Beginner’s Guide to Becoming a Great Ad Copywriter
I’m often surprised at just how many companies get great ad copywriting wrong.
That’s because there are so many misconceptions about ad copywriting.
Common Copywriting Misconceptions & Mistakes
Ad copy should be short. People are too distracted!
Did you know that advertising pioneer Claude Hopkins noted that this argument was being used as early as the 1920s? People have been saying this for a century now! That doesn’t mean that it’s true. Long copy outperforms short copy in every single study published on the matter for the past hundred years. That being said there is a caveat: your long copy must actually be good.
My audience is highly educated, so I need to speak as they do.
Wrong. Studies prove that ads written at a high school level are the most effective. Furthermore, the more syllables your ad contains the worse it’ll perform. Good copywriters write simply and efficiently. When you are faced between the more sophisticated word or the simpler word, opt for the simpler one.
I need to load up my copy with all of my competitive advantages. Talking about how great my product is will ensure it sells!
Effective copywriting isn’t just about the product. It’s about how the product will improve the lives of your prospective customers and impact their quality of life. Always make the connection between the product and the customer. How can it solve their problems? How can it meet their needs? This needs to be effectively communicated if you wish to find success with your paid advertising.
My ad needs to contain the latest jargon and buzzwords in order to convey credibility and position my product/service as ‘cutting edge’.
Layering your copy with too many buzzwords could actually turn potential customers away and make your copy difficult to comprehend.
Copywriting should be universally appealing.
Nope. It should appeal to your audience. Make it specific to their needs.
Creative copywriting and flashy writing will help me stand out.
Quite the opposite. Being ‘too clever’ and creative may win you awards and accolades from your peers but won’t necessarily make sales. Effective copywriting should be clear, concise, and focused on the message.
Copywriting is easy and anyone can do it.
While you don’t need a degree to be a good copywriter, you do need a deep understanding of your target audience and their needs, wants, and problems.
Ad Copywriting Research
When approaching your copy, think through what your audience is like first and foremost. If you have the ability to perform customer interviews, then do so. Understand what the product is and what it can and cannot do. Research is pivotal when it comes to effective copywriting.
If you don’t have the ability to conduct user or customer interviews because you’re a freelancer and your client does not want to give you direct access to customers, then you need to improvise. Luckily we live in an age where you can simply spin up a ‘persona’ that approximates what the target customer is like in terms of demographic and psychographic profile nearly instantly with AI Chatbots like ChatGPT. I’ve found this approach to be extremely valuable and a solid example that 20% of the effort can yield 80% of the value you’d get from a user interview. In fact, much of the value of using an AI Persona lies in the fact that you can query it on command.
Advertisement is Sales at Scale — Your Ad Copywriting Should Reflect That
But I digress. Once you’ve conducted your interview I want you to take a trip down to your local Best Buy. Ask the manager for their top salesperson. Have them pitch you an HP Printer. Analyze the type of language they use and how they speak about what the printer does for you rather than the printer’s specs and feeds. A good salesperson is able to make something as unsexy as a printer seem like a life changer.
Advertising is just selling at scale. A good, salt-of-the-earth salesperson will outsell a college-educated English or Journalism major 9 out of 10 times.
So adapt the sales technique you saw firsthand to your medium: copy. Position your product or service as a solution to a problem, and try to anchor your message with one of the ‘Lifeforce 8’ or ‘Nine Learned (Secondary) Human Wants’ (See the book Ca$hvertising, one of the best books on advertising I’ve read), and be informative. The longer – and more specific – your copywriting is, the more likely you are to come across as authoritative and build trust in your product or service.
Now, you might be thinking, ‘All of that sounds like hard work – why not just use ChatGPT?’
Truth is, AI will never completely replace the hard-earned skills of a copywriting professional.
But it can come close.
I actually prefer ChatGPT’s output to that of some of the highfalutin copy I’ve been presented by folks with Master's Degrees in Journalism.
The trick is getting it to engineer your prompts in such a way that you guarantee consistently ‘good’ output.
If you’re looking for an easy way to copywriting success, I’ve actually compiled a PDF for getting started copywriting with ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.
Just enter your email address in the signup box below and I’ll send you my list of prompts that I used to resurrect copywriting legends like David Ogilvy and Claude Hopkins along with prompts that will help you create personas that these AI-Copywriters can tailor their copy to. The PDF even includes the full list of the aforementioned Lifeforce 8 and 9 Secondary Learned Desires so you can make sure that you are anchoring your copy to powerful psychological triggers that trigger sales now.
