There are a LOT of different copywriting tips floating around on the internet.

But there’s only a few that are really going to move the needle.

In fact, 80-90% of all copywriting success can be explained in just four quick tips…

And in today’s episode of Write Bites, I’ll share them with you.

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Hey guys, welcome to Write Bites: a series of 10-minute videos on writing, marketing and freelancing.

There’s an endless number of tips, tactics, and techniques that you can use to improve your copy. But the reality is that most of them are fairly inconsequential.

They might improve things a little bit, but they aren’t going to have it a massive impact on your copy’s performance.

So in today’s episode, what I want to do is I want to cover the only four tips that you need to know in order to write great copy. If you can master these four tips, you’re going to write great copy every single time.

If you fail to do any one of these four tips, your copy is going to struggle.

So if you’ve been looking for some ways that you can meaningfully improve your copywriting performance, stay tuned. This is the episode for you.

Tip #1: Figure Out Who You’re Speaking To

First and foremost, you need to understand who you’re speaking to.

If you don’t know who you’re speaking to, you can’t really communicate with them effectively.

Let’s say I were to have you prepare a speech, and I told you “Hey – next week, I’m going to have you come in and give a presentation on building a business”.

So in your mind, you’re thinking: okay, this is for business owners. Maybe small business owners.

So you spend the next week preparing your presentation.

You think about the challenges that small businesses are facing, the potential hurdles that new small business owners might need to overcome as they’re looking to achieve profitability.

You put your whole presentation together. You’re ready to go. You walk in…

And it’s a class of fifth graders.

Suddenly everything that you’ve just prepared sort of goes out the window because this is a completely different audience.

If you’re going to speak to fifth graders about what it means to build a business, maybe you’re talking a bit more generally about entrepreneurship and helping them understand the concept of what owning a business is all about, or the place of small businesses in the economy, how small businesses impact their daily lives, things that they like that connect to people who have started these businesses.

What matters to fifth graders and what is it going to keep them interested – what is going to get them excited about the idea of growing a business – it’s going to be completely different than a group of adult active small business owners.

And that’s an extreme example, but I just want to illustrate the point that who you’re speaking to has a massive impact on what you’re saying, even when the topic is the same.

And continuing in line with this idea, it takes us into our second tip, which is the only thing that matters is what our target audience cares about.

Tip #2: Figure Out What Your Audience Cares About

One of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs, marketers, even new copywriters make when they’re coming in and writing copy is that they get very focused on the brand itself, the offer itself, or who they are working with to write this copy.

This is because when you’re speaking with a business owner about their company, they’re describing it to you the way they see it, the things that matter to them.

And what matters about the business to a business owner is very different in many cases, from what matters to the customers.

The customers are who we actually care about. We really want to know what’s important to them.

If I’m starting up a new mattress company, I might be thinking about all the materials that go into these mattresses, the manufacturing process, the shipping details.

There’s a lot of things that go into building this company and developing this product that I’m going to be thinking about 24/7, but ultimately the end user doesn’t really care about

They’re looking for good sleep.

They’re looking for longevity.

They’re looking for something that lets them wake up without back pain in the morning.

What matters to them is a lot different than what the business owner is thinking about.

So when you write copy, you need to make sure that you’re really looking at the copy through the lens of the reader, through the lens of the customer: how they see it & what they care about.

The details of what they’re looking for are the only thing that matters when we’re writing our copy.

Tip #3: Focus On The Copy’s Objective

Tip number three: you need to be aware from the very beginning about the objective of the copy.

When I say objective, I don’t mean the broader objective of we want them to purchase, or we want them to make a donation or this or that. I’m talking about the immediate action that we want them to make after reading these exact words.

If they’re on a landing page, what do we want them to do from that landing page?

Do we want them to click a specific button?

Do we want them to read down to a certain point in the page where they are going to select from multiple options?

Do we want them to click to then make a call?

What do we specifically want them to do as a next step when they’re reading this copy?

This needs to weigh just as heavily on our mind as the target audience, because we’re trying to take that audience and bring them to a point of action.

In most cases with copywriting, we want them to take a fairly immediate or short-term action after reading this copy.

If any part of the copy is not moving the reader toward that point of action, it’s probably not worth being there. In some cases it might even actively hinder the reader from taking that action. So we always need to be conscious of that.

Tip #4: Prioritize Clarity Over Everything Else

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see with new copywriters in particular.

As writers, we really love the persuasion element.

That’s probably what attracted us to copywriting in the first place: the idea that we could come in and use these persuasion techniques and this persuasive language to motivate decision-making.

But most of what motivates action is not persuasive copy.

It’s not psychological tricks.

It’s not being a wordsmith or any of these other things that people like to hype up.

What gets results is product market fit and clarity. It’s selling something that the target audience actually wants and then making the presentation really clear.

So it’s a good fit and we just make it really clear through the messaging that it’s a great fit.

That’s where 80, 90, maybe even up to 99% of sales come in most products- from that product-market fit paired with that clarity in the messaging.

Depending on the elasticity of the product, sometimes persuasion can have a bigger impact.

Writing really great persuasive copy can move the needle a bit more on some products than on others.

But ultimately, you are never going to move the needle further with persuasive writing than you’re going to move the needle with just clear writing – with clarity of messaging.

So you always, always, always, always, always need to be prioritizing clarity in your copywriting. And if you do that, you’re going to get 80 – 90% of the way there.

Everything else is just icing on the cake.

So, I hope that was helpful, and I’ll catch you guys in the next episode.

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Share Your Thoughts

I hope this was helpful, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Do you agree? Do you disagree with the fierce heat of a thousand suns?

Let me know in the comments below.

Plus, if you have a question you want answered on a future Write Bites episode, ask in the comments or shoot me an email, and I’ll add it to the schedule.