If you’re like most people, you probably enjoy doing marketing and copywriting most of the time. After all, it can be pretty engaging putting your thoughts into words and being able to communicate your message to the world. And who doesn’t love getting paid to do what they love? But what exactly do you do in marketing and copywriting? Let’s explore.
The Basics
When we think about marketing and copywriting, we usually think about the role these two jobs play in relation to each other. After all, you can’t do one without the other. But what exactly does each job entail? Let’s take a look.
- Marketing: Marketing is the discipline of getting traffic to your website. It includes everything from building a good niche to identifying the right buyers (i.e., the people most likely to buy your product or service). Think of marketing as the “pie” in “Pricing and Marketing” (a pie chart showing the different elements that go into your marketing budget). When you’re first getting started, every little bit of money counts, so be careful with how you allocate budgets to different marketing campaigns. However, as you get more experienced, you can start testing different tactics and see which ones work for you and which ones don’t. It’s all about finding what’s effective and keeping costs down while still achieving the desired results.
- Copywriting: Copywriting (also known as copyediting or content writing) is the art of crafting compelling copy to attract, convert, and retain customers. A good copywriter is someone who can take a pitch (i.e., an idea or an opinion) and turn it into a piece of compelling content (e.g., an article, a blog post, or a commercial) that will engage potential customers and encourage them to take action (e.g., buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, or call a company).
Both jobs entail a lot of responsibility and can be quite demanding when you’re first starting out. You’ll have to take the time to learn what you’re doing, and then you’ll have to put in the time to do it right. Keep that in mind as you develop your careers in marketing and copywriting.
Marketing And The Digital World
Even before the age of digital marketing and SEO, marketers had to be savvy to understand how to reach the right audience with their messages. After all, back in the day, people had to actually go to a television set and listen to a radio play in order to learn about products and services. While that may be true, the digital world has enabled marketers to target their efforts to smaller groups of people and be more precise in their approaches.
If you’re a marketer, you’ll have to be familiar with the different platforms available online. You can start by becoming an expert in social media and then branch into other platforms such as SEO, content marketing, email marketing, and digital advertising. It’s important to learn as much as you can about each platform because each one has its perks and perks. Being able to master these different platforms enables you to reach your audience where they are and allows you to experiment with different marketing tactics.
As a marketer, you’ll also have to be comfortable with the tools available to help you find the right audience and then engage with them. You can use software such as Hootsuite to connect with people on social media and then use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to track the results of your campaigns. Being able to quantify your efforts and being able to determine the effectiveness of different marketing techniques is what enables you to improve over time. Plus, with the right measurements in place, you can start to see trends and determine what works best for your niche and in what scenarios.
If you’re a copywriter, your first stop should be the content itself. When someone comes to your site with the intention of buying a product or service, your first instinct may be to direct them to the sales department rather than the best blog post you wrote on technology trends. If you want the people reading your content to take action, your first and foremost goal should be to provide good, solid content that appeals to them. When you do this, they’ll be much more inclined to take the desired action (e.g., make a purchase or subscribe to a newsletter).
As a copywriter, you’ll need to understand the different types of content available online (i.e., text, audio, and video). While people may visit your site looking for products and services, they’ll most likely leave without acting on those initial intentions. To engage them and encourage them to take action, you’ll need to offer compelling content that draws them in and keeps them coming back for more. People like easy content that they can consume in short bursts. Longer articles with fewer words often work best. And while videos can be fun and engaging, they also require a lot of work to create a polished, professional-looking video that will appeal to the right audience.
Marketing: The Bottom Line
So, what does all of this mean for marketing as a discipline? Simply put, marketing is the process of getting people to respond to your offer (e.g., buy a product or service). Whether you’re trying to convince someone to try out your product or service or educate them on the value you offer, marketing is about getting someone to agree to something (e.g., meet you halfway, give you their email address, or take a survey).
Whether you’re a product manager who wants to onboard a new vendor, a salesperson who wants to close the deal, or a marketer who wants to attract the right audience, marketing is about getting someone to agree to your offer. It doesn’t matter what you want them to do, as long as they respond to your message and can find the value you’re trying to convey.
You can’t do this alone. Not in marketing, and not in life. You’ll need an audience to listen to you, and you’ll need vendors to help you make your product or service available to the right people. So, while marketing is a broad discipline, it doesn’t require a broad scope of skills. It just requires the will to get the job done.