My 3 rules for good copy
A simple guide to persuasive marketing communication
As marketers, it’s difficult to attract and hold attention at the best of times. In times like these, when there is so much going on in the world, it’s downright impossible.
Which is why copywriting is the most basic skill a marketer needs to have. You just have to know how to write good copy.
And it’s not just for marketers. Entrepreneurs can’t always talk up their product, even in very early stages, they have to write it up too.
That’s what led me to put this together. It is by no means comprehensive: This is not an all-that-you-need to good copy. It is my personal and quick communication guide, if you will.
Here goes.
Rule 1 - If you are writing/talking about your product, make it memorable.
Simple, isn’t it? The key question is this: How are you going to make people remember what you do? They should be able to recollect the specifics not just in a day or two, but also in a week’s time, or maybe in a month’s time. Your copy should be able to help them do that.
Here’s an example. This is from the parking startup JustPark, which was able to raise money from Richard Branson off this pitch.
Let's face it. Parking can be a real nightmare. It can be infuriating to find, extremely pricey and by the time you find that spot you would have lost time, petrol, and caused a lot of unnecessary traffic and pollution. Well, there's an answer, parkatmyhouse.com. We are an awesome little company, backed by an awesome big company called BMW. Now, listen in: You can reserve parking in a private property and save up to 70%. Need to park at a sports match or local station? Sorted. Just go to parkatmyhouse.com and simply type in where you want to park and what dates. It is that simple.
It’s brilliant, because it is able to define the problem, define the solution, and also is able to tell its audience why they should care. The BMW reference is not thrown in for no reason, it’s to give you pause, to impress. And they succeed.
(There’s one more point here in the JustPark example I’ll return to later.)
Rule 2 - Don’t write marketing BS. Be clear and specific.
These are not my words, they are Girish’s.
One of the things he drilled into me during the early days of Freshworks was just this. I would be writing about an integration for the blog or the knowledge base, and I would write about how it was an amazing integration. I would write about how we had built like this and like that, and how it would change things for the customer because of how brilliantly we had made it and so on.
Girish would send it right back, asking me why the customer should care about how we built it. And as always, he was right.
The customer doesn’t care whether you are using blockchain or AI or ML: that’s what you are excited about, not her. She just wants a problem solved. If you can’t do it, she’ll get someone else to solve it.
Just tell her how you can solve her problem, and how easily you can do so. That’s it.
The customer/prospect won’t do the hard work for you, reading through your fluff to get to what she needs. She’ll just leave. We have to do the hard work, making it easy for her to understand how we are the perfect answer to her problem.
A week or two ago, I sent my team a message on our WhatsApp group. I’m converting it into pointers here, but this was basically what I said:
a) In webinars, write time, date and topic first, because that’s what people will look at first
b) In blogs, pay attention to structure and titles. People skim blogs, they don’t read them
c) Vague statements are bad marketing. Be specific, come straight to the point
Remember, nobody wants to read flowery language which hides away the purpose. You are not a novelist, you are a marketer. Your creativity is not there to be shown off, it is there to help persuade/sell.
(I make the above point because I know. I still get carried away sometimes.)
Rule 3 - Always remember who you are writing for.
Keep asking yourself who you are writing for. Are you writing for a customer or are you writing for an investor? Are you writing for a potential employee, or are you writing to pitch to a newspaper?
If you are copy-pasting your pitches, please stop.
It’ll get you nowhere. A customer has different motivations than a prospect. A potential investor has hugely different incentives from a potential employee. A journalist is looking for something completely different from all the rest.
Then how can one pitch/messaging work?
It can’t. Each one of the above has to be spoken to in a different way.
Which is why when writing copy, it helps to always keep in mind who exactly you are writing for.
Look at the example of JustPark again. Who is the copy for? Easy, a potential investor. The founder’s writing to impress, not to a prospective user, though he has made the case for it as well. If the copy was just for the prospective customer, the BMW reference wasn’t needed at all. I was already sold.
The three rules, again
If you are writing/talking about your product, make it memorable.
Don’t write marketing BS. Be clear and specific.
Always remember who you are writing for.
PS - The rules above can apply to content too. There are different types of content, of course, with different objectives. But some of the above points can help, especially in a time when grammar is not as important as clear communication.