How to write copy?

Did you know that copywriting is a structured creative process? Or at least it should be if you want to succeed.

Wait, why would you even need a process? Aren’t you a creative professional who just sits and writes? Like a true artist? Well, no.

Writing? Isn’t it simply about inspiration?

Copywriting is different to writing poetry or novels. It has a very clear goal: to make people do something, usually buy your product or service. Framing the creative process helps you keep it clean and simple. As much as it’s possible. It makes creation more predictable, in a good way.

I know this idea of creators simply waiting for ideas and inspirations to come from heaven or anywhere else so that they can finally start writing, painting, designing… The problem is that real creativity doesn’t work that way.

You don’t need to keep waiting for inspiration or a muse to come and enlighten you. In fact, inspiration comes to people at work. Sometimes it comes unwanted in the least desirable moment. Yet, for people who work in creative industries, who earn their daily bread by creating stuff, it isn’t enough. We need something more, and one of the best things a creative can do is to organize the creation process in some way.

Now, let me show you how I do it.

Content Simon Copywriting Process

The copywriting creation process

Although it may differ regarding the peculiar needs of your business, my process will roughly look as follows. It consists of 6 elements, but some of them will appear more than once.

Brief

If my project management education and experience taught me anything, it’s the value of analysis and preparation.

Everything starts with you, the customer. We need to talk about your needs, your business, the strategy, etc. I wrote an article about marketing briefs if you want to learn more. For now, let’s just agree that I need to know what kind of text you need, what is its purpose, who is the audience, and how you want to reach them.

As soon as we agree on the scope of our cooperation, I can move on to the next step.

Research

Usually, I start with desk research. With some information from our interview and the brief, I dig deeper. My goal here is to learn as much as I can about your business, clients, competitors, etc.

Questioning you and your employees is another great way to source information for copywriting.

Sometimes I’ll also contact my fellow experts. People who can help me look at your business from a different perspective or better understand what your clients might need.

What’s the point of all that? Why so many questions, so much learning, and analysing? Without them, your communication will be blatantly superficial. And without certain depth, you’re not going to convince people to become your clients, let alone stick to you.

Outline

I design every text before I write it. To serve a certain purpose it usually has to contain particular elements. An article like this has a different structure to a social media post or a video advertisement script. Some elements must appear in any type of copy, while others work only in some situations.

The outline also keeps me on track and reminds me that it’s not about my free-association expression writing but about you and your business. Copywriting is a very utilitarian type of writing.

Writing

Writing anything starts with a dirty, clumsy draft that doesn’t resemble the final version you receive. That’s just the way it is. Usually, something you enjoy reading was born in pain. More often than not, writing isn’t a piece of cake. Even more, writing something easy and fun to read and, what’s more important, something that works, is hard as hell. Hence, all this process. To make it go, even when it’s difficult.

Editing

Editing is actually a part of writing, but for this article, I decided to show it as yet another step to make it clearer.

I write and edit. Write and correct. Back and forth. How long? That’s the trickiest question of them all. The thing is that at some point I don’t know if this new version is better than the previous one without testing it in a real environment. And that’s only possible when you accept to do so. By the way, testing the copy is yet another story worth writing about, and I’ll do it one day.

Feedback & Adjustments

Once I decide the text is good enough or cannot get better in a reasonable timeframe, I send it to you. And I wait.

If you’re like most of my clients, you will suggest some adjustments to make the text fit in your style.

Normally I provide two rounds of adjustments priced in, to make sure everyone is satisfied.

Acceptance & Invoice

Once you receive all the pieces, and accept the final version, I’m happy to issue an invoice and offer you further copywriting services.

In the future, you might want to adjust the copy to the new circumstances, create copy for a new product or project, or broaden your content marketing base. Whatever it is, I’m here to write anything your business needs to grow.