Types of Copywriting every newbie must know about
Copywriting is textual marketing and is one of the most important factors to bring sales. Copywriting jobs are one of the highest-paid jobs in the world today and copywriting courses are being sold worldwide. It is a skill that is always in demand; by 2026, demand will grow by more than 7%.
What is copywriting?
Copywriting is a strategic and persuasive type of writing that urges action. Today is the era of the internet and we saw numerous ads on our smartphones. Either it is social media or email. Someone always keeps on chasing us to sell us their products, services, books, or whatnot. Multiple forums and marketing techniques have shortened our attention span and made the job of capturing our attention difficult for copywriters. If the first sentence failed to catch our attention quickly, we quit reading and this is the biggest challenge for marketers and copywriters.
By then, you must have understood the concept and definition of copywriting.
But this is not it.
There is a lot, a lot more in this.
Types of copywriting.
We can’t confine the idea of copywriting to some types but there are nine most used and in-demand types in the world of copywriting and almost 99% of the marketers and business owners do need one of these types of copy.
- Website Copywriting
- Social Media Copywriting
- E-mail Copywriting
- Direct Response Copywriting
- Seo Copywriting
- B2B copywriting
- B2C copywriting
- Product Copywriting
Website Copywriting
Websites are the very first and most important step of any online venture whether it is e-commerce, service providing, online courses, or anything else. Every start-up start with designing a website for its idea and the website is not just a layout or design and spoke code on google. It needs textual content to let the reader know what the business is about.
It is not only your introduction but your brand voice. The authoritative website content attracts the high-quality visitor and that is what every business need in order to generate some revenue.
The website consists of multiple pages, like the home page for the introduction of the business, and the about page to introduce the team, your mission, and vision. Services page explaining what your company can do for others and why they should contact you. It is the most important page of the website and also works as a landing page.
It consists of as much detail as possible to satisfy the readers to contact you for their needs. If you are selling any product, the shop page, consisting all your product images, descriptions, rates, shipping process, FAQs, and guarantees. Similarly, if you are a course provider the pages will be different.
You can be a food venture or an author. An academy or club. Everything you should know about websites can not be summarized in a paragraph but it is enough to give you a pretty good idea of what a website is, and what type of content it needs.
Different types of tones can be used in a different types of website copywriting. It can be conversational or formal. It can be passionate or luxurious. This is called brand tone or Brand voice and a copywriter must be aware of the brand tone before starting the copy for any project.
Social Media Copy
Social media is a collective name of many forums like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and a lot others. The difference between social media copywriting and website copywriting is that social media copy is precise, comparatively precious, chunky, clicky, and full of passion.
Social media is the platform where we find immediate users, buyers, customers, clients, or whatnot. It enables businesses to directly interact with their customers and help the customers directly reach the online stores to search for what they need.
But at the same time, social media is one of the most distracting forums as it contains false information, fun videos, a bunch of friends, and images, and according to research, the attention span on social media is not more than 2.5 seconds. It makes the job of social media copywriters tougher than we can imagine. They have to capture you in almost no time in order to introduce their business so there are some specific rules for writing an effective social media copy.
E-mail Copywriting
E-mail is the least used and most sophisticated form of copywriting because it doesn’t mean to target everyone. It is specifically written for the audience of a specific type who actually are willing to read your copy. They provide their e-mail address on your website and subscribe to read more about your business.
It provides the businesses with the opportunity to target the hot audience who is willing to be the target by showing their address. So, the tone and style of e-mail copy are totally different and it needs an experienced copywriter to write an effective e-mail.
Some newbies use false click baits in the title of e-mail to grab the attention. It might be useful but in the short term. The reader opens your e-mail and after realizing the contradiction in the title and body content of the e-mail, he either unsubscribes or starts disliking your brand. No one wants to be cheated. So, writing an e-mail copy is serious stuff.
Different tones can be used in different types of e-mails. It can be story-telling or giving an irresistible offer. The more you engage your reader with you on a personalized level, the more they are meant to act upon what you want them to act.
Direct Response Copywriting
I am so excited to write about this style actually as it is called the most delicate type of copy and used in sales letters and landing pages. It is a type of copy where you directly pitch the reader to act. No website content that provides a bunch of information, no social media copy that is meant for a consistent presence on the internet and engagement with users, no e-mail copy where you write stories to engage the readers and they may act or may not. This is the direct response copy where you actually confront the reader to act.
You clearly told them to buy the product, subscribe to the newsletter, book your service, or whatever you want.
Being direct is kind of tricky and always comes with the risk of backfiring. Here either you can get some revenue or can lose the customer. There always was, is, and will be a hot debate on how to write an effective direct response copy or the rules we should follow while writing a direct response copy. But the truth is, none can guarantee that it will work 100%.
It is the most result oriented and this is the type of copy that actually generates revenue. Every major enterprise, brand, and company prefer this style more than anything because they have no time to do experiences with other types. Yes, they do email marketing too but this type of copy is most popular among marketers.
What risks direct response copywriting comes with is another huge topic to cover but I believe you got a pretty good idea of DR copywriting.
SEO Copywriting.
Search engines are complicated to get ranking and SEO specialists are studying and examining the algorithm all time to get the best out of their SEO practices. They do experience and compare them to conclude some actionable results.
SEO copywriting is a type of copy that is written according to the SEO rules and helps in ranking in search engines because good ranking comes with organic traffic and organic traffic leads to a substantial decrease in the marketing budget.
Seo copywriting does not guarantee any kind of results itself or directly. It is meant to bring a more organic audience and some of the audience may or may not act. So, it is indirectly related to action.
Why SEO copywriting can’t be ignored is a widely asked question if it doesn’t guarantee results. But no long-term business can do the stupidity to ignore SEO because usually, the organic audience is the hot audience, they approach you while searching for something that they need and you have it.
So, businesses use Seo copywriting to let the buyer find them on the internet and then DR copywriting to urge them to act. Cool, ain’t it?
B2B copywriting
B2B copywriting is different from all other types of copywriting. All types are directed from businesses to their targetted retailer clients in one way or another. But B2B copy is written by one business to another business.
This is written by manufacturers to wholesalers ( As an example ). Giant companies do not interact with one user directly so they do not target them. They need another business to sell their stuff on the retail level.
Ali baba, the world’s biggest wholesale website is a type of B2B dealings and its copy is specifically designed for another business.
Such copy needs no typical attention-grabbing techniques or chunky funky lines to capture the interest because the target audience of such copywriting type is highly picked, serious in their market research, and highly professional. They need serious and real details instead of the tricks used in other copy types.
This is why B2B copywriting is totally different from all other types.
B2B tone is highly formal and professional. Because with corporate sectors and giant enterprises, storytelling tone is considered a kind of time waste, conversational tone as mature and so on. They only prefer to deal with a company that is highly professional in their tone and dealings because most of their deals are long-term deals.
B2B copy can be used on websites, sales letters, and on product pages.
But they can use any medium to approach their targets.
B2C copywriting
All types of copywriting except B2B is B2C copywriting which is written by businesses directly to retail clients. B2C is not actually a specific type but a category that includes all the sub-categories of copywriting that directly target retail clients.
It includes all the businesses, brands, products, services, courses, and programs that target an individual.
Their tone varies according to different requirements including geography or the venture type.
Product Copywriting
Product copywriting mainly is the landing page copy that consists of the description, Faq, CTA, and details about the product. If the product is any service then details change as per the requirements. This copywriting style is mostly used in E-commerce. It can be any platform Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, or WordPress. Product copywriters must learn the rules of writing an effective product description.
Product copywriting must be done in a passionate and luxurious tone to high rate the product. It mainly has two rules, preciseness and honesty.
If you do not write a precise copy the reader will be distracted by details and it can affect sales. Honesty in writing the benefits of your product is beneficial in the long run for businesses and is the only ethical way to write.
Overclaiming and delivering less can push you out of the queue before you even realize it. If your product has any kind of side effects, do mention that in your description and do not cheat the reader.
There are a lot of other rules too but these two must be followed while writing a product copy.
There is a lot of coverage about tones, research methods, copy problems and solutions, and classic and modern gurus of copywriting but you have to know that it is science as well as arts. It is a lifestyle that has to be adopted. Newbies always confuse content writing with copywriting but if you have read this blog, you are far away from that stage.
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