What Is Copywriting In Marketing? A Guide

The world of content marketing needs numerous departments working together cohesively to ensure a company improves its customer acquisition.

A marketing department can prioritize one tool over another, when in fact, there is one marketing method that is one of the most critical elements to stimulate sales: the power of words.

Good copywriting is a creative, diverse, and dynamic skill that can turn a customer onto the benefits of a product in little more than a few words.

The role of a copywriter is to create copy in different styles to meet the different needs of companies or clients.

What is copywriting in marketing, and how can businesses use the right copywriting tools and techniques to drive sales?

What is Copywriting in Marketing?

Copywriting is a key aspect of marketing that involves crafting compelling and persuasive written content to promote products or services and drive conversions.

A skilled copywriter understands the audience and can use language and techniques to influence their behavior and encourage them to take action, whether it’s making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. C

opywriting can take many forms, including website copy, email campaigns, social media ads, and more.

Ultimately, the goal of copywriting is to create engaging and effective messaging that resonates with the target audience and drives business success.

From the outside, many people can make the assumption that copywriting is purely about the written word.

But any writer worth their salt knows that writing is about the research first and foremost.

When we look at the first few stages of a sales funnel, persuasive copywriting is the most important tool:

Stage 1: Awareness, where a prospect learns about your company for the first time, perhaps by clicking on an ad, reading a blog, or finding your website from a Google search.

Stage 2: Interest, where potential customers make sure what you are offering is the best solution.

Stage 3: Decision, where a prospect will dig deeper and decide if your product is worth purchasing.

The stage after is Action, where a customer makes a purchase.

The three initial stages rely on marketing materials; copy is the most important tool, as this is what gets customers interested in products and starts them on the journey to being your customer.

People can use compelling imagery to hook someone in, but a succinct, on-brand written word is the foundation.

How Does Copywriting Differ From Other Types of Content Writing?

Copywriting, as a term, is often lumped in with content marketing, but copywriters and content writers can be two distinct entities.

The term “copywriting” relates to sales or marketing copy, for example, slogans, ad copy, online content for landing pages, and so forth.

In contrast, content writing is more likely to take the form of longer web copy with a higher word count, such as articles, blog posts, reports, white papers, e-books, or video scripts.

The term “content” relates to anything that does not necessarily equate to selling, for example, this blog post is a piece of content.

Content writers and copywriters both have the same goal: to convert readers into customers.

The major difference between the two is that a copywriter needs to do it succinctly as the content may be a:

• 120-character product description.
• Press release.
• Landing page.
• Email subject line.

The benefit of content writing is that using content with higher word counts can help a business build trust by demonstrating authority and knowledge on a subject over a longer form.

A content writer is also more likely to have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices and incorporate keywords to ensure the piece of content and the website it is on ranks higher on Google.

A copywriter is more likely to work with shorter text that is more inclined toward the purpose of selling something on a website.

How Copywriting Benefits Businesses

• Enhances brand awareness. Copywriting can increase brand awareness by creating content that reflects the brand’s tone and voice and values.
• Increases conversions. The goal of great copywriting is to increase conversions by using persuasive content that convinces readers to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, or inquire about something.
• Builds trust. Copywriting that addresses the needs of the target audience can help a business establish itself as a credible authority on a specific subject matter.
• Captures attention. The most important reason copywriting exists is to capture a user’s attention by using persuasive language or attention-grabbing headlines to keep them interested in the company and the products or services.

The Qualities of Great Copywriting

Clear Communication

The bottom line of copywriting is that it’s trying to sell us something.

Communicating your message quickly and clearly takes a lot of practice, but this is where the KISS acronym is always invaluable:

Keep It Simple Stupid!

My writing is based on one system:

Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

Here’s how you can steal it:

— LB (@LegacyBuilder__) January 5, 2023

Customers don’t need to know how clever you are by using florid, verbose terminology.

This only serves to alienate audiences.

Words everybody can understand will get the point across.

Sounds natural

SEO rules have changed a lot recently, and now the tide is turning to incorporate the acronym E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

While the right keywords is a critical component, it is only one piece of the puzzle.

You can use keywords to help your content rank higher but “keyword stuffing” can make it sound like it’s been written by a robot!

Your content must sound natural to build trust or demonstrate authority and expertise, which is what will help you convert customers.

Many people are using AI tools to create copy, and while tools like our blog post generator can create something quickly, a great copywriter possesses that human touch and makes content sound like they are speaking it.

Natural-sounding content can help you convey empathy for a customer, highlight their pain points, and provide a solution.

Tells a Story

Even though many content marketing specialists think putting across the salient points in product descriptions is all you need, you can always tap into storytelling tools to build connections.

Storytelling should be part and parcel of how you create your copy because a great story highlights a problem, explains why it’s frustrating for the customer, and then showcases the solutions.

There are numerous copywriting formulas that can capture readers’ attention, including:

• The Before–After–Bridge, where you show the world before the problem, then how it would look after the problem is solved, and the tools to get there.
• Problem–Agitate– Solution, or a variation on this popular copywriting formula known as PAIPS:

This is my variation of a popular copywriting formula called PAS (problem/agitate/solution).

I add 2 steps to make it PAIPS:

– Problem
– Agitate
– Intrigue
– Positive Future
– Solution

I’ll break down a piece of my content that had 276k impressions using this format.

— Justin Welsh (@thejustinwelsh) December 29, 2022

• Features–Advantages–Benefits, known as FAB.
• The 4 C’s (Clear, Concise, Compelling, and Credible)

Puts the Reader First

It is easy for copywriters to become sucked into the finer details or try to please every single department, but the final product will only be read by the intended audience- everybody else’s input is mere window dressing.

Without the reader, you will not reach new users, generate interest, or build trust.

What Aspiring Copywriters Need to Remember

Understand the Different Types of Copywriting

It can be easy to think that we can apply one generic framework to our marketing emails or social media posts.

While all copywriting is persuasive, there are different specialties and sub-categories:

• Website copywriting, which are informative marketing pages to improve user experience and drive traffic via search engines, which may consist of FAQ pages, landing pages, and a lot more.
• SEO copywriting, which may include relevant keywords or title tags to persuade readers to take action.
• Technical copywriting, which can consist of “how-to articles,” which serves the purpose of being helpful, while also encouraging the reader to take action.
• Social media copywriting, which could be blog posts with specific messages to your target audience.
• Email copywriting, which includes compelling subject lines and engaging text that builds up to a Call To Action (CTA.
• Ad copywriting, which would convince readers to make a purchase in as few words as possible.

Fine-Tune Your Skills

A copywriter can be a key cog within a marketing team that is not just responsible for crafting the wording but can be a point of contact between design, comms, customer service, and product teams.

A copywriter should display a greater understanding of the big picture, while also possessing the following:

• Creative thinking. Different departments want different purposes for their content, which requires a copywriter to write copy in different styles and subjects to meet weekly or daily deadlines.
• Research skills. A copywriter does not know the ins and outs of every subject which is why they need to be able to locate, ingest, digest, and interpret information quickly to distill into copy.
• Communication skills. Contrary to popular belief, a copywriter is not necessarily someone typing their magnum opus in their basement, especially when it comes to freelance copywriters, who need to be highly responsive to work requests and listen carefully to client needs and expectations.
• Strong writing. Copywriters need to strike the right balance between a love of language and words, a broad vocabulary, and create compelling phrases that fit the brand voice to engage customers.

Deciding Whether to Go In-House or Freelance

Many businesses hire in-house copywriters for many reasons:

• They are less expensive if you are looking for someone to create lots of content in a shorter timeframe.
• Greater control over the content they produce.
• They will have a better understanding of your brand.

Freelance copywriters can help businesses in the following ways:

• They can scale up quicker.
• Businesses can add more copywriters if more content is needed.
• Can locate niche copywriters to create specialized content.
• Can be less expensive to work with, depending on their rate.

The Final Note

Copywriting is an essential component of marketing, from social media marketing to landing page optimization and everything in between.

Ad copy, first and foremost, must be compelling, and to do this correctly, a copywriter must focus on hitting the right tone with their content that is on-brand and encourages the audience to take specific actions.

Writing copy is not always easy, especially for businesses looking for freelance copywriters, but at Optimo, we provide a number of tools that can help with copywriting such as our blog post generator and product description AI tools.

Copywriting has one goal, and that is to convert.

We’re trying to get a viewer’s attention in a short space of time, and we only have moments to inform, inspire, persuade an action, develop a brand voice, and progress someone through the sales funnel quickly.

This is no tall order, but if you have skilled copywriters in your corner, it is achievable.