Here we’re going to look at what copywriting is, why and when you may need copywriting services provided by a professional copywriter, and the benefits this can bring.
In a nutshell:
Copywriting in all forms is writing to sell, or to persuade a reader to take a specific action.
There are also secondary benefits of using a professional copywriter – it adds to the professionalism of your messaging and builds your brand equity.
All good then.
So, when do you need a copywriting service? For what purpose?
Website
We’ve written about the relationship between copywriting and design when having your new website developed and we will reiterate the point again here…
Do not neglect your copywriting – it’s what gets the results! It’s what makes your beautiful new website worth the investment by making it an effective website. If you’re not getting the results that you want from your website – whether that’s sales or simply an effective brand message – be suspicious of your copywriting.
Did you simply copy the content across from your old site?
Did you focus solely on the design and its appearance rather than the actual desired results?
If you answered yes to either, that’s the problem. Our copywriting services can help and we have a proven process by way of The Pearson Brown Blueprint to get you the results that you want. Not only that, the work we do will shape all of your future marketing strategy and communications – we go that deep.
We know, we know blogging police – it’s poor form to plug your own service in a blog so blatantly but this part of the creative industry drives us slightly insane! We’re passionate about putting this right and showing people the difference quality copywriting can make.
Your website is your number one online sales asset, let’s make it work!
Brochures & welcome packs
So, that’s that rant out of the way and it brings us on to brochures and welcome packs.
Whether your business needs these will depend on the nature of who you are, what you’re selling, and who you’re selling to. If you’re in hospitality or leisure for example, you need these – especially for high value sales such as weddings and corporate events. People spend a lot of money and expect to receive a lot of information.
The same applies for a franchise business. You’re not going to sell someone a new business venture on a whim, they want information and it needs to be high quality.
A business with a lot of physical products also needs quality brochures, think any retailer as a prime example.
Brochures and such like are your chance to really drive an emotional purchase. They need to tap into your target audience’s hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations. They need to showcase everything that you’re about and how you can make their lives better. Professionalism is critical.
Again, don’t neglect copywriting services in favour of design – both matter.
Product sheets/literature
Product sheets and other literature as the name suggests tell potential buyers about your products and services. You should have one for every product that you have. They only need to be a single page of A4 with all the key information and because you don’t want to go overboard on the content that’s presented, it all needs to be on point to have an impact.
The job of product sheets, leaflets and other literature is to generate enquiries or to confirm in a buyer’s mind that they want to go ahead. The design needs to be right, but again the copywriting creates the action.
Case studies
Case studies are different: the black sheep of your sales content. They’re written in a different style, but they work. They do, however, need a professional to produce them.
Case studies are basically storytelling in the business world. Sometimes boring stories that we need to write in a less creative (and therefore boring) way so you don’t want to write these yourself, hire a copywriter who’s a glutton for punishment!
Whitepapers
Whitepapers are similar to case studies in terms of writing style as they also take you away from the creative and are more factual, formal documents.
They are an authoritative report on a specific topic or issue, usually commissioned by a company with an interest in its findings that they can then share (sometimes for a fee or other recompense such as providing an email address) with their target audience.
The purpose of doing this is to educate and influence the readers whilst promoting a particular methodology – like something the company providing the whitepaper can help with!
Whitepapers are an ideal way to capture high value leads. Obviously, given the complex nature of these documents, it pays to hire a professional copywriter to produce them, or even a company that specialises solely in producing whitepapers for big business.
Presentations
Whether you’re pitching your business, conducting training, or sharing your knowledge, make sure the written content within your PowerPoint, or any such delivery method, is professional and impactful. You need to share the right information in the right way and at the right time. It needs to be a structured journey for your audience.
Plus, professionalism is key. You simply cannot afford spelling mistakes or a messy layout. Let a professional copywriter give it a once over. All good copywriters will offer editing services, you don’t necessarily need to have a budget for a full copywriting service when an edit would suffice.
Exhibitions
Showing off your company at events, and all your perfectly crafted new product literature?!
You’ve got to get your message across within seconds of someone stopping by. A few words need to have a big impact on your banners and stands.
Businesses commonly think that just because they only need a small amount of copywriting they should just do it themselves, but this is the time that you really should get help. Ask any professional copywriter – it’s a lot more difficult to write a few great words than 1,000 average ones!
Proposals
Sending a proposal isn’t just about the pricing, this is your ultimate opportunity to convince your prospect that you’re the company for them. Long form proposals work, that’s why they’re used. But only if all the information is relevant. Waffle just for the sake of it will kill your chance to convince. Add value throughout – engage the customer so they come on the journey that you want your proposal to provide, making the price a mere formality.
You don’t need a copywriting service every time you need to send a proposal out, just once to create a few great templates that you can drop the relevant information into for each type of prospect.
This is probably one of the things that very few people consider hiring a professional copywriter for, but it can pay big dividends.
Email marketing
Your email list is full of potential customers and advocates of your brand: use it. This is where effective copywriting really comes into its own to get you game-changing results. Make your e-shots focused, short – but long enough to get your key message across – and have a clear call to action.
If you don’t have an email list or any relevant data, we can help with that too. Just ask.
Blogging
At Pearson Brown we don’t classify blogging as a copywriting service but because a lot of people do we’ve added it into this article for you.
We class it as content marketing. Whereas copywriting is writing to sell, content marketing is writing (or other forms of content) to educate, inform and entertain to build brand over a long time period. Copywriting as we’ve said is writing to sell now. Copywriting = sales, content marketing = brand building.
Your blog is critical. Content increases your exposure, positions you as a trusted authority in your industry, and generates automatic leads over the long-term.
Attention + trust = sales/enquiries.
Plus, humans aside, if you have any kind of SEO ambitions within your marketing strategy, you need to be blogging regularly. Google will love you for it just as much as your readers.
Can you tell we’re interested in this stuff?
We don’t normally go on for this long in our blogs but if we can’t talk about copywriting to this extent (we could have gone on some more), how can you trust us that we know what we’re doing? Plus, passion is critical in business and especially in marketing.
Do you need help doing the same with your blog to help and influence your audience? Talk to us.
Equally, should you have any questions at all about anything we’ve looked at here or you want to discuss working with us on a project, please email me directly at matthew.brown@pearson-brown.co.uk or call 0333 009 0060.
It would be great to hear from you soon.
Matt
Matthew Brown, director