Let\u2019s take a look at some of the strategies good marketing writers employ to create writing that persuades audiences to act.<\/p>\n
How Is Marketing Writing Different From Other Types of\u00a0Writing?<\/h2>\n
Marketing writing is designed to create content with a purpose. It provides information customers seek, including actionable resources for a business\u2019s customers and clients. A business\u2019s marketing writing can take many forms, from blog posts and website copy that\u2019s often updated to more detailed articles published in reputable outlets. It can also take the form of a video script capturing the audience\u2019s attention and explains or demonstrates the company\u2019s product.<\/p>\n
The copywriter\u2019s traditional role has expanded and is sometimes fulfilled by the whole marketing team<\/a>. Every member of that team, from the business analyst to the social media manager, is expected to convert ideas into marketing copy.<\/p>\n In marketing writing, the KISS principle means using a simple, straightforward three-part structure consisting of the introduction, body copy, and conclusion.<\/p>\n Writing a good piece of content means understanding who your customer is. Companies should not delude themselves into thinking everyone wants their products because that simply isn\u2019t realistic. Trying to appeal to everyone ends up making the product unappealing.<\/p>\n One effective way to launch an audience identification strategy is to create customer personas. Customer or buyer personas<\/a> are semi-fictional archetypes based on actual customer research and data that represent the key traits of your target audience.<\/p>\n After conducting interviews, focus groups, and other data collection efforts, marketers consolidate the responses to identify commonalities in the available data. From there, they work to identify pain points and other psychographics the company\u2019s customers are experiencing. Using this collected and analyzed data, you can develop a profile of a person that combines demographic information and common themes from your data. This is where the vision of a typical customer takes shape.<\/p>\n Storytelling can be a powerful tool to capture and hold your audience\u2019s attention. Stories are powerful because they touch the emotional core of who we are as human beings. Before there was the written or printed word, there were oral traditions. A successful story answers three core questions:<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve established the answers to these questions, seek feedback on your story from others. Then you can decide how the story is going to be incorporated into your campaign or brand.<\/p>\n Storytelling has been an exceptionally powerful marketing tool with the advent of socially conscious businesses. Storytelling can convey a company\u2019s commitment to giving back as well as their belief in their product. A relevant example of this is Warby Parker<\/a>, the company that took on the mammoth eyeglass industry with low-cost, high-quality alternative eyewear. Warby Parker\u2019s story<\/a> is the very definition of the KISS principle in action: As a cash-strapped college student, one of the founders of Warby Parker loses his glasses on a camping trip and is motivated to start the company after having to wait to replace his glasses thanks to the high cost of quality eyeglasses.<\/p>\n Making an assertion is easy. Backing up that assertion with evidence may not be quite as simple. Good content marketing often includes statistics derived from market research.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re trying to drive a point home to your audience, back it up with a statistic. It\u2019s an effective way to convince a reader about the accuracy of your assertion. Phrases like \u201cLots of people\u2026 \u201d are vague and may seem intuitively true but unproven, such as \u201cLots of people love our cars!\u201d However, it\u2019s harder to argue with a phrase like \u201cMazda is the number one rated car for reliability according to Consumer Reports,\u201d along with a link to Consumer Reports<\/a> backing up this statement.<\/p>\n There is one very simple reason to use short paragraphs in marketing writing, especially for digital marketing content: Your audience is likely reading the content on a smartphone or tablet. Short paragraphs are much more likely to keep the reader\u2019s attention and appear less intimidating.<\/p>\n As a marketing strategy, humor<\/a> can be effective when used properly. It can also be catastrophic when misused. Infusing a marketing campaign with humor can be a tricky proposition. Success doesn\u2019t rely solely on the humor itself, but also on your knowledge of your audience, situational awareness, and emotional intelligence.<\/p>\n Effective humor in marketing is usually self-effacing, as was the case with KFC<\/a>\u2019s campaign in the UK. In 2018, KFC was living every fried chicken restaurant\u2019s worst nightmare: a chicken shortage. It handled this crisis with a brilliantly written, audience-appropriate, and tongue-in-cheek exercise in laughing at itself while addressing the problem. In turn, this allowed the audience to laugh along with the company.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re sorry.<\/p>\n \u201cA chicken restaurant without any chicken. It\u2019s not ideal. Huge apologies to our customers, especially those who traveled out of their way to find we were closed. And endless thanks to our KFC team members and our franchise partners for working tirelessly to improve the situation. It\u2019s been a hell of a week, but we\u2019re making progress, and every day more and more fresh chicken is being delivered to our restaurants. Thank you for bearing with us.”<\/p>\n Remember earlier when we described simple, concise marketing writing as having an introduction, a body, and a conclusion? This structure culminates with a clear set of instructions designed to drive the potential customer to a call to action.<\/p>\n If a customer invests the time to read your writing and you have invested the time to give them writing worth reading, then the call to action serves as the mutual payoff. A strong, clear call to action gives the reader the next step to take in order to interact with your business in a way that will solve their problem.<\/p>\n In order for potential customers to read your content, you either have to make it easy to find, or you have to put it right in front of them. Making it easy to find involves search engines, while the latter typically involves social media promotions aimed at that target audience.<\/p>\n The beauty of the relationship between the two is that one feeds the other. Social media can drive hits to your web content, which can help in boosting organic search engine rankings. When a person finds your site using a Facebook link, for instance, you can use that web content to drive them to your Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest feeds.<\/p>\n Another key to using these strategies to climb the search engine rankings<\/a> is regularly refreshed pieces of content that link to each other. Creating internal links that connect your best and most popular pieces of content, whether that\u2019s through your website, a blog, or a social media feed helps increase the shareability of your content as well as the likelihood that other sites will link to it.<\/p>\n Marketing writers who don\u2019t work in marketing sometimes confuse marketing with selling. These two functions are both critical to corporate success but they are not the same thing. A good way to think about the difference between marketing and selling is by thinking about the difference between a product and a brand.<\/p>\n A product (or service) is a thing, tangible or not, that can have a value attached to it. Once the product or service is in the hands of the customer and they\u2019ve paid for it, the transaction is basically closed.<\/p>\n On the other hand, a brand is an idea. The goal of marketing is to spread that idea to as many people as possible. When the brand is received by the target audience by way of a specific channel or channels, the relationship between the company and that audience has just begun, and marketing\u2019s job is to maintain that relationship for as long as possible.<\/p>\n When you hear marketers refer to a brand\u2019s \u201cvoice<\/a>,\u201d it might sound a bit abstract. Voice is a hard thing to quantify or measure, unlike other metrics in marketing like SEO or hits on a website or the number of subscribers to a blog.<\/p>\n Voice refers to the emotion and personality baked into a company\u2019s communications and the desired audience reaction to those communications. The one part of a brand\u2019s voice that can be measured is how consistently that voice is delivered across the brand\u2019s various communications channels.<\/p>\nTen Rules for Marketing Writing.<\/h2>\n
1. KISS\u200a\u2014\u200akeep it simple and\u00a0succinct<\/h3>\n
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2. Write to your\u00a0audience<\/h3>\n
3. Make it a story when applicable<\/h3>\n
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4. Include statistics and cite the reference<\/h3>\n
5. Craft short paragraphs<\/h3>\n
6. Add humor when it makes sense (and fits your\u00a0brand)<\/h3>\n
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7. Use a\u00a0CTA<\/h3>\n
8. Incorporate SEO in a natural\u00a0way<\/h3>\n
9. Don\u2019t\u00a0sell<\/h3>\n
10. Create a distinct voice that represents the\u00a0brand<\/h3>\n
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