It’s a direct marketing thing. Direct marketing-led copywriting is all about persuading people to respond to your message. It’s relevant whether you want them to fill in a form, part with personal information, apply for something, buy something, join you or share your stuff. Which makes it a vital component of successful digital marketing.
Here are a few handy copywriting and content creation tips to help you make the right kind of impact.
Copywriting tips for digital marketers
Being funny – How to pull it off on social media
I just heard an interviewee on BBC Radio 4 saying funny content is the thing people like to share most. It’s obviously a good move to harness giggle power, connecting with people on an emotional level where messages have the biggest impact.
Can you do funny in your sector? Probably not if you’re a funeral director or otherwise engage with humanity at its most difficult moments. But other than that, why not. Quirky brands like Innocent and Pot Noodle do it all the time, tapping deftly into the British sense of humour. What about you, and can you swing it on social media?
Getting personal – When individual beats corporate
Social media is personal. Most of us prefer interacting with fellow humans to conversing with brands, even when we have our work heads on and especially when the brand’s tone and content are as dry as dust.
Being funny – therefore human – in a corporate tone of voice, restricted by the magnolia non-personality you’ve created, doesn’t really work. But being funny from the heart, as an individual, is much easier and comes across as genuine.
You could give a talented, eloquent, responsible person with a good sense of humour responsibility for your social media voice and give them the freedom to do funny and develop a genuine, warm, human voice. Get it right and you’ll go straight to your audience’s heart. Or you could communicate as a corporate entity and stay as dry as dust. Which do you think would engage the most people?
For your entertainment… British humour at its best
Bearing the power of funny in mind, here’s something I’m delighted to share. Here’s one of the Tower of London’s deliciously entertaining Beefeaters in action.
Old-style direct marketing superlatives still work
Don’t let anyone tell you old-school words like ‘free’, ‘guarantee’, ‘new’ and ‘ and ‘proven’ don’t work in a marketing context. They still do, and they work hard to maximise response. Here’s a list of 20 words powerful enough to make people stop, think and act:
- Look
- Success
- Surprising
- Secret
- Now
- Cash
- Success
- Easy
- Quick
- Tested
- Offer
- Latest
- Sale
- Save
- Money
- Reveal
- How to
- New
- Discover
- Imagine
According to Drayton Bird, the direct marketing guru, gentleman, scholar, all round good egg and lifelong bullshit-despiser, including these words improves campaign ROI by as much as 551%.
Are they cliches? Yup. But there’s nothing quite so powerful as a good cliche: a highly effective short cut to zoom people straight to the heart of a proposition. The proof of the pudding? Take a look at these, just three of Victor Schwab’s 100 great classical advertising headlines:
- How to win friends and influence people
- The secret of making people like you
- Discover the fortune that lies hidden in your salary
Of course you don’t have to restrict your use of these magical words to headlines and subheads. They’re suitable for judicious use throughout your copy.
