There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to the difference between copywriting and marketing. It’s understandable. After all, the two are often confused. A copywriter might write an email pitch or a blog post, and think they’re marketing it when in reality, they’re just writing content to support a sales process.
The truth is that copywriting and marketing are two sides of the same coin. If you want to grow your business successfully, you must understand the differences between them.
When Should You Be Using Each Service?
As you grow your business, you’ll find yourself with more content to promote. It might be products you’re promoting, services you’re offering, events you’re attending, or online courses you’re teaching. Basically, you’ll have a lot of content to work with.
At the very beginning, when you’re just getting started, you might not have a lot of money to spend on content marketing. That’s when you need to rely more heavily on SEO and content curation. In this case, you would want to use the services of a content marketer, or copywriter, to help you develop key messaging and create compelling headings and sub-headings. You might also want to use them to help develop some compelling content for your blog. As you can see, as your business grows, your need for content marketing services grows as well.
What Kind of Content Should You Be Creating?
When you’re first getting started, you might want to look at what kinds of content your ideal buyer is already consuming. That way, you can create content that they’re more likely to be interested in.
If you’re not sure what kinds of content your ideal buyer wants, you can always use keyword research to figure out what topics and themes your target audience is interested in. For example, if you’re writing your blog post for an audience in the UK, you can use the Long Tail Pro keyword tool to find the most popular keywords and phrases that are specific to the UK.
When you establish what kinds of content your audience wants, you can more easily decide what to write about. Let’s say, for example, that you’re a beauty product brand. You might want to establish your blog’s theme as beauty and make all your articles related to beauty. That way, when a reader finds an article about makeup brushes, they’ll know exactly what content type they’re seeking.
How Should Your Content Be Presenting?
If you’re not certain how to properly present the content you’ve created, you can always take a lesson or two from bestselling author and copywriting coach, Gary Albright. In his widely-read How to Write a Winning Business Plan, he suggests combining these three elements:
- An overview of what the plan is
- The purpose of the plan
- The structure of the plan
In other words, Gary Albright’s recommended approach to structuring business plans is to begin with an overview of the problem you’re solving, then move on to the solution, and finally, provide the steps you’re taking to achieve those results.
When it comes to presenting content in an email pitch, on a landing page, or in a blog post, you should follow the same approach, but in reverse. Begin with the conclusion and then work your way back to the problem. For example, if you’re writing an email pitch to convince a potential customer to purchase your product, you might begin with
- The benefits your product offers
- The pain point your product attempts to solve
- The unique selling point (USP) of your product
- The pricing of your product
- The promotion you’ll use to get the most out of your product
From there, you can develop compelling evidence to support your claims. To take advantage of email marketing, create a short bio about yourself, your blog, or your website. Remember: people who read your email pitch, or visit your landing page, are already very engaged in what you have to offer. That’s why you want to keep the content brief and compelling.
Who’s The Target Audience For This Content?
Another important question to ask yourself is, “Who’s the target audience for this content?”
If you’re not sure whom you’re targeting with your content, take a step back and try to put yourself in the shoes of a potential purchaser. For example, if you’re writing an email pitch for a small business owner who either operates out of the UK or manages sales for businesses that do, you can use the Long Tail Pro keyword tool to find the most popular keywords and phrases that are specific to the industry.
If you’re trying to grow your business through email marketing, it’s important to know whether or not your target audience is already engaged with other marketers in your industry. To find out, you can use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, which is part of the Google Ads app or the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to find the volume of search activity for your chosen keywords.
Once you know this information, you can determine if there’s room for growth within your industry. If you find there’s not a lot of search volume, then you might want to consider pivoting to a new line of businesses or trying a new industry. On the other hand, if you find there’s a lot of interest, you can decide whether or not to enter the market, knowing that there’s already demand for your product or service.
Where Should You Publish This Content?
Once you’ve got your key messages and compelling content, you need to decide where you’ll publish this content. Wherever you choose, make sure you have a clear call-to-action (CTA) urging the reader to take some kind of action.
While you might ultimately choose a digital publication like a blog or a website to host your content, remember that humans have always been more likely to read content published in physical form. That’s why traditional magazines and newspapers have enjoyed such enduring popularity. If you want to really nail down the ROI (return on investment) of your content marketing efforts, you might want to consider investing in some banner ads, or even a small paid promotion on a blog post to drive more traffic to it.
As you can see, there’s a lot of differences between copywriting and marketing. If you want to succeed as a business, you need to understand the differences and be able to apply what you learn.