Copywriting as key resource for brands

Nowadays, as digital marketing activities grow, the importance of copywriting to gain online visibility is increasing, whether we are referring to SEO optimized business blogs, whether we are talking about a copy for social media or even advertising, thus representing a key aspect of internet communication.

In this article, therefore, we will talk about copywriting activity, its definition, how it takes place, what are the main types of copywriting, also providing information and advice regarding some of the best books and copywriting tools available online.

The importance of copywriting: what is it and why you should use it

Creating a website is simple: more than 33,000 websites are born on the web every hour. The real challenge is to make one’s brand visible on search engines, especially to position themselves on the first result page, where 90% of users stop to explore the results. Winning the first page among billions of results, however, is an extremely complex task, hence the importance of copywriting to position itself online.

When we talk about Copywriting, we refer to the act of writing advertising texts with the main objective of attracting, capturing, and maintaining the attention of the target audience to get a sale or generate a lead. As we will see below, Copywriting requires specific skills that are not limited to the marketing field alone but require instead language skills and creativity. It is not only about having good writing skills and creating grammatically correct texts; Copywriting must be able to communicate the brand’s message through words, using specific writing technics for sale.

The importance of copywriting to gain online visibility consists above all in creating content that responds at the same time to as many search intents as possible, attracting its target audience and inciting it to read and share the content in question.

As Wendy Piersall said:

“Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first”

If the contents of a site create engagement, being a reliable source for users to consult to find useful information, the same contents will gain importance within search engines, advancing in online positioning.

In 1996 Bill Gates, indeed, was used to say “Content is king” considering contents, and in particular texts, as the focus around which online communication can develop successfully, creating copies that meet the needs or curiosity of users.

How to do copywriting

Before starting the actual writing process, it is necessary to identify and know the target audience for which the advertised product/service is intended. It is important to define the audience to which we refer to build an effective and well-structured communication, based on personal data, problems, desires, and interests belonging to the target audience. The more the potential customer is known, the more the message delivered will be specific and related to the target’s needs and problems, consequently representing a possible solution.

But what are the techniques to get the public attention? Unfortunately, there are no specific rules to follow to write copies, but we can provide some guidelines to create contents aimed at generating leads and sales, using general copywriting techniques.

It is important to:

Choose an attractive title, using a clear and direct language, that creates trust in the potential customer and towards the brand, but above all that can converge the attention of users towards what the brand proposes. The title, as a matter of fact, determines up to 80% of visits of a website.
Repeat the title all along the copy, to keep the reference to a particular theme, reproposing the terms used in the title itself or reworking and enriching the message. Especially from a SEO perspective, this process is particularly effective to ensure that the search engine optimizes the created content in the best possible way.
Talk about a problem, familiar to the target audience, providing precise, concrete, and measurable data to attract the attention of the reader/potential customer who will recognize himself in the situation illustrated.
Propose a solution to the problem which has previously been raised. A key aspect of this phase is to present the product /service highlighting its characteristics that present it as the most suitable solution for the problems of the target audience.
Use Call to Actions, to incentivize users to act, interacting with the brand, subscribing to the newsletter, purchasing a product or service:
Put key information in the introduction and in the conclusion of texts, as the reader who enjoys online contents often tends to have a lower level of attention, reading the initial part and then proceeding quickly towards the end of the text.

As mentioned above, these points do not represent an exhaustive list that must be followed to write a copy but are instead a sort of guidelines aimed at facilitating the writing process, considering the importance of copywriting in the process of creating content.

What are the different types of copywriting?

There are different types of copywriting, and the importance of copywriting also consists in creating each content based on a specific goal and in relation to the reaction that one wants to provoke in the reader / potential customer.

The main types of copywriting are:

Persuasive copywriting
SEO copywriting
Content copywriting
Technical copywriting

Hereafter we will see the details.

Persuasive copywriting

Persuasive copywriting aims at expressing a concept through terms and contents that break through the reader’s mind. Usually, a persuasive copy tends to include the user’s emotions in the communication process, leveraging the needs of the target audience to induce it to act in a specific way and creating an emotional connection.

In addition to the key elements already described above necessary to consider in the writing process, so that a copy is persuasive and acts on the user’s emotions, it is good to:

Use clear and simple language, not too elaborate.
Use the first person of the plural to increase the emotional impact on the reader. The pronoun “we”, in fact, helps to create a community of which the user can be part.

Other than considering these general recommendations, to write a persuasive text it is necessary to adopt a convincing language, which leads the readers to choose a particular brand as a potential solution to their problem.

SEO copywriting

SEO Copywriting is an activity that deals with writing to gain online visibility, creating contents related to the needs of users, that provides value and that corresponds to the specific queries inserted on search engines.

Nowadays, SEO copywriting is an essential activity to generate traffic and its main purpose consists in writing SEO oriented texts, combining different elements, in particular good writing techniques and SEO optimization techniques for search engines.

In general, a content to be indexed and optimized by the search engine must have an average length between 1,400 and 2000 words. In addition, to be performing, a text must contain keywords and key-phrases repeated several times according to the length of the text itself and that correspond to the search intent of the users. There are different online tools to support this phase of the copywriting process, thanks to which one can search for the most typed keywords on search engines and the related key-phrases connected to a specific topic.

Moreover, it is important to indicate to the search engine the different paragraphs and the organization according to which the text is written, using the H Tags ranging from the H1 tag to the H6 tag.

These tags show to the search engines and to the users the levels of importance that certain portions of contents represent within the text. The H1 tag is the most important tag that represents the title of the text; it is good that within the H1 tag there are the main keywords also present within the rest of the text, which allow to attract the attention of the search engine.

Content copywriting

Content copywriting concerns texts intended for a website and is centered on specific topics. It is important to create attractive and engaging content. Often, it develops in parallel with creative copywriting, integrating the creation of content such as company slogans, titles, and concepts to be elaborated.

Technical copywriting

Technical copywriting deals with the process of writing texts of specific topics or sectors whose creation requires a high level of specialist knowledge. The aim is to give added value to readers with specialist knowledge.

Copywriting skills

Since the existence of various types of copywriting and the importance of copywriting itself, and since there is the need to create different texts from time to time according to the purpose that one wants to achieve, we will list hereafter some of the skills necessary for a copywriter to be able to create specific contents, be they SEO oriented, persuasive, technical, etc.

The skills and competences that one should have to carry out a good copywriting activity are:

Excellent writing skills, even better if persuasive
Excellent command of the language and care of spelling and grammar
Skills related to the SEO field, with relative familiarity with the related tools
Organization skills and ability to connect with the target audience
Ability to write and create texts in different styles, to capture the attention of different target audiences

As already mentioned, these are just some of the skills that a copywriter can use to create compelling contents that can generate leads or sales. Each product/service of a specific brand will be adapted to a different type of copywriting that, consequently, will require different skills to be developed.

The role of a copywriter in a company

Given the importance of copywriting to gain online visibility, it is necessary for a business, brand, or individual blog to have a figure to rely on for this type of task. We are talking about the role of the copywriter, a professional figure whose main task is to use words in a strategic way to create a message optimized for the search engine and that at the same time generates leads and sales.

Starting from the most traditional meaning of the term “copywriter”, we refer to that profession developed with the advent of modern advertising, that is, paper printing.

Nowadays, referring mainly to online communication, the figure of the web copywriter grows and develops, and the same skills, like those of the offline copywriter, are used on the pages of websites or more generally in the world of online advertising.

It is possible to distinguish the roles of:

SEO copywriter: who creates SEO friendly contents based on ranking factors, to gain the first page of search engines
Social copywriter: who deals with writing social copywriting, in other words this activity consists in writing and structuring copies intended for social media posts
Micro copywriter: it deals with more specific details within sites, such as captions, chatbots, or meta tags

Copywriting tools

Given the importance of copywriting to create engagement, conversions, and brand awareness, there are now available on the market many tools useful to create valuable contents if a company does not have the professional figures necessary for this specific activity.

The Best 10 books on copywriting

If you are interested in learning more about copywriting techniques to undertake this professional path or improve your skills in this field, hereafter we will propose a list of 10 books suitable to build an effective communication.

The copywriter’s handbook

A guide by Robert W. Bly to create copies that have as their goal the promotion of products/services, to successfully conclude the sales process.