What is Copywriting (& Why It Matters For Your Small Business)

“Anything you write is, at its core, selling something. Maybe that something is a product or service. Maybe it’s you.” – Kira Hug

“What is copywriting?”

I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked this question.

Firstly, I understand that it is not one of those ‘typical’ careers that people are used to hearing about like medicine, law, and the likes. It’s okay if you aren’t sure about what I do. I’m pretty sure that my mum doesn’t either but I’ll clear it all up in this post.

Honestly, I was about 3 years deep into my communications career before I realised that all the conversations about “copy” during strategy meetings with my boss was about words. 3 whole years into my writing career and I was just learning that! Made me think, “what else do I not know?”

Anyway, before Sex and the City, a career as a writer would have been a bit harder to explain, but Carrie Bradshaw has helped us copywriters out a bit. And now, it’s exciting to watch all the businessowners and individuals whose businesses I help come alive through writing copy for their website, blog, email, social media, press release and more while they focus on enjoying their passions, starting their businesses and all the exciting things they do with their lives.

For some who have some idea of what copywriting is, it’s often compared to content writing, and some use the terms interchangeably. This is not entirely accurate, though. Just what is copywriting, and what makes it different from other types of content creation?

Keep reading to learn what copywriting is, the 1 thing that every copy should do, the types of copy that copywriters mostly work on, the reasons why you shouldn’t hire a copywriter to write everything, the top ways to get started with D.I.Y copywriting today, and much more.

Alright, let’s get into it.

What Is Copywriting?

At the heart of it, copywriting is (dare I say) the most important part of marketing.

In a nutshell, it’s the art and science of capitalising on your brand’s voice to pass a specific message across to an audience in order to drive a purpose or result. It’s the wording that you pair alongside your imagery to create a meaningful brand messaging that can simply and effectively lead to a desired conversion.

When you draft emails, write on your website or social media, post a blog and headline, and more for yourself or your small business, you’re actually writing copy that is aimed at achieving some type of result for your small business. As John McIntyre puts it, “Copywriting is using words to persuade people to take some kind of action, such as clicking on an ad or purchasing a product.”

I love how that quote 100% encapsulates what copywriting is about because everything from your headline to your offer and “contact” or “buy” button is copywriting.

Once you understand that, you can now see why you need to focus on making sure that each element is perfect, from:

• A strong, compelling headline,
• The benefit for your reader/client/customer, so that they can stay put and keep reading,
• The promise that you make to them,
• Bits of proof and data that speak to the rational side of their brain.

Now, on to another fun part.

Difference Between Copywriting & Content Marketing?

One of the most common questions people have about copywriting is how is it different from content marketing. I understand the confusion but I promise, they are two widely different things.

Just like copywriters, content marketers are vying to get users’ attention in a brief amount of time. According to one survey, users spend an average of only two minutes on a blog post before leaving. Copywriters also have just moments to capture a user’s attention. However, the aims of copywriting and content marketing copy are different.

While Content marketing focuses on indirect sales goals, like educating, amusing, or building brand awareness, the main aim of copywriting is to get readers of the content to take a certain action. That said, some examples of content marketing are things like blog posts, white papers, e-books, and webinars, while you can usually see copywriting in ads, CTAs, and product descriptions.

I hope that your confusion about both of these things has been cleared.

Why Is Copywriting Important?

Evidently, since women are 81 percent less likely to buy a product if the advertisement has spelling or grammar errors and 77 percent of men feel the same way, great copy is important for driving sales.

However, great copywriting isn’t just about perfect grammar and proofreading. It must also inspire, inform, drive sales, and persuade people to take specific action.

What Are The Types Of Copywriting?

The main reason why copywriters are hired is to collaborate with businesses and brands to create the custom content needed to fill important communication gaps. There are many types of copy to be written as there are copywriters to create them, so I’ll only give you a short summary of the types of copywriting that we do:

• Content marketing: This includes blogs and digital downloadables. You might not used to this at all as a small business owner, right? Well, this type of writing is typically elevated up with SEO styling so that it appears in search results.
• Brand copywriting: This involves creating strong emotional responses from the audience through presenting the right information in the right voice that will invariably boost positive narrative of the brand and share its positive stories.
• Websites and product descriptions: This is self-explanatory but here, copywriters combine SEO styling with a brand’s communication strategy and conversion goals to create this type of copy.
• Emails: From newsletters, to email sequences and launch funnels. As digital marketing grows, copywriters have to be just as dangerous with the strategy of a campaign’s email funnel mapping, too.
• Social media posts: From captions to the content in carousels and video scripts.
• SEO copywriting: This involves using strategic copy to get your content to rank highly on the search engine result pages (SERPs) in order to boost organic inbound traffic to your digital assets like your website and social media pages.
• Scripts: Just like for social media above, copywriters also create TV ad scripts, radio scripts, podcast scripts and more.
• Ads: All those power-packed phrases that appear alongside print and digital advertisements (even social media ads)? Yes, copywriters create all of those.
• Insight copywriting: This is all about establishing your brand as an industry authority (or thought leadership) by producing high-value educational content about your industry of specialisation.
• Printables: From brochures, client magazines, pamphlets and more, copywriters create all of those too.
• Press releases: This is a no-brainer especially for copywriters in Nigeria, although some copywriters believe that writing press releases is not part of their job but that of publicists or PR practitioners. Personally, I believe that the skill sets are the same and I have written some press releases in my time.

What Can Copywriting Do For Me?

The short answer? Copywriting can change your life and (small) business just like any skill can.

While visual imageries are important, copywriting is the ingredient that clearly communicates the sell. Imagine if your website or social media pages just included your products or portfolio of work and a contact form without any copy? Can you imagine how much opportunities you would lose? Of course, this is an extreme example, but hopefully you get the message and can start to see why copy matters.

Copywriting, when done well, clears the clutter of messages and eases your path to connecting you with your ideal client.

• It explains your “why” and unique story,
• It makes your client feel emotionally heard and seen,
• It reassures their pain and fears,
• It makes you show up in Google (find more on SEO here), and
• It tells your client what to do next.

How Copywriting Can Help Small Businesses

When done strategically, effective copywriting can make a huge difference in your business; help with attracting customers and ultimately increasing sales. Here are 4 examples of how effective copywriting can boost your small business sales.

1. Get found easier online: A big part of copywriting, especially for digital publication (on your website, blogs and social media) is the opportunity to capitalise on search engine optimization (SEO) when writing about your business. SEO enables people who search for your products and/or services online to find you if your content has been optimised for search engine with strategic keywords.
2. Emotionally connect with prospective customers: One of the most successful things that your business can achieve is building an emotional connection with your target customers. Many businessowners make the mistake of focusing their writing about why their company, product, and/or service is great rather than writing about what their customers really care about. This is where it is important for small businesses to frame their writing toward their customers’ needs, challenges and pain points.
3. Move customers through your sales pipeline: The best way to secure more sales in your business is using your knowledge about your customers and speaking to them directly in the copy. Whether you are writing in an email, brochure, social media or website, you can entice potential customers to read your blog, download a content upgrade, start a free trial and even purchase a product or service with great copywriting.
4. Grow your brand: Most businesses benefit from the celebrity status of their owners. And many of the ways to attract customers and grow your small business includes some form of copywriting. This includes using your knowledge and expertise about your industry or niche to establish yourself as a trusted source of information, much like a thought leader or influencer, which will attract more potential customers to you (and your business). This can be through consistently writing a blog, social media post, guest blog or other content (like video and other media) that can enable you to grow your online footprint and reputation.

Some Tools For Copywriting

Naturally, we tend to think of writing as a skill that is distinctly human, but the truth is, technological advancements like artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years have improved the ease of writing great copy. But despite these advancements, you might not want to completely rely on AI for your copywriting just yet as there is still room for lots of improvements. However, the right tools can make a significant difference to the quality and performance of your copy.

How?

Well, if you speak to marketers, 43 percent of them believe that more than half of all their marketing tasks will be automated in the next two years. The elements of copywriting were taken into consideration in that projection so it is quite well-rounded.

How then can you get started using AI to boost your campaigns?

Here are some great tools that you can use to improve your copywriting, make it more efficient, optimise your results, and improve your overall writing experience.

1. Grammarly

If you only use one tool, it should be Grammarly. Firstly, because it has an amazing free plan. Secondly, because simple spelling and grammar mistakes can ruin great copy and Grammarly is helps over 30 million people worldwide to spellcheck and correct grammar errors. And thirdly, Grammarly just released its ‘AI writing partner’ to help make writing easier.

Grammarly also has a useful tone detector feature that tells you what your tone sounds like so that you can tweak your message to appeal to specific audiences. Of course, you still need to read through your copy yourself to screen for many writing mistakes as no technology is perfect…yet.

2. Wordtune

Wordtune is one of the best tools for amateur (and even advanced) copywriters because it provides a suite of features to improve your writing. You can easily write anything that gets in your head and Wordtune will proffer better well-written suggestions. You can also use its AI Writing Assistant to come up with texts or summarise a very long copy.

The free plan offers a reasonable 10 rewrites per day, but you will get more value from the paid plan. My personal philosophy is to only pay for tools that I’m sure I will be taking full advantage of. So, if you only want to explore copywriting, I’d advice that you stick to the free plan.

3. Semrush

If you have been dabbling with copywriting and want to take your copy further, then Semrush is the perfect tool to help you improve your copy for SEO and digital marketing (content or social media). It enables you to do keyword research, find topic ideas around your keyword(s), get semantic entities, determine word count, and check the readability of your copy. Semrush also allows a number of integrations with platforms like WordPress, Google Docs and more, making it easy to use.

How To Get Started With Copywriting

First of all, I believe that you can learn to D.I.Y your copy, and you shouldn’t have to hire a “me” every time you have copy needs—save your money and only call me in to create the important launch sequence campaigns, multiple ad split tests, hero image headline, and marketing copy when your conversions are down. I’m sure that you can do it yourself if you’re willing to invest the time and energy into learning the craft. To help you along, I’ve compiled some tips to get you started.

Here are some ways to get started today:

1. Keep your writing simple with clear, concise, conversational words.
2. Master the rules of grammar and use them.
3. Also use bullet points and numbered lists.
4. Master how to write headlines that will make people click to read.
5. Focus on the reader—a copy is not about you, and you’re going to have to learn to write to one person.
6. Show credibility often: think experts, stats, data, numbers, testimonials, references, etc.
7. Give the features and benefits. Here’s how:
8. Sell with story and emotion.
9. Employ power words—especially for your titles and headers.
10. Aim for clear copy over clever words.
11. Make your reader the hero of the story.
12. Revise and make necessary corrections like a professional.
13. Learn SEO—here is my free and favourite resource to help you D.I.Y.

Consider taking a deep dive into some of the free resources available online—I hope I’ve made it helpful by giving you some tools over here! Between my blog and free resource page, you’ll find tools specifically geared for creatives and small business entrepreneurs to help you grasp the psychology and basics of words that convert.

Use these tips before you click “post” or “send” next time, and you will be on your way to becoming a stronger writer.

I know that was a lot but if you’re just beginning your entrepreneurship journey, next time you start to write, ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. When I read it aloud, does it sound like something my best friends would say is “me”?
2. Did I clear the clutter, focus on one reader, cut out unnecessary words to cut to the chase?
3. Did I end strongly, whether it’s a to-do for the reader, or punchy final thought?

Copywriting Strategies To Keep In Mind

To ensure that your copy comes out as best as it can, you need to implement some common copywriting strategies. So here are some steps that you can use to ensure that your words inspire people to take action:

1. Get to know your audience
2. Use the right tone of voice
3. Highlight your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
4. Capitalise on storytelling
5. Create copy that solves your audience’s pain
6. Include engaging facts and figures
7. Use compelling words in your copy
8. Leverage social proof where possible

Bottom line, if you focus on your audience and take care of them in your content, eventually, they’ll take care of you and your business. By starting to study up on copywriting to support your brand’s visual assets, you’ll be well on your way to differentiating yourself from other businesses in your (probably) saturated industry.

I hope this post has served you as a helpful crash course in copywriting tips, and on how to hone and nail persuasive writing for your business!