Stop Being Boring And Start Getting Creative With Your Copywriting

Copywriters strive to craft copy that will hook their target audience. It’s not enough to know the basics of copywriting anymore. After all, your company could have its competitors, and you want to be one step ahead of them all the time. To be a notch higher than your competition, you might need to work on creative copywriting.

So, in this article, know what might hinder you from writing more creative copy. Plus, learn how to enhance your creative copywriting skills, even if you’re not a copywriter!

What Makes a Copy Boring?

At some point in many copywriters’ lives is the question, “how to craft a compelling copy”? You want to persuade readers to buy your items or avail your services and not from your competitors. What should you avoid when writing boring copy that will give your competition an upper hand?

1. Writing Only the Features

Product copywriters know not only to stick to the features of a product or service. They find how it benefits the end-user or consumer. If you list only the features of a particular item, you might have people scratching their heads, asking, “so what?”. What’s in it for them?

The solution is simple: always add the benefits. Let’s say you’re selling a blanket. You wouldn’t only say what material it has or the design. What makes the blanket cozier than others? How thick or thin is it? If it’s weighted, how relaxing would it be for the user? Ask yourself questions that your users or customers would ask. Get into their mindset.

2. Sticking to One Voice or Language

Experienced copywriters are flexible. They can write copy for a tech company, for example. Perhaps, at another point in their career, they might write one for a restaurant. For copywriters that write for various industries, they know NOT to write in only one voice or language. Why? They’re catering to different audiences. You don’t want to use tech language for food. And vice versa. That would bore your customers.

3. Overusing the Same Call-to-Action

You see the word “Shop Now” from most brands on digital ads, landing pages, email newsletters, etc. And sometimes, it no longer entices your audience to click on the call-to-action (CTA) button or link. To combat this, you might have to use different call-to-action phrases. You can use phrases such as:

• Discover
• Explore
• Start Free Trial

If you can, try to tailor it to your industry. Or what you’re selling. Hubspot found that if you have a personalized CTA, you’re likely to convert 202% better. In this example by Lyft, instead of Download the App, they wrote “Prepare to Ride” on their email newsletter.

4. Beating Around The Bush

Whether you’re writing a short or long copy, you want to make sure that you always get straight to the point. If you can, cut the filler and observe brevity. Sure, a long copy does convert, too. But, you don’t want to bore readers with irrelevant sentences in between. They might close the tab or skip to another block of text. That might hinder you from doing creative copywriting.

5. Talking About Yourself

One thing you should never forget in copywriting is always talking to your audience. If you talk about yourself, that will backfire. You want people to connect to you or what you’re selling. But don’t connect by talking about you all the time. That will bore your readers, visitors, or potential customers.

To combat this, Neil Patel suggested researching your buyer or customer persona. This way, you can create a copy that will speak to them without talking about YOU. Learn what they want and need.

Five Tips to Enhance Your Creative Copywriting Skills

Even if you’re a beginner or moving towards creative copywriting, you need these five skills to write a more engaging and compelling copy.

1. Use Power Words

Power words spice up your copy. As the name suggests, it will captivate your audience. Think of power words as bringing your copy to life. Plus, it can help trigger some emotions. SmartBlogger categorizes more than 800+ power words into seven categories, which you can see in the photo.

Creative copywriting isn’t complete with power words, and you need to add that to most of your copy. But, of course, don’t overdo it.

Where should you add power words?

Your headline and CTA should have power words. The body of the copy needs it too, but remember to keep it in moderation. Not all sentences would require it.

2. Simplify Your Copy

Simplifying doesn’t mean you should cut down to one to two sentences. One thing to remember is jargon. Many copywriters aren’t big fans of using jargon. 

Martina Mercer shared in Crazy Egg that if your target audience uses a dictionary, you’ve already lost sales. You should use simple wording or phrasing that people would understand on their first read.

As said previously, simple doesn’t mean short. It’s condensing all of your thoughts into simpler sentences so your audience doesn’t lose its focus. 

You can do this by following the PAS formula. PAS stands for Problem, Agitation, Solution. Tons of copywriters follow this formula in guiding them to write copy without having to explain too much.

Another thing to note when writing simple long-form copy is to make it skimmable. To do this, you may have to use headings, line breaks, and full stops. This will help make it easy for your target audience to follow a flow or head straight to a section that’s relevant to their current interest.

Many copywriting experts laud Basecamp for their simplified copy to give their software a try.

3. Learn How to Format

Creative copywriting doesn’t also focus on writing. You have to know where you’ll publish your copy. Would it be on print? Would it be on the web? Know which channel or platform you’ll have the copy posted. From there, you can craft copy based on its layout and structure.

Some simple tips to use in formatting or structure:

• Create line breaks
• Add headings
• Try word repetition
• Use the Inverted pyramid
• Make Lists

4. Get Ahead with the Objections

You can’t please everybody, and not everyone would like your product or service immediately. Many expert copywriters know this, and they all say the same thing: expect you’ll have people objecting to what you might offer. And if you want to combat that, SleekNote suggests adding testimonials to your copy or a solid FAQ page.

Here’s an example of an effective FAQ page from Pretty Little Thing. They categorized sections, so it’s much easier for visitors to view a question relating to their concern. When you view one of their questions, it’s concise and clear.

This will prevent any more resistance, and you might have people clicking Add to Cart or choosing a plan suited to their needs.

5. Test, Test, and Test

If you think you have the right copy, don’t stop there. What you want to do is not settle for what you have. You want to see if the copy you might want to publish would really convert. So, you need to produce another copy that might work somewhere else. 

For example, many brands use A/B testing for ads or emails. This helps them evaluate which copy converts better. Here’s an example you can check out one of Walmart’s Facebook ads. As you can see, they have different texts on each image on the Facebook carousel ad. It may allow them to know which copy performed better.