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What is copywriting? On this content, I create a real guide for beginners, and in the end, you will able to write your first copy.

What is copywriting?

What is copywriting? Copywriting or copy is a set of strategies to persuade, inform, or inspire the readers to take a specific action. For example, if you see an ad that says “Buy now”, this is copywriting.

However, copy is not just about sales, sales, sales. Copywriting can involve information about your product, or how is it perceived.

For example, McDonald’s has had a huge success with their campaign “I’m Loving It” with celebrity endorsements, simple, but effective, and positive associations all at once. 

In this slogan, they don’t talk about the product itself, but they talk about how the brand can be perceived.

All this set of strategies rely on the understanding of the audience and technical aspects to drive good results.

Why is this important?

The question that connects directly with what is copywriting, is why this is even important. Copywriting is important because every piece of marketing starts with the written content.

A good video on YouTube starts with screenwriting, social media has social media copy to enhance the message, and so on. Even in movies, everything starts with the script.

With that in mind, good copywriting is always the first step to leads to engaging, persuasive, and informative content, and good marketing.

Once you master the power of words you can make sure that every piece of your marketing is really good, doesn’t matter all the other aspects of the piece itself.

I love cinema, and sometimes I watch a low-budget movie that it’s not the best in VFX or the acting itself, but the script is really good. Of course, I’m not suggesting that a good copy is all that matters; the rest does matter.

However, you definitely can’t rely on the other aspects with a bad copy, because the foundation of your content is not good. You need to start with the copywriting and have other good elements in your content to lead to:

• Engagement of the audience, and make sure that they stay, and return for more.
• Build brand awareness by communicating the brand’s values, identity, and goals.
• Increase sales by connecting the audience and building trust in your brand.

What are the key elements of copywriting?

Well-crafted copywriting has the same key elements, and you need to focus on those elements to make sure that all core components will be good.

• Headline
• Psychological triggers
• Storytelling
• Value proposition

The headline is in general the title, and is the first thing that readers will see in your copy. The main goal of the headline is attention-grabbing by having the solution that the audience wants and emotional appeal. How to make a headline? Learn Copywriting in 3 steps in this content!

We can do that by extending research about our audience and making the headline appeal to the fears, needs, and desires of our audience.

Psychological triggers are a set of strategies to lead an emotional response from the audience. We have the psychological triggers of reciprocity, social proof, curiosity, exclusivity, and so on.

The main goal of the psychological triggers is to enhance all the aspects of the message and make sure that the reader will have the action that we want.

Storytelling is a set of strategies to tell a story, those strategies are used in movies, series, anime, and all good stories even in ancient times.

We have a protagonist which is the audience, the steps in the hero’s journey, etc. The main goal of the storytelling is to make our ad and content more interesting to the audience.

Last, but definitely not least we have the value proposition. In simple terms, the value proposition is so compelling that saying “no” to it is just dumb.

In the value proposition, we say all the benefits that our solution has, and how the audience doesn’t lose anything from it, and we address all the objections of our audience to make sure that they will say yes.

What is copywriting: Types of copywriting

As I said earlier, we have three different goals so we need different types of copywriting to achieve those goals. However, is important to say that all four types of copywriting have all the key elements that I said above.

Sales copy

What is copywriting for sales? The sales copy is the most common type when we hear about copywriting. The main goal of sales copy is to show products and persuade sales as we have in landing pages and product descriptions on websites.

Is a medium-long copywriting in general, and the most important key element is the value proposition. Since we need to make sure that destroy all the objections.

The audience that we focus on when we make a sales copy is the audience in the middle of the funnel, this audience already heard about your solution, and they are considering buying.

Ver no Threads

Content writing

What is copywriting for content? The content writing has a focus on education and the engagement of the audience. The idea here is to say nothing about products, and only focus and help out and inform the audience.

We see this kind of copy in many media, like blogs, scripts for videos, guides, posts on social media, and so on. With that in mind, this type can be short or long, depending solely on the type of content itself.

In posts on social media, we usually see short and catchy content, but in guides or blogs, we have long and deep content.

The most important key element is usually the headline for short and catchy content and storytelling for long and deep content. It all depends on how much information we want the audience to see.

Usually, we see short and catchy content for the audience on the top of the funnel, this audience is discovering your solution and your company. So it’s not a good idea to try to sell at this stage because you don’t have trust yet.

SEO Copywriting

What is copywriting for SEO? SEO Copywriting is a type of content that focuses on making the content relevant and attracting organic traffic. We can see it as the right arm of the content writing since both are connected, but are not the same.

This kind of copywriting has the main goal of having as many clicks and views as possible. We see this kind of copy in discussions, news, opinionated topics, and informative content that we talked about above. 

The most important key elements are usually the headline and storytelling, but also the SEO techniques, especially on-page SEO. 

Usually, we see this type of copy for the audience on the top of the funnel, this audience is discovering your solution, and your company as we say above. So SEO copywriting is important to catchy the attention of this audience.

If you want more about why SEO is important, we have another article with 7 reasons why matters

Advertising  copywriting 

What is copywriting for ads? Advertising copywriting is only found in ads, usually short and brief. The main goal is to sell, sell, and sell. So the most important key element is psychological triggers.

We craft this type of copy just for the audience at the bottom of the funnel, because this audience already knows your solution, already considerate, and is ready to buy.

The advertising copy is to encourage immediate action, and we can this type of copy on Google Ads, Banner Ads, and Social Media Ads (Swipe up or Buy now!). Check out my other content: The key elements of the types of copywriting!

What is copywriting: How to write in 3 steps?

To finish our content about what is copywriting, I’ll make a simple step-by-step to you write any copy that you want. However, I need to say that the quality of your copy depends on the knowledge that you have.

This is a guide for beginners, so I can’t say all the aspects of copywriting in just one guide, especially an introductory one. So even these are the main three steps to anyone make a good copy, you need to seek more knowledge.

When I say more knowledge, I’m talking about references of copywriting, studying the key elements, and the most important thing: Practice. So keep that in mind, the third version of your copy will be way better than your first one. You already have the first step, you know what is copywriting.

Step 1: Search your audience

As I say in the beginner, your audience is 50% of the success of your copy. So you need to know your audience to appeal to them. You can’t make a winning copy without knowing your target audience.

The core aspects of your research have to be the needs, fears, and desires of your audience. The best part is everybody talks about that, even if they don’t know they’re talking about it.

• Fear is future problems that your audience is afraid to face.
• Desires are solutions that your audience wants to prevent future fears.
• Needs are solutions that your audience wants to fix the problems that they having right now.

Looking for those three pieces of information in forums, social media, and YouTube comments that your target audience will be there. Organize as many testimonials as you can to find the specific needs, fears, and desires.

Step 2: Create a clear call to action first

Call-to-action or CTA is what you want your audience to do next, like buying, subscribing, seeing, reading, liking, commenting, sharing, etc. 

The most important thing that you need to understand is you need to have just one Call-to-Action per copy. If you have two, three, or more CTAs in one copy you will confuse your audience for sure, and anybody wants that, right?

When we focus on the CTA first, we know what type of copy we want, the key elements that we need to focus on, and even the most important information that we will use in our research.

Step 3: Craft the path to the CTA

The last step is to craft the path to the CTA after we have a clear Call-to-Action in mind. Because, since we have the exact goal first, is easier to create all the elements, and write down what you need.

Based on the CTA, we can create a strong hook in the beginner to grab the attention of our audience, incorporate the best social proof to that scenario, and we can refine it later, rewriting to make our copy the best as possible.

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