A Peek Behind the Curtain - There's More to Copywriting than Writing Copy

“It’s easy. It’s just churning out bumpf. Just writing a few words. Won’t take you long at all. It’s only a short email.”

Every single copywriter has heard those words. In the interests of positive copywriter/client relations, I won’t tell you the sort of words we say to ourselves when we hear those words. But basically, this is why we drink.

On the face of it, copywriting’s simple. It’s literally just writing a few words.

It’s easy to see why you’d think that. After all, you’re not a copywriter. You’re just hiring one. So I’m going to let you have a peek behind the curtain. I’m going to show you how I approach writing an email that generates great open rates and fantastic response rates. After all, when you’re paying for this copy, you don’t want to think your hard-earned is going to someone who tickles a keyboard for half an hour and then clocks off at lunchtime to get a cocktail.

While anyone can churn out the bumpf for a short email, it takes a bit more work to craft an email that actually does what you need it to.

The Copywriting Process

Forget everything you saw on Mad Men. I spend very little time smoking over a glass of scotch, and even less time getting acquainted with my secretary. I don’t even have a secretary.

See – I told you this’d be warts-and-all.

Step One: The Brief

On the face of it, this is the easy bit. This is where you tell me what you want.

Easy.

I need to know what you want, and that can be condensed as follows:

What: What do you do? In depth.
Why: Why do you need this content? Your end goal.
Who: Who are you targeting? Describe your key customer.
How: How are you going to speak to them? Your tone of voice.

(From “How to Brief Your Copywriter“)

See, fairly simple. The questions I ask are usually a little more in-depth and wide-ranging than just those four, because the more information I get the better. But this is all straightforward so far.

Then I need to work out what the really important people want. Because you and I, we’re only half the story. And we’re not the half of the story who puts money in your pocket.

No, I need to know what your clients want. And that’s where this whole process starts to get tricky.

Step Two: The Research

Finding out what you want is easy. I’ve got questionnaires, and time for phone interviews, and face-to-face meetings where we can sort that out.

I don’t get to do that with all of your potential clients though. Just imagine for a second, a world where your phone never stopped ringing because you’d been identified as a potential client for yet another service, or product, or film. That’s some dystopian nonsense right there.

Instead, we’ve got to be sneaky. There’s research to be done. Research like ghosting around forums where people are talking about the problems you solve, or examining your competitors to see if there’s a consensus about how your clients are to be approached, or looking at data to see who buys what, when and why. And on some glorious days, that research involves actual market research data that’s been made public somewhere.

From there, it’s a matter of trying to pull out the key threads to find those all important pain points. What does your client want? How does your product or service give it to them.

That little nugget is going to be the basis of what comes next.

Step Three: The Idea

Here’s the bit every creative dreads. Imagine being paid money to sit and think and come up with an idea. How good does that sound?

Yeah, if you’ve answered “really good!” you’ve never spent hours in front of a blank word document while your brain spits out more cliches than you ever thought possible.

This is the hard part. Finding the hook. Finding the one little linguistic crowbar that will pop open your client’s mind (and wallet) and allow us to explain how you’ll solve all their problems.

This is why in-house copywriters get a bad rep with their colleagues. A huge part of the job is literally staring out of a window, and that never looks good on a timesheet.

Anyway, after the blood, sweat, tears and shoegazing is done, and the idea has been willed into existence, it’s time to get down to actual writing.

Step Four: The Secret First Draft

Thank your lucky stars you never see this. The first draft. It’s uniformly terrible. This is a stream-of-consciousness blurt of verbiage, spewed forth onto the page in an attempt to cover every possible angle and try out every possible line. It’s long, it’s sprawling, it’s usually full of typos and it’s not really going to work.

Bad writers send this to clients.

Oh dear.

Good writers put it to one side, and then go to bed. Or walk the dog. Or bake a cupcake. They put it to one side and they leave it alone.

Step Five: The Real First Draft

While that first draft is sitting there, I’m percolating. Having thrown everything possible at the wall, my brain is now subconsciously seeing what sticks. So when I return to the sprawling mess of the secret first draft, I’m ready to hack it apart and stitch it together.

This is where the draft you see takes shape. Bad ideas are burned, good ones expanded upon. Mistakes are spotted and terminated with extreme prejudice. And at the end of it all stands something you’ll see labelled as “Draft #1.”

Here’s a secret. It’s probably draft three or four.

No matter how many iterations it’s been through, it’s the first draft you see. And it’s time for you to get involved.

Step Six: The Feedback

This is where you have your say. Where your experience and expertise of your niche comes into play, and the copy begins to get even tighter, more focused, and more effective.

Constructive feedback from a client can be the difference between good copy and brilliant copy. Click To Tweet

So make sure to remember the following:

This is NOT Constructive Criticism

• I don’t like it.
• Redo it.
• It’s no good.
• Is that the best you can come up with?
• Fail!

(From “How to Criticise Your Creative“)

That’s not me being precious. This process isn’t about finding out what you like. It’s about finding what your clients respond to, finding what sells. Saying “my clients usually respond to a friendlier tone” gives me something to work with. “This is bollocks” doesn’t.

The feedback step is where you and I both leave our egos at the door. This is about your customers, not our preferences.

Step Seven: The Amendments

Egos checked, feedback gathered and ideas matured, it’s time for the final spit and polish. Sometimes it’s a matter of wiping a smudge off a draft’s cheek, other times it’s a substantial reworking. Either way, I’m not happy until you’re happy.

Or, actually, I’m not happy until we’re equally unhappy and an equilibrium has been reached that’ll make your clients happy. Happy enough to start making enquiries. Then it’s all a matter of publishing, paying and signing off.

And that’s that.

Step Eight: The Analysis

Apart from that that very much is not that.

There’s a real benefit to ongoing relationships with a copywriter, and that benefit is all down to the analysis.

You see, if you call me once, I write one email, and you send that email, you’re going to get a fair few enquiries. Make a few sales. Hooray!

If you come back with the results from that email, and we A/B test a few subject lines, and we tweak the tone in a follow-up email, you’ll make even more sales. Big hooray!

And over time, the more we work together, the better I know your clients. The more accurately I can target them. And the better the results we’ll see.

Absolutely massive hooray there.

So there you go. That’s how copywriting works. It’s not all just typing out a few words at all.

If you want me to put that process to work for you, drop me a line. I’ll be happy to help.