Hello and welcome to “Copywriting from zero in 30 days”: a new course for beginners. This course contains thirty lessons and will help you answer the main question: “What is copywriting?” Using this course you will be able to learn more about it, obtain basic skills and decide whether it’s worth further studying.
Looking ahead, copywriting is a fairly lucrative field of study. Moreover, it is very useful in everyday life, since most of us have to talk to people every day, convince them of something and build effective communication: at home, at work, among friends and acquaintances.
This is a first introductory lesson. Today we’ll focus on three main topics:
- What is copywriting?
- What is a copywriter?
- …and what does a copywriter do?
In simple words. And in modern realities. This course will help you understand the niche, learn more about it and decide if it’s worth further studying. So, let’s begin.
If you prefer watching lesson in the video format, check this out.
What is copywriting?
Let’s start with a brief definition.
Copywriting — is a task solving with text and strategy. And it’s more engineering than the art. Generally the tasks are commercial. Their main goal is making money. Often it’s about sales of goods, services and ideas. And the purpose of the text is to convince readers to take some action. For example, make an order or a call, signup or subscribe.
The feature of copywriting is that every text here has a clear and in most cases measurable goal. For instance, we can count new signups brought by the copy. Moreover, we can compare them with previous version of the text and make a conclusion about its effectiveness.
There are many types of text that are used to solve commercial tasks:
- business proposals
- landing pages
- presentations
- articles
- home pages
- social media posts
- scenarios
- sales scripts and many others.
All of them we will consider in the future lessons of this course. So subscribe to the channel to get new episodes.
What does a copywriter do?
A copywriter — is a specialist who solves tasks with the text. The more effective the copy, the better it convinces people — the more money it can bring or save. That’s why good copywriters are always valuable.
In modern realities copywriter is a type of a marketer. Moreover, copywriter often cooperates and interacts with different other types of marketers.
For example, working on a text for website, copywriter often interacts with a PPC specialist. This is a type of a marketer who plans and optimizes online ad campaign in pay-per-click systems. Such as Google Ads.
Here are some more examples.
- Copywriter interacts with SEO specialist when the task is related to a copy with search engine optimization.
- Copywriter combines efforts with social media specialist to make and launch a catchy post for Facebook or Instagram.
- In addition copywriter can also work together with web analytics, designers, Email-marketers, etc. Indeed, everything depends on the tasks.
One more important thing. A copywriter’s work is not about text and not about information only. This work is foremost about people and their needs. A good copywriter always offers readers what they need. Through the text. And the product, service or idea we sell is just a way to give the people what they want. Certainly, psychology rules here. But, we’ll talk about it in later lessons.
Copywriter specializations
Depending on texts and tasks copywriter sometimes chooses a specialization. In other words, a personal niche to master. There are six main directions a copywriter usually delve into. Let’s take a closer look at them.
1. Copywriting for websites and landing pages
Copywriters who choose this specialization create not just texts, but also wireframes or mockups. These are layouts of the future page, which serve as a technical task for designer. Besides text they also contain other visual components: images, tabs, buttons, labels, etc. Despite the commercial logic is the same as in plain texts, creation of mockups requires additional tools, skills and knowledge.
2. Texts for business proposals
Business proposals generally come in two forms: sales presentations and PDF documents with commercial text. All of them are usually part of an active sales system. When a company, looking for clients, makes cold calling and sends a commercial offer.
3. Content marketing
Copywriters who like to write articles and letters often specialize in content marketing and SEO copywriting. Although it is not a classic commercial copy we know, but articles, optimized for search engines like Google, can attract additional readers. These readers can then be transferred to a commercial page. So it turns out that the article is the part of a sales system as well.
Web writing is a sub-niche in content marketing. Unlike the latter, web writing does not involve the development of a complex strategy and content plans. Web writers usually write texts and articles for websites according to the technical task. Most often with an emphasis on search engine optimization.
4. Social media copywriting
Copywriters that specialize in content creation for social media are called SMM copywriters. They generally develop strategies and texts for:
- posts
- stories
- ads
- profile descriptions (bio) and other types of copy.
5. UX copywriting
User experience or UX copywriting is a part of information technologies sphere. Therefore UX copywriter creates copy for user guides and different types of user interface in web and mobile applications:
- buttons
- controls
- labels
- notifications
- onboard sequences
- chat bots, etc.
The main task of a UX copywriter is to translate information from a complex technical language into a simple and understandable “human” one.
6. Copy for ads posting sites
This branch of copywriting is one of the easiest for newbies. There are lots of ads posting sites. Both local and global. Therefore there are many copywriters that specialize on writing copy to advertise on these resources. It is a great way to raise necessary skills.
Of course, these branches are not the only ones. There are other, more exotic, but rather expensive directions. For instance:
- sales script writing
- speech writing
- print media ads creation
- naming and many others.
How much money a copywriter can make?
They say copywriters can make up to six-digit income per month. However, there is an important thing. The earnings are generally proportional to responsibility copywriter takes on. If the whole campaign with huge budget depends on the copy, the responsibility is high. Therefore the reward is high as well.
Copywriter’s income also depends on task, location and many other factors. The same text can cost $100 and $1000 in different countries and within different tasks.
Lastly, there is a special rule. As long as copywriter’s work brings more money than client spends on it, such work will always be in demand.
That’s it for today. Take care of yourself. Subscribe and see you in the next lesson.
Best regards, Dan.
