What Is Copywriting, and Why Do We Care?

Apps and websites are where companies battle it out to gain the attention of customers and show how they are superior. One of the most important weapons in this fight is their choice of words. Sure, a picture is worth 1,000 words, but it’s the copywriting that explains what the picture is in the first place. 

Copywriting is the creation of text for advertisements and marketing material. A good copywriter is as essential to attracting potential customers as is a good layout or interesting graphics, and so the competition to impress buyers is also a competition between good copywriters. 

Copywriting Is a Strategic Asset

The increased importance of key copywriting skills means that, in addition to authoring remarkable prose, the copywriter must deliver their brand’s messaging, describe product benefits, and attract the target audience.

Moreover, they must do this across formats—ad copy, landing pages, CTAs—as well as platforms—Instagram, Facebook, Google, etc.—with each requiring a different approach according to platform rules and format best-practices.

In short, copywriting is a time-consuming challenge. Let’s take a look at the 3 sets of skills involved, and then we’ll get into how it can all be done a little bit better.

1: Writing Skills
Finally, all those grammar lessons are paying off! High-quality writing is actually important because noticeable errors are a big turnoff for some readers – 59% of web users see such mistakes as a reason not to buy.

On the other hand, bending the rules can be a great way to go. It makes copy stand out. It lets you emphasize certain points. And even grammar fanatics might find it interesting in measured doses (catch the intentional grammar violation there?).   

So good copywriting is a mix of catchy composition and sticking to the rules, but the copywriter needs an instinct for striking the right balance.

2: Knowledge
Of course, copywriting is ultimately about selling a product. The copywriter needs to thoroughly understand a product’s unique features and strengths so that the copy will promote it in the most appealing ways. Knowing its weaknesses is also essential, so that you can draw focus away from them. It’s also important to make sure that you get a full idea about the product from stakeholders on all the relevant teams – product, marketing, and sales. They will be judging your copy and its success rates!

3: Research
Your writing skills and product knowledge come together in the most important message that your copywriting needs to deliver: “What’s in it for me?” But you should also be aware of the latest industry trends and slang terms in order to add the right finishing touches. In addition, you’ll probably be posting on various social media platforms, so you’ll also need to understand the specifications (character count, format) required for each. 

Once all of this is done, it’s time to test and retest numerous copy versions to see which are converting the most users.

Up Your Game

Got all that? 

If you’re already implementing these factors in your copywriting, but still are not seeing the results you need, then there are two routes from which to choose:

Experimentation

Perhaps your style isn’t the best it could be—take a look at top brands in your field and the styles that they use. You can also try expanding to different platforms in case there are a few new ones that your target group is using.

Also, it sometimes happens that the group that is buying your product is not what you think—perhaps you need to revise buyer personas.

AI Copywriting

Does all this feel daunting at times? You may be surprised to know that you don’t actually need to go through the traditional copywriting process anymore, i.e. invent, test, reiterate, and retest dozens of copywriting variants. The complicated nature and strategic importance of copywriting has inspired the creation of technologies based on artificial intelligence. 

By analyzing the success rates of millions of ads, landing pages, CTAs, and so on, this technology can build marketing copy that accounts for nuance, slang, product features, and audience preference. Companies like Anyword can take a few basic pieces of product and industry information to build literally dozens of ad copy lines and provide a score that predicts how well they will perform. Anyword can also create copy according to the various rules and best practices of numerous media platforms.

As a result, the copywriter simply needs to publish the copy with the best score according to the platform for which the copy was created.    

Olden Days to AI Days

Which way is better? Like many aspects of our technology-driven world today, balance is best. It’s good to have a living and breathing copywriter on your team, but it’s even better when that copywriter is armed with tools like Anyword’s AI Copywriter that save resources along the path to that perfect line of copy. It’s akin to an engineer having a calculator.