Copywriting for marketing takes on many forms. It informs, instils trust, motivates, convinces, educates, triggers action and even enchants but to do that successfully, it’s important that your writer has a thorough understanding of your product, who they are talking to and through which channel they are communicating.

Here’s just an outline of the different types of marketing copy needed, and what the writer has to take into account.

Tone of voice

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s about putting yourself in your audience’s shoes so that you can have a more meaningful conversation. For instance, you might need to make a ‘How to…’ video appeal through a chatty, relaxed tone whereas copy for a corporate brochure will be more formal. Add brand to the mix though and everything changes.

Be on brand

Even a serious document like a corporate report will have a lighter tone if it’s for Innocent Drinks than if it’s for Barclays bank. Understanding what the brand image is and what it conveys is part of any copywriting for marketing task. Your brand values, personality and image should come shining through in your copy just as much as imagery.

Creative copy and concept – let’s get some attention

Here, copywriting is as much part of the process as design when coming up with attention-grabbing, creative ideas for advertising and promotion. It’s about lines that convey the essence of what you offer in one memorable phrase, and key messages that create an immediate effect, eliciting an emotional response.

Technical copy – knowledgeable and accurate

A lot of our B2B clients need more than just sales copy when speaking to professionals in their field. Being able to offer a deeper level of technical detail is expected and is assuring for their readers. For this form of writing, a complete, in the round and detailed understanding of the product is extremely important. It helps if you have the knack of getting your head around new product knowledge quickly so that you can work with technical advisors.

Copy to sell and persuade

Here is where we try to get inside the buyers’ head, to truly understand our target audience, what they need and what drives them. Then it is up to us how we best answer their needs. It might be to inspire, educate, empathise, inspire concern or sympathy or just gently guide, whatever that is, keeping the reader in mind is vital. This might be part of an email campaign, a brochure, a video or advertising.

Optimised copy for websites

This is where a good understanding of how websites work and what will help with SEO (search engine optimisation) is really useful. A writer can often work with the design team in the early stages, planning navigation and content. Web copy can be just as creative but is about getting website visitors to click on the right things and navigate their journey to answer their search.

If you think about it, although visuals always create first impact, copywriting for marketing is one of the most important skills we need to get our messages across. This article gives just a taster of some of the factors considered in marketing copy, and hopefully it helps you see that one style of copy to an audience or format certainly doesn’t fit all.