12 tips you can use to improve your marketing copy immediately
There are a thousand reasons marketing campaigns fall flat. Your timing’s off. Your targeting’s wrong. Someone forgot to publish the landing page …
These are all one-offs. They’re easy to fix. But there’s one major culprit that many small businesses never even notice — and the same can be said for a fair share of large companies.
It’s the marketing copy.
When you’ve got your head down trying to create the Next Thing, it’s easy to forget that what you’re doing is simply irrelevant to the rest of the world. To reach potential buyers, you must cut through their distractions and competing priorities …
… and if you do manage that, only to splatter then with lifeless marketing speak, you’re simply training them to ignore you.
Remember, every flat subject line has a cost to your business. It generates unsubscribes where you might have been building relationships instead. Worse still are the cases where poorly written emails, web content, white papers … are all actively undermining your brand and your credibility.
The good news is that strong marketing copy is coachable, even for people who hate writing or who claim they “don’t know how to write.” And over nearly two decades of coaching writers and editors, I see some of the same points time and again.
Here are 12 simple tips, followed by a downloadable cheat sheet. Take them on board, and I promise your marketing will be stronger for it.
Declutter your copy
Your eraser is the most effective tool in your marketing toolbox. Use it voraciously. Eliminate unnecessary words and ideas. The result is cleaner copy that your readers don’t have to fight to understand.
Read your copy aloud
If it sounds awkward, it’ll read awkward. Copy should sound like you’re talking freely. Vary the lengths of your sentences. Switch up your sentence structures. You’ll come across as less repetitive, more dynamic, more compelling.
Draw your readers in
Tech companies in particular often have a bad habit of referring to “users” in their copy, as in “users benefit from XYZ.” This unnecessarily distances readers from your copy. Instead, write “you benefit from XYZ.” Similarly, if you see an opportunity to make your writing less formal, take it. You’re talking to a friend.
Avoid jargon
Tech companies also often fall prey to jargon overuse. This is usually because it’s the shorthand they use internally. The problem is that if this jargon is not part of your prospects’ daily vocabulary, it creates an unnecessary barrier to understanding. It also makes it more challenging for your prospects to use your words to evangelize on your behalf.
Defocus features
Focusing on features is the result of “inside-out” thinking. Again, it’s easy to forget that your features simply do not matter to your prospects unless they benefit them in concrete ways, or solve specific pains. So focus on the pains and benefits – that’s the language your prospects are already speaking.
Trim your gerunds
Gerunds (-ing verbs) are strange creatures. Half verb, half noun, they often lack specificity. This can bloat your copy, especially when an auxiliary verb is also deployed. For example, contrast “babies are buying turkeys” vs. “babies buy turkeys.” In most cases, you will be better served by the more declarative option.
Don’t meander
Whenever you begin a sentence with a dependent clause (i.e., a phrase that cannot stand on its own as a sentence), you are essentially asking your readers to hold your beer. The longer the dependent clause, the more unnecessary cognitive overhead there is for your readers. Keep it snappy — prefer sentences that start with independent clauses.
Keep it interesting
Bored readers switch off. They have things to do. Try deleting the boring stuff to see what happens.
Make it easier to scan
Your readers will not read all your words. Break the text into bite-sized chunks. Treat your copy as a visual element. Use subheads, paragraph breaks, subheads, numbered lists ...
Keep it real
Nothing torpedoes your copy faster than insincerity. Avoid over-the-top descriptors unless your solution is, in fact, over the top. Don’t tell readers you’re thrilled unless you truly are thrilled. Readers will know the difference.
Sleep on your copy
If I had a dime for every time I thought I’d written something brilliant, only to discover the next day that I really hadn’t, I’d have a fistful of dollars. Get distance between you and your copy. Sleep. Take a walk. It’ll help.
Get going
Can you break these rules? Of course you can. Rules don’t make your copy better. You make your copy better. Go forth and write.
Download the cheat sheet here.
Looking into copywriting coaching sessions for you or your team? Contact me for a quote.
