Copywriting for Marketing

If your marketing campaign was the Titanic, bad content would be the iceberg.

Put simply, few things can more readily cause a marketing campaign to capsize and fail. And although there are dozens of ingredients that go into the special sauce of any successful marketing campaign, what many businesses fail to realize is that quality copywriting is the cornerstone. It’s the support structure that buttresses a strategic content marketing campaign.

The good news is that this tragedy of the RMS Titanic is completely preventable—so long as you avoid the crummy content iceberg. But what does good content for marketing look like? What are the best practices to employ?

If you don’t have the answers, don’t worry. We do. So, for today, let us be your sherpa.

And this guide, your map.

Copywriting for Marketing - “The Times, They Are a-Changin”

The turn of the century marked the beginning of the Information Age—a historic time period characterized by a rapid shift where the world embraced novel technologies.

Two decades later, and we now live in a time when the cyber interstates and highways are more densely populated and interconnected than ever before. Technology, social media, and e-commerce have become such an important facet of everyday society that, even now, a growing number of businesses are scrambling to establish a digital presence and use their website as their primary marketing tool.

Forbes writes:

Digital marketing has proven itself indispensable to today’s marketers, and it's moving the marketing industry in a direction filled with innovative technologies, social media connectivity and endless possibilities. This year, digital advertising spending is predicted to surpass traditional advertising for the first time, according to eMarketer.

These days, content is a broad term that represents several unique, but equally important, facets of content marketing. For example, a marketing campaign may require all or some of the following types of written content:

• Blogs
• White papers
• Direct campaigns
• Advertorials
• Web copy

Although we won’t go into the nitty-gritty of the types of copywriting, we can speak generally to the merits of content with respect to marketing.

Content, Marketing, and the Trip Down the Sales Funnel

Whatever types of copywriting you’re working on, the goal of your marketing campaign is to attract new customers and then move them down the 7 primary steps of the sales funnel. These steps are:

1. Building awareness – You introduce yourself to potential customers.

1. Garnering interest – You build trust and establish a relationship with customers, garnering interest in your good or service.

1. Provoking consideration – Potential customers balance on the edge of the knife, your efforts or lack thereof can help convince them one way or the other.

1. Acquiring intent – The customer plans on purchasing your service, you need to get them to the finish line.

1. Final Evaluation – A savvy customer performs a comparison of you and your competitors.

1. Landing a conversion – You successfully transform a site visitor or reader into a customer.

1. Ensuring retention – You nurture the relationship so that one-off customers become repeat customers.

According to Get Matcha.com: “Recently, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs partnered to publish B2C Content Marketing 2019: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends, and their findings validate the power of full-funnel content marketing. Among survey respondents, they found that:

• 56% create content based on the stages of the sales funnel.

• 79% use content to successfully build brand awareness.

• 52% use content to generate revenue.

• 81% use content to build customer loyalty and increase retention.”

With this in mind, it’s important to consider the ways content writing helps achieve these aims, as well as examples of what successful marketing copy looks like.

The Flavor Profile of Great Copywriting for Marketing

There are several elements that go into creating a successful marketing campaign. They have a flavor profile, if you will. Although each brand has its own marketing strategy with a unique focus, approach, and voice—the brands that do it well tend to hit the same beats and work towards similar goals, including:

Builds Brand Identity - Who Are You?

This is the voice and language you use to communicate with customers. A strong voice can help differentiate you from your competition. It’s your way of signaling to potential customers what product or service you have to offer them and then highlighting that you’re not just any old company.

If you haven’t already, take the time to define your brand and find its voice, then be sure to regularly post your blog content and build a presence on the social media platforms, using that same consistent messaging of who and what you are. When writing each blog post, remember your target audience. Use your brand voice to write compelling content that will have your readers itching for more. Alternatively, you can hire someone like a professional blog copywriter to help define your brand voice and ensure you are pushing out high-quality content that is relevant to your customers on a regular basis. Moreover, you can use your clearly defined brand voice in Press release copywriting when sharing company news. This unified voice helps create clear brand messaging and communication.

Establishes Authority - Why Should We Listen to What You Say?

Each blog post can be a powerful inbound content marketing weapon. If you’re not using your blog to your advantage, you’re missing out on a chance to become the authority or the go-to voice in the industry.

Expertise is not a mantle that you can simply put on. You’re not Napoleon—you can’t simply crown yourself emperor of your domain and call it a day. While there is something to be said about the value of bravado and confidence, new readers need to be convinced that you’re an expert before they’ll back your claim as an authority on the matter.

If you want your copywriting marketing efforts to succeed, you need to build trust. That starts with creative content writing that is instructive and chock-full of relevant information. Over time and through repetition, this will convince both your readers and Google’s algorithm that you’re providing something valuable. Accomplish this, and two things will be sure to happen:

1. Customers will keep coming back for more
2. Google will rank you higher

Boosts Search Engine Ranking - How Will Google Find You?

Content creation is the linchpin of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Basically, it goes like this: Google’s algorithm seeks to connect searchers with the right results. They enter a question, Google provides an answer. In order to accomplish this, the algorithm is formulated to target high-quality content, which is defined by five benchmarks:

• Useful/informative
• More valuable/useful than other sites
• Credible
• High quality
• Engaging

In order to satisfy these qualifiers, content needs to be positioned with SEO in mind.

Qualities of optimized SEO content include:

• Rich with keywords, key phrases, and long-tail keywords (without being spammy)
• Readable content that is structured and broken up with for the purpose of easy scanning
• Has unique titles, H2s, H3s, and descriptions
• Includes meta descriptions, and title tags
• Features interesting and relevant videos, images, and/or infographics
• Utilizes both internal linking and external linking

Optimized SEO copywriting for marketing will help you escape from the cemetery that is the later pages of the Google search results so you can reach the promised land of the all-important front page.

Drives Customer’s Down Funnel - What’s the Next Step?

Once you’ve developed a relationship and warmed up your lead, a reader is much more receptive and welcoming to the pitch, particularly if they’ve read your entire blog or advertising pitch. They’ve been teed up, now it’s your job to get it out of the park.

In order to capitalize on this, you must include imperative calls to action (CTAs) that make a pitch to your reader that they’re better off as a customer than a passerby.

Generates Leads - How Will You Be Seen by Fresh Eyes?

Ideally, the goal of any piece of content is for it to go viral. The more eyes the better.

The most effective copywriting in marketing compels the reader to share, post, comment, like, and or subscribe. Every time your content gets shared or interacted with, you expose yourself to more potential customers.

Engaging content is one of the most powerful lead generators at your disposal. And best of all, once it’s out there, its impact can grow tenfold—a hundredfold—without you having to do anything else. So long as you’re producing high-quality content, you will reap rich rewards over time.

Re-engages Past Customers - How Do You Keep Customers Returning for More?

Your target customer isn’t a one-time buyer; rather, a lifelong, repeat shopper.

Brand loyalty is the name of the game. And good copywriting for a website drives engagement and hammers home that message. It encourages them to keep returning to read what you have to say, and also reminds them that you’re still around making your impact and presence felt.

Together, these “flavors of content” serve as the foundation for your entire marketing campaign.

And if the foundation isn’t right, nothing else will be.

Three Quick and Easy Ways to Improve Your Content – Tricks of the Trade

Since we’re on the topic, there are some things you should always keep in mind as you go about building out your content. These include:

• Make it easy to scan – Many people perform a quick scan before they dive into a full-fledged read. Your job is to highlight the most relevant information and group content into logically flowing sections. Your mission is to lull them into reading, and then before they know it they’ve gone through the entire thing. You can make this more visually appealing by:

• Breaking up paragraphs and creating whitespace
• Utilizing subheaders
• Formatting consistently
• Using lists and bullets

• Headlines matter – Keeping in mind that customers tend to scan, headlines become critically important. In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute:

David Ogilvy (1911-1999) wrote: “Five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” He believed that a wasted headline was a waste of 90% of the marketing budget. Contemporary research has confirmed Ogilvy’s conjectures. According to studies, 80% of viewers read the headline but not the body copy. Heat maps typically indicate that people pay attention to pictures and headlines.

Knowing this, it’s vital that you invest the time in plotting short and sweet

headlines that grab the reader’s attention. The profile of a good headline typically looks

like:

• Less than 65 characters, since it’s cut off in search results
• Approximately 6 words in length
• Speaks directly to the reader
• Utilizes interesting adjectives
• Uses numbers and/or negative language

For such a small thing, great headlines hold significant power and can go to great lengths

to increase your content marketing efforts.

• Simplify complex topics – Most of your customers come to you seeking answers—not more questions. Think of them like baby birds in need of feeding. Especially if you’re an expert on the subject, you can’t regurgitate everything you know. It needs to be boiled down to its essence, broken up so even a layman can digest it and then walk away with both a clear understanding of what they just read and useful takeaways they can later apply.

Your vocabulary should be tailored to your audience and speak directly to your ideal customer profile.

Getting the Most Out of Your Content Marketing Efforts with Copycat

Because good copy plays a vital role in your marketing efforts, it’s important that you devote the time and money necessary to produce great content. But, if you have neither the time nor the inclination to do so, you can turn to the professionals at Copycat Copywriters to be your in-house writing team and take care of all your copywriting services.

When you work with us, you retain the services of a team of expert content creators that know how to effectively speak to audiences and properly position your content marketing efforts. Let us produce killer copywriting—you focus on growing your business.

Interested?

How about a free piece of content to sweeten the deal?

Reach out today and we’ll show you how to make words sing.

Sources:

Forbes. Three Reasons Why Digital Marketers Can Win This Year And Beyond. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/10/03/three-reasons-why-digital-marketers-can-win-this-year-and-beyond/#35be73ba7ac5

Emarketer. US Digital Ad Spending Will Surpass Traditional in 2019. https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-digital-ad-spending-will-surpass-traditional-in-2019

Matcha Blog. How Content marketing Helps at Every stage of the Funnel.

https://getmatcha.com/blog/how-content-marketing-helps-every-stage-funnel-examples/

Google. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide.https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en&visit_id=637184535302836212-1759804907&rd=2

Advanced Web Ranking. Google Organic CTR History. https://www.advancedwebranking.com/ctrstudy/

Content Marketing Institute. 5 Essential Skills for Content Marketing Copywriters. Todayhttps://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/10/skills-content-marketing-copywriters/