Copywriting in digital businesses

Let me tell you a secret: in four years studying communication, not a single lecturer ever talked to me about copywriting, or “copy”, as the discipline is also known.

And that is despite the fact that I obviously had an advertising writing course. Another one on advertising communication too. And, on top of that, one on marketing.

Well, whoever designed the syllabus or its content has probably never run a business.

Otherwise I cannot explain why this concept was left out of those courses, because copywriting is, without a doubt, the discipline that will help you most in a business.

Get that clear from the start.

What copy is

Right, since I do not know how you arrived at this article or how much you know about the subject—as Eugene Schwartz, one of the masters of this art, would say—the first thing is to explain what it consists of.

And I am not going to give you an academic definition—for that you can go to the RAE or Wikipedia—but rather my own understanding of the subject. The one I apply day to day without being a copywriter, which is important for you to know when interpreting my words.

For me, copywriting is mainly about using words to sell.

Written, spoken or voiced words.

To sell products, services or image.

Yours, your business’s or your company’s.

That is copywriting.

And, as I say, it is very useful in business and in life, as Isra Bravo—the person commonly described as the best Spanish-speaking copywriter—would say.

What copy is used for

Besides its main purpose, which I mentioned above—to sell more—we will also use it for other things that, in turn, will help us sell more. Indirectly, of course.

I will explain all that now.

Selling more through copywriting

One thing: do not confuse “writing well” with “writing beautifully”. They can go hand in hand, but not necessarily.

When we talk about copywriting, writing well means writing texts (“copy”) that achieve the intended results, generally getting people to buy something, donate to us or perform an action we want. That is why “direct response” marketing is based mainly on copywriting techniques.

You do not need to “write beautifully” for this. The words do not need to sound like music to our ears, nor do we need to admire the author’s intelligence and precision with language while reading them.

Not at all.

Most of the time, the writing will seem transparent to us. With no obvious feature that makes it stand out. And yet, if the copywriter is good, many of us—if we are the target audience—will at least consider the proposal they have made to us.

That is writing well from a copy perspective.

And it will also bring us certain additional advantages.

Differentiate yourself from the competition

In businesses where differentiation may seem difficult—from law firms to multi-brand ecommerce—copy is an excellent way to stand apart from competitors.

To stop being “a 360 business”, claiming to have staff “with extensive experience”, preparing “personalised quotes” or, my favourite, saying that “our pride is the satisfaction of our customers”.

All of those are empty phrases.

Expressions that say nothing and go in one ear and out the other for the customer.

Good copy will banish them from every company text: website, presentations, sales scripts… and replace them with others that resonate with potential customers, make them remember you and therefore differentiate you from the rest.

Build your brand image

And over time, piece by piece -the website, every email, every social-media post, every ad- the business will build its own brand image.

One that some people will like and others less so. And that is good, because in life it is difficult to appeal to everyone.

Get customers who fit the brand better

What really matters is that you, your brand or your business appeal to a sufficiently large group of customers.

 And that you could not care less what everyone else thinks.

Because the people who align with your ideas—the ones you convey through your communication—will buy more from you. It is that simple.

It is very similar to voting: we vote (if we do) for the political party we agree with most. Just as we hire the professional whose proposal aligns with what we have in mind.

And customers of this kind, who buy from you not only because of price but because of what you communicate and how you communicate it, are also much more likely to leave reviews and speak well of you to people they know.

Which will bring you more sales. And something else.

Reduce friction with customers

Because there is always friction with some customer.

For whatever reason.

Sometimes they will be right, sometimes they will not. But what I always try to do in my businesses is reduce this friction as much as possible.

And I say “possible” because this is not about automatically agreeing with the customer every time.

If they are right, you apologise and fix it.

If they are not, you have to make them see that. And try not to leave the customer unhappy. Or as little unhappy as possible.

And copywriting can help you with that. Let us see how.

Customer-service scripts

Preparing a good script for what to say in the most common disagreement cases with customers is an excellent idea.

Using copywriting techniques for that is even better.

So we will prepare protocols with the solutions that can be offered for the same problem. There are almost always several routes, and letting the customer choose the one that suits them best from a set of options we know in advance and have proposed usually works well.

The customer feels heard and feels they have a choice, which lowers the tension.

Obviously, it is impossible to have every type of incident scripted and protocolised, but we can cover the most common ones.

Think about it.

How to apply it to businesses

Copywriting can really be as broad as you want. It can go as far as defining the product or service being sold and creating the offer, rather than staying only at the “surface” layer of trying to sell something that has already been created.

However, the most common situation is the latter: already having a product or service planned or created and focusing on how to communicate it. On selling it.

In this article I am going to stay at this point because, as I say, it is the most common situation.

Also, given the focus of my website, I am going to concentrate on the digital side of businesses, but it is perfectly applicable to everything offline (advertising, sales arguments, etc.), since copy was actually born for traditional media such as newspapers. Imagine if it were not applicable there.

Types of businesses

A business can sell two things: products or services. And both can be physical or digital. In each case there are common ways of applying copy, but also differences.

How to apply copy when selling services

In general, if you sell services you will have one or more digital products:

• A website.
• A profile in directories such as Google My Business.
• A profile on social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn or Facebook.

In each of them you will have to write the text with a clear objective:

• On the website, getting interested customers to call you or leave their email.
• On Google My Business, getting the customer to choose your business among several similar options.
• On social media, getting your posts to go viral so you gain contacts and authority.

And mastering the techniques for achieving these objectives is the job of a good copywriter.

In addition to digital products, you will have some kind of marketing, for example:

• Google Ads: where you will need to stand out among similar services.
• Social media: which you will use to attract users to your website.
• Email marketing: where you will write to your list with some frequency so they remember you when they need the services you offer.

To create all these pieces you will need to learn copywriting or hire someone to do them.

Finally, and crucially: work on ORM.

ORM is online reputation management, and it is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely fundamental for a business to succeed, especially if it is local or has a physical establishment. The percentage of customers who contact businesses with fewer than 4 stars on Google Maps is ridiculous, so you have to work on it.

How does copy help you here?

In two ways:

1. Encouraging reviews: thinking about what to say and how to say it so your customers rate your services.
2. Replying to reviews, especially negative ones: because countering a customer’s review by giving your version of events and apologising only when necessary helps put that criticism into context. Once again, copy is your friend here.

I hope these examples are helping you understand the enormous importance these roles have in a business.

How to apply copy to product sales

Here, although the content mix changes a little, everything above still applies, but there are also other pieces to deal with depending on the type of product.

Copywriting for selling physical products

In this case we are talking about ecommerce, or online stores.

We could distinguish between ecommerce businesses selling their own brand and multi-brand stores, which offer products from different brands and suppliers.

Without a doubt, copy matters in both scenarios, but it matters more for own-brand businesses because you determine all the brand communication yourself.

In stores selling products from several brands, the companies themselves study their market and define their target audience, communication and recommended pricing, leaving little room for the online store in this respect.

Even so, in both cases there are always pieces where copy can be applied.

Website

The first thing copy will help you do is define your unique value proposition. In other words, why customers should buy from you and not someone else:

• Because you have the widest catalogue?
• Because you offer personalised products they will not find anywhere else?
• Because you offer free shipping?
• Because of convenience?
• Because of price?
• Because of your values and principles as a brand?

This is something you should already have clear before starting any business, but copy will help you convey and communicate it effectively.

Then, in the descriptions of each product -especially if they are own-brand products- you can -and should- apply all your copy knowledge too.

Finally, one aspect you should not neglect on your website is the wording of actions such as encouraging sign-ups to the business newsletter. There is a huge difference between generic text and well-thought-out, well-executed copy.                                                                                      

Marketing

To email marketing, social-media ads and Google Ads, which we discussed earlier, we can now add Google Shopping, which, although part of Google Ads, is not used in service businesses.

In the shopping feed there are some fields where the wording matters: title, main description and highlights.

Finally, we will very likely use promotional landing pages for the campaigns we launch in our business. Here too we will use copy (urgency bias, anchoring…) to improve results.

Customer service

To start with, I would tell you to have three scripts prepared:

• Sales scripts: for example, when a customer tells you they have seen your product cheaper on another website.                                                                              
• Scripts against returns: offering an alternative to try to make the user reconsider.                                                                           
• Scripts for incidents: in the event of delays, stockouts or the wrong product, think about offering several limited options so the user can choose the one that suits them best while minimising the cost to the business.

Copywriting for selling digital products

When we talk about selling digital products, we mainly mean things such as:

• Online courses.
• Memberships.
• Ebooks.
• Other info products.
• SaaS solutions (software as a service), such as Canva, Netflix or Dropbox, can be classified as digital products or digital services depending on the chosen criteria. In any case, I am putting them in this category.

In all these cases, besides the formats we have already discussed, two stand out above all: the sales letter and launch videos or webinars.

The sales letter

It is the URL that fully explains the service you are selling. For example, this is the sales letter for my email marketing course for ecommerce.

As you can see, that page contains all the necessary information about the course:

• What you will find.
• What it will be useful for.
• Who it is aimed at.
• What makes it different from others.
• …

All of it written with the intention of getting you to buy the course (which, by the way, if the topic interests you, you should). There is a lot of copy strategy behind its creation.

Launch videos or webinars

Some people launch through their email list. Others buy advertising.

In both cases you can try to direct traffic to the service’s sales letter.

But, for various reasons, some prefer to send their audience to an earlier stage, where they explain the product itself through recorded or live videos.

Those videos are obviously designed to move you closer to buying the product.

Very popular was the Product Launch Formula by Jeff Walker, which was based on four videos in which, thanks to an exceptional knowledge of his market, he managed to convince even the most sceptical customers.

As we will see next, researching your market is one of the first things a copywriter does when starting a new project.

Some copy techniques

Without going deeply into any of them, I want to mention a few copywriting techniques so you have a clearer idea of what is worked on here and how.

#1. Audience and market research

It is the first thing you have to do.

To sell something you need to know the people who might buy it very, very well, so you can explain why they should.

And you also need to be clear about the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, because this will help you structure your texts and know which points to address and which to leave out.

#2. Storytelling

There is no better way to fix an idea in someone’s mind than telling them a story.

A well-constructed story, consistent (for the most part) with their beliefs.

An entertaining story.

Because very few people like reading sales copy.

But stories… we all like those.

And copywriters know it and use all their power to wrap sales arguments in stories and bring the customer closer to a purchase.

#3. Using biases

If you come from digital business and have heard of CRO, this will probably sound familiar.

From my point of view, copywriting is closely linked to conversion-rate optimisation. Both disciplines are trying to sell more, after all. And they do it through understanding human behaviour.

Let me give you a couple of very common biases.

Scarcity

Making it clear that a good offer is scarce helps people buy, because who in their right mind would want to miss out?

Urgency

We want you to buy. And to do it now. That is why good offers always have a time limit:

• You have until tomorrow to buy this because “I am closing the cart”.
• Or “the price goes up on Friday”.
• Or tonight “you lose this powerful bonus”.

You see how it works, right?

Demonstration

Showing real success stories or positive customer reviews is an incentive to buy. It is a kind of guarantee that what is being sold is worthwhile.

I have shown you three, but there are many more biases.

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman was the first to discover them and demonstrate that we were much less rational than we thought.

Today, more than two hundred have been identified. All within reach of good copywriters (and CRO experts).

Best copywriters

And that is who we are going to talk about.

Because if you are discovering the subject and like it, I am going to leave you a list of several people you can follow.

Best copywriters in history

There are quite a few. Here is my selection, although some people who could perfectly well be on this list have been left out:

• Eugene Schwartz: who developed the five levels of consumer awareness in relation to your product. And my favourite.
• David Ogilvy: the “Father of Advertising”.
• Claude Hopkins: known for introducing the concept of advertising based on testing and measurable results.
• Gary Halbert.
• Joseph Sugarman.
• Dan Kennedy.

Best Spanish copywriters

The most famous is undoubtedly Isra Bravo. He is the person who has done the most to expand copywriting in Spanish-speaking markets, but we could add:

• Rafa Casas.
• Josely Medina.
• Ines Díaz.
• Javi Vicente.
• Beatriz Torres.
• Arturo García.
• Javi Pastor.

And several more I am leaving out, but these are my favourites.

Conclusions and how to learn copywriting

I hope I have shown you the advantages of knowing the fundamentals of copy for your business.

Knowing how to sell is probably the best thing you can learn, whatever you do.

Right, if these brief ideas in the article have made you realise you like this copywriting thing, I have very good news for you.

Because you can read all the books by the classics, of course. But there is a faster way to learn about the subject. Join here:

Círculo Copy, the best Spanish-language copywriting membership.

The suffix I have added is not there for free.

It is not, because I know what I am talking about: I was a customer of the membership for quite a while. Specifically, from when they opened until a few days ago, when they offered me the chance to become a partner.

Obviously I could not say no.

Because I had already checked what you yourself will be able to check if you join:

• You have all the content you need on classic copywriting, selected so you can keep the best from each master.
• As well as the fundamental techniques you need to master.
• All the classes are practical and focused on helping you with AI, because it is obvious that everything is heading that way.
• The content is useful whether you are (or want to be) a copywriter or you want to use copy for your business, which is why I joined.
• Besides copy, there will be digital-business lessons in which I will cover aspects closely related to your business: how to create your website, how to see the performance of your pieces or which marketing channels you should use in your case.
• Finally, and most valuable of all: its community. The people inside are incredible, with different levels of copywriting knowledge but one thing in common: a desire to take on the world and improve. And, of course, to help others. I have been in quite a few memberships, but none like this one, I genuinely mean it.

In short, if you have any kind of business (there are owners and professionals from very different fields inside), take a look, because I think it will be worth your while.