“What does a copywriter do?” you ask.
A copywriter is a person who writes marketing and content for organisations to persuade or inform.
The work of a copywriter ranges from writing up long brochures to crafting witty taglines for businesses, often involving in-depth audience research and a thorough understanding of the industry.
So what does a copywriter do to day-to-day?
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They get into the psyche of the business.
It’s a copywriter’s job to communicate to the world the value of a business or its product.
Therefore, the first crucial foundation to build is a thorough understanding of exactly what the business does, how the industry works and what the customers are like.
What does that look like? Well, it depends on the kind of work the copywriter is producing, and it depends on the type of business they’re writing about.
Some examples of research tools are meetings with the business to gather crucial information, interviews with customers, gathering reviews, listening to experts, and looking at past campaigns they ran. They need to know all about the target audience, as that’s who they’ll be addressing their copy to and those are the fish that need to bite.
Copywriters also want to understand more than just what kind of product they’re selling. They want to know the ethos and heart of the business; getting a flavour of the passion that drives them.
It’s like getting to know a person really well.
They create copy.
Copy is the term for wording that is written to sell. Not just entertain or inform, but sell.
After absorbing everything to do with the business and the product (or service), they write. This can take from a few hours to a couple of months (in this case, usually with milestones).
It involves crafting just the right words together to communicate in the right tone of voice the best message for the deliverable. Think brainstorming, drafting, rewriting, tweaking, and sometimes, scrapping it and starting again.
Copy that sells include deliverables such as paid ads, sales presentations, leaflets, brochures, and simple tag lines.
There is a flavour of persuasion in copy that you won’t find in content.
They create content.
Content is different from copy. It doesn’t try to persuade the reader, or need a call-to-action. Instead its main job is to simply to relay information.
Content is written to be informative, entertaining or analytical. Some examples of this would be a blog article, a press release, social media or newsletters.
Even though these are written to tell you about a certain topic or viewpoint, they can still be used to subtly promote something or raise the reader’s awareness to a product or service.
For example, in a blog article the writer may be presenting a comparison between the engine of a Ford Anglia and a 1969 Ford Capri, and mention that the new Ford Focus has a certain feature that was missing with these two models. Now the reader knows of the release of a new Ford Focus, and the writer can place a simple link at the bottom to the new Ford Focus.
Even a post on social media is considered content, but a lot of posts from businesses are clearly persuasive, so the line between copy and content is very blurry on social media.
As you can see, it’s a very useful marketing tool, and is in just as high demand as copy. Content fleshes out websites, fills social media pages, informs large audiences and packs a lot in one deliverable.
They get results.
The kind of results copywriters look for are as varied as the types of deliverables, but yes, in the end it comes to down to how much revenue the business made as a result of it.
Classic indicators of customers moving down the funnel (towards making a purchase) have long been impressions, likes, page follows, link clicks, average time spent on page, visitors to site, and more.
However, AI has budged those blue links on a Google search out of the way so clicks and impressions are down, but when people do click, they’re normally significantly interested.
But you don’t need to worry about navigating that when you hire a copywriter. It’s their job to not only write the copy but put it into action, so they’ll either guide you or share it themselves.
How to find a copywriter..
You can do a Google search for ‘freelance copywriter’ or go to ProCopywriters’ website. But you’ve already found a copywriter by reading this post, so why not have a look at what I can do? Or get in touch if you already have questions.