Copywriting is a concept that is widely popular and used in many businesses. However, not everyone is familiar with it, even though they probably have heard about it at some point in their careers. Here is an explanation of what copywriting is and how it works.
What Is Copywriting?
From first hearing of the concept of copywriting, you may mistake it for the concept of copyrighting. Although they sound the same, they deal with significantly different materials. Copyright involves legalities surrounding rights to distribution, trademarks, and intellectual properties. These can be books, pictures, art, clothes, or even just ideas. Copywriting, on the other hand, deals with completely different things.
Copywriting is a skill that can lead to a career in technical writing fields. You utilize your words to provide information but also persuade readers to take action. The actions taken will vary from business to business, and depending on the industry or market you are focused on, your copy will be driven with the main goal of selling a product or service.
Difference Between Copywriting And Traditional Writing
Copywriting, although still utilizing language as its main tool, has a key objective. The main purpose of copywriting is conversion. The purpose of traditional writing is to tell a narrative or be informative, with the information being the final objective. This is seen in journalism, where you are trying to provide readers a clear picture and understanding of events, with facts and details. You may not have a further goal outside of that. Effective copy has the ability to entice its readers to take different actions.
These use in businesses to get audiences and readers to click a link, call a number, sign up for email communications, or even lead directly to an action button. Where the reader or audience member turns into a customer and buys something. B2B copywriting takes these ideologies and translates them to dealing with other businesses and companies as opposed to individual consumers.
Basically, copywriting creates the messaging that powers your entire business, building the core of your brand or company, leading directly towards sales numbers. Although the purpose is to drive sales, a big part of what good copywriting does well is to tell stories. As with traditional writing, you can still use your skills to build narratives or stories that develop relationships and create emotional connections between readers and brands.
This translates to an increased positive experience. As consumers will associate such positive emotions with your specific company, translating to further sales down the road.
Is It The Same As Content Writing?
Content writing is another form of writing that is prevalent in business. However, it is not the same as copywriting, as content writing can have other goals that do not focus primarily on sales. Content writing focuses more on engagement and brand awareness. That can analyze through data and track in terms of views, clicks, or comments.
Their effectiveness may not measure directly in sales numbers. Content writing also explores other mediums such as blog posts or youtube videos to increase interactivity. However, this is not to say that they are independent of each other and in fact, content writing and copywriting often work alongside one another, with the main goal, especially in the long term, being to generate profits.
Where It Is Used
Copywriting use in a variety of mediums. It is basically anything that you want to use to your advantage as a means to promote your business. This can be done off your websites through different web pages. But can also expand to emails, promotional videos, catalogs, physical mail flyers, and other visual advertising campaigns.
Basics Of Copywriting
There are many aspects of copywriting that you need to consider in order for you to implement it effectively. You need to be able to grab and retain a reader’s attention, provide solutions to questions or problems that consumers have, and ultimately have a clear, and concise call to action.
Your strategies may vary depending on the medium you choose, as there are limitations in the number of words you have, the language you can use, the space you have, and the time when you can relay all your information.
Copywriting is everywhere, and every business utilizes it in one form or another. Your company may use it without you even knowing. Whether you are looking for ways to take advantage of these practices, or you’re simply curious from a consumer or customer standpoint, it is smart to educate yourself on how copywriting works.