LEARNING OBJECTIVES
How to write concise copy
How to personalize your copy
How to apply the 80/20 rule to your copy
How to make your copy interactive and personal
How to avoid corporate rhetoric and jargon
REDUCE THE FLUFF
A critical component of copywriting is understanding the importance of each word you choose to use in an advertisement or marketing piece. Budget restraints, especially for small business owners, will force you to ensure that each word in your ad is there for a reason and truly adds value to your message. Advertising space and production methods are expensive, which often prohibits small to medium-size business owners from creating full-page ads or full-color brochures. Smaller ads mean less real estate to communicate your message. When that is the case, every word plays an extremely important role.
Analyze your copy word by word to ensure that each word is included for a reason and delete extraneous words that don’t add value to your message. In fact, this is a practice copywriters should employ regardless of the budget, size of the ad, or marketing piece they are writing. Extra words can confuse or slow down customers. Don’t take the chance of losing a customer’s interest with “fluff” words. Make sure your message is clear, concise, and direct by omitting filler words. This concept will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 9.
PRONOUNS—LITTLE WORDS WITH A BIG IMPACT ON COPYWRITING
It is essential that you are aware of how you’re addressing your customers in your copy. To do this, you need to understand pronoun usage. Think back to your school days. Remember your English teacher explaining first person, second person, and third person? As a refresher, first person (I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours) is the person speaking and second person (you, your, yours) is the person to whom one is speaking. It’s essential that you write copy that speaks to your target audience and not at them—and not about you. Therefore, the majority of your copy in any ad or marketing piece should be written in the second person. For example, do you prefer copy that says, “Through our first-rate sales department, we can deliver cars within 24-hours” or “You can drive your new car tomorrow”? While the first copy example focuses on the business, the second example focuses on customers and speaks directly to them. It’s more personal, and thus, more effective.
Your copy should speak more about your customers and less about you.
Remember, writing in the second person helps your audience quickly connect the points in your copy to their own lives and allows them to personalize the advertisement or marketing piece. This is how the ad is connected to an individual customer’s own life. By writing your copy so it focuses on the customer rather than yourself, the customer can personalize the ad and product you’re selling and act accordingly.
APPLYING THE 80/20 RULE TO “YOU,” NOT “WE”
The 80/20 rule introduced in Chapter 4 applies not only to Step 3 of the Copywriting Outline (Know Your Audience) but also to how you speak to your audience by using “you” more frequently than “we.” As you have previously learned, when you’re writing copy for an ad or marketing piece, focus on structuring your headlines and sentences so they are written primarily in the second person, thereby speaking directly to your customers. When you’ve completed writing the copy for your ad, take the time to read it and count how many times you used “you” (or another second person pronoun) vs. “we” (or another first person pronoun). As a rule of thumb, make sure you use second person pronouns in at least 80% of your copy and first person pronouns in no more than 20% of your copy. This will give you a good balance and ensure that your ad speaks directly to your customers.
To further understand the you vs. we concept, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. How do you feel when you’re talking to someone and the conversation is dominated by the other person speaking only about himself or herself? After a short amount of time, you probably don’t pay much attention to what the other person is saying. However, if the conversation is more balanced or more about you, you probably pay much more attention and are actively involved in the discussion. The same concept holds true in copywriting and advertising. If an ad speaks only about the business in the first person, it’s not as compelling to customers as an ad that speaks about and to those customers in the second person.
MAKE YOUR COPY INTERACTIVE AND CONVERSATIONAL
Again, similar to a verbal conversation, people don’t pay as much attention if the other person is doing all the talking. When you write copy, you need to invite your customers to participate in the conversation (i.e., your ad or marketing piece). In fact, unless you’re selling a highly technical or medical product, your copy should have a conversational tone, so customers are engaged and comfortable participating in the discussion. In other words, they’ll be compelled to read the ad instead of ignoring it.
You can take the conversational tone a step further by adding questions and making your copy interactive. While it’s important not to clutter your ad with questions (remember, you have limited real estate and need to use your ad space to get your key message, benefits, and differentiators across), one or two questions can make your ad interactive and invite your customers to join the conversation. Questions asked in the second person can help customers feel like they are being asked directly for their responses. For example, copy for a home alarm system ad could say, “Home invasions are on the rise. Is your family safe?” Not only does this copy focus on the emotional trigger of security, but it also uses the second person and asks a question making it interactive and more compelling for customers to read and act. While some questions can seem a bit cliché, they do have their place in copywriting when they are used strategically and effectively connect an ad to customers’ individual lives.
Speak with your customers, not at them.
CORPORATE RHETORIC, JARGON, AND BUZZ WORDS IMPRESS YOUR COWORKERS—NOT YOUR CUSTOMERS
Consider these two copywriting examples for a photographer’s business:
1. Paul’s Wedding Photography operates under a unique business model that leverages technology to transfuse progressive X123-based digital imagery into the creation of best-in-class photographic results.
2. Paul’s Wedding Photography uses the latest digital technology so your wedding day pictures look stunning for a lifetime of treasured memories.
The first example is teeming with jargon and buzz words and does little more than deliver an industry message that only another photographer would understand. On the other hand, the second example speaks directly to the customer and tells them that the photographer won’t show up on the customer’s wedding day with a Polaroid camera from 1985. Instead, the copy tells the customer that the photographer knows how to use current technology to provide great pictures. Your customer doesn’t need to hear how many buzz words you know. They want to know what you and your product or service can do for them. Your copy needs to speak to your customers in terms to which they can relate.
A WORD ABOUT BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS COPYWRITING
The majority of examples used in this book provide copywriting tips for ads and marketing pieces targeted to end-user consumer audiences (called business-to-consumer or B-to-C marketing). It’s important to note that the basic copywriting rules apply whether you are writing messages for end-user customers, business partners, or business clients (called business-to-business or B-to-B marketing). However, your tone should be more professional in business-to-business copy, and the use of business jargon and buzz words is more acceptable. Always keep your target audience in mind as you craft your marketing messages and write copy in an appropriate tone and style for that audience.
Leave buzz words and jargon at the office.
EXAMPLES OF “YOU,” NOT “WE” COPYWRITING
Use the following examples to help you change your copy from the first person to the second person, so it speaks directly to your customers rather than about you.
Product: Creative Craft Store—craft merchandise
Feature: low prices
Benefit: customers save money
Creative Craft Store wants to advertise their low prices. They could do this with copy that simply says, “We have the best prices.” However, this copy focuses on the first person and doesn’t speak to customers. By changing the copy to the second person, “You’ll save money with Creative Craft Store’s rock-bottom prices,” the ad speaks directly to customers and helps them connect to their own lives a specific feature and benefit of visiting XYZ Craft Store.
By using “you” instead of “we,” your copy focuses on the customer. In the previous example, the copy written in the second person allows customers to immediately connect the product or service to their own lives, making it more compelling. The copy written in the first person touts the company’s claims but does not link it to customers personally. It is certainly nice that the company has the best prices, but potential customers might not understand what that means to them. The copywriter is responsible for communicating sales points in a way that the audience can relate to them. By telling customers they will save money with the company’s low prices, they can personalize the advertisement and product, and they are more likely to be influenced by it.
Product: Microwave-Safe Containers
Feature: microwavable
Benefit: no burned fingers
Imagine a small business owner who sells kitchen products. She wants to place an ad that hypes her Microwave-Safe Containers to her target audience of mothers with small children. She could use copy that says, “Our Microwave-Safe Containers are made from our specially manufactured materials that don’t get hot.” This copy does not speak to customers and does not invite them to read more. However, if the copy is changed to say, “Are you tired of burning your fingers on scorching hot bowls from the microwave? Put your potholders away because Microwave-Safe Containers are cool to the touch straight from the microwave.” The new copy asks customers a question, making it interactive and conversational, and it speaks directly to them in the second person, which motivates them to read more.
Product: Monique Jackson’s Realtor Services
Feature: flexible schedule
Benefit: available to help customers anytime
Assume Monique Jackson is a realtor who focuses on service to win new customers. One of the best features of her service is her flexible schedule. She could write copy that says, “Monique Jackson is available anytime.” This copy states exactly what Monique offers through her service, but it doesn’t speak to the customer. If Monique changed her copy to say, “Do you want to tour a house on the market right now? No problem. Monique Jackson is available to help you day or night.” Now the copy is interactive and very conversational. By using the second person, her message speaks directly to customers and allows them to personalize and relate to the copy.
REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES
Recently, I was looking at theme park ticket prices for Walt Disney World. I noticed the copy Disney uses for their various park tickets is a great example of “you,” not “we” copywriting. Disney uses the tagline, “Disney’s Magic Your Way,” whenever they advertise their park tickets. Disney even goes so far as making the tagline into a logo that appears on all of their park ticket marketing literature and advertisements. Their tagline tells customers they can enjoy the magic of Disney their own way if they use the flexible ticketing options. This copy does a great job of tying together the product and Disney’s entire brand image in a way that directly appeals to the customer.
A famous example of copy that successfully uses “you” rather than “we” is the Burger King campaign that says, “Have it your way.” It’s so simple, yet so effective. This campaign launched during a time when it was unheard of to alter a menu item at a fast food restaurant. Burger King appealed to their audience’s desire to have fast food just the way they wanted it. No tomatoes? No problem. To this day, Burger King lets their customers make choices and feel satisfied and special. The copy successfully hypes these benefits and appeals to emotional triggers.
Similarly, Hallmark ran the, “When you care enough to send the very best” campaign for many years. This copy was clever in several ways. Not only did it speak directly to the audience by using “you,” but it also appealed to the audience’s emotional triggers. Suddenly, buying a greeting card was equivalent to buying jewelry. “Do you care enough to buy a diamond or just cubic zirconia?” translated into “Do you care enough to buy Hallmark or just some other greeting card brand?” Furthermore, Hallmark successfully differentiated themselves from their competition by making customers think their cards were “the very best.” It’s amazing how one sentence of well-written copy can say so much.
SUMMARY
Remember to write copy that speaks to your customers not at them by using the second person significantly more than the first person. This is a simple way to link your product’s features directly to your customers’ lives. Make sure your customers can relate to your copy by using a conversational tone and invite them to join the conversation with questions, but remember to adjust your tone to correspond to the target audience for each ad or marketing piece you create. Review the benefits and differentiators you developed in Steps 1 and 2 of the Copywriting Outline and rewrite them to include the second person. This way, when the time comes to write your ads, you will have completed most of your work already. You will be able to simply pick and choose the phrases you need from your Copywriting Outline for each ad based on your target audience and the medium where you’re placing your ad. I’ll discuss this further in Step 6 of the Copywriting Outline.
See Chapter 17 for the complete Copywriting Outline for ABC Tax Services as well as ad and marketing collateral samples using copy culled from the Copywriting Outline.
Copywriting Outline Step 5
Step 5: “You,” Not “We”—How can I word my product’s benefits and differentiators so they talk to the customer and not about me?
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