The Secret to Marketing is Irresistible Copywriting
It should be no surprise that modern day business success is still a consequence of traditional marketing methods.
These days, if you want to generate a lot of leads – especially b2b leads, you have to be an inbound marketing pro. What that means is that you have to create a lot of high quality original content and push it out to your target audience. Creating good content is an art form that many marketers haven’t yet mastered – and it begins with developing your copywriting skills.
Here’s why creating irresistible copywriting is an art form that business owners and CEOs have a difficult time with.
Every good copywriter will tell you that you should write concisely. Eliminate every unnecessary word. Be bold with your choice of nouns and adjectives. Choose precise, common words. Cut all the fluff, the clutter and the jargon.
If you’re a business owner or a CEO, you probably have a very hard time following this advice. It makes sense though, because you have a lot of knowledge that others don’t have. You have information not readily available to everyone out there. Not only that, you have a skill set around your particular topic that’s more advanced. Therefore, the way you describe things to others comes out in great detail and using terms the layman doesn’t always understand.
Writers and bloggers alike tend to be quite verbose. They find joy in connecting uncommon words to form seemingly more interesting sentences. If you hire an internal content marketer, beware of this habit.
“Complex sentence structures threaten to entwine the reader in dense and impenetrable grammatical nightmares.” –Storyteller, Jonathan Crossfield
Your prospects and target audience want highly relevant and useful information, and they want it fast. They need you to be direct and to the point. If they can’t wrap their minds around exactly what you’re trying to say then they’re going to bounce.
This doesn’t mean you need to be boring.
It actually means you have to work a bit harder to impress all those knowledgeable prospects out there. You have to get a little creative and use the gifts you’ve been given to create some high quality copy.
You have to understand your audience and be tactful in your copywriting. Assuming a higher level of literacy may be fine when writing poetry or the great Australian novel, but if you are writing blogs or putting together some marketing material, a confused reader is a big fat FAIL.
You must, however, use better language with words that have a deeper meaning and that are best understood by your industry. You need to be succinct, yet interesting enough to hold the attention of your readers. This irresistible content is what all marketers and business owners strive to create.
Tech blogger, Om Malik says “A good writer can get their idea across in 1,000 words or less. A great writer will get their idea across in 500 words or less.”
I laugh when business owners and CEOs struggle to keep their emails to a five sentence minimum. It’s one of life’s ironies. But it’s a good habit you should work to develop. People don’t want too much information. They want you to be direct and to the point. This applies in and out of the office and it would be wise to consider this if you expect your copy to retain interest and convert more sales.
Creating great copy takes skill. It’s an activity where simplicity is far cleverer than complexity. It’s about results and purpose. Resist pretension, avoid verbosity but please, please HOLD my attention.
About the author: Lee Constantine
Lee Constantine is a young marketer and writer who intuitively understands that you need to constantly produce content and engage to win an audience. After college, Lee joined the trenches of forced flexibility in Silicon Valley where he has been designated to own the content marketing initiative for various startups along the west coast. Lee helps various companies with growth and branding strategies that capture interest of targeted audiences while simultaneously ensuring focus on tactics that generate the best return.
