10 Copywriting Myths to Be Aware Of BEFORE Hiring a Writer
From “oh, it’s the same as sales” for marketing to “anyone can act” for the arts industry, every sector is plagued by some kind of misconceptions.
Copywriting is no different!
If you’re a badass female-founded brand looking to hire a marketing-savvy wordsmith, let me bust these copywriting myths. That way, you can avoid disappointment and save yourself both time and money.
COPYWRITING MYTH #1: ‘Copywrite’ is the same as ‘copyright’
“Oh, you’re a copyrighter? That’s the thing inside books, the one with the little letter inside the circle, right?”
No.
While it might sound pretty much the same:
copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects its owner against other people stealing their work
a copywriter is a word-wizard or witch who writes marketing material for another business
COPYWRITING MYTH #2. Every writer is a copywriter
Before you get your website copy written by that cousin of yours who published a YA trilogy a few years ago, let me save you some valuable time and money: not every writer is a copywriter.
Sure, some people can be both.
Since my virtual colleagues obviously love words, it’s not rare to find someone who’s both a copywriter and an author, journalist, or poet (*insert shameless promotion of my own fiction and poetry books*).
However, being an author or a journalist doesn’t automatically make you a copywriter. That’s just a dangerous copywriting myth!
The former writes words to entertain, the latter to sell.
Rather than a traditional author, a copywriter is more similar to a marketer: they must be able to understand your target audience and how to best convey what your amazeballs product can do for them!
You don’t just pay them to write pretty sentences: you invest in their expertise and results.
And that’s why they’re more expensive than your cousin.
COPYWRITING MYTH #3. Copy? Sounds like plagiarism
Don’t worry: a professional copywriter doesn’t plagiarise other people’s work (the one you pay £5 on UpWork for a 1000-word article probably will).
In marketing, ‘copy’ simply refers to promotional material in a written form.
This misconception led to another popular copywriting myth: that copy is exactly the same as content (and, consequently, that ‘copywriter’ is the same as ‘content writer’).
If you’re curious, here’s the difference between copywriting and content writing.
COPYWRITING MYTH #4. A good copywriter will make my marketing materials all about how great I am...
Here’s the thing: nobody wakes up in the morning wishing to be bombarded with thousands of ads telling them how great company A is.
What do they really want to know, I hear you ask? How to solve that problem that’s been in the back of their head for weeks when it comes to your industry.
If company A doesn’t tell them that because they’re too busy talking about their fifteen years of experience, awards, and their entire history, they’ll go to company B, the one that puts their needs first.
Think about it!
If you were looking for an eco-friendlier alternative to your morning cuppa, which landing page copy do you think would grab your attention?
Company A: “As a company with over twenty years of experience in the tea industry, we offer the best range of products on the market, all packaged inside unbleached cornstarch bags.”
Company B: “Your usual plastic-lined tea bag releases 11.6bn microplastic particles into your cup. Yuck! Be kinder to your stomach and your all-time favourite sea animal by switching to our plastic-free teabags.”
Company B, right? Thought so.
COPYWRITING MYTH #5. … and will use the most sophisticated jargon and big words
Don’t get me wrong: this really depends on your industry and clientele, but… 9.99 times out of 10? Big words and technical jargon will only put off your audience.
An ace copywriter knows that you have around 2 seconds to grab someone’s attention and 8 to keep it: they ain’t gonna waste a single one of them on vague or confusing words!
You need a copywriter who can write like your target audience speaks and translate even the most complicated features into clear, bite-sized messages.
COPYWRITING MYTH #6. I can get a copywriter for £5 on Fiverr
Technically, you can... just like you can get a £5 fast fashion dress that was made inside sweatshops by underpaid garment workers, using toxic pesticides and dyes, and designed to fall apart after a few wearings.
Or you can choose a £50 dress made of sustainable linen by garment workers who aren’t kept in modern slavery conditions, using only natural dyes, and designed to last you for decades.
When you pay an overworked copywriter £5 or so, you’re buying just that: words on a page. Good copy requires time and an actual strategy!
A professional copywriter will take the time to:
understand your target audience
familiarise themselves with your brand
use your tone of voice to ensure consistency
research the subject thoroughly
add something new rather than just copy and paste whatever they could find on your competitors’ websites
You most certainly can’t expect them to do all this for £5.
Excellent copy costs more than what content mills like Fiverr or UpWork would have you believe, but it’s oh-so-worth-it because it’s a profitable investment.
You’re no longer buying pretty words: you’re buying the right ones. The ones that will convert into sales.
Spending less will basically cost you more money in the long run because you’ll miss out on lead generation and sales, becoming white noise.
COPYWRITING MYTH #7. Surely [insert number of words] can’t take that long or cost that much money!
Again, it really depends on what ‘words’ we’re talking about.
Churning out a thousand words per hour without conducting proper research nor taking your target audience and the bigger picture into account?
Sure, that doesn’t take long.
But it also won’t bring you more customers or sales.
A shorter 300-word website page written to attract your specific target audience, stop them from clicking away, and convince them that you’re the coolest kid on the block? That actually takes a lot longer.
Still, the point is:
The value of your copy shouldn’t only be measured by the number of words that it involves or by how long it took to craft it. What matters is the results that it can bring you.
An example? The iconic ‘just do it’ slogan helped Nike increase its share of domestic sport-shoe business from 18% to 43%.
Would you have seriously expected to pay £0.25 per word for it? Or to tell them “but it must only have taken you five minutes to come up with it”?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
(And also, it takes WAY longer than five minutes to come up with a slogan like ‘just do it’. Just saying.)
COPYWRITING MYTH #8. Copywriters should give me a free sample
And restaurants should give you a free starter before you decide to order a main course and dessert, right?
Nope.
Free samples don’t pay our bills.
However, a professional copywriter knows that you’d like to get a feel of our writing before committing to a purchase.
We get it.
That’s why most of us have a portfolio on our copywriting website. And guess what?
It’s sull of samples.
That you can check out.
Like.. for free.
COPYWRITING MYTH #9. I don’t need to send a brief to a copywriter
Here’s the most ‘shocking’ copywriting myth debunked:
copywriters can’t read minds.
Sorry. We’re not Edward Cullen in Twilight.
You can’t just tell us “write an article on succulents”.
We need to know A LOT MORE than that. For example, who it’s for and how this project fits with your overall marketing strategy. We should also be given your brand guidelines or a piece of your own copy to match your existing tone.
This will also save you a ton of time by allowing us to send you a first draft that’s 99% there!
The worst ‘brief’ I’ve received so far?
“Make it more marketing.”
COPYWRITING MYTH #10. A copywriter for my website or blog doesn’t need to know about SEO
“Oh, I don’t need SEO. I already had someone doing it when I built my website.”
Every time you say something like that, an SEO copywriter out there pours themselves another cup of coffee just to have the strength to deal with this blasphemy for the umpteenth time… but will still bang their head against the keyboard.
If you have a website, I assume you want new people to find it, right? Then your copywriter or content writer MUST know how to include search engine optimisation within your website copy and blog posts.
That way, you have higher chances of being found through the right keywords. Why pay for something that nobody will see?!
So, there you go. These are the most common myths about copywriting that I’ve encountered so far.
I hope they’ve helped you gain a better understanding of my crazy industry (I still love it, though)!
What now?
There are three main ways I can help you generate more leads and sales through the words on your business website:
sending you tips and content prompts through my newsletter
replacing your corporate-sounding words with some audience-oriented and SEO-friendly website copy
taking care of your blog by writing the right articles for your specific audience, smoothening your sales funnel, and making you stand out against your competitors
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