Improve your Online Presence by Choosing the Right Type of Copy with this Smart Guide

  • June 20, 2019

By now, there should be no doubt in your mind about the power of content in increasing your website’s traffic and generating leads. However, content is only as effective as you need it to be if it matches your business goals

There are various types of copy and each possesses unique features, best suited for specific platforms and purposes. Sadly, many businesses go about creating or choosing copy for their promotional or online marketing campaign the wrong way and thus end up with unsatisfactory results.

The right step to choosing and crafting ideal copy to meet your goals begins with properly understanding and defining what it is you intend on accomplishing via copy. Is it to introduce a new product to customers, or enlighten potential customers, or some other reason? Whatever the case, understanding what you need copy for will put you in a better position to determine the best line of action towards accomplishing strategic goals for your business and/or website.

After defining and clearly understanding your goals comes the process of actually getting the copy you need. Choosing right type of copy requires asking some questions, whose answers will see you better placed to acquire copy that’s best tailored to suit the platform, audience and goal you have in mind.

Some of the questions you need to ask before formulating copy include:

5. Do I need a professional copywriter, a freelancer, or will I create copy myself?

There’s nothing stopping you from creating copy yourself, but keep in mind that the time and effort you put into keeping your website or social media pages fresh and exciting are resources you can actually focus on other aspects of your business. To save you trouble, you can work with a freelancer to help you generate the right type of content for your website. However, freelancers are not always dependable and at times do not possess the specialty or expertise to create the right type of content for your purposes.

On the other hand, you can talk to a professional copywriting firm such as us. A professional copywriting firm will have various writers with different specialised skills and the knowledge to create content that’s best tailored to serve your needs. By working with a professional, you will also have access to copy that is not only engaging and compelling, but is also optimised for search engines in every way that matters.

Some of the types of copy we frequently produce for our clients include blogs, articles, micro-copy, press releases, e-commerce copy, technical copy, SEO copy, advertising copy and much more.

By asking yourself the questions in this guide, you will be better able to get the right type of copy to suit your personal or business needs. Having the right copy ensures that your audience are better engaged and compelled to perform the actions desired of them, which in turn boosts your conversion rate as well as lead generation.

4. How often do I need to publish copy?

You can’t keep posting copy simply for the sake of it, especially on social media. Each copy you publish has to be impactful in its own right. That is, every bit of copy you publish must share some useful information and must be engaging and compelling. If your brand becomes known on its website or social media pages for putting up what’s of no interest or value, it is likely you will start driving your audience away from – rather than towards – you. Evidence of this can be seen in a spike in people unsubscribing for your emails and a high bounce rate.

While it’s true that the more copy your website has, the better, it is important to keep in mind that quantity without quality can be highly disadvantageous to your business and your website in the long run. Thus, publish copy as often as you can, but ensure each copy is optimised, compelling and engaging.

Also, if you need copy for email marketing, you need to understand that bombarding your subscribers on a regular basis with several emails can be very off-putting. So, unlike your blog or social media pages, where you can publish as much as you want in a day, email marketing should be well spaced enough to avoid annoying a recipient, but not so far spaced that a recipient forgets who you are before the next email.

3. Who is my audience?

Knowing who makes up the majority of your customers places you in a better position to give your targeted audience exactly what they want. For instance, if your website’s targeted audience is a demographic of children between the ages of 6 and 16, copy that’s focused on politics is probably the last thing such they will be interested in. Also, if your targeted demographic is women over the age of 60, copy that’s about science fiction or body piercings will likely be a flop. This is why it is important to know exactly who you are talking to, so you can provide them copy that they will actually find interesting and compelling.

Once you identify the group of customers you intend on satisfying via your products or services, or the sort of demographic you’d like to appeal to via your website, you can begin researching what is of interest to members of such an audience and provide them with relevant copy. This will help avoid a high bounce rate on your website and instead increase conversion, as well as help generate more viable leads.

Knowing who makes up the majority of your customers places you in a better position to give your targeted audience exactly what they want. For instance, if your website’s targeted audience is a demographic of children between the ages of 6 and 16, copy that’s focused on politics is probably the last thing such they will be interested in. Also, if your targeted demographic is women over the age of 60, copy that’s about science fiction or body piercings will likely be a flop. This is why it is important to know exactly who you are talking to, so you can provide them copy that they will actually find interesting and compelling.

Once you identify the group of customers you intend on satisfying via your products or services, or the sort of demographic you’d like to appeal to via your website, you can begin researching what is of interest to members of such an audience and provide them with relevant copy. This will help avoid a high bounce rate on your website and instead increase conversion, as well as help generate more viable leads.

2. What platform will copy be published on?

Platform refers to where you intend on having copy published. For example, you might require copy for email marketing, for your website’s blog, or for social media. By knowing what sort of platform you need copy for, you can have the content crafted in a manner that will best suit the platform and appeal to the sort of audience that makes use of such a platform.

Copy that’s required for a website blog tends to be lengthier and contain features such as links and so on. Copy that’s needed for email marketing needs to be shorter and punchier. The faster email marketing copy can get its point across, the better. Social media copy on the other hand is a bit more diversified, as different social media platforms require different types of copy. For example, what would make for good copy on Facebook will definitely not work on Twitter. This is because on Facebook, there is room for lengthier copy with images attached. On the other hand, Twitter copy is currently limited to about 140 characters, with efforts being made to upgrade it to 480 characters. This means copy for Twitter will be far shorter than what you’d need for a Facebook post.

By knowing what sort of platform you intend to publish copy to – for your long or short-term goals – you will be able to decide what sort of copy is right for your marketing or strategy.

1. Do I need copy for long-term goals or short-term goals?

The majority of copy has a period of relevance. Copy about how to use a mobile phone that was useful 10 years ago will likely not be as useful in the present day, because of how the technology of mobile phones has changed. Also, some guides concerning how to optimise a website for SEO that was published five years ago might not be so accurate today, due to updates search engines such as Google have added to their algorithm.

Copy that is required for short-term goals usually consists of content that’s useful now and might be relevant for – at most – another year. After said time has passed, pages that contain such copy will likely experience less traffic, because visitors no longer have any use for such content unless it is updated. Such copy is usually about what’s currently trending or something that’s expected to occur in the very near future. Once that trend or event has passed, the copy becomes of little interest to most visitors. For example, copy for a themed promotion that’s currently ongoing on your website might be of little value once the promotion has passed.

On the other hand, copy that’s required for long-term goals has a longer shelf life and will remain relevant for a long time to come. Another feature of copy that’s crafted with longevity in mind is that it tends to have a more positive impact on a website’s SEO. This is because the page containing such copy will have consistent traffic which positively influences SEO.

If you need copy for a long term business strategy, crafting one that only focuses on the now and won’t be relevant within the next few months will very likely be ineffectual. Thus, it is important to research and understand what is consistently of interest to your target audience and craft copy along those lines.

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