Today, businesses cannot grow without clear and strategic communication — the days of having a peppy advertising campaign turn your sales around are gone — now, brands need marketing copywriters to grab every opportunity to grow, spot the holes in their sales process, and keep messaging on brand.
What is a Marketing Copywriter?
In broad strokes, a marketing copywriter is a skilled professional tasked with creating written content to promote a product, service, or brand. Their primary goal is to engage and persuade audiences to take a specific action, whether it's making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or visiting a website.
The top skill of a marketing copywriter is crafting compelling messages that resonate with a chosen audience. However, their reach within a company will decide how much more they can do; give a marketing copywriter access to your executives and tools, and you'll see their true potential.
This article explores all the areas that marketing copywriters can positively impact, and how businesses can make the most of them to thrive in their industry.
5 reasons why marketing writers are good for business
If you hire marketing writers and most importantly, empower them, you'll garner all these benefits:
1. Have persuasive prowess on side.
At the heart of marketing copywriting lies the art of persuasion. Copywriters use language strategically to evoke emotions, address pain points, and highlight benefits. By understanding consumer psychology, they craft messages that resonate with target audiences and compel them to take desired actions.
Wouldn't it be useful to have a communicator on your team who can not only persuade prospects, but your internal clients, existing client contracts, and even your superiors to follow the best marketing strategy? The skills of persuasion, well-applied, are enormously empowering.
2. Keep your audience hooked.
The best marketing copywriters possess a unique blend of creativity and analytical skills. They know how to captivate readers with attention-grabbing headlines, compelling storytelling, and persuasive calls to action. Whether it's a blog post, social media ad, or email newsletter, they will tailor their content to suit the platform and audience preferences and never bore them.
Again, this skill might be useful beyond your landing pages: Who writes speeches for your executives and company speakers? Who looks over your slides for company-wide presentations? Who checks your extensive job descriptions, designed to attract the best candidates? If you let a marketing copywriter weigh in on all your content forms, and enable them to be honest and constructive, you'll be amazed at the improvements they'll make to ensure your content is consumed from start to finish.
3. Strengthen your brand identity at every turn.
It's likely unnecessary to emphasise how important establishing a strong brand identity is; we all know how essential it is to be memorable, before venerable, as brands and executive thought leaders. Marketing copywriters play a crucial role in shaping brand narratives, tone of voice, and messaging consistency across all channels.
Brand values, visuals, and messaging must remain consistent across all channels. If you think about it, it's not only your marketing or PR team who talks about the company. Sales, customer service, client success, partnerships, operations... Are there any departments that don't talk about the company, even if it's mostly with their colleagues and service providers? To get everyone on the same page and talking with the same voice, include your marketing writer in as many projects as possible. Encourage them to mix with other teams and do periodic training sessions on the messaging.
Your brand identity needs strengthening repeatedly, updating according to new company developments, then instilled in every new and returning employee. This job is best done by the person who designed, curates, and protects your brand voice — your marketing copywriters.
4. Never miss an opportunity to convert a prospect.
Ultimately, the success of any marketing campaign is measured by its ability to drive conversions and sales. Marketing copywriters use the principles of persuasion to influence consumer behaviour at every opportunity. You'll likely find your marketing copywriter talking about the brand to friends and family because they're so entrenched in the sales-speak that it's unavoidable!
Whether it's through compelling product descriptions, persuasive landing pages, or enticing email campaigns, marketing copywriters help businesses generate leads and increase revenue. Moreover, they are practiced at spotting holes in the operation from a customer's perspective, partly due to working outside the product or user design team, but also because marketers are comprehensive thinkers and problem-solvers by nature. Consider this role an overarching advocate for your customers and users.
5. Work with someone who's on top of trends
Any marketing professional is constantly updating their skills simply to keep up with new technologies and trends shaping consumer behaviour. Marketing copywriters must stay abreast of these changes and adapt their strategies accordingly.
Whether it's incorporating SEO best practices, optimising content for mobile devices, or leveraging emerging social media platforms, they ensure that businesses remain competitive in a rapidly changing landscape. This will keep you up-to-date by proximity, and you may learn a lot from your time spent working with a marketing copywriter!
How are marketing copywriters different to content writers?
Content is essential, no doubt about it. But just having content isn't enough.
Imagine a beautifully crafted piece of writing or stunning imagery sitting on a deserted island — stunning, but alone. If nobody knows it exists or if it doesn't resonate with anyone, it won't achieve its purpose. This is why it's not enough to hire "any" copywriter. You need a professional who will consider the whole funnel, from a customer's first impression of your company through to them making the sale. Most copywriters will primarily consider the conversion portion or perhaps your taglines, while most content marketers are focused on awareness and brand marketing. Moreover, content marketing and copy alone won't make a brand invaluable and memorable. That's why investing in skilled marketing copywriting is essential for staying ahead of the curve and driving long-term business success.
A marketing copywriter is an invaluable asset because they will consider it all, even if some of the actual writing needs to be shared among multiple writers — from building brand identity to driving conversions, they help businesses connect with their target audience and achieve their marketing goals.
So, what does a marketing copywriter do?
You may have come across marketing copywriters who call themselves something else. What makes them marketing copywriters is their focus on creating and curating the following:
Real content
It is what it sounds like — authentic, valuable, and engaging content. Real content speaks to your audience in a meaningful way. It could be educational, entertaining, aspirational, or a combination of these elements but it will most importantly connect with people on a deeper level, sparking interest, fostering trust, and encouraging action.
Marketing with personality
We all talk about humanising marketing, but who does this best? Marketing writers. It's about infusing the unique voice, tone, and style that sets a brand apart from the others. Just like in real-life interactions, personality in your content helps to build relationships with your audience. Whether it's injecting humour, showing empathy, or being a little shocking, personality makes your brand more relatable and memorable.
Content that serves
Every piece of content has a goal, to pass the reader onto the next stage in the funnel. Whether the writing is at the point in the funnel that it should serve to generate leads and increase brand awareness or drive sales and close deals, the end goal is what marketing copywriters tailor their content towards.
While content is crucial, it's not enough without a comprehensive strategy. To truly succeed in building your brand and attracting leads, you need to combine real, engaging content with a distinct personality and a clear goal guiding your efforts. Only a writer with a keen marketing focus will target all their copy towards an end goal in an all-encompassing
How should you hire marketing copywriters?
Beyond the usual hiring best practices you should consider the following 4 unique steps to hiring your first marketing copywriter:
1. Communicate the top tasks. Before you start searching, clarify what you need from a marketing copywriter. Are you looking for someone to write website copy, product descriptions, blog posts, email campaigns, social media content, or a combination? Being up-front about the tasks will ensure you hire someone who wants to do these, not just someone who can do them.
2. Request portfolios and samples.
It's not recommended to give test tasks to creative people, unless you are willing to compensate them for the time, with money not "practice". Ask candidates to provide samples of their previous work or portfolios. Look for diversity in writing styles, tone, and formats to find a real pro.
3. Assess their industry knowledge: While not crucial, industry-specific knowledge will speed up the marketing copywriter's impact on your projects. If this is not necessary, the marketing copywriter candidate should still demonstrate an understanding of your target audience, market trends, and competitors during the interview process.
4. Hire for good communication skills.
Effective communication is great for any role, but a marketing copywriter is going to be working with every single person in your company. You're looking for someone responsive, clear, and professional in their interactions who inspires authority, because they will sometimes need to dig deep and ask surprising questions to your higher-ups.
By following these steps, you can effectively hire marketing copywriters who can produce high-quality content aligned with your brand and marketing objectives, hold their own during research, and share improvements that will impact you company-wide.
Top companies hire marketing copywriters to lead their organic growth.
Companies across various industries and of all sizes hire marketing copywriters to create compelling content that funnels their target audience toward the end goal. Here are the types of companies that most commonly hire marketing copywriters:
1. Marketing agencies
Advertising agencies, digital marketing firms, and content marketing agencies often have teams of marketing copywriters who create content for clients across different industries because their clients need extensive knowledge and guidance, not only execution. These agencies work with businesses of all sizes, from startups to large corporations, providing them with copywriting services for various marketing campaigns as well as advice on how to improve their overall strategy.
2. eCommerce
Online retailers, such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify stores, and direct-to-consumer brands, rely heavily on persuasive copywriting to drive sales. But eCommerce companies hire marketing copywriters to do more than write product descriptions, website content, email marketing campaigns, and social media posts that effectively communicate the value of their products and convert visitors into customers, they hire marketing copywriters to be involved in everything the customer sees, to improve customer experience (CX).
3. Tech companies
Tech brands, including software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, tech startups, and IT firms, hire marketing copywriters to create content that explains complex technical concepts in a clear and engaging manner, needing minimal direction from superiors. While copywriters in the tech industry often write website copy, blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, and email newsletters to educate and attract potential customers, marketing copywriters can be leaders — reading between the lines of what's said to understand what's needed on an operational and revenue level.
These are just the top three examples of the types of companies that are known to hire marketing copywriters. In reality, almost any company that engages in marketing activities and wants to effectively communicate with its audience can benefit from the expertise of a skilled marketing copywriter.
Now you know why marketing writers are good for business, how marketing copywriters are different to content writers, and how to hire marketing copywriters, your business is already en route to growth.
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