Words That Win Clients

COPYWRITING = The art of selling by means of the written word.

          Copywriting can be defined variously. Personally, I understand it as the process of creating effective, persuasive and functional texts, generally sales-oriented. Copywriting comes into play when translating regular text into the language of marketing and advertising, i.e. the language that effectively helps sell products and services to prospective customers and establish and maintain a relationship with them.

          Copywriting involves creating texts for marketing, containing a certain message intended for the customer (or to turn a person into a customer, convert a alead into a sale). A good copywriter not only has to be fluent in the language but also know the basics of sales psychology. In other words, you must know how to sell, and for that you also need to know the product or service, the target customer and the communication strategy adopted by the organisation, among other things that are of strategic and tactical importance to sales, marketing and customer relationship management.

          Copywriting includes product and company naming, creation of catchphrases and advertising slogans, advertisements and advertising campaigns, preparation of content used in newspaper, radio, television advertisements and any other promotional materials, such as websites, catalogs, brochures, leaflets, writing sponsored articles, SEO texts and positioning phrases, creating advertising offers, requests for proposals, branding, and more, with new channels emerging every day.

Why is it important to do market research before preparing content?

The role of a copywriter is to go beyond regular writing intended for ordinary communication, instead achieving functional goals such as generating leads, encouraging interest, stimulating engagement, calling for action, and generally having sales in mind. Before starting to prepare content, it is extremely important to do or obtain market research and assemble all the necessary information about one’s own company (this involves some introspection and self-definition for the company as a corporate “person”), its products and services, and also competitor companies and their products, and more importantly the target audience with all of its relevant characteristics, of which we today distinguish quite a considerable number, as marketing is becoming more and more professionalized and data-driven. Copywriters really need to get as much information about the intended recipient of their text as possible — and this is called profiling — what is the recipient’s age? social status? spending limits? interests?, needs?, typical behaviour?, and more. A very different language is used when creating content for housewives, different for children, and different for high-level managers, especially in their role as B2B decision-makers (often in committees). Different strategies are used for selling basic everyday products, and different for luxurious holiday trips for the whole family. Failure to identify and understand the target audience may result in creating content that fails in its role — fails to win you more clients and grow your sales, strengthen your brand, improve your market share… perhaps all at once. Are you surprised? Not having done one’s homework typically sets one up for a rude surprise.