This is something of an open-ended question, but let’s dive right in.
The Basics
A good creative copywriter understands the fundamentals of copywriting as described in any good marketing textbook. There are six steps to any effective copywriting project:
- Step one: Understanding the problem
You have a problem you’re trying to solve. This could be engaging with a certain demographic or aiming to reach a certain audience with your message. When you establish the nature of the problem and establish what you hope to achieve by taking action, everything else follows naturally.
To put it another way, you have a product you’re marketing and you want to sell it to someone, preferably as many people as possible. Creative copywriting can help you identify the problems your product or service can solve and the benefits it can offer to those problems. It also helps you find the right person to sell it to, whether that’s a CEO of a large corporation or an individual customer.
- Step two: Gaining empathy
You must be able to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. The more you know about your target audience, the better you can tailor your approach to effectively solve their problems. Even if you’re writing for a CEO, it’s still important to understand the problems that person might face.
When you write with empathy, you write with the reader in mind. You assume they know nothing about the product or service you’re promoting and you provide them with as much information as necessary to make a decision. The more you know about your audience, the more you can tailor your approach to be effective.
- Step three: Creating interest
The next step is to create interest. When someone lands on your website, they might be looking for something specific, but they also might be wandering around confused. If you want them to take action and become a customer, you have to keep them interested until they take that action.
You can use a variety of methods to create interest; from providing useful information to encouraging them to sign up for your newsletter or follow you on social media. The key is to find the methods that work best for you and your target audience. Sometimes it’s as simple as providing more information about a product or service.
- Step four: Developing a clear objective.
The final step of any effective copywriting project is to set a clear objective. You define what you hope to achieve from this project and what you’ll need to do to get there. It can be as simple as driving traffic to a particular webpage or as complex as developing a new product or feature for a company’s website. Think of a specific action you want the reader to perform and write down what you hope to see as a result.
Your objective should be challenging yet realistic. You want the reader to believe that they can achieve the results you’re promising, but you also don’t want to set them up for disappointment. Be very careful not to set yourself up for failure by choosing an unattainable or unreasonable goal. It’s your job as a copywriter to keep the end result within reach, but also to make your target audience believe they can reach it.
- Step five: Measurement and evaluation
The final step of any successful project is to measure and evaluate the results. After you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve, it’s important to look back and see how you did it. There are several ways to measure the success of your creative copywriting project; from the number of orders you received to the amount of time your website spent in the top positions of search engine results to the amount of click-throughs from your social media posts.
Some businesses will argue that you shouldn’t evaluate your work until you’ve completed a project, but that’s not true. It’s important to take note of the results of your efforts as soon as you can and use that data to improve your approach for future projects.
- Step six: Review, review, review.
Just in case you missed it, here’s a recap of the basics of effective creative copywriting. Creative copywriting entails taking a product or service and turning it into a story. The better you are at taking a complicated subject and simplifying it for the average person, the more skilled you’ll be as a copywriter.
To practice creative copywriting, you don’t need any special software or a fancy portfolio to showcase your work. All you need is a notepad, a pen, and a willingness to learn.