The Secret Elements of Effective Copy Writing Revealed
By: T.J. Tedesco
For: The Binding Edge
Published: Fall, 2000

In the last issue of the Binding Edge, this column covered the key elements of good graphic design.  While your design and layout choices are certainly important, visual images aren’t everything.  Far from it.  Good content will make or break your ad.  The words you use must generate enough interest to plant the buying hook deep enough so that your reading audience will take action.  Today, we will examine some copywriting secrets that will help your message rise above the clutter. 

The odds are against you.  On average, six exposures are needed before 63% of a message is retained.  And, 63% of a message needs to be retained before people know enough about your proposal to take action.  This means that even if key business influencers read your first communication, it has to generate enough interest so that they’ll continue to read in the future … at least five more times.  Bottom line: Your marketing campaign has to have “legs.”

Guiding Principles

Before putting a single word on paper, think carefully about what it is that you need to communicate.  What is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)?  What words will help you successfully convey it to the marketplace?  In the early 1990s, Harvard University did a study and found that the best USPs in Corporate America were those of Domino’s Pizza and FedEx.  Is your USP as compelling as “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight?”  Or as clear as “Fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or less?”

Lead with benefits:  De-emphasize features.  People read business communications to stay up-to-date on news, technology, products and services that will make their business lives easier.  If they’re not rewarded with easy-to-understand and compelling messages, they’ll stop reading – as they well should.  Regardless of whether you’re writing copy for an advertisement, brochure, website, press release or article, make sure that your main points are clear and easy to understand. 

Be honest and believable: Avoid making pie-in-the-sky promises.  Southwest Airlines is a master at under-promising and over-delivering.  They promise to get you there and that’s it.  This pleasingly simple no-frills promise is easy to keep and makes insignificant extras, like a bag of peanuts, very appreciated.  Compare this to the promise of another major airline, you know, the one with the friendly skies.  I am constantly furious at this company’s never-ending litany of mechanical and staffing problems.  The service levels on Southwest and the “friendly” one probably aren’t all that different, but their promises sure are.  So, I end up being pleasantly surprised by one and disappointed by the other.

When writing promotional materials for your post press company, keep in mind that your customers want more from you than simply renting time on your machines.  What they really want is peace of mind and a good night’s sleep.  De-emphasize machinery and focus on how you meet these needs.  At the end of your piece, your audience should clearly know what’s in it for them.

Write copy that is dripping with useful information.  Even though almost anything you need to know about is available on the Internet 24/7, people still need help navigating our modern day information-glut.  For smart marketers, this spells o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y.  If your communications help reduce informational chaos, you will get closer to winning valuable top of mind positioning. 

Eighth Grade Writing

On average, Americans read somewhere between the sixth- and eighth-grade level.  There is no reason to believe that people outsourcing post press services are significantly different.  Keep your writing style appropriate by keeping in mind the following:

• When writing promotional copy, make sure you choose words that everyone knows.  Desist from using obscure onerous ones.  Pedantic word choices frustrate readers and metamorphose your message into one that is unintelligible.  Alan Greenspan is great as a Fed Chief, but he’d be a lousy copywriter.

• Use a lot of short words.  In general, 70% of your words should be no more than five letters long.  Although consistently violating this guideline doesn’t necessarily induce impossible reading, it annoys readers nonetheless.

• Use short sentences.  On average, your sentences should have twelve or fewer words.  Again, there’s nothing grammatically wrong about writing sentences with as many as thirty-seven words (like this one), but people quickly lose interest in your point, especially if it’s buried somewhere in the middle of a lengthy piece.

• Write in the second person active tense.  This means you shouldn’t be afraid of using the word “you” in your writing.  After all, when you’re the one doing the reading, don’t you want to know what’s in it for you?

• Although you may incur the wrath of your sixth-grade teacher, high-impact writing often benefits from selectively ignoring a few grammar rules here and there.  When you have to make a point.

Go To The Head Of The Class

… with creative use of headlines.  No matter what the $100+ per hour fancy designers say, headers and sub-heads are just as important as great graphics.  There are many different approaches that you can take when trying to come up with effective headlines.  Sometimes you may want to highlight a selling point and at others you may want to tell a story.  Here are some samples of the story approach, as used in other industries:

Shocker: When I told my doctor I was dying, he laughed

Interrupting Idea: In the time it takes you to read this sentence, ten acres of tropical rain forest will have been destroyed.

News Item: Introducing great tasting soup you can make instantly in your microwave.

Preview: Our dreams can give us significant insight into our problems and relationships with others.

The Story: It was 1:00 am. The last departing siren was slowly fading into the night.

Are these ideas relevant to our industry?  How about making a few changes like, “When I told my bindery they were killing me, they laughed?”  Or, “In the time it takes you to read this sentence, we’ll have bound twenty books.”  Even though many of our industry’s promotions are boring, yours needn’t be.

Some well-publicized headlines have gone terribly wrong.  Here are a few that should give you a chuckle:

• Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted

• Reagan Wins On Budget But More Lies Ahead

• Farmer Bill Dies In House

• Stud Tires Out

• Teacher Strikes Idle Kids

• Prostitutes Appeal To Pope

• British Left Waffles On Falkland Islands

The Power Of Words And Even A Letter

The words we use say a lot about us. Dull words get dull reactions.  Action words like Discover; Free, Secret and Now are some of the most powerful communicators in the English language.  Choose your words carefully.  For example, people don’t like to buy things; instead they like to own things.  People don’t like to sign contracts; rather they prefer to OK paperwork. 

Still not convinced that the words you choose are incredibly important?  How about a single letter?  Consider the headline, “Put Music In Your Life.”  It’s OK isn’t it?  What would happen if you added an “s,” which gives you, “Puts Music In Your Life.”  In actual use, the second headline out-pulled the first three to one.  Think about it.  The first forces you to do something while the second does something for you.  The second is more compelling – and the results prove it.  (PS: The difference between winning and wining is just a letter too.)

My company, Grow Sales, Inc., advises clients to try to be repetitive, but avoid redundancy.  If possible, use your company’s name at least twice in the body copy of a standard size advertisement.  This Grow Sales tip has worked well for many years.

Edit.  Edit.  Edit.  When you think you’ve got it as concise as possible, strike a few more words.  Can we do better?  How’s this: Write concisely.  

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Make a solid impression on your current and potential customers by adhering to a few of the copywriting principles that we’ve discussed today.  Successful promotions inform the marketplace about your services and motivate key business influencers to take action.  Identify your USP, choose your words carefully and deliver your message to the marketplace.  Then, make sure you deliver on your promises.

T.J. Tedesco is a “hands-on” marketing, sales, coaching and training consultant to the post press industry. He is the author of Binding, Finishing & Mailing: The Final Word, and Win Top-of-Mind Positioning, both published by GATFPress and available at Amazon.com. T.J. can be reached at (301) 294-9900 or tj@growsales.com.