. Your darlings haven’t even had a chance to live before you decided to kill them. This is also another creativity inhibitor. Let the thoughts flow out onto paper or Word doc. Then, follow the steps we’re about to review.
After You Write Copy
Reading the entire piece back to yourself—out loud.
At least read it to yourself slowly and deliberately, hopefully with a bit of space since after you finished writing. Read to ensure that everything makes sense, adds value, and—without copyediting—make a mental note of things you want to change. Then copyedit. Better yet, ask a copyeditor, Creative Director, or other grammar nerd to take a look and opine.
Trust me. Taking your time with this process will help you yield the best marketing product possible.
Check your title and header capitalization.
Use a free tool like CapitalizeMyTitle.com to drop in your title and capitalize it according to your preferred writing style: e.g., Chicago, AP, APA, etc.
Test. Measure. Analyze. Keep doing what works.
When you’re evaluating completed marketing campaigns, learn what copy seems to resonate with your audience. Take a look at the performance data for:
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Most visits
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Most opens
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Most engagements
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Most clicks
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Least of each of the above
Commit to testing everything. Test headers in landing pages. Test ad copy. Test email subject lines. There’s never an end to testing, as well as what you can test.
Handy Tools for Copywriting and Copyediting
Install the Grammarly Chrome Extension.
Grammarly is great for spellcheck and small grammar edits when you are writing in tools/apps/websites that don’t have a built-in spellcheck. It is annoying to see the red lines pop up and green circle spin while you’re writing, but Grammarly can catch typos and errors as you write. I also get a kick out of their regularly emails that tell me how I compare to Grammarly users in terms of my productivity, accuracy, and use of unique words.
Drop your writing into the Hemingway App.
When I don’t have anyone to proofread my work, I rely on the Hemingway App to be my robot proofreader. It’s not as accurate as having another grammar nerd proof my writing, but it highlights my long sentences that I’m fond of, as well as my use of passive tense. It will tell me what reading level I’m writing at and my overall word count.
Side note: The reading level you should be targeting in your writing will vary based on your persona’s reading level.
Jot down notes and copy in Evernote.
Evernote helps me:
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Record audio from meetings and calls with people I am interviewing and gathering content that will be in my finished piece.
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Have a clean slate for me to put down my raw, unedited thoughts.
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Centralize where my thoughts, in-progress work, and documentation live.
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Jot down ideas for content as they pop up.
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Organize all of my random notes into categories that make sense to me.
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Access my notes on all the devices I use to communicate and work.
I also recently discovered that I can use Evernote to take pictures of documents and “scan” them into a notebook. The Evernote-snagged pictures with text are searchable, which comes in handy when I want to locate them within the app later.
I lied. Copy isn’t always everything.
Sometimes an image, GIF, or video will get the message across easier or in a more digestible fashion. Always think through the most effective way to get your point across. This is again where copywriting is strategy. Work with your graphic designer or videographer to bring your vision to life with the goal of reaching your customers.
Got any more ideas for how we can all become better copywriters? Share your insights in the comments section below.