5 Copywriting Lessons From a Decade of Mistakes

But wait, what is copywriting?

It's crafting words that compel an audience to feel something and take action.

Why is it the most valuable skill in small businesses?

For your employees: Crafting words that resonate in the hearts and minds of your team offers them clarity and direction within your business. Excellent copy can transform the recruitment process, and onboarding experience, build a sense of belonging and communicate goals, direction, and meaning.

For your customers: It's a noisy world out there. Writing copy that resonates with specific groups of people and compels them to listen and take action is powerful.

Unfortunately, no one ever teaches us how to do it and it's normally a niche skill that falls under the marketing function of a small business.

With so many other skills to learn, SME owners never get around to learning it and instead, they spend hours (and usually a ton of money) trying to shout at all customers about the benefits of their product while failing to realize the world doesn't actually care.

To be successful in business, you have to appeal to the identity of your ideal customer and employees.

I wasted half a decade writing the wrong things until I discovered copywriting.

But, my loss is your gain.

Today we're just going to focus on writing copy for customers.

Here are 5 techniques that helped me grow my business 40% year on year that will save you dozens of painful hours trying to learn yourself:

1. Understand your audience

Write down as many things as you can about your ideal customer:

• What do they think about daily?

• How do they behave during the day?

• What pressures do they face right now?

• What opinions do they have of themselves and others?

• How do they make decisions?

• What income do they receive?

• What portion of it would they spend on your products/services?

• What are the barriers to purchasing your products/services?

• What fears do they have?

• What do they value?

Now that you've built a persona for your ideal client, give them a name. ie, Gary.

When it comes time to write a social media post, specials board, website or email to them you'll be able to speak directly to Gary (ie all Gary's) specifically which cuts through the noise and gets all the Garys' attention.

I've gone as far as doing a personality test from our ideal customer's perspective to see the results of how that person would think and act.

2. Pick an emotion

There are pages of content on how the greatest companies in the world link their brand/message to specific emotions. Look at Nike, Apple, Patagonia, WWF, Gilette, VW when you have a few minutes to search.

Here's a quick breakdown of how some emotions drive action.

• Happiness leads to more shares

• Sadness leads to more clicks

• Surprise/fear leads to more loyalty

• Anger/disgust leads to viral content

The 2 best ways to thoughtfully use these are to:

• Tell real stories about your experiences and how your brand created a solution that helps others solve a problem.

I found this article that summarises the different types of storytelling.

• Build meaningful relationships with customers by provoking basic emotions.

Example: Nike helps people become athletes because anyone who moves is considered an Athlete to them. Buying a pair of Nike shoes you can link your identity (highly emotional) to becoming an athlete.

3. Write As You Speak

It blows my mind when I see company documents and marketing copy that looks like it has been written by a robot at high tea.

It makes it so freaken hard to read!

Especially on a phone which is where most content is being consumed these days.

So, write down what you have to say, then read it out loud or to another human. If you find yourself clarifying what you meant, often the words that you say at that point should be the language you use in your document.

4. Get to the point in the first line

Once you've written your piece, leave it a day before editing.

Then, brutally edit your content using an app like Hemingway to cut out all unnecessary words.

When I started writing I found that my main point was always a few sentences in and I'd just been waffling on for the first bit to set the context.

Rewrite your piece to get your main point into the first line or two.

Humans are scanners who are habitually scrolling through content on their phones so your job is to stop the scroll, get to your point and add context later.

5. Call To Action (CTA)

Good copy compels readers to take action without the business asking.

If you've done your job right leading up to this point, you can now place a small CTA one-liner or button that moves people to purchase or join.

They'll already be sold on you as the solution and now want to quickly move to buy so make your CTA clear and visible.

SUMMARY

1. Understand your audiences by profiling them

2. Pick an emotion to leverage

3. Write as you speak

4. Get to the point in the first 2 lines

5. Call your audience to take action

Small businesses can't afford big budgets for marketing.

Copywriting is a skill that can be learned for free on the internet and refined each time you write something.

There is literally no downside and millions of dollars of upside.

Learning the basics of copywriting has transformed my business.

If only I had learned it sooner...

I hope it helps.