Socrates once said that “error is the privilege of philosophers.” It’s true: trying and working, it’s impossible to avoid small slip-ups. Still, we don’t always have to learn from our mistakes, so – to help you save time and nerves – we present the copywriting mistakes you better avoid.
Before you start writing the text, think about what is your target audience and adjust the language to it. By knowing your target audience, you will be able to reach them better. After all, you will write the text of the advertisement aimed at children in a different way, and differently for a business client. A common mistake is to write texts that appeal to us, the content creators. Remember, however, that what we find attractive does not necessarily have to be good for our audience. So let go of your personal sentiments and preferences, and focus on the customer instead
Unfortunately, long gone are the days when sales texts were more than a thousand characters long. Long texts often mean better conversions, but users spend less and less time reading. They often browse very briefly or even just scroll mindlessly through the page. So, if you are already going to write a long text, it just has to be great. Otherwise, focus on concentrating your main message within fewer characters
According to the DOMO report, 3.5 trillion bytes of new content are added online every day. So in order to break through with yours, it is imperative that we optimize the text. Do not ignore keywords, take care of its uniqueness and appropriate placement, headings and subheadings.
We often overestimate our readers, inundating them with technical know-how. We forget that not everyone speaks technical jargon, just like not everyone in the world knows what SEO is. It is your job to translate rigid data into understandable visualization language. Excite and provoke!
A good text is one that you write as if you were writing to a best friend. With a best friend you are sincere, you know them inside out, you use natural language and you don’t pretend to be someone you are not. That’s how your text should be. And what shouldn’t it be like? It should not be stiff and resemble a dissertation. Unless it is a dissertation. Even if the price of naturalness may be sentences that are not necessarily grammatically purist, why not?
Of course, features define the product. Unfortunately, they say nothing about what it does or how it can help your audience. When you talk about a trait, translate it into benefit language. Illustrate what it can do for the buyer and tailor the benefit language to it. Let’s say you’re doing an ad for a manufacturer of fit cookies. Their feature is the presence of fiber and vitamins and their handy packaging. How to translate this into a benefit? For those who take care of themselves the benefit will be for example a snack eaten without reproach, and for people on the run the fact that they can reach for them at any time
Any decent writer has a solid knowledge of grammar or spelling, but when you’re racing against deadlines, you can overlook even the most obvious mistakes. A good practice would be to wait a while after we’ve finished writing and take a moment to edit the text when our eyes have rested and are able to catch the errors.
Your headlines need to be specific, not only for readers but also for SEO purposes. If people can’t immediately tell what you’re writing about, they won’t read on. Also, if your SEO ranking is low, fewer people will be likely to find and read your text. Every thought you are trying to convey must be clearly stated in your headlines.
Main article photo: source: pixabay.com
