Writing Marketing Copy

What is Copywriting

All copy writing has a call to action, it is like a handshake. 

To successfully communicate that call to action, copywriting has to do three things. It must deliver significance. It needs to be worthy of attention to those who may never buy but will spread the word. Some people call this the unique selling proposition. Appeal to the right niche audience. Provide value (return of time invested.)

The call to action is please understand why you need this. I’ve built my entire company around the teaching style. We tell our audience exactly how we do what we do. That sounds crazy, but what we do is really complicated. By teaching, we show our audience what they need and why. They need us, while also taking away the air of mystery. Folks appreciate it, and they buy from us. 

Preparing yourself to write copy

Different styles, teaching, straight shot, laughter, (scare tactic, hard sell) not a good way.

First, remove all distractions, any notes that leap out at you regarding the audience. You might get these from your client or from your boss, or you might simply rely on a brief conversation with the folks who’d know the audience, like a sales team. This is one or two sentences like, never ever, ever mention chickens, or really loves to hear about sports. These are the important hints that keep you on target and out of trouble. Second, I need a list of collateral that i’m going to write. You may already have this from your boss, your client, or your own business plan. If so, just review it and ensure you’ve got everything you need. If you don’t, prepare it now. Last, my plan has a list of the styles that I think can work for this audience. And a list of styles that I shouldn’t use under any circumstances. That’s it, nothing fancy. Whatever you do, do not get hung up on this step. If you can’t come up with a plan, move on to writing.

Creating the plan

Set a timer for five or ten minutes. Start it. Once it starts, just begin writing. Do not pause. If you can’t think of anything to write, write, I can’t think of anything to write. Keep going. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or formatting. Just get those thoughts down. Every now and then I get really lucky and my free writing session gets me copy you can actually use. Normally though, it just kind of steers your brain in the right direction. Just write and write and write as much as you can within the five to ten minutes. 

First draft 

First draft tips, think about dos and don’t’s. Write them down, type them out and put them next to your computer. You can focus on what you need to do and avoid the things you shouldn’t be focusing on. Next, you have to figure out your style and collateral if you haven’t already. Once you have that figured out, print it out so you don’t have to be constantly going back and forth between screens or shuffle papers to get back on track. You must eliminate all distractions. Turn off all notifications, emails, text messages, phone calls, tv’s kids… everything. The more distracted you get, the less focused and less productive you will be. You can be writing and then get distracted and then your idea and train of thought is gone and never to be found again. When you start writing, don’t write the introduction first. Write from the inside out, it will allow to flow everything together and not get hung up on a catchy introduction. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling or word choice. This is a first draft, it’s all about getting words on paper and getting it started. Try to write one chunk before your timer goes off. Whether it is one particular section or not, try to have a set milestone for each timer. And finally keep the goal in mind, once you get to the end of each sprint, stretch and be happy that you are writing a great piece of copy. 

General rules

First, you must address the reader. Use you and your to speak directly to the reader. Next, you need to remember that your customer is not an algorithm. Customers don’t care about search engines and search rankings. They just don’t. Don’t worry about quantity, worry about quality. Another tip is sarcasm doesn’t work. Customers are unaware of sarcasm when it is written. It doesn’t translate to any format and it doesn’t become understood by people. Next, tell me why. Tell customers WHY they need to purchase that item from you or invest in what you are selling. And finally, be direct. Don’t make people interpret what they are looking at or reading. There is a lot of information when it comes to writing a marketing copy and the last thing people need to do and to try and decipher the material they are trying to read. 

Polishing the draft

First, start off with getting help. Try and get somebody else to proofread, they will find things that you missed or that just doesn’t make sense. Next, you need to edit and then proofread. Editing is to reorganize, reword and modify the copy. Proofreading means checking spelling, grammar and punctuation. If you proofread first, then you will most likely have to do it again after you edit. Another important rule is not to use two words where one will do. You want to try and keep a marketing copy brief and direct to the point. Its very important to keep it clear. Make sure to gather all similar topics together and not have them scattered throughout a sentence or paragraph. 

Writing a headline

The headline can grab attention, inform and tie together the entire piece. When you choose a headline, the copy should drive the headline. It needs to be fitting to content of your copy. It should not hold up the rest of the writing. Don’t get hooked on trying to find a headline and just write. The headline doesn’t have to be perfect at first. The headline may change two, three or even five times before you choose the headline you want to stick with. Even once you choose one, you might even change it after it was published. It is not uncommon for it to change a hand full of times. 

Headlines should not be mysterious; some people say that it pulls people in when it is mysterious however that is not true when writing marketing copy. People don’t have time; they have options and they could choose the not read your copy from a mysterious headline. You should avoid fear mongering. It is not always effective when selling a product. Trying to scare somebody into buying something by showing them what can happen if they buy that product. Write lots of headlines, it will take some time to decide on which you will like better. You may even end up putting more than one together.

Structuring for online

There are a few problems when writing for online. Humans have a hard time with reading on a screen. It creates some unique problems, including a lack of context. A headline, image or text could be lifted from your page and included in a tweet, a search result, a Facebook post or a newsfeed. People have a hard time keeping their attention on a screen rather than in print, most people can’t read as long online as they can on print. There are also some benefits to online copy. You can edit the copy at any time and therefore make it as great as possible. It is very testable. You are able to test multiple headlines and body copy. When you publish online, the potential goes far beyond a single venue. People will be able to access from multiple streams instead of just one location. A couple rules for writing copy online. No more than 13 words on a line. It improves the scanability and makes it easier to retain information. No more than 5-6 lines per paragraph. This is for scanability and information retention. It is much easier to read, and remember many, little paragraphs. Have no more than 3-4 paragraphs without a subhead or something to break up the page. Always use bullets or numbering for lists. Never do a list with commas or semicolons in a sentence. Link when you think it is necessary and genuinely useful. Finally, the readers is not an algorithm. Don’t write for search engines and make sure to write for the actual reader. 

Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a calendar that lists specific titles to write, who should write them, the content type and the status. It’s a good idea to try to plan up to 3 months out. 70% of the content should be solid standard stuff. Basic product information, how to’s, and advice that’s very safe and easily justified chances. 20% of content should riff on the 70% but may present products in a very unconventional way and trying to appeal to a new audience. 10% of the content should be completely innovative. Things that have never been done that, if they work, could become part of the 20 to 70%. First, create the content schedule. The content schedule is a high level 6 to 12-month guide to the general types of content you’re going to publish. You can use a spreadsheet or a simple list in a word processor. Now, you can create the editorial calendar. Here’s an example. Note what I included. The date to submit a draft and the planned publish date. The title, which isn’t final, but should give your writer a head start. The target audience as a guide for the writer. The designated writer. The designated reviewer, this is very important. You want to schedule editors in advance, so it’s already decided and resources won’t be a problem. The 70/20/10 category, in or out, meaning the client liked the idea or didn’t. 

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Facebook Advertising

Facebook Ads is a great way to get your business out to customers since people are already active on the social media platform. Facebook advertising is a low-cost method of reaching thousands of people for as little as $5 per day. Ad set is where you are going to choose your audience, the placement of your ads, the budget and the schedule. 

The first thing you will have to do is choose your objective. When choosing your objective, there are three top level categories.  The first is awareness, to generate interest in your product or service. The second is consideration and that is to have people think about your business and begin to look for more information on it. And third is conversions, these are objectives that encourage people interested in your business to purchase or use your product or service. 

Targeting options for ads are an important factor. The most widely used is location. Local businesses can use this to target people within a certain distance from their store. Demographics can be used to target specific people of age, gender or education level. Some more specific targeting options are interests, behaviours, connections and custom audiences. 

How Facebook Ads Work

Facebook organizes ads into three levels. Campaigns, Ad Sets and Ads. This will help you be able to organize, optimize and measure the performance of your ads. Campaigns will help you boost your ad however ad sets work inside the campaign. A campaign can have multiple ad sets and will define who you are targeting, your ad placement and bid settings. Each ad set can have its own budget and scheduling criteria and it can also have multiple advertisements. 

For example, you have a product and the first portion of the campaign that you want to do is drive more traffic to the website. Being able to sell your product from your website is the goal with this specific goal. Next, you may want to increase brand awareness so when people see your product, they know what it is and they are more likely to buy it. And third, you may want to promote a coupon for a local store that sells your product. 

Create a campaign for each objective and if you create an ad set for each audience, you will be able to target each objective more thoroughly. Next you create the ad itself. You will want to add images, messages and links to enhance the interaction with the ad and you might want to try a couple different pictures to see which is most effective. 

How to Create Facebook Ads

Since you have already created your advertising objective, next you have to identify your audience. The audience you define are the people who will be served you ad, so choosing a highly relevant audience is important. 

As shown above, this is where you are going to set up the age, gender and language of the audience chosen.

 When choosing your audience, you are going to want to pay attention to the meter on the right side of the photo above. Too far to right, and your audience selection is too broad. Too far left and your audience selectin is too specific. When choosing your location, you will have the opportunity to choose your city of preference however not every city will be available.

 If you select a city, there are different settings you can select such as, people who live in the city, people who have recently been in this location and people travelling to this location. Your audience is crucial to the success of your ad, so to make the most of your advertising spend, start with an audience that matches your existing user base, or meets the criteria for your products, who is your primary audience. 

The next part of creating an ad is refining your audience with interest targeting. Interest targeting is refining your audience target with specific key words, or interest, that will catch their attention. Topics that people like, keywords in the status’ and any adds they have previously clicked on. For example, if you are trying to sell a new piece of hockey equipment, you will have key words such as hockey, NHL, goal or any number of variations of terms regarding hockey. 

You can add as many interests as you want, and Facebook will target anybody that has at least one of the interests that they have liked on their profile. 

After refining the interest targeting, you are going to refine your behaviour targeting. Behaviours are constructed from someone’s activity as they browse the internet along with the offline activity, like spending. Offline activity will be helpful because it may include demographics, purchasing behaviour and life events. It allows you to really narrow in your target however it is not fully 100% accurate so be careful with this feature. 

At some point when you are running a Facebook ad, you will have to decide how much you want to spend. It is best to set up a budget and schedule to keep everything under control and so you don’t go OVER your budget. Facebook does a really good job at making sure you don’t go over what you can afford. Depending on the type of objective you are trying to achieve, Facebook will optimize with what your budget is. 

Managing your ad placement is important because you want to be able to capture everything you are trying to highlight without running out of room. The most obvious however most important placement to begin displaying your ad is in the “Feeds” option. It is going important to select the appropriate options for the type of product you are advertising. There are at least 7 different options within Facebook so the options you have are really broad so it important to select which is best for your objective. 

The final step in creating the ad is actually creating the ad. Be creative. You want to gain the attention from the most amount of people. When creating an ad, you can add up to 6 different ads images. Facebook with test each photo in the ad to see which photo does the best and gain the most traffic. You want to add a text to the photo, and you basically want to make it a quick caption and get to the point. You want to add a link so when it is clicked, people know where they are going. Adding a headline is simply that. A headline. Make it stand out. 

View Your Advertising Data

When you have an ad, you need to manage your ad properly and you want to make you sure it is achieving what you are you trying to achieve. Being able to track the reach that your ad is receiving is important because you automatically tell if you need change something or do something different. The vast majority of information that you can retrieve is beneficial because it is broken down into demographics such as age, sex and gender. 

You are going to want to create advertising reports as they provide details you need to refine your advertisements and identify whether or not you are hitting your goals. 

With so many different types of goals and objectives, it’s really important to understand your success metrics. When we look at a report, we’re often doing so with the mindset of optimization. Keeping an eye on reach, impressions will make a lot more sense and by having a greater reach and more impressions will help tell you if you need to change something with your targeting options. 

Implement Best Practices

A few tips for writing a great ad. Have a clear, well defined call to action. Making sure people know what your full intention for them to understand your ad is important. You want to make sure that they people know what you want them to do. Next, use a simple eye-catching image. Don’t try to confuse people by having a picture that has no relation to what your selling. Make sure you there aren’t too much going on in the picture. Finally, have somebody else read your ad. Just because you like your ad, doesn’t mean that somebody else will think the same thing. 

When choosing an image, its always good to choose something natural and relevant to your product. Using stock images in your ads is a good way gain attention while not spending any money. Make sure the size of your images isn’t going to be a weird, odd shape. And don’t forget to make sure that they fit on all platforms. 

To make sure you are adhering to Facebook, here are some key guidelines. Ads in the newsfeed cannot have images with more than 20% text on a image. That includes logos and slogans. The landing pages must be relevant to your ad. If you have a coupon offer, it has to be current. Be respectful and honest. Images by not be overly sexual, imply nudity, show excessive amounts of skin or cleavage or focus unnecessarily on body parts, even if they’re for artistic or educational reasons. Also shocking, sensational, disrespectful, or violent content is forbidden and really enforced.

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