So many businesses underestimate the importance of good copy. They invest a fortune in training their sales team on how to cold call effectively.  Or they blow their marketing budget on building a fancy website or exhibiting at prestigious events. But then they let themselves down with horrible outreach messages, badly worded follow-ups, boring sales packs, a website that leaves visitors confused, or social media posts that undo all the hard work they’ve put in elsewhere. 

You might think your copy isn’t important, but it can make the difference between landing an amazing client or putting a prospect off working with you forever.

Good copy will support your sales and networking efforts

I cannot tell you how many companies let themselves down with poorly executed follow-ups or inconsistency in the way they present themselves. 

Imagine meeting someone at a networking event. They are likeable, interesting, and (most importantly) they offer something that could really benefit you. You decide they’re someone you might want to do business with. 

But then you check out their social media pages or their website and the content isn’t consistent with what they’ve told you. You start to doubt whether they even offer what you thought they offered or whether they are the right fit. And their follow-up email to you is a generic sales email listing loads of irrelevant features of working with them.

You start to think that maybe they weren’t as good as you thought they were. Maybe their company isn’t a company you want to do business with after all. 

And this is why good copy is important. You could undo all the hard work you or your sales team have done through cold calls, networking, or pitching for business by not backing it all up with a good online presence or decent marketing materials. 

You might make a fantastic impression face-to-face, but you could leave people thinking you’re all talk when your marketing materials don’t match up with what you said. 

Good copy makes closing sales easier

Your marketing copy can do a lot of the legwork when it comes to selling. You can attract your ideal customers, show them how you can add value, answer all their questions, address any concerns and get them to the point where they are confident you are the right fit for them. 

I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Example one: A call booking dropped into my calendar from a marketing manager at a company in the US. She’d ben looking for copywriting training for her team, had come across my Write to Sell training, read the sales page and booked a call. We chatted for 15 minutes and then exchanged two follow-up emails. Two days later, she’d booked a date and paid the invoice in full. I didn’t need to give her the hard sell or spend hours convincing her to buy from me because my copy had done the hard work. All I needed to do was nudge her over the line. 

Example two: A guy saw a post I put on social media and decided to follow me. He saw another post about my free email series so he signed up. He decided he wanted to do my 12-week copywriting programme, so he dropped me a message. I replied and he booked and paid for an initial consultation call. Following that he signed up to my 12-week programme. My social media posts and emails had done the hard work of building trust, establishing my expertise and credibility, and showing him how I could help. 

And this is why copywriting is such a useful skill. You can save yourself so much time and effort by attracting the right people to you and getting them primed to buy. No need to jump on dozens of free sales calls that never lead anywhere or pitch for business you’ve got no chance of winning. Let your marketing content and sales copy do the hard work for you. It makes the whole process better for you and for your customers. 

Get greater clarity over marketing strategy

So many people “do marketing” without really understanding why they are doing the things they are doing. For example, they share posts on social media without any real purpose behind them. They opt or the spray-and-pray approach. 

That’s why one of the things I cover in my copywriting training is the customer journey – the marketing and sales process people go through. 

Understanding this process enables you to create copy with a purpose in mind. 

• Who is this copy for?
• What is its purpose?
• What do you want people to do, think or feel after reading it? 

Essentially, I get you or your team thinking about the bigger picture. 

For example, rather than just sticking random posts on social media each day without any thought, you start posting with purpose in mind – for example, to increase reach, attract new followers, showcase your expertise, promote a specific product or service, build trust, establish your credibility and so on. 

Feel more confident in your marketing

A big barrier to content creation and marketing is confidence. 

I’ve been delivering copywriting training since 2017 and some of the things I hear over and over are:

• “I’m not very good at writing”
• “I’m not very creative”
• “I don’t know what to write about”
• “I don’t want to sound too salesy”
• “Everything I write sounds a bit rubbish”
• “It’s all a bit cringe”
• “I feel like a fraud”
• “I don’t know enough about the subject”

That last one mostly comes from employees who don’t feel like they have enough industry experience or product knowledge to write marketing copy. 

But all of the above comments come down to a lack of confidence. 

And that lack of confidence can be reduced if you address the lack of skill. 

Copywriting is a skill. And it’s a skill that can be taught. 

If you understand the theory behind writing good copy and approach copywriting with a purpose in mind, you feel more confident about doing it. And, as with most skills, the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the better you get at doing it. 

Ensure consistency in marketing messages

If you have several team members contributing to your company copy, it can be hard to get consistency. Copywriting training can help you get teams working more cohesively. 

But it’s not just teams that suffer from inconsistency. Even if you are solely responsible for marketing, there can still be inconsistency in your marketing.

This will happen when you don’t really have clarity or direction. You end up trying to appeal to too many different audiences, your messaging is all over the place, and all your marketing activity is siloed rather than being connected. 

Copywriting training will help you understand how to develop a consistent voice and create a more joined-up marketing journey for your customer. 

Attract your ideal clients

The whole point of any marketing content or sales copy is to attract more of your ideal clients. 

Of course not everyone who is a good fit will go on to work with you, but the better you get at attracting the right audience, the more of your ideal clients you’ll generate. 

That’s why trying to appeal to everyone doesn’t work. Your messaging becomes confusing and potential clients don’t feel completely confident about whether you can help them or not. 

When you understand how to write for your ideal clients, you can form a connection with them. You show them you understand them. You make them feel confident in you. You increase the chances of getting them to the next stage in the sales journey. 

You also start to repel the wrong kind of people. And that’s a good thing because it means you spend less time dealing with people you can’t help or don’t want to help. 

Better customer retention

People often focus on attracting new clients, but good marketing is about customer retention too. 

The way we market to existing or past clients is different to how we market to new audiences. You have already established a level of trust and credibility (or at least you should have if you delivered what you promised) so there’s less work to do in that area. And you already know they are the right fit so you can focus on strengthening the relationship through your content or sales copy. 

Copywriting training can help you improve your ability to retain customers, upsell, and cross-sell. 

A common mistake I see when it comes to marketing training is people focusing on one platform. For example, they might bring someone in to teach their team how to use Facebook or pay someone to help them build a LinkedIn following.

Unfortunately, a lot of this training focuses on how to use a specific platform in terms of optimising your profile, getting engagement and building followers, using paid features and so on. 

It doesn’t always cover the bigger picture – how will you fit that platform into your wider marketing and sales process? How will you convert followers into paying customers? How will you use the platform to generate leads?

Copywriting is a transferable skill that can be applied to almost any marketing platform. So whether you use social media, email marketing, direct mail, paid ads or a combination of all of them, you’ll have the skills to move people from having never heard of you to wanting to buy from you. 

Freelancers and business owners 

If you are a one-person business or you do all the marketing and sales for your business, then copywriting is the best marketing skill you can learn. It’ll give you the skills and confidence to market yourself on whichever platforms you choose. Plus, when you work with me one-on-one, I help you create sustainable marketing strategies that play to your strengths.