My beginnings as a copywriter

A salute to the beautiful community of Hive.Blog. I hope that you are having a great Christmas surrounded by your loved ones and all those things that make you happy. In this article I will talk about my experiences in my first week of practicing copywriting, telling you about the details and the lessons I learned in the way, hoping to encourage you to follow this beautiful discipline. Let's begin:

First, the fundamentals

The first thing I did when I said to myself that I was going to learn copywriting was to look at the fundamentals, for which I looked at course videos online. From the first I watched I understood what copywriting really meant, which is just any type of text made with the intent to get a person to take action. Previously this concept was known as text with the intention to get a person to buy something. However, with the birth of sales funnels and strategies there appeared offers for free content which was the beginning for a chain of value, for which It was changed to "take action"

Aside from this I learned that copywriting is not only limited to writing emails or headlines, as there can be a lot of areas for which a copywriter services might be required, such as any publicitary campaign. In this field, potential clients weren't called like that, preferring to use the name of prospects and that to verify If a particular piece of copy is effective, we have to verify is this can convert a prospect to a real client.

There are also different types of prospects you will find when trying to promote a business with copy. If we take a look at the familiarity of the person with the business, we can divide them in warm leads and cold leads, where cold leads are those people that don't really have too much knowledge about the market in which you compete, reason for why they might need more nurturing than a warm lead, which is someone who already knows what his/her needs are and what he/she is seeking, for which that particular person might be more open to communication and making a deal

If we delve further in the field of email copywriting, we have two types of individuals: Those called quick readers and slow readers. Quick readers are those who usually just read the subject of your email and maybe one or two lines and then click out If they are not interested, reason for why you need to have a great subject line and a compelling first few lines to your copy. Slow Readers are the opposite of quick readers, people who like to take their time to read what you are offering with your email and consider the offer. The main purpose of writing copy in this case is to get quick readers to become slow readers via great writing.

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Structure of Copywriting Emails and my experience practicing

The first type of copywriting I'm practicing is Email Copywriting, writing at least 1-2 emails in google docs, taking into account first two important concepts, that of a customer avatar and that of a Central Selling Idea. The first one (Customer Avatar) is where you define what your target client will be, responding to a series of questions in the greatest amount of detail you can, visualizing what your prospect's age is, at what he/she works, If he/she has kids, what his/her interest are and where he/she hangs out online, all so you can recognize who the email will be written for and you can suit your offer to the needs of that person.

A Central Selling Idea is another great tool you can use to figure out what your specific offer will be, mostly guided by If-then statements. For example, If you are trying to offer writing services for your client you might say "If you buy my services I will write 5000 words for any application you want". in this way you will not only know who you are making the offer to, though also what's the particular offer.

Once I write these at the beginning of my copy, I write the headline/subject line and the body of my email. A headline is basically the title of your copy, in this case the subject line of my email. This should be attractive enough to get the prospect to click. That's why you have to identify what the pain points of the customers are. These pain points are needs or things that are causing pain to your client, It being for example debt, not having enough knowledge to pay their taxes or not being able to protect their password.

Once you have these in mind, you can begin to write a good headline by just talking about them. Referring to the previous example, you can write in the subject line: "Pay your debt in less than 3 months", "Don't worry about filling your tax form anymore" or "Protect your password from hacker attacks". You can also make these more interesting by asking questions such as: "Does your debt take hours of your sleep?", "Is filling tax forms too hard for you?" or "Is your password at risk of attacks?"

Then It's time to write your pitch/hook, thing which will create even more interest in the reader that clicked due to the subject line, you can keep asking furher questions related to the person's pain points or talk to them in terms of statistics and facts such as: "29% of people in South-America suffer form mosquito related diseases every year". You can even attract them further with stories, which will make them emotionally invested with the product. The main objective of a pitch/hook is to get the reader to become more interested in what you are offering before you offer It to them.

When the Unique Selling Proposition comes, you should have a pitch/hook that is good enough to keep the customer engaged reading and that can transition smoothly in what your real offer is. For a good unique selling proposition you should talk in terms of what It can do for your clients and not being arrogant when talking of what It can do. To achieve this, you should talk about the product in terms of features and benefits, the first being those things that It can do and the latter the benefits that your client will get from that. You can even use real testimonials about the product to get the trust of your potential clients.

Once you are done with all this, you should put your call to action statement, which will be based in your Central Selling Idea, telling the prospect to go to a particular link or do a particular action to get the product. This should be as simple and easy as can be, not confusing the client to the point of inaction.

Then, when you finish, It is time to say goodbye to your prospect and close the email with the name of the business or individual.

This is the particular framework I followed when practicing my copywriting emails, which I hope can be of use to you, encouraging you to put in practice what you learn and teach It, as It can be a powerful way to acquire new knowledge. As always, I thank you for your support and good luck!