10 Ultimate Copywriting Tips for Beginners
Copywriting is not a piece of cake. Good copy must walk a fine line between encouraging consumer action without sounding too pushy. No matter where your copy is, it must be punchy and catch someone’s attention.
It’s a tall order, but copywriting is essential for businesses. Why? Well, because it persuades consumers to interact with your company. Copy isn’t all about selling; sometimes,
it’s getting readers to sign up for a newsletter, schedule a call, or download gated content. Either way, copywriting brings in leads and keeps readers interested in your brand.
It’s no secret that the skill will take some time to acquire properly. That’s why we’ve spoken with some professionals on what copywriting tips beginners can learn from.
1. Keep Writing
When you start out, the most important thing is to keep writing. If you don’t have to pay client work, use that time to send cold emails with ideas to people you’d like to write for, write articles on Medium, answer Quora questions, join Reddit groups, and start blogging.
The more you write, the better you get. Plus, the stronger your portfolio, the more clients will trust you and hire you. And, when you can’t possibly write anything else, read and study what other copywriters are doing.
Erica Jabali, Copywriter and Blogger, ISpyFabulous.com
2. Focus on Benefits, Not Features
Start with your ideal customer. When you’re writing copy, you should know exactly who it is you’re talking to. Some people even create an avatar, which is the exact person they’re trying to market to.
For example, if you’re selling a fitness product, don’t just stop there. Ask yourself, “Who is my ideal customer? What is their body type? What’s their age?” The more specific you can get, the better. Think of their age, their height, their gender, what they do for work, and more.
Secondly, focus on the benefits, not the features. One of the biggest mistakes I see newbie copywriters make is emphasizing their products’ features but not the benefits.
Features are things that make the product different than others. For example, a car might have a deluxe package with numerous features, such as better air conditioning, leather seats, and a better steering wheel.
Instead of focusing on the features, however, emphasize the benefits. Tell your client about how the deluxe package will help keep them cool on hot summer days, or how it will provide them with a more comfortable driving experience.
Lastly, hit the key pain points. When you’re writing copy, it pays to know exactly what your clients’ biggest problems are. And no, I don’t just mean their general problems, like they want to lose weight or make money. You want to grind this down to be as specific as possible.
When it comes to writing copy, emphasizing on the pain points over and over again is where the money’s at.
Jon Anthony, Masculine Development
3. Maintain Conversational Copy
One of the common copywriting mistakes brands make is writing in a way that’s too formal and robotic—it doesn’t feel natural! What makes copywriting a different form of writing is that it’s meant to compel your target audience to connect with your message and take action emotionally.
A way to quickly transform bland content into great copywriting is to relay your message, in the same manner, you would when speaking to a friend. This means explaining things in simple ways while being descriptive. It also means using contractions to mimic a conversational tone.
Instead of saying, “As a result of working with me, you will gain clarity and examine how to get past the emotional hurdles that are pulling you down,” try this instead: “Together we’ll look at what’s making you feel heavy and create an easy plan that’ll get to the heart of your concerns so that you feel good again.”
Ditch the jargon and formal writing (sometimes even forgoing traditional grammar rules!) and write for impact. If you speak in your audience’s language, they’ll hear your message—and act!
Marietta Gentles Crawford, Founder, MGC Ink
4. Use Hemingway’s Help
Use the Hemingway App. It’s the best $20 I have spent on my business. The app lets you know when your sentences get long or when you’re using complex language. It won’t help you write a classic American novel, but it’s great for creating punchy copy that converts.
Outline your copy first. Then, write section headers. Then, fill out your content. An excellent online copy can be skimmed. With this writing process, your content will read well to someone scrolling. Busy people will get the gist of your message and convert.
Paul Bromen, CEO, HelpfulHabitat
5. Tell Stories Whenever Possible
Write in the active voice. This is encouraged for every bit of writing, from emails to copy to articles and novels. It can be a hard habit to break, but copy in the active voice crushes passive voice copy.
Tell a story wherever possible, but keep your stories straight. Don’t get carried away. Your copy is always written to accomplish (that’s what makes it copy, not a different form of writing).
Benefits make sales, and features make failures. Features are aspects of a product or service that differentiate it from others. Benefits are how those points of differentiation translate into value for your target audience. Expressing a product or service in terms of what it can do to provide value to your readers (benefits) is much more effective than listing features.
Benjamin Sweeney, ClydeBank Media
6. Do Competitor Research
Do extensive competitor research when writing a new article, blog post, or copy for a webpage. One of the easiest ways to do this research is to take the target keyword you plan to write on, google it, and read through the posts or pages of the sites that rank for that keyword.
They’ll offer you direction on what readers value and what Google thinks is the top resource for that keyword. For example, if you’re writing an article on copywriting tips, google ‘copywriting tips’ and review the top results for:
- how long the article is by word count
- what additional resources are included in the article like graphs or examples
- what types of tips are offered
- how the page is formatted
You certainly shouldn’t copy the top posts, but you should aim to make your piece more informative than top competitor posts. Combining elements from the top posts in particular, will be helpful. Also, pay attention to the titles and meta descriptions of top posts. They’re clues to what you should address in your title and meta description.
For example, should you include ranking language like “27 Top Copywriting Tips” or include (Examples for Success) at the end of the article?
Nicolas Straut, Writer, Fundera
7. Master Subject Matter
Become a subject matter expert. This is challenging when you’re a beginner because you must take any client who will come to you. Ultimately, work toward focusing your efforts in one industry, such as healthcare, technology, retail, or finance. You’ll be more valuable to potential clients when you don’t need to learn how to write convincing copy that sells.
Become an expert storyteller, too. Whether you’re writing a blog post or an ad, stories sell. Learn how to interview people and write a compelling narrative. It serves as a convincing lede in long-form content, such as blog posts, and engages your audience quickly in ads, email copy, and social media posts.
Pamela Ellgen, Senior Marketing Copywriter, Health Editor, WELL Health Inc
8. Know Your Value
Keep it simple. As Shakespeare said, brevity is the soul of wit. To me, effective communication should be brief and concise. Good copy is written using language that’s clear, easy to understand, succinct and simple.
Also, draft an effective headline. Good copy lures the reader in by building off of the previous line of copy and compelling them to read the next line. And more often than not, a well-crafted headline will determine whether your reader even moves into the body copy.
Convey key messaging, too. Well-crafted copy brings your company’s tone, values and aspirations and any other company messaging together into a coherent whole.
A few other tips are:
- consider your audience
- use active voice
- be personal
- appeal to emotion
- know your value — and demonstrate it
In the end, the copy you produce shouldn’t leave any questions about the value of your product or service unanswered. Your audience wants to know why they should take action, and oftentimes your copy has to tell them why your offer stands out.
Drew Albee, Copy Specialist, MAPRagency
9. Develop an Editing Process
It’s essential to develop an editing process. If you don’t edit your content, you’ll find that your posts contain fluff that distracts from your core message.
After completing the first draft, I sift through the entire article and try to shorten sentences, remove sections that don’t add to my core message and add more sensory words where possible.
Once that process is completed, I use Grammarly to clean up any last grammar/wording edits.
Finally, I’ll follow my first draft editing process one more time, as there’s always something I miss. Having a systematic process improves my posts significantly!
Secondly, simplify as much as possible. You don’t have their full attention when someone is on the internet.
Therefore, it’s extremely important to use simple language that they can easily digest. Even though your readers are smart, most won’t want to expend mental energy trying to read through complicated concepts. They’ll simply decide to click the back button, and you might never see them again.
Axel DeAngelis, Founder, NameBounce
10. Devote Time to Your Headline
Spend 80% of your time writing your title and only 20% on the text. Spend the majority of your time writing your titles! Whether it’s a blog post, webpage, landing page, or email (this would be the subject line) most people will read your title and decide if they want to continue reading based on that alone. Titles should be as impactful as possible.
Next, make your text scannable. It’s difficult to read long blocks of text. Optimize your text for maximum readability by making it easy to read as possible. This includes incorporating things like:
- headlines and subtitles
- bullet points
- numbered lists
- images with captions
- YouTube videos
- charts
- CTAs (i.e. Sign up Now, Read Now, Learn More, etc.)
- switching the cadence of your text (making sure you don’t just write in short or long sentences
Vanessa Perplies, Brand Storyteller, Workiz
Best tools to make writing an ebook faster and easier
You now have an overview of the ebook creation process, but figuring out the nuts and bolts can be intimidating still.
If you have an idea about what you need to do but are stretched for time, then you might need some extra help to generate content and expand on what you have. These ebook writing tools can help.
1.Jasper [AI writing assistant]
Jasper is a unique AI copywriting assistant with an outstanding well of knowledge to draw from. As a content marketer, you know that good writing simply lures readers in from headline to sentence after sentence. Let Jasper worry about writing the perfect headline for every chapter, using its Perfect Headline template.
As you switch up your narrative style, Jasper can handle the twists and turns. Just guide the Long-form Assistant by providing some information about each chapter, and watch it generate content with less than half the usual effort from you. With Boss Mode, all you need to do is tell Jasper what to write about (e.g. “Write an article about SEO best practices”).
Jasper knows how important bullet points can be for readability and engagement. That’s why the Persuasive Bullet Points template is there to craft points that will keep your readers transfixed.
Pricing: Starts at $29/month for the Starter plan. Pro and Boss Mode plans cost $109 and $119 respectively.
You can try the product for free.
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