10 Ways to Write Good Copy

Writing effective copy is both an art and a science.

It’s an art because it requires creativity, a sense of beauty and style — a certain aptitude, mastery and special knowledge. Artistic advertising allows you to create content marketing that’s not just practical and persuasive, but awe-inspiring and breathtaking.
Writing effective copy is also a science, because it exists in the world of tests, trial and failure, improvement, breakthroughs, education and predictability. Scientific advertising allows you to develop an idea, and then test that idea. It’s how you know if your content marketing is working.
In bad copy, one (or both) of these elements are missing. In good copy, they are both abundant.
Read on, in the next few minutes we’ll explore ten examples of good copy living (and selling) out in the wild …

1. Plain copy

The most basic approach to writing effective copy is to simply introduce the product without gimmick or style. It’s a simple presentation of the facts and benefits.
There is no story. There is no conversation. There is no “sizzle” and no superlative claims.
Think Google Analytics.

That copy isn’t going to win any literary awards, but it will get the job done. It will give a prospect the information she needs to make an informed decision about the product.

2. Storytelling copy

Everyone loves a good story.
We like hearing about people — especially interesting people. People who’ve suffered challenges we can relate to, and can tell us how they overcame those challenges.
And the moral of the story, coincidentally, is that your product was the catalyst to overcoming those odds.
You might find this storytelling technique in an email series, a landing page, or a short video. Whatever the format, you’ll get four basic traits in the story:

1. Opening: Introduce the pain. Show how the character of the story had a normal life, then how that life was shattered by a change of events.
2. Conflict: How is the life of the main character threatened if he or she does not respond to the problem? What does her journey look like as she tackles this challenge?
3. Dialogue: People are drawn to conversations in a story. It’s human interest at its root: two people talking to each other. We are also drawn to dialogue because it’s easy to read. “Our eyes flow over dialogue like butter on the hood of a hot car,” says novelist Chuck Wendig.
4. Solution: Finally, your product is introduced as the cure for your character’s problem. You increase the credibility of your product by sharing specific results (347% increase in conversion, for example).

Your story doesn’t have to be dramatic. It just has to be interesting to your target audience. And this is where good research comes in.

3. Conversational copy

John Caples calls conversational copy “You and Me.”
In this style of copy, you write as if there is a conversation between two people: the copywriter and the prospect.
The language here would be no different than a salesman sitting down for lunch with a customer and talking through a sales presentation. It’s a straightforward approach that tries to identify with the reader:

I know how you feel. I felt the same way. That all changed when I found x, y and z.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to be a polished copywriter to create effective conversational copy. Often the sheer passion for what you’re trying to promote breathes off the page.
In fact, you can record a conversation about the product, transcribe that conversation, and use it as a rough draft.

4. John Lennon copy

When John Lennon asked us to imagine there was no heaven or hell, no countries, religion or war, he was using an effective tool of persuasion: imaginative copy.
As an advertiser, you can ask your target audience to imagine a painless way to lose weight, or what it would feel like to be a successful travel writer.
Imaginative copy typically begins with words like “imagine,” “close your eyes,” “pretend for a moment,” “discover,” or “picture this” in the first paragraph of the text.
This is the concept behind AWAI’s Barefoot Writer presentation.

In this example, you are asked to imagine your life in a certain way — to pretend what it would be like to live your dream, whatever that dream might be.
Then the copywriter paints a picture of achieving that ideal life through your product.

5. Long copy

The fundamental premise behind long copy is “The more you tell, the more you sell.” Ads that are long on facts and benefits will convert well.
Why?
Unlike a face-to-face conversation with a salesperson, a written ad has only one chance to convert a reader. If you get in front of the reader, you’ve got to lay it all out on the table.
Take the Google Analytics example above.
Page after page of facts and benefits are presented because the proposition isn’t simple — typical prospects are going to be asking a lot of questions. Better to anticipate those questions, and answer them in the copy.
But when you’re following the basic rules of content marketing that works, remember that you don’t have to present all the facts and benefits up front.
You can leak the presentation over a period of weeks through an email autoresponder (like our Internet Marketing for Smart People course), or a registration-based content library (like the Scribe Content Marketing library).
In this way, you’re turning long copy into short, easily-digestible snippets.

6. Killer poet copy

Here at Copyblogger we love Ernest Hemingway and David Sedaris. But we aren’t so enamored by their writing abilities that we try to imitate their styles at the expense of teaching and selling.
Our goal isn’t to convince our audience that we’re smart — it’s educating and selling with our copy.
As David Ogilvy once said, “We sell, or else.” But we try to sell with style. We try to balance the killer with the poet.
Killer poet copy sees writing as a means to an end (making a sale), and the ad as an end in itself (beautiful design and moving story).
In other words, the killer poet combines style with selling. Creativity with marketing. Story with solution.

7. Direct-from-CEO copy

It’s a known fact — third-party endorsements can help you sell products.
But it’s equally effective to position your selling argument as a direct communication between the company founder and his or her customer.
This down-to-earth approach levels the playing field. It telegraphs to the customer, “See, the CEO isn’t some cold and remote figurehead interested in profit only. He’s approachable and friendly. He cares about us.”
Jeff Bezos of Amazon is a superb example:

Notice this letter is conversational as well as plain: it’s a simple statement of the facts and benefits between two people: Jeff and you.

8. Frank copy

Some copy will explain the ugly truth about the product.
This approach doesn’t start with the jewels of your goods — it’s going to start with the warts.
When selling a car, you might point out the endless repairs that need to be done — thin brake pads, leaky transmission, busted sway bar, and inoperable dashboard — before you introduce the leather seats, Monsoon stereo system, sun roof, brand-new tires and supercharged engine.
What you’re saying is this car will need a lot of TLC. You might even go as far as to say, “Make no mistake here — there’s much work to be done here.”
And here’s a curious thing: when you are honest and transparent about product weaknesses, the customer trusts you.
When the reader trusts you, they will be considerably more likely to believe you when you point out the good qualities of your product.

9. Superlative copy

There are also times when you can make outlandish claims.
Claims like (these are actual ads):

• “A revolutionary material from this Nevada mine could make investors a fortune in 2013″
• “Stores across U.S. selling out of what some call a new ‘miracle’ diet fighter”
• “Obey this one weird loophole to get car insurance as low as $9″

But you can make only make extraordinary claims when you have the proof to back it up. The evidence can be in statistics, testimonials, or research — or preferably all three.
The problem with superlative copy is that it’s often hard to make outlandish claims and not sound like you are hyping it up — so use this type of copy sparingly.
Generally, it’s good to follow the “Remove All Hype” policy.

10. Rejection copy

Rejection copy turns conventional wisdom on its head. and tries to discourage people from being interested in your product.
This type of copy is a direct challenge to the reader that leverages the velvet rope approach — the idea that only an exclusive set of people are invited to use a product.
The American Express Black Card is a good example here — this card is reserved for the world’s wealthiest and most elite. The only way you can get your hands on one is if you are invited.
Similarly, consider the dating site Beautiful People. If you want to be part of this exclusive dating club made up of “beautiful” people, then you have to be voted in by existing members:

Potential rejection startles readers — they don’t expect to be turned down, especially not from an advertiser.
This approach also keys into our sense of wanting to belong. It generates that curiosity itch and activates our pride. We think, “How dare they say I might not be good enough to get into their club? I’ll show them.”

Over to you …

In the end, great copy often combines several of these techniques into one ad.
The CEO of a company writes a conversational sales letter built around a story about his passion for his product (whether it is peaches or water pumps).
A copywriter writes a long rejection ad that explains why certain people are excluded from receiving an invitation to dine at an exclusive restaurant.
Or a Savile Row tailor writes a plain but elegant sales letter about his suits, which have been worn by kings and presidents.
This is the art and science of copywriting.

8 Ways SEO Should Influence Your Marketing Copywriting

In the world of inbound marketing, your content is your business and your calling card. Your effectiveness as an inbound marketer relies on the quality of your content, and your content is what helps you get found online, build trust with your readers, educate and inform them, build a pathway to conversions, and sustain ongoing and profitable relationships with loyal customers for years to come.

But for content to truly be successful, marketers must think like SEO professionals to ensure that content gets found online by the proper audience. Old school SEOs believed they could magically sprinkle keywords throughout content with the hope that it would result in solid rankings for as many keywords and keyword variations as possible. For instance, they might use “clickthrough rate” on one page, and “click-through-rate” on another page. But by doing this, you’re not only creating inconsistency in your content and confusing your audience, but you're also inconsistently alerting search engines of your expertise (as well as creating duplicate content -- eek!).

To help ensure you’re ranking for the right words -- not just any and all words -- it's important to ensure that your content is consistent. And something like an official Internet Written Style Guide can be a big help in addressing consistency issues. This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s important to develop an in-house guide that goes beyond the general rules of branding and content strategy, and hones in on the nuances and terms particular to your specific industry. To save you the time from starting from scratch, we've published HubSpot's own in-house style guide with tips for customizing it for your own use. Download it for free here!

So as you're customizing your own in-house written style guide, here are some critical SEO considerations to include so your marketing copywriting is both compelling and search engine-friendly!

8 Critical SEO Considerations for Marketing Copywriting

1) Well-Defined Target Audience and Tone

In SEO -- and all of inbound marketing for that matter -- content is king. However, your attempt to optimize that content for search engines will be worth nothing if your content serves no purpose. Don't just create content for the sake of creating content. Start by defining your target audience and the appropriate tone for your different types of content. For example, website pages may be more formal and focused more on product details and services, while blog posts may be less formal, focused more on educational and informative content.

As you define your target audience and your buyer personas, you’ll learn about the needs, interests, and problems your ideal customer(s) face. Remember: You're writing for them, so your content needs to focus on them. Only then will you be able to optimize that content for the keywords you want to get found by in search. To help define your buyer personas to direct your content creation efforts, read this blog post and check out our free buyer persona creation template.

2) Keyword Research 

Clearly identify which specific topics and keywords your writers should focus on. Conduct keyword research to confirm your intuition about their topics of interest.  Each tool allows you to type in a word or phrase you think you should target and returns a list of recommended results and suggestions. The keywords that you discover as part of this research will either help you determine your game plan or confirm what you’ve already defined (e.g. "clickthrough rate" vs. "click-through-rate"). Comparing traditional metrics like the search volume and competitiveness of a term should also be part of this equation.

3) Proper Spelling and Grammar

Make sure to always use proper spelling and grammar. A proper written style guide should outline common keyword variations in addition to which version your company has decided to use. It’s easy to publish content with inconsistencies in terms of capitalization, hyphenation, and punctuation. Using proper English and a style guide that establishes the correct version of commonly troublesome words ensures consistency across your assets, and consistency counts when you’re trying to optimize for certain terms.

4) Branding Nuances

You should always be striving to maintain a well-defined and consistent brand -- and your SEO efforts should reflect that. Establish how to approach words specific to your particular brand such as your company name, names of product lines, services, and individual products. Is your business name capitalized or in small caps? What about your products? Branded terms are typically quite easy to rank for in most cases, so don’t make it harder by creating brand dysphoria.

5) Content Formatting

Spelling out best practices for content formatting is a smart idea, too. Should your blog posts include images, headers, or subheaders? Should copywriters be mindful of a specific keyword list to use in those headers? All of your links should use strong anchor text, so for which keywords or phrases are you trying to rank? Make sure you provide your copywriters with all the resources they need to succeed with SEO. It’s absolutely worth taking the time to spell all this out.

6) Copy Editors

Every marketing team should designate a copy editor (or a few) to review the content the team creates. Find somebody who is eagle-eyed and supremely detail-oriented, and have them review everything you write before you publish it, no matter how seemingly small or inconsequential. Make sure these copy editors are well schooled in your team's written style guide and keyword best practices and can spot opportunities for optimization and improvement.

7) Content Calendar

The one thing that is arguably more important than how frequently you publish is how consistently you publish. You already know that consistency of language is important; the same holds true for the timing of when you publish. Studies show that early morning publishing times, Monday through Thursday, work best. Don’t let your readers down. Don’t let Google down.

Did you know that search engine crawlers return to your site on a regular basis? If you have new content, they'll index it. If there is no new content, you lose out. And the more consistently you publish quality content, the more consistently those crawlers will come back and not only check for new content but also other general updates they might stumble upon. So develop an editorial calendar or some sort of publishing schedule along with your other guidelines to help you focus on publishing regularly and incrementally improving your search engine rankings.

8) Conversions

If you plan on increasing your ROI through your content creation and SEO efforts, then you’ll need to create some calls-to-action (CTAs). How else will you convert that search engine traffic into business leads? CTAs are an important component of overall on-page optimization, and they should be consistent throughout your content and relevant to your audience. CTAs lead your traffic to highly optimized landing pages which offer them something in exchange for their contact information, and presto -- you suddenly have a lead! If your end goal isn’t lead conversion, then why even bother with search engine optimization to begin with?

4 Don'ts of SEO Copywriting

1. Creating Content for the Sake of SEO: Content should not be created just for the sake of ranking. Instead, create content that's useful and serves a purpose for your readers.
2. Don’t Obsess About Keyword Density: Why? Because there’s no magic number. Overtly optimized content is just that -- overtly optimized. No one likes it, particularly Google.
3. Don’t Optimize Content for Misspelled Words: If you have an AdWords budget, you’d be better off targeting those types of words and phrases in your PPC campaigns, not your content. 
4. Don’t Create a New Page for Every Single Possible Keyword Variation:  Furthermore, don’t create additional pages for abbreviations of a word. These types of pages will rapidly disappear from the index because Google will automatically pick the canonical version for you and disregard the rest.

At the end of the day, remember that there should be little difference between traditional online writing and SEO writing. If your content isn’t compelling, it doesn’t matter which keywords you use because it won’t get shared or linked to. First and foremost, focus on writing for your target audience. After all, that’s what Google wants you to aim for as well. Being relentlessly consistent in your writing establishes trustworthiness and stability with your readers. And creating a set of copywriting guidelines will go a long way toward helping you and your marketing team stick with it.

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