As a copywriter, I face a hard time explaining what I do and how I do it. Many people just don’t get what copywriters do, how they differ from marketing representatives, and how they are helpful to businesses. It is a fact that we all come across the work of copywriters through different mediums throughout our day. The newsletter you received in your inbox, an ad in the newspaper, the mantra of your favorite brand, and even the blog you are reading right now, are all the works of a copywriter. People all over the world often get confused about the job role of a copywriter and any usual content writer. Many business owners still cannot understand the importance of good copywriters and how they bring you business. Read More: How to Convert Your Users into Your Content Writers?
So What Do Copywriters Do?
In simple words, copywriters craft content that attracts and converts leads. A copywriter creates content that engages the reader, gives them some value, and helps in improving the marketing communication of businesses. Writing a web copy differs from writing newspaper articles or novels. A web copy aims to steal the audience's attention. Keep it throughout the article and let the reader leave with a value.
But make no mistake, this job is demanding. The average attention span of humans is 8 seconds, which is one second less than that of a goldfish. This itself explains the complexities involved in attracting attention. The job of a content writer involves research about the company, market analysis, crafting content, promoting content, analyzing results, strategizing, and a lot more. It involves so much work that it is best to describe it with a JD (job description).
Job Description of a Copywriter:
To explain what copywriters do, here is a sample job description of a copywriter who is employed at a digital marketing agency. The roles and responsibilities vary according to the company’s structure and industry, but many key responsibilities remain the same. Thus, this should suffice in explaining what copywriters do.
Job Summary:
As a content writer, you are required to frame the content strategy for the business, work in collaboration with the marketing and sales team, and aim towards achieving maximum ROI in marketing with your content.
Primary Responsibilities:
Write content for the company website and as well as for the clients.
Manage client relations and ensure that clients remain happy with the company’s marketing services.
Research keywords that can be used in articles in order to rank them well in SERPs.
Create marketing collaterals like eBooks, case studies, and white papers.
Research the company’s products and services and find out strategies to communicate them to prospective clients.
Write advertisements and social media posts for the company to bring better engagement online.
Proofread existing and new content to avoid possible mistakes like grammar errors and incorrect facts.
Write email copies for both outbound and inbound marketing campaigns.
Lead the creative team and the designer to create engaging pieces of content.
What Do Copywriters Write?
Still confused about what copywriters do? To sum it up, here is a list of all the different content that copywriters create to answer the key question of what copywriters do:
1. Blogs: These are websites that publish information of the reader’s interest and drive engagement and conversations. In business, blogs are used to describe a company’s activities and promote its services. BTW you are reading a blog right now. :)
2. Advertisements: These can be advertisements in newspapers, magazines, websites, and search results. A copywriter crafts content for both text-based ads and visual ads.
3. Emails: Emails written by copywriters include both outbound and inbound emails. A copywriter creates emails so that people open, click, and reply to the emails.
4. eBooks: eBooks are detailed guides on a particular topic. Nowadays, eBooks also involve a lot of design elements thus, copywriters need to work with the designers as a team.
5. Case studies and White Papers: Case studies are client reports and marketing collaterals describing a company’s work for a client. White papers are authoritative detailed guides written to describe or solve a complex issue.
6. Press releases: Press releases include both the PR pitches written to interact with the media companies and influencers and content describing the company's activities to attract media attention.
7. Presentations: The presentations are another form of marketing collaterals and content that you find online. Copywriters decide the content that goes into such materials of the company. Slideshare is also a popular example of online presentations written by copywriters.
8. Social Media Posts: Copywriters also post content on social media sites to create brand engagement, awareness, and authority. It is also important to drive visitors to the websites from social media sites.
How to Become a Good Copywriter?
Today, copywriting involves more than just exceptional English. On the internet, we fight to get the reader's attention, keep it throughout the content, and then aim to make him take the desired action. To achieve that, a copywriter needs to become a good marketer. They need to research their readers - their likes, dislikes, preferences, problems, and more. Along with this, they need to have an excellent knowledge of on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization), social media, story writing, a little analytics, etc. While nobody can become an exceptional copywriter in a day it is easy to start if you are passionate about making your career in this field.
The best way to start is to know what copywriters do and decide from which section you want to start. You can first develop expertise in one type of content, like blogging or social media articles, which are easier to start with and as soon as you feel confident enough, you can begin learning other more complex writings like creating a brand mantra.
What Copywriters Never Do - Common Misconceptions Busted:
Here is a list of common misconceptions about the work of copywriters. The fact is that these ideologies about "what copywriters do" are incorrect and yet people continue to believe these:
We have nothing to do with copyright laws. We are not lawyers.
A copywriter differs from a book writers. Though we write stories in our content, the way a book is written differs totally from that of a blogger or copywriter.
The number of words is a completely wrong way of measuring the skills of a copywriter. It involves more effort in writing a 3 words brand mantra than a 2000 words blog article.
Copywriting involves more than creative writing. We do a lot of market research and analysis of our previous work before producing any new piece of content.
It takes experience, and passion to succeed in this field and none of these come overnight. So here we have the answer to the common question - what do copywriters do? Copywriters are an inseparable part of your company's marketing team and you should always know the effort that they put in their work.