Are you a new copywriter that is just getting into the business or you want to learn it but you are not sure on how to get started? I am going to give you five copy writing tips for beginners. If you are one and ready, carefully read, then do well to apply these now:
1) Desire is much more important than your degree.
Don't be intimidated by the idea of learning how to write copy. I remember when I first heard about copywriting, I said to myself, I was unsure and uncertain. I said to myself, I was not good in the English language and I failed it twice while in high school. I said, I don't have a degree, couldn't I do this?
And what I realized is that when it comes to copywriting, a lot of things that we learn in school, journalism etc don't help. Those skills don't apply. Proper academic writing is different from copywriting. Academic writing is designed to educate, entertain to an extent, and inspire. That kind of text-book-like or boring types of writings. Copywriting is a form of writing that is designed to sell, convert a prospect into a customer or cause someone to take action. It's a kind of street smart type of skill, not much a school smart type of skill. When I talk of school smart type of skill, I am referring to accounting, and engineering backed by degrees. Over the years past, very few customers asked me if I have a degree in writing or journalism. They don't care about this. What they care more about is 'can your writing produce results?'
2) Master short form copy before long form.
When it comes to copywriting, there are different forms. Example include long form landing pages, webinars, sales letters, any kind of direct mail piece etc. It takes years to learn and hone your craft. I always suggest that beginners first learn the short form copy like emails, auto-responder sequence, Facebook ads, social media posts, Instagram posts and even Google ads with just the headline and a few other lines. By so doing, you learn how people respond. You are barely crafting short paragraphs or headlines. Once you get feedback and data and you kind of develop a sense of distinguishing those that worked from those that didn't, you are honing your skills and this builds selfconfidence.
Sometimes when you write long pages, it's intimidating - it might take you three weeks to craft something versus if you write something short, it might take you 30 minutes or an hour. You can test it by sending to a client and observing his or her response. I think it is good to learn short form copy first.
3) Use 80% of your time on research and 20% on writing.
One mistake I see most beginner copywriters do is spending too much of their time typing on computer or writing on paper what they intend to do. You need to spend a majority of your time researching about your prospects. Getting to know about their frustrations, pain points, goals, desires, hopes or where they want to get to, and many more. Once you know a lot about your prospects, you use very little time to write a message that speaks directly to them. This is different from something that you just rush to write with no clear background knowledge. If you do your research well, it is easier to write a copy that produce results. So spend more time in research and less time in writing. Think about their hopes, desires, fears, goals in the about page, or experience page of their websites or blogs.
4) Write the way you speak.
Getting formal education and having a degree is not important in copywriting. Because when it concerns copy, it is all about communicating. You connect with your prospects, customers, and leaders. So you have to write in very simple language. Sometimes you might use what I call ' one sentence paragraph ' which in English is not very proper. Sometimes when I write, I use one 'word paragraph ' Imagine writing one word paragraph and move to the next! Again, this is very unconventional but when it comes to copy it works because it is easy to read. So you have to write the way you talk. You want that when your prospects read your message, they should a kind of hear you talking to them; they can hear your voice versus when they read, they're like saying; l am confused, loosing, difficult to understand etc. Sometimes, academic writers write something to make themselves smart. Unfortunately, such is not understood by the audience. So write the way you talk.
Also, when you write, think of whether you are writing to one person or a group of people. Instead of using a lot of " we", "our", use more of "you", "I", because it's a one-on-one communication. It's me sitting across the table and talking to you versus " our company is very welcoming", is not a personal conversation. The more personal it is, the more powerful and compelling your copy will be.
Academic writing may be lengthy for nothing. Like this; " professional communication helps me the challenges of today's digital world, where communication is more important than ever." You see, it is very wordy, very serious! Okay; see how I will express the same thing in there words: " Copy equals money."
5) Build your own swipe file
Think of your swipe file as your source of reference or corperating vote. As a beginner , you don't have a lot of experience. You have to study the work of others such as emails, landing pages, sales letters, newsletter, advertising messages, catalogue, brochures, etc. Everything they do in the above. This is because when you study other people's work, you stop taking up pardons. So when you want to write, the last thing you should do is turning your attention to a Blanc computer screen and start wondering what to write. That's not what professional s do. Professional copywriters have an archive of other people's work called swipe file. If they need to write ads, or sales letters, they simply turn to swipe files that performed best a few years ago and gather ideas from there. They may write something similar or change the angle a little bit and boom they go! So do same.
So, it's not all about creativity, trying to come up with something no one ever came up with. This is stupid. Don't do that because when you go get your payment from a bank, nobody cares to find out where and how you got the material written in your copy. The bank teller simply pays you. Be smart building your own swipe file. Do well to have as many swipe files as possible with the different campaigns in relation to how effective they were previously.
Some of the things people don't understand is that there are many aspects of copywriting. Copywriters are among the highest paid professionals in the world. I call them high income copywriters. If you want to become a high income copywriter or which path you should follow or which types of copy you should focus on, read more of my posts in the days ahead.
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