Professional Writing Careers: Copywriting

By Angela Booth

Have you ever thought about a writing career, but weren't sure if you could earn a living at it? Consider copywriting, which pays well, and can be a fun, creative outlet. The best copywriters can earn $100,000 or more annually. In addition, you can get started fairly quickly. These three tips can help you get off on the right foot, and build a solid career.

1. The point of copywriting is to persuade. You will be writing marketing and sales pieces. Projects can range from small space ads to full video or audio scripts. You may occasionally even work on a product manual.

Copywriters often end up specializing in a certain area. Your specialty might be in writing for the internet, or radio scripts, or direct mail. You can make money while you're learning, and your projects and clients will grow along with your experience. Plus, you can increase your fees as long as your copy brings good results.

2. Understanding yourself can help you get into the mind of your audience. A clear knowledge of what makes you take action, and how you get motivated, can help you tap into the emotional triggers of your prospects.

Keep in mind though, although you'll gain a basic understanding of psychology, you must be honest. Just because you may be able to sell a product doesn't mean you should. If you think the product falls short, it's better to turn down the project.

3. Don't forget the classic advertising mantra, "what's in it for me." Your prospective buyer is concerned about his own needs. It's your job as the copywriter to find those hot buttons that will make him take action.

The copy you write has a purpose, and that is to get the prospects to take some kind of action. You want them to click a link, make a phone call, join a list, order a product, or whatever it may be. If they don't respond to your copy, there's no point. You have to create a great offer with a strong call to action in order to get the desired response.

If you put these three tips in your copywriting: write persuasively, understand the psychology of selling, and create strong calls to action, you'll be well on your way to becoming a successful copywriter.

About the Author:

Imagine starting your own successful copywriting business with help from top copywriter Angela Booth. You'll soon be taking on clients, and will build a great new career as a professional copywriter.

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Brian

Where Marketing And Copywriting Converge

By Brian Layne

Imagine your competition breaking in to your encrypted network to steal your strategic business plan. But if your marketing was doing things right, all your competition would need is your best sales letter. Why?

Because quality copy will hone into the essence of your business strategy by exposing the right message that reaches the heart of your target market. Demonstrating their buying process. The motivating factors that get them to buy. The features that help place your product BEYOND what the competition can or will provide. The wording that enraptures the market's most valuable customers for maximum life time customer value. And much more.

However: Your competition will find it near impossible to replicate. Why? Because copy is never a collection of creative wishful thinking. Rather, copywriting done right will blend your company's genuine advantages with irresistible brand strengthening benefits though a compelling personal brand story. Your competition can not compete on those grounds.

What Are Your Marketing Objectives? A good copywriter can near effortlessly reel off high quality copy for short-term gains by evolving pre-existing collateral. But beyond that short-term promotional sales uplift, copywriting can 'get at the roots' of your business strategy to support a sustained and 'irresistible' competitive advantage. In Marketing Due Diligence, McDonald, Smith and Ward explain: "Market definition should be described in terms of a customer need, in a way which covers the aggregation of all the alternative products or services that customers regard as being capable of satisfying that same need."

Legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz put it thus: "Your markets sophistication depends on how many similar products, and how many competing ads... the goal is to be at exactly the right place, at the right time, with the right gadget or gizmo - To discover, intensify, and revitalise the desires held by a market. To focus those already existing desires onto a particular product."

The more your copywriter uses a crystal clear copy platform which defines the target audience, the more your advertising will produce high-performance results.

Here's where marketing and copywriting come together. Your copywriter must understand the essence of your company and product to build brand preference and response 'inside the mind' of your target audience.

"Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself. But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect." - Positioning - The Battle For Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout

Consider beer. First there was just beer. Brands like Miller, Schlitz, Heineken and Carlsberg. Which to choose? But then came Miller Light. A new market category was instantly formed for the market segment concerned about calories and weight. Miller created and owned a new market category. How can your company create and own an entirely new market category?

Your Product Positioning Statement - To really empower your copywriter, work together to select a suitable company/product positioning statement for the brief. Something to the effect of: My product helps [whom?] do [what?], [when?], better than any other product in the world by [how?]. With strong product positioning, your copywriter can produce rock-solid sales messages for you.

About the Author:

Find out more and choose your b2b copywriter or email marketing copywriter wisely.

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