What is Copywriting?
Copywriting is a persuasion technique in advertising, to persuade the audience to take call-to-action, with the objective being that the audience buys a company's products or pays for a company's service.
Let me share an incident for your better understanding. Sarthak and Dixit are two friends from a college in Mumbai. The college conducts a charity event "Kanyathon - Run for her" every year. For this event, runners, students, families are invited to do a charity run, which is a marathon. All the students are assigned the task to sell the tickets to this event. A database of contact details is provided to increase the output. Sarthak’s usual call goes like this. “Hello, Sarthak here from ABC College. I got your number from my college's database. There's a charity event in my college called Kanyathon. I would like to ask you to come here for the charity event by donating towards the cause of educating the girl children. The ticket is priced at 500 rupees. Please donate for this noble cause and come for the charity run.” Almost all the people he contacted denied paying for the charity and Sarthak was not able to sell a ticket.
Dixit's call goes like this - "Hello Sir, I'm Dixit from ABC College. I got your number from my college's database. I would like to have 5 minutes of your time to speak to you. Do you do charity and how often? I've got an opportunity for you to do your part in saving a girl child and making education more accessible to a girl in a poor village. It's a charity run on a Sunday. It will be a refreshing and healthy break from work and would be a great time for you and your family." Surprisingly, the man later asks for the amount and registers for the charity event.
What's the difference between both dialogues? Sarthak's dialogue is more about asking for money for the donation. There are so many unanswered questions that the prospective donor has. On the other hand, Dixit, in his dialogue with a person, nowhere asks for money. He "gives". That's the game-changer. He gives out the prospective donor 2 things -
An opportunity to save and help the underprivileged girl child.
Opportunity to spend time with his family and friends.
The dialogue by Sarthak here is an example of “bad copy”, while that by Dixit is a “good copy”, as it was successful in closing a deal (low-ticket deal). It is a real-life example of how a good copy can generate leads and sell products/services effectively. This was an example of a sales script. A sales script is a form of copywriting to attract leads and drive sales. We will go into the details of a sales script in the next article.
There are various forms of copywriting -
Product descriptions.
Blog entries.
Website content.
Email marketing.
Newsletters.
White papers.
Social media posts.
Scripts.
Catalogs.
Direct mail brochures.
Internal training videos.
Podcast scripts.
Phone sales scripts.
Webinar scripts.
Scripts for sales videos.
Copywriting is found in almost every business and is the core of any business. A Company looks to hire copywriters to bridge the communication gap between themselves and the audience. A copywriter bridges that gap by establishing a connection between the company and the customers, emotionally and by creating trust and credibility over the long term. The product/service descriptions, the landing page, the newsletters, the blogs, the video scripts are the different aspects of the job. Companies need to have a skilled writer for the various copies because 74% of internet users pay attention to spelling and grammar quality on company websites and 59% will avoid purchasing goods or services from a company with obvious spelling and grammar mistakes.
The internet has enabled the growth and expansion of the Copywriting industry to online written content like blogs, web copy, social media posts, emails, landing pages, etc. Nowadays, many companies want their websites to be ranking in the Google Search so that they get can target a large number of people and generate leads. This is done by something known as SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization. It has become a useful technical skill, in addition to the creativity and grammar skills of the Copywriters.
