Whatever your business objectives, well-crafted SEO copywriting can help you succeed and deliver tangible, meaningful results. It can help you raise brand awareness, delight and engage prospects and customers alike, increase your brand footprint, gain competitive advantage, and drive leads, bookings and sales.
Knowing where to start when it comes to copywriting can feel daunting. Whether you’re planning on generating copy in-house or using a professional copywriting agency, keep these seven essential copywriting tips in mind and you’ll be one step closer to using copy to meet your business goals and objectives.
1. Stick to your brand guidelines
Your copy has to reflect your brand essence and personality – the things that make your business unique, such as how you talk, your tone and style, and how you use language to communicate your values and purpose. Copywriting should form just one part of your brand guidelines and subsequent style guide, but it’s an integral part. This is especially true if you’re working with a copywriting agency; they need to be able to hit the ground running and understand clearly what it takes to make their copy sound like your brand. Mailchimp‘s style guide does this really well.
2. Know your audience
Your brand guidelines should determine how your talk to your customers, but you also need flexibility in terms of how you connect with different audiences. Analyse your customer data and build out customer segments based on key group traits and characteristics. From this, develop personas for the customers in these groups. You’ll find that each set of personas requires slightly different information and content, and that your copy will have to flex to communicate with them effectively.
3. Structure is key
Words dumped on a page will not help you meet your business goals. Copywriting is an art, and your readers expect a clear flow of information that they don’t have to work hard to understand. Use titles, headlines (H1, H2, H3, and so on) and a clear narrative structure to break up your copy and make it easier to understand. Innocent Drinks brings its copy to life by breaking it into sections and bullets, making it a joy to read.
4. Consider different format
How you deliver your copy can impact its success. Think about what will best resonate with your audience. Will they respond well to long-form article writing? Will short, snappy sections of copy engage them, and do you need to vary how you write across social media? Maybe an infographic or piece of interactive content will better bring your copy to life. If you’re unsure, try testing different ways of displaying your copy and use an analytics package to measure the different levels of success.
5. Aim for complete accuracy
It might feel like this goes without saying, but making sure that your grammar, spelling and punctuation are correct is an essential when it comes to copywriting. You want your audience to trust you and respond well to your copy, whatever the purpose. Spelling mistakes or poor grammar can distract readers from the main copy content.
6. Make the experience visually appealing
Your copy shouldn’t just be a blanket of one-size, one-colour, one-style text. Integrate icons, animations, images, videos and a slick user experience with your copy and watch it shine. This is especially true for digital copy, where readers are looking for more than just text. They want an experience that really helps bring the copy to life – something that Gymit does really well.
7. Have a clear purpose in mind
Don’t forget that you’re writing for a reason. You want the reader to achieve something through engaging with your copy, whether it’s learning something new, feeling a certain emotion about your brand, moving closer to becoming a lead or customer, or completing other valuable online actions. Create a content matrix based on your objectives and themes; this will help you stay focused and will provide a point of reference for anyone supporting your copywriting project.
Copy is one of the core ways of communicating with and making an impression on potential and current customers. These seven essential copywriting tips will help you to create memorable and engaging copy that helps you to meet your business goals. Get started with copywriting today and take a step closer to meeting your objectives.
Get in touch with WooContent today to discuss how our high-quality copywriting services can bolster your content strategy.