What's so great about copywriting?

I fully realise that writing your own marketing words - or copy- may feel like a sensible way to save money.  After all what's so great about copywriting? Everyone can write - sentences will arrive on the page and join other sentences to form paragraphs.  

But will those paragraphs persuade someone to part with their money in terms of your product or service? Will they stand out in a world filled with messages of every description?

Unfortunately, too many companies write as if they’re addressing a large audience from a microphone up on stage - indeed that’s why a large amount of commercial, academic and corporate words

• go unread

• and if read - will not be understood

• and if understood - will be ignored

This is because that kind of writing simply doesn’t move us. What many people forget is that we hear a sort of “subvocal” speech in our minds when we read. And the better that “speech” is created, the more we become immersed in the words - and the more we are persuaded. 

So this is the time to put your old English teacher to one side of your mind and to write like you chat!  

Firstly harmonise your copywriting with your reader so that it sounds personal.  As a rule of thumb you should be using four "you's" to every "I". And you should be writing "you" i.e.   

NOT "We help companies" or "We help people" but "We help you..."

Part of this chatty-sounding process is to achieve a tone of informality, so use contractions like 

·         isn’t - instead of is not

·         and won’t -instead of will not.

Writing which doesn’t resemble this rhythm of human speech simply will not work. And talking of rhythm, that is the other  secret ingredient of good copywriting - in fact professionals compare writing copy to composing Jazz.

Creating this rhythm can be helped by mixing sentence lengths for variety; by repetition of key words; and by using what’s called “triads” i.e. a list of three words in a series with the last item preceded by the word “and”

e.g. “expert, experienced and dynamic”

Only last week a client said to me – “we have had much more targeted enquiries since you wrote our website copy”.  That’s because it wasn’t just words - it was salesmanship in print.