Although marketing professionals know that good content is key to success, not every company understands the significance of great writing or how to produce it.
Producing quality content takes work and commitment, but the returns are high. Content marketing strategies require little investment of time or money, but they have a huge impact on your business.
You may already do some form of content publishing, such as email newsletter distribution or advertising articles for online magazines. But did you realize that content publications improve user engagement by up to 17 times?
That’s because people love reading books and stories. They also enjoy learning new things through informative blogs and posts.
But you need more than just great content when it comes to effective blogging. You need well-written material along with excellent formatting.
Your readers should be able to read what you write without getting too bored. Good grammar and spelling go a long way toward achieving this goal.
You also have to make sure that you are being honest and original. Copying other authors’ works is not acceptable.
There’s a reason that most marketing messages fail.
They are either too general or too specific. They can be all of these things at once.
What people want is not straightforward, which is why they hire copywriters.
If you just had a great idea, then don’t take it directly from me. Take it from anyone who has ever done this before.
Look for other examples to look at. Most successful marketers share similar stories about how they came up with their messaging campaigns.
When people think of copywriters, they usually imagine someone sitting around a typewriter writing articles.
Sure, you can write an article using your favorite word processing program, but there’s a better way to do it. A lot of time and money has been spent on software that will create similar sentences over and over again (think stock photos or graphics).
The best way to get started is by reading what other writers have written. If you want to make progress as a writer, then others need to be willing to read your work. Your first step should be to learn how to put your content into standard form for any given topic.
After you’ve done that successfully, it’s time to use those skills to put your content into a broader context with more general topics.
You can also focus on just putting bold text into paragraphs, lists, links, and widgets for web pages. All of these things require a very basic level of copywriting knowledge and skill.
Overall, your goal should be to choose quality material and edit for grammar and syntax before publishing. At this stage, you may actually want to hire someone who can help you rewrite sections of your website/blog if necessary.
Modern marketing is built upon a concept called customer centricity. Companies such as Harley-Davidson, McDonald’s, Walmart, Starbucks, etc understand that people are the most important asset of their company, hence they focus their efforts on helping them to make choices about what matters to them.
It is likely that some of these companies have even developed strategies for dealing with troublesome consumers, which we will discuss later. However, the core principle remains the same: it starts with the customers, not the businesses.
If you take the time to ask people why they do business with you, then story ideas can be planted like seeds in a garden. People love sharing stories about how products and services helped or hindered them in achieving specific goals.
Customers are also more willing to try something if they feel that the company cares about them and their needs. Through understanding consumers and their wants and needs, companies can create products that appeal to them and their customers.
There’s a saying in advertising-and beyond – that says, “Never be afraid to take a chance.” Whatever you do, don’t stick with what isn’t working. That won’t give you any results.
Surprisingly, most businesses only test one or two advertisements at a time. They never test combinations of techniques for high impact phrases.
They don’t see big gains by testing things that have little impact. However, if you put all of those pieces together, you get an explosion of new ideas that can blow up into more sales.
The best way to improve business is not through marketing but through selling products and services. But before we peel back the layers of marketing ploys, let’s look at how they sell us everything from soap to sunblock.
When you write to sell something, you need to understand who you are writing to. Your audience plays an important role in how you write.
You can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it, doesn’t matter what you do with it.
To be successful, you have to know your target market and their problems. You also needs to know why they will buy from you over any other company.
These are all questions you need to ask yourself before you start planning anything. Target marketing is key to being successful as a copywriter.
Headlines are how readers discover what your content is about. If you have an article with a catchy headline, people will read the entire piece just to find out more about the topic.
You should always use your favorite tactics for writing headlines. These include using suspense or emotion, being direct, and including topics in the headline.
Your goal is to get people’s attention and keep their interest through the whole article. To do this, you can write the headings “actionable” or “takeaways” so they feel like questions or statements that summarize the article.
If you want more ideas, look up some fun ways to title articles.
Clickbait is an interesting concept that you may be familiar with or not, depending on how much time you’ve spent online.
Clickbait is something that holds your attention, draws you in, and persuades you to take action by promising a surprise ending.
Often times, this is exactly what we want from our marketing – quick wins that hold our attention and help us get results.
Here are some examples of clickbait :
After you’ve written a webpage, it is time to read it again and see if it hits the mark. You want to make sure that everyone who reads the page gets what they need from the page and no more.
There are two ways to do this; let people tell themselves how much it costs to buy their product or service or show them another price then cost to buy their product or service.
People feel comfortable when they know exactly why they should purchase something. So keep both prices near each other (in case someone goes back and forth) but clearly state the lower priced item.
Also try to avoid marketing words. Don’t use words such as “free” or “bargain” because people get tired of being told that these products are worth less money. Instead, refer to specific savings we can all make at this price point or that deal date.
Lastly, be careful with typos. People hate spelling errors more than anything, so give yourself some grace and fix any mistakes right away.