Inevitably, as you begin your career in copywriting, you’ll be asked to write various pitches, proposals, and other marketing materials for clients. While it’s great to have experience, it’s often overwhelming to know where to start. Many copywriting professionals find that learning the basics of copywriting is the key to becoming a better writer. With that in mind, here’s a short list of the essential tools and techniques of copywriting.
1. What is Copywriting?
Put yourself in your client’s shoes for a minute. What do you know about copywriting? If I were to ask you what it is, what would your response be?
If you’re like most people, you’d answer:
- marketing materials, such as flyers, Web pages, and articles
- promotional materials, such as commercials, infomercials, and documentaries
- sales letters, orders, and other correspondence
- pitches, proposals, and other documents used in business
- product descriptions and other written work for online stores
That’s a lot of material to cover. But copywriting is much more than just words on a page. It’s a craft that has been around since the 1800s. Back then, it was known as “copyediting.” Essentially, copyediting is the practice of revising and editing copy for publications and the internet. These days, it’s called copywriting.
2. Grammar and Spelling
Although you don’t need to be a perfectionist to become a good copywriter, you should know how to spell and use grammar correctly. This will make you sound more intelligent and give your work more credibility. Many aspiring copywriters make the mistake of submitting work riddled with spelling errors and grammatical errors. If you’re taking your craft seriously, you’ll want to ensure that your work is flawless. Fortunately, there are tools available to help automate the process of checking your work for errors. For example, SpellChecker, Vocabulary Builder, and thesaurus.com are just a few of the online tools that can be helpful to your copywriting career.
3. Research, Research, Research
Like many other fields, copywriting is constantly evolving. As the saying goes, “a house can only be built on a solid foundation of knowledge.” Therefore, it’s important to continually educate yourself about what works and what doesn’t work in marketing. This involves continually performing research and synthesizing this information into useful, actionable insights. You’ll be able to quickly find all the information you need in one place, rather than searching for it across the web. An excellent place to start is Google Scholar, which will give you access to millions of academic articles for free.
Tip: When searching for information, be sure to use the quotation marks around phrases. This is an effective technique, especially when searching for long paragraphs, as it will allow you to find the exact piece of text you’re looking for. For example, if I wanted to find out more about the New York Mets, I would search for “New York Mets,” rather than “the New York Mets.” The first search returns more than 50 million results, while the second returns just over 13 million. The difference is that the second result is more applicable to my query.
4. Formatting a Document
One of the most important things to keep in mind as you’re writing is how your work will be presented to the reader. You have a few options here:
- a printed piece, such as a newspaper or magazine article
- a Web page
- an email
- a PowerPoint presentation
- a video
- a song
You’ll have to decide which one you think would be the best fit for your project. Keep in mind that the type of publication you’re submitting to will most likely have guidelines about how to format an article. These documents will tell you how many spaces to leave between paragraphs, what fonts to use, whether to capitalize certain words, and so on. In most cases, you’ll be given editorial direction about what to write and how to present it. But you should still have complete freedom to write the way you see fit, as long as you produce acceptable results.
5. Voice
As a copywriter, you’ll be engaging with clients on a one-to-one basis. This means that you’ll be speaking with individuals rather than presenting your views to a group. Before you begin pitching your ideas to clients, you should try and get used to using different words and phrases. This will help convince your audience that you’re a professional who has an in-depth knowledge of your subject matter. One of the best tools to help with this is thesaurus.com, which provides you with a lot of synonyms for keywords and phrases. You can also look up the meaning of words and find alternate spellings. For example, if you search for the word “innovative,” thesaurus.com will give you synonyms such as “creative,” “upbeat,” and “entrepreneurial.”
6. Style Sheet
As I mentioned above, your work will likely be presented to an audience, and you want to ensure that your work is easy to understand and doesn’t hurt the reader’s experience. For that matter, you don’t want to use the wrong type of language or the wrong tone of voice. To avoid any potential confusion, you should consult with the people who will be reviewing your work to ensure that you’re using the correct tone of voice and the proper language. Depending on your experience, you may decide that you need to use a specific form of language, known as “style.” The best way to find out how to use style sheets is to look at the finished product. If you have a publication that you’re working with, ask if they have a style sheet for writers. If not, create one and use it in all your publications.
7. Headings, Sub-Headings, And Pretty Words
In most cases, you’ll be required to write a news article or press release for publication. When writing this type of content, you need to keep the whole piece organized and understandable. For that matter, you need to make sure that each sentence, each paragraph, and each scene is structurally sound and builds on the previous material, so that it makes sense as a whole. To help you with this, you should use different techniques such as headings and sub-headings. These are phrases or words that appear at the top or the side of sentences to provide additional information, context, or instructions. When used appropriately, headings can not only tell the reader what information is available but can also guide them to relevant sections for additional details.
For example, if you’re writing a piece about the history of the New York Mets, you could head off the piece with a brief note about the franchise or use a heading to introduce major themes and points of discussion. In this case, the heading “The Evolution of the Met’s Logo” would serve as an excellent way to organize and sequence your material.
Sub-headings, as the name suggests, are smaller headings within headings. For example, if you have a major heading called “The Evolution of the Met’s Logo,” you might use a sub-heading below it to provide more specific information about the topic.
You should also use sub-headings within sub-headings, and so on, creating a tree of headings, sub-headings, and text. Using this approach allows you to create a clean hierarchy of information, which makes it much easier for someone reading the article to understand and find the relevant material.
For that matter, you can use headings and sub-headings to indicate the main paragraph divisions and themes. For example, if you’re writing an article about the history of the New York Mets, you could use headings to mark off major discussion points, such as “Frederic Remington’s Influential Designs,” “The Early Years,” and “Mets Players Through The Years.” You could also use sub-headings to discuss each player or team member individually, as well as general details about the franchise, such as “Year-by-Year Sales,” “Where They Are Now,” and “Observations About The Team.”