Ask any marketer, and they will tell you that great copywriting is the secret behind any successful campaign. 

You need copywriting to stand out from the noise, engage your audience, and persuade them to take an action. In most cases, the difference between an amazing and average campaign comes down to copywriting. 

But wait, copywriting? Where do I even begin?

Follow this copywriting for beginners guide for everything you need to know to get started. 

  1. What is Copywriting?
  2. Copywriting for Beginners: 10 Elements Of Effective Copywriting
  3. 10 Copywriting Tips for Beginners

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting is the process of writing the text for marketing materials. This includes any content that a business uses to attract customers and make sales. Some common examples of copywriting are ad copy, copy for web pages, marketing emails, writing social media posts or blog posts, and more. 

Although, copywriting is so much more than just a writing process – it’s an art. Great copy stirs emotions, it convinces people to take an action, and it’s ultimately what helps your marketing campaigns turn into sales.

While copywriting can be used to achieve many different things, it always has one purpose: to make people take an action.

This could be to purchase a product, book a demo, download a guide, sign up to your mailing list, share your video, or anything else your business wants to achieve. 

Great copywriting skills are fundamental for marketing. Each word you use can make an enormous impact. Writing copy is also a particularly tricky area because there is no “100% correct” approach. You can always optimize your copy and your campaigns. 

Effective copywriting is a blend of strategic marketing ideas with creativity. 

Copywriting for Beginners: 10 Elements Of Effective Copywriting

There’s a lot to learn when sharpening your copywriting skills. Here are some of the most important elements of great copywriting.

1. Addresses an Audience

One of the most crucial parts of successful copywriting is understanding your audience. You need to talk to someone, and the more specific you are about this, the better.

Always try to write copy with your audience in mind. Who will be reading this? What is on their mind? What do they want to achieve? What do they know about my brand? These are a few important questions to ask. 

The best marketing copy starts with audience awareness. When you really understand who your audience is and what they’re experiencing, then you can start to write more compelling copy that is more relevant to them. 

2. Grammatically Correct

This one is obvious, but great copywriting has to be grammatically correct. Make a spelling mistake while writing content, and your copy will end up doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to. 

A spelling mistake creates an instant negative perception of the brand. Spelling mistakes are also easy to avoid. 

So, the first rule of copywriting is to write with grammatical accuracy. Write carefully, review your work carefully, and use a spell checker tool like Quillbot and Grammarly.

3. Convincing

Every marketing campaign has a clear objective. It’s the job of the copywriter to persuade people to follow that objective. 

This means all copywriting needs to be convincing and persuasive. 

To achieve persuasive copywriting, copywriters need to understand their audience (as above) and use the right words that get them to take action. This could be by stirring their emotions, making them think, or making the audience realize a problem that they never thought was there. 

If you simply write “buy this” on your website with a picture of your product, you probably won’t get many sales. Instead, a copywriter needs to craft a compelling CTA, title, and product description to motivate the sale. 

4. Direct

Great copywriting gets straight to the point. 

The best copywriters are those who can say the most with the least words. No filler or fluff, just convey the message you need to get across. 

This should be short, punchy, and easy to read. The more direct you are, the better. 

5. Human

Always remember the human when writing copy. You’re a human, your reader is a human, so write like a human. 

Cheesy sales copy just doesn’t work. Instead, you should write copy in the same way that you would talk to your audience. It should sound natural, and be easy to read and understand. 

This means you should also avoid using jargon, or any complicated words or phrases. You’re not trying to impress anyone, you’re trying to get people to relate to what you’re saying and doing. 

Always read your copy out loud, and change anything that sounds unnatural when you speak it. 

6. Attention Grabbing

You need to grab your reader’s attention from the first word. 

People read LOADS of content every day, both online and offline. They’re also targeted by endless marketing campaigns, spammy emails, and products that they “need’ to buy. So, why should they read what you have to say?

You need to be engaging straight away. Powerful copywriting involves starting with a strong lead (like a headline or first sentence) and hooking the reader in. If your lead-in is weak, readers will soon give up on your copy. 

7. Understand the Channel

There are many channels that exist in the copywriting world. You need to make sure that your copy is optimized for whatever channel you’re writing it for. 

People on Facebook want to read something different from people on your website. People on Instagram want different things from people on TikTok. Each platform you publish on needs a unique approach. 

Just like you need to understand your audience, you also need to understand the channel that they’re interacting. Understand what they want to see on that channel, and make sure your content matches it. 

Never just rehash the same copy across your different channels. This won’t work. 

8. Goal-Driven

Copywriting always has a purpose. Before you start writing, always start with the end in mind. What do you want to achieve from this copy and how will you achieve it? Then you can write around this. 

Many beginner copywriters make the mistake of diving straight into the righting without having a strategy in place first. Copywriting needs to be strategic. This could mean following a copywriting formula, or knowing exactly what emotions or feeling you plan to target and how you want to achieve this. 

Never just figure your copy out as you write it. Always have a plan. 

9. Original

We’ve all read so many advertising messages that they’ve just become generic and cliched. The best copy is totally unique and original. 

Now, this is tricky to get right, as it’s so easy to just fall back on a classic marking line or word. However, always try to be different. 

See what your competitors are saying, and take a different approach. Pick out any boring or cliched words and look for a synonym. Consider being bold, taking risks, and writing totally different copy from what anyone expects. 

Originality is key to any successful campaign.

10. Emotional

Anyone can write a description of a product. Great copywriters go beyond descriptions and tap into their audience’s emotions. You want to make your readers feel something – not just understand something. 

This is what separates writers from mind-blowing copywriters. 

To achieve this, you need to combine all of the elements above. A deep understanding of your audience is essential, but you also need to talk to them like a human, communicate correctly for the channel, and have a clear strategy. 

Get this right, and you will be able to create copy that achieves anything.

10 Copywriting Tips for Beginners

We’ve covered the fundamentals of copywriting above, but there’s really so much more that goes into this. There are also many different strategies that you can take to achieve these copywriting elements.

To help you get started, here are some of the best tips and tricks for copywriting like a pro. 

1. Keep it Simple

Imagine I gave you $10 for each word you could remove from your copy without making the copy lose its meaning. This is how you should be thinking when writing copy. 

Keep it simple, review your copy, remove words, and start again. The more you can simplify your copy without detracting from the value, the better. 

Remember, the easier something is to read and consume, the more effective it’s going to be. 

2. Focus On the Benefits

One of the best copywriting tips for any scenario is to focus on the benefits, and not the features. 

Remember, you want to get emotional and make your audience feel something. Highlighting the benefits gives them a lot more reason to take an action, as opposed to simply highlighting features. 

So, whenever you write about something, try to include a way that benefits the reader. 

For example, don’t just say “our bicycle can reach the fastest speed in its category”, say “win your race with a bicycle that reaches the fastest speed in its category”. The benefit is winning the race, something your audience wants to do.

3. The More You Write, The Better You Get

Don’t stop writing! 

Write every day, whenever you can, in any format you can. 

Don’t have any copywriting projects to do? Create a post on Reddit, update your Facebook status, sit down with a notepad and write about your day. 

The more you write, the better you get at it.

4. Write in the Active Voice

Great copy is active, not passive. This can be a tricky habit to break but always try to write in the active voice. 

Active copy is just engaging, it’s easier to read, and it creates a greater impact. 

Luckily, there are free tools available to help you identify and eliminate passive voice writing, which brings us to our next point…

5. Use Free Copywriting Tools

Software can help you become a better copywriter, and you don’t even have to pay for it. While there are many great copywriting tools out there, there are two essentials that any copywriter should have in their arsenal. These are Grammarly and Hemingway.

We all know Grammarly (well, at least you should). You can use the free version to easily pick up any spelling and grammar mistakes. The premium version offers even more functionality. 

Then, when your copy has been written, run it through the Hemingway app. This evaluates the readability of your copy, and it can be a great way to simplify your copy, flag tricky sections, and make it sound more natural. As per the point above, the tool also highlights passive voice, which you can easily change. 

6. Research Your Subject Matter

You have to be an expert in what you are trying to sell for your copy to be effective. Well, you have to sound like an expert at least…

Many copywriters simply use the same tactics and apply them to different products or niches. This is not going to cut it. 

Make sure you do enough in-depth research on your subject matter. This will help you understand your audience better, add more value, and sound more convincing.

7. Know What Value You’re Adding

You want your audience to do something, like make a sale. To do this, they want something in return. This is the only way they will be convinced to take an action. 

To do this, you need to add VALUE. This is critical. 

Value can come in many different forms. Whatever the case, the idea is that your offer will help the user or add something beneficial to their life. 

If you just try to sell, then your copy is focused on helping you and not the user. Instead, develop a strong value proposition and make this clear to your audience. It’s important that you have this planned out before you start writing copy. 

8. Develop a Brand Voice

When writing copy for your brand, consistency is key. 

It’s important that you develop a clear brand voice, and stick with this across all of your channels. 

To do this, understand your brand values, who your audience is, and what you stand for. Then, try to formulate a voice. This will determine how serious you are, how you greet customers, and how you approach explaining things. 

It’s important that you come across as a human when doing this. Your brand voice is a way of humanizing your brand, so try to keep your tone natural and conversational. 

9. Proofread… And Then Proofread Again

Even the best copywriters make mistakes. It’s OK to make a mistake, just make sure that it doesn’t slip through the cracks. To avoid this, you need a clear editing process. 

First, use your spell checker and proofread your copy carefully. Then, hand it over to a friend or colleague to proofread. Finally, read it again (this time out loud) and listen to how it sounds. 

With each step, you can make small tweaks and edit the copy a little more. The more critical and careful you are, the fewer mistakes you will make. 

10. Tell a Story

A great way to make your copy more compelling is to take your readers on a story. It doesn’t have to be long, and it doesn’t have to sound like a novel. Instead, it just needs to have three parts: a start, middle, and end. 

Rop them into the intro, bringing up a problem, then explain the problem in detail in middle. Finally, come up with a solution in your ending. This is just one example, but it’s a great way to illustrate your ideas and turn your solution into a story that your readers can follow. 

If you can, try to add cliffhangers. Keep your audience interested, and eventually, you can unroll your big ending. 

Summary

Follow these copywriting for beginners strategies, and you will soon be able to turn your regular writing into truly killer sales copy. The more you practice, the better you will get. 

Copywriting is vital for any successful marketing campaign, and the difference between good and bad copy really will show in the results. 

Want to learn more about copywriting? Then check out these related guides on the subject:

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