Interested in Ad Copywriting? 16 Tips for you to be a Pro!

Copywriting and Content writing have never been as competitive as in the coming days with more and more growing demands of an attractive, powerful and high-quality copy.

To make sure of not rolling out of the competitive line of work of content and SEO copywriting, here are some tips which help every person who is interested in improving their skills with creativity.

16 Tips To Be Pro in Copywriting

There are many techniques you can use in copywriting to make it more efficient and effective. Following are 16 of the best techniques and tips you can use to be a pro in copywriting. 

1. Collect More and More Information Through Research

The first step to being a pro in SEO copywriting is to be involved in research. Every copywriter knows the value of the information gained through research and observation. Everyone knows of its importance which is why people respect the most knowledgeable person in their community. A copywriter never misses any chance of gaining information from wherever it is coming either through magazines or through any online medium.

The father of advertising, David Ogilvy once said to “stuff your conscious mind with information” and just to comply with his teacher legendary copywriter, Gary Bencivenga said “The best copywriters are the most tenacious researchers. Like miners, they dig, drill dynamite, and chip until they have carloads of valuable ore. John Caples advised me once to gather seven times more interesting information than I could use….. Research is the infallible cure for writer’s block.”

2. Creating an Innovative Way While Representing Any Task

Creating an innovative way while representing any task is the second tip to copywriting one likes to read a lot of information which doesn’t feel interesting to anyone. To explain this we can take the example of students. Those who don't feel interested in a certain subject, won't be able to come up with the best results in the particular subject and later on, whenever they get the chance to just neglect the subject they will surely ignore it. In consideration of this David Ogilvy has said “Tell the truth but make the truth fascinating. You know, you can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.”

So how can we make our copy more fascinating? By bringing more appealing visualization

• By making our representation more entertaining and more intractable.
• Telling stories
• Making newsjacking
• Using our distinct selling prepositions
• Incorporating controversies

3. Demonstrate the Brand Personality

Copywriting another tip is to demonstrate the brand personality. David Ogilvy always says to build a “ sharply defined personality” which is the best way, in fact, the only way at some places to gain larger profitable positions and shares which is why he always used to say “Make sure the words and actions demonstrates the brand personality” through his actions. We (the content writers) have brought a feeling of requisite in the client's view for our product along with including voice, style, word choice, values and USP (Unique Selling Proposition) at the equal brand’s personality.

4. Coming up with defining headlines

“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eight cents out of your dollar.”- David Ogilvy

Coming up with defining headlines is another tip for copyrighting. Many people know that almost 60-70% of people only get their full attention to the headline of any work. If they didn’t feel an interest in the body or if they didn’t feel like they might benefit from it then they would just ignore the other portion. So attractive and almost informative words should be used in the heading to raise people's interest in reading the whole thing.

Here are some of the major tips if taken into consideration then anyone might be able to get a great start-up for their product:-

• Copy blogger's Magnetic Headlines training
• Write the copy first, then pull out the strongest phrase which would be suitable for the headlines and subheadings.
• Try to make the headlines as simple and as straightforward as possible
• Try to maintain the 4 U's which are acknowledged by everyone:- Unique representation, Urgent situations, Useful factors, Ultra-specification
• Try to make the reader feel benefited by your work in every way possible, grab his attention and interest –then make sure you deliver the body copy.
• Use David Garfinkel’s Shortcut test; if you posted the headline with a phone number as a classified ad, wouldn’t it generate some inquiries?

Copywriting Hall-of-Famer John Caples says that “try to get self-interest into every headline” and “avoid headlines that merely provoke curiosity…..curiosity by itself is seldom enough”. He classifies the headlines into 3 different classes representing them as “Best classes”:-

i. Reader’s self-interest

ii. News

iii. Curiosity

5. Try making it simply understandable and matching to clients' desire

Making content simple to be understood by clients is the next tip to copywriting. Albert Einstein, a German Theoretical-Physicist, once said, “If you can't explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” He meant to say that those who can’t express or represent everything to the basic level to any person (It doesn’t whether that person is a ninth-grade student or a taxi driver), don’t understand the full details themselves and those persons get a lot of difficulty in convincing anyone.

6. If possible try to link your project with some simple story 

A 26-year-old raw copywriter sat down in 1926 to write an ad for the U.S. School of Music selling home-study courses for would-be musicians. He could have used a simple benefit headline, like Master the Piano at Home in 30 Days - Without a Teacher! Linking content to a cute story attracts visitors. This is a tricky technique for copywriting.

But he didn’t.

He dug deeper. He knew that mastering an instrument is hard work and that the real reasons people do it are to be popular, to win their friends’ admiration and envy, and to find happiness. That copywriter realized the real product of the ad wasn’t a course or the ability to play, but popularity and happiness. With that in mind, he still could have used the classic how-to benefit headline, such as How to Be the Most Popular Guy of Any Party!

But he didn’t.

He knew that simply describing musicians’ popularity wouldn’t be enough. He needed the headline to resonate emotionally with prospects. He needed to create a vivid image of a buffoon--the kind of person no one ever dreamed could play - who left his friends stunned and speechless by his performance.

His headline was “They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano But When I Started to Play!”

Then he used half of his entire ad space to tell the story of personal triumph, seducing prospects into reading the whole ad and giving them a vision of the possibilities.

That copywriter was John Caples, who was inducted into both the Copywriters Hall of Fame and the Advertising Hall of Fame in the 1970s. That ad he wrote in the ‘20s launched his career and is still considered one of the pillars of the copywriting field.

It worked because it captured prospects’ attention, drew them into a world they desperately wanted to be part of, and left them hungry for more. The story presented the product as doing most of the hard work of learning to play and overcoming the objection that you need a special talent to play (since even the buffoon could do it).

Consider these storytelling examples from CrazyEgg and these tips on mastering storytelling from Forbes.

7. Visually appealing format should be met for Copywriting

Format matters in content copywriting. Eye-appealing content is more acknowledged and approved in comparison to only informative words. Unless the content is eye-appealing it won’t get shared or be read by many people. Successful advertiser Leo Burnett used to develop simple icons to symbolize easy-to-understand product benefits. His main focus as a copywriter was on the fact “to make it appealing to the eyes of the audience”-because if the ads weren’t enticing to the eyes then there was a high possibility that no one would read it.

SO HOW CAN WE MAKE IT APPEALING TO THE EYE OF AUDIENCE?

• By using not too many simple and not too much of stylish fonts and sizes
• By dividing the content into smaller paragraph
• By bringing variety in the major points which should be focused
• By using symbols bullets or number lists for pointing out headings or the sub-headings.
• Using some graphics or pictures at certain places to express the content

8.  Try not to act over-smart or over-confident

Showing overconfidence is not good in content copywritingOnce a million-dollar copywriter Gary Bencivenga said, “ Effective copywriting is salesmanship in print, not clever wordsmithing. The more self-effacing and invisible your selling skills, the more effective you are. Copywriters who show off their skills are as ineffective as fishermen who reveal the hook.” I believe there is a very fine line between becoming confident at work and acting over-smart in the link of work. As a content writer, everyone knows we have to play with words in such a way that the audience and our client both get satisfied and log for our help more in the future.

9. Keeping some of the best creations of our own

Creating your content is the best tip for copywriting. Many times in the career of a content writer, a feeling of demotivation or a feeling of knowing nothingness comes which disturbs a lot of our creativity. At that point if we have some of our best content or the contents of others whose work we appreciated a lot might help to rebuild our creativity with more compassion.

10. Purposeful meaning behind every content

Purposeful content is what visitors want. It is one of the best tips for content copywriting. David Ogilvy said, “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.” Having content full of creativity, formalities and information won’t be useful unless it sells and keeps on increasing its value. So every content writer must know how to engage the audience with his/her words if they want to be successful in this sector.

11. Creating a fully concentrated environment and thinking beyond barriers

By thinking beyond barriers, you can create good content copywriting. Sometimes when content writers get stuck to one line, mainly that’s because of distractions like social media and worries about some ongoing events. At that point, content writers aren’t able to think as fluently as when they are only thinking about the content that can be done by taking a break some moments from everything around them and thinking about the things which may be beyond the reality of this world that way their creativity can be restored.

12. Focusing on the benefits and showing yourself in the same shoes

Three famous copywriting tips kept by popular copywriters are:-

! John Caples:- The best headlines are those that appeal to the reader’s benefits.

!Eugene Schwartz:- Talk about what your product ‘does’ not ‘is’- and demonstrate this.

!Bob Bly:-  Virtually all successful copy discusses benefits

It is somehow an easy approach to the audience by only explaining the benefits to them but for the longer-term connection between clients and us, many content writers show almost all the cons and pros of the products as if they have tried that themselves. That way a longer connection between them can be seen.

13. Reading the reader's emotions from different angles

Being able to understand readers' emotions is an extraordinary tip for content copywriting. It is easier said than done to read other’s emotions but it is important too since only after reading that with different angles one can hunt down the right word to get the reader to stay with the writer’s words as long as the writer can. As Mark Twain famously said. “The right word is the difference between lighting and lighting bug”

14. Use active, imperative and promising words instead of “weasel and passive words”

Using active voice is good for content copywriting. Active and imperative words like “have” and “can”. These words strengthen the sentences and prove that the writer means his words for action rather than the weaselling words like could, would, etc

For example:- the passive sentence “Over 5000 customers have been helped by our services” is much stronger in the active voice-“We  have helped over 5000 customers”

15. Backing up words with specific examples and proofs

During content copywriting, when a content writer backs up his/her words with facts, methodologies, testimonials, case studies and examples of success stories then they build up more trust and credibility and gain a long-term profit.

16. Lead with the strongest points and keep the main three interesting and important points for the last

Smartness is necessary during content copywriting. As I have mentioned above many people only read headings and some only follow all the information to the bottom. So the content writer if starts with the strongest points then is going to attract the eyes of the reader to go one reader at a point and when that happens he needs to make sure of one thing that his/her reader must feel benefit by reading the content. That will also build credibility for the writer and the writer might earn many followers.