What is Copywriting & What Does a Copywriter Do?
Finding the right Brisbane copywriter for your brand can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful business.
It does not matter how amazing your product or service is – if you can’t connect with your target audience and convince them that your product solves their problem, then you will have big problems.
What does a Copywriter do?
What service does a copywriter provide your business with?
A copywriter is someone who writes professionally for brands and businesses. The material that they write – referred to as ‘copy’ – is usually of an advertising or promotional nature.
Any content or writing that is done for marketing purposes is referred to as marketing ‘copy’. Hence, the term ‘copywriting’ covers everything from blog articles and website content, through to advertising tag lines, content for a brochure, or the text for your Google ad campaigns.
A copywriter differs from other professional writing occupations such as an author or a journalist because they are writing and creating content on behalf of their client (where as a journalist or author is writing content under their own name).
What is copywriting and what makes good copy?
Copywriting is the act of writing copy, and good copy should be interesting, engaging and persuasive. The reader should be directed to take a particular action (such as purchase, download, enquire etc) without realising that it was the text or wording on the page that persuaded them to do it.
Great copy will make the reader think that it was their idea to purchase, download or enquire.
What does copywriting mean?
The basic definition of copywriting is any written or text-based content that is of a promotional or advertising nature.
The goal of copywriting is to persuade the audience to take a particular action, such as buying, ordering or enquiring. It does that by addressing the reader’s needs and knowledge gaps. This can mean building brand awareness through storytelling and entertainment, providing information or education around your product / service, or pitching your brand as the solution to the problem that they are facing.
Defining Copywriting at BeKonstructive Marketing
At BeKonstructive marketing, we believe that amazing copywriting meets all of the goals above while also building connection with your audience.
We do this by eliciting an emotional response; making the reader smile, tear up, laugh etc. It can also be done by using language that has been specifically selected to appeal to your target audience.
Using slang and shorthand that only people within a certain demographic will understand makes your product feel exclusive to them. It communicates that you have made something specifically for them and that it is tailored to meet their needs and requirements.
We also believe that amazing copy can have its cake and eat it too. By that we mean that it can be both engaging AND optimised for search engines. Too often we see copy that reads really nicely and has heaps of personality, but that is not optimised for search engines.
What is the point of taking the time to craft copy that no one is going to read because it won’t get picked up by Google? Similarly, we often see copy that has been optimised to rank #1 in Google but is super dry, bland and has zero personality.
Sure, it might rank well in Google, but the reader gets bored before they’ve finished the first paragraph and is unlikely to make it to the bottom of the page.
Learn more about our SEO copywriting here.
How do you know what skillset to look for when hiring a copywriter for your business?
It is a copywriter’s job to draw the line between a customer’s problem and your solution. They need to find a way to convey all of the key selling points of your product or service and they need to do that using language that your target audience understands and will relate to. Oh, and they need to do all of this subtly, persuading the customer to purchase or enquire without coming off too sales-y, needy, promotional or, well, annoying.
For that reason, a copywriter’s skillset should include more than just an ability to string words together in a grammatically correct manner. In addition to being a ‘wordsmith’, capable of crafting interesting copy, they also need to understand several different areas of marketing. They need to be able to understand target markets and the importance of communicating to your target market in an inclusive manner. They also need to understand branding, and how tone of voice or style of language and communication that they use fits within the brand strategy and brand persona.
Your copywriter’s skill set will also need to include an understanding of the platform or medium that they are writing for – for example, blog articles, website content and copy that is destined to be uploaded to your company website will need to be ‘Search Engine Optimised’ (AKA SEO), to ensure that it performs well when people search in Google for your products or services. Similarly, if they are writing ad copy for digital ads such as Facebook ads or Google ads, then they will need to know the character limits for those ad formats.
For these reasons, it is important that you select your copywriter carefully. When you are looking at their portfolio, look deeper than just the words in the sample articles that they wrote.
Ask them about results – what is the readership on the blog articles that they wrote? Do they rank well in Google? What was the conversion rate for the ad copy? What is their process – do they research your existing and target audience and do they review what your competitors are doing to see where you fit within the market?
Get in touch to learn more about BeKonstructive’s Brisbane copywriting services, or request a copywriting quote here.
What is SEO Copywriting?
SEO copywriting is copy that is written for digital platforms such as a blog or a website. It is search engine optimised so that it performs well in Google search engine results pages. Writing copy for SEO purposes involves more than just picking a keyword and stuffing it periodically throughout the text.
Things like page formatting, title hierarchy, information flow, keywords and related terms, length and backlinks all play an important role in getting your copy to the top of Google. That is why it is important to choose a Brisbane SEO company that employs copywriters who have a strong understanding of SEO concepts.
SEO copywriting should start with keyword research and should focus on building long-form pages that provide information-rich content that is nicely formatted and easy to skim and digest. Your Brisbane SEO service provider should look at organising the information in a logical way, breaking up large chunks of text with relevant sub-headings, making it easy for the reader to locate the information that is relevant to themselves.
A great example of this is the page that you are currently reading! The text on this page contains close to 2,000 words. Our use of clear sub-headings as well as breaking up the text into different sections, makes it easy to navigate the page.
Having long-form content is important for your SEO and rankings – research has shown that the majority of pages that rank #1 in Google for competitive keywords contain 1500 – 2000 words. That’s a lot of words!
Website copywriting is some of the most important copy that your business needs.
If you are going to engage a professional copywriter for just one project, it should be writing the copy on your website. Many business owners fall into the mindset that they can save money by writing their own website copy. They know their business and products or services, and all they have to do is write a few paragraphs about what they do and what they sell, right?
Wrong.
If you want any chance of your site performing well in Google, each of your main products or services should have its own dedicated page, and that page should contain a minimum of 500 words per keyword that you are targeting. So for example, if are a Brisbane florist and one of the services that you provide is local delivery, then you might be looking at trying to rank for:
- Brisbane Flower Delivery
- Flower Delivery in Brisbane
You will want to have a website page that contains approximately 1,000 words talking about your flower delivery services in Brisbane. Minimum.
The other reason that it is important to hire an experienced copywriter for website content is because your website is one of your most important marketing assets. It is the first place that people are going to come to learn more about your brand, your business and your services.
The people browsing your pages are likely browsing the pages of your competitor’s websites as well, trying to decide who they would rather purchase from. The content on your website needs to persuade them that you are the right choice – that your solution will solve their problem better than any of your competitors, and that you offer something special or unique that they won’t get anywhere else.
Conveying the right message to customers when they are in the research and decision-making phases of the purchase cycle is crucial to the success of your website.
Such an important part of your digital marketing should be placed in the hands of a professional, and not become a DIY job for the sake of saving a little bit of money.
Copywriting Versus Copy Editing:
Copywriting and copy editing are two different things. Copy editing is the process of editing copy that has already been written. Copy editing is a service that many copywriters (including BeKonstructive Marketing) provide and can be a great way to save your business a little bit of money if you have someone internally who can write a lot of the copy but who needs help with any or all of the following:
- Search engine optimisation
- Formatting and page structure
- Strategic flow of information
- Strategy and message
- Length and clarity
- Personality and tone of voice
At BeKonstructive we can edit your existing copy to include any of the above. We can lengthen and optimise it so that it ranks better and gets more organic traffic. We can format it, re-arranging the flow of information so that it reads more logically. We can help you get the message right or we can apply tone of voice to your copy to make it stand out from your competitors.
BeKonstructive Marketing’s Professional Copywriters:
Copywriting Pricing
If you are interested in engaging BeKonstructive Marketing’s professional copywriting services then you can request a copywriting quote here.
Keep in Touch
If you know that you need a professional copywriter abut are not ready to engage our services yet then stay in touch by signing up to our email newsletter in our website footer or following us on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
