Why do some ads and marketing campaigns reap major bucks, while others falter or fail? The secret is in the copywriting. No matter how brilliant the product or service or how powerful the graphic elements are--winning words make it all work.
Creating Emotional Experiences
Today's consumers are a savvy and fickle bunch, with high expectations. Track your own behavior and you'll see what I mean. Which direct-mail piece, radio or TV commercial grabs your attention; which annoys or bores you?
If you're running a business, you want to get robust returns from every marketing penny. So allocate part of that penny to a copywriting professional. The pro's job is all about wordsmithing that rocks (read: creating emotional experiences while being very forward about action calls, which results in major bling).
Finding the perfect prose that fits a specific brand and engages the target audience is not for the faint at heart. It's a blend of art and science, and the writer has to have a firm handle on the objectives and the demographic audience. Truly creative copy is worth its weight in gold, so you don't pay by the word. In fact, the leaner the copy, the more difficult it is to "nail it."
Advice from the Experts
To understand how better returns are achieved via strong copy, it pays to get some insight from the experts. This way you fully understand the process and, equally important, you’ll be able to have meaningful conversations and give smart directions as you interview and work with your copywriter.
You'll need to make some decisions in advance about your offer, your audience and the problem your product can solve so your copywriter will have the information to write spectacular copy for you.
We'll begin with advice from one of the nation's best copywriters, Bob Bly. Bly is an independent copywriter with a long track record of successful promotions for Forbes, IBM, and numerous other businesses and publishers. He's written more than 70 books, including The Online Copywriter's Handbook, Fool-Proof Marketing and The Elements of Business Writing. Here, Bly shares his top five tips for captivating copy:
1. Make an offer with a direct call to action. According to Bly, many campaigns fail because they lack this one element.
2. Make the offer appealing and strong enough to make people want to take action. For example, if you own a restaurant, a coupon for a free dinner tied to a certain purchase or a free glass of wine with a dinner purchase works well.
3. Use target-driven copy. Design the copy to be meaningful to the specific audience, reader or market.
4. Speak directly to your audience. According to Bly (who has been called America's top copywriter by McGraw-Hill), the best copy is specifically focused on the prospect and the problem, not the product, quality or features.
5. Use testimonials. Get one to three of your best clients to share not only how great your product is, but also how it benefits the consumer.
Roberta Rosenberg , who calls herself "The Copywriting Maven," has been crafting B2B copy for a variety of academic, commercial and nonprofit publishers and information product marketers since 1987. Based in Maryland, Rosenberg knows a bit about why tightly written, conversational and motivational copy works.
According to Rosenberg, if you get the right offer to the right audience, you can write it in lipstick on toilet paper and pull in great results.
If it was that easy, we'd all finally have a great use for that freaky shade of pink that never worked. But the simple fact is that creating sales-churning copy takes special expertise that can "speak" with resonance to the target demographic, in tandem with the visuals.
1. Rosenberg's top tip for getting it right is focusing. She recommends spending a good amount of time thinking about whom you are selling to, instead of concentrating on a list of benefits, picking headlines, etc.
2. Don't skimp on preparation. Consider everything that's important about the product/service and the campaign. That includes the purpose of the project, the context, the challenges, the competition, the uber benefits and, yes, the product or service features and pricing.
Don't forget to detail to your copywriter what the consumer thinks about the price point: Is it reasonable, pricey or way off the charts? This kind of back-end homework will enable you and your copywriter to cover the critical details needed, so that the final draft contains language that pulls in results.
3. Great copywriting is not a linear process. It involves unbridled creativity, shelf time, considered reflection--and lots of editing. The prize at the end of the day contains the meat, with nothing unnecessary, useless or off the mark.
According to Rosenberg, copywriters are the hunters. "We are revenue generators. We look for fresh meat, we kill it and bring it to the lair so that the tribe does not go hungry."
Pretty strong language, but bringing in serious sales is serious business. And if you work with a talented team that includes a professional copywriter, you're more apt to get your cash register singing.