12 Copywriting Tips To Keep Your Audience Engaged

Copywriting is one of the most crucial elements of marketing. The best copy tends to be original, memorable, and effective. It’s often the difference that separates the great brands from the merely average.

Copywriters want their audience to feel something visceral and respond to their brand in a positive way.  But, how do you go about it? How do you start writing copy that can keep your audience engaged?

In this article, we’re sharing the insights we’ve gathered after a decade of writing impactful web copies for businesses and brands. By the time you reach the end of this article, you’d have learned how to create compelling copies that your audience and search engine can’t get enough of.

If you are new to copywriting, you need to keep the following copywriting tips and practices in mind before you start. However, if you are pressed for time or would like a professional to undertake this task, you can also reach out to us and benefit from our expert web copywriting services.

Tip 1: Learn About Your Target Audience 

The best way to create a compelling web copy is to know who you’re writing for. Defining your buyer persona is critical to your content creation strategy as it is critical for product development.

As a business, you want to create a website focused on your users which means you absolutely must create your buyer persona. This should be designed with an understanding of your users’ lifestyles, preferences, and needs. Creating content centered around your buyers allows you to speak to the right people in the manner they want you to, and it has multiple benefits:

• It is a form of inbound marketing that will attract your customers by creating valuable content tailored specifically for them.
• A research-backed representation of your consumers will help you decide the order in which you would want to present information on your website.
• It will help you set the tone for all copies across the website, including the home page, about page, products/services page, blogs page, and so on.

Tip 2: Remember, It’s Not Really About You

Back in the day, advertisers used to clobber their prospective customers with a bucket load of information, telling them about the features of their latest product or service. But, in reality, you’re never selling features; you’re selling benefits.  It’s never about the product; it’s about what it can do for your customer.

In short: it’s not about you, it’s about your audience.

So, keeping that in mind, here are a few useful tips:

• Talk more about them than yourself.
• A conversational tone using “you” and “we” will help the audience relate to you.
• A simple change of using the word “you” makes the reader feel that you have their best interest at heart.
• A more personal, conversational writing makes the reader feel special, connected, and included.
• Your web copy should be relatable to the readers’ experiences.
• It should appeal to their emotions.

Tip 3: Use Great Visuals

What is the first thing you notice when you land on a website? The visuals, of course, but visuals alone won’t help you retain customers. You need to combine good visuals with good copy. Even if your copy includes sufficient headings and bulleted lists, it may still appear like a dense brick of words. Adding relevant imagery to your content will give your potential customers a break from reading and make your web copy easier to understand.

When you look at some of the websites of businesses like Lyft, you’ll notice their web copy consists of relevant and attractive images with web copies that describe precisely what they offer.

You must put forward your business objectives using good web copy and good visuals. This way, the reader will know what the website and business are all about. The website’s landing page should keep the business interest at the center of attention.

As the world has advanced over the years, so has Google. It doesn’t rank websites according to the number of clicks on your website, but rather on the number of repeat visits, the amount of time a reader spends on it, and the number of conversions.

If you want your reader to take a desired action or be the center of their attention, you have to deliver relevant content through appealing visuals and selling body copies. 

The micro-interactions, color grading, and presentation of your copy all add to the experience of using a website. Good fonts and white spaces make reading easier, and attractive CTA (Call To Action) buttons can encourage actions.

Alternatively, you can also spruce up your web copy with high-quality stock photos, intriguing screenshots, attractive graphics, interactive charts, interesting videos, and much more.

Your website is an important business tool representing you to the entire world. It is important that you communicate the exact message about your business and who it is for.

Tip 4: Have a Distinctive Personality 

In addition to the above, creating a personality in tune with your brand message is also essential. For example, if your business caters to the younger generation and college kids, create a copy in their language.

• This helps your audience resonate with you and is a key element for creating personality.
• People like making connections; the more your users feel that you are on their side, the more willing they are to invest in your business.
• Staying up-to-date with topics in your industry allows readers to build trust and look forward to your articles.
• This will also help boost your SEO.
• Infusing a bit of your personality makes your writing memorable for your readers.

Tip 5: Create A Positive Tone For Your Brand 

Write motivational and encouraging copies for your customers. Create a positive solution-oriented tone in your web copies, and avoid using negative stuff that might discourage a customer from learning more about your business. Creating a positive tone allows users to trust your brand, which helps in a CTA. Let’s take a look at an example:

Tip 6: Write for Scanners 

A study conducted by Chris Cillizza highlighted that around 60% of Americans only read headlines and don’t even bother getting into details and reading articles.

So, if you think your website users will be reading all the web copies on your web page, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

With websites, your first impression is literally the last impression, which is why your homepage especially needs to be great. This means that most online users only scan the copy rather than reading each and every word. Here is how you can create more scannable content:

• Create headlines that capture the attention of your visitors
• Get straight to the point.
• Avoid FLUFF
• Use headings and subheadings
• Use bullet points
• Write shorter sentences
• White space organizes your text and makes it more scannable
• Single-point paragraphs make it easy to pick out takeaways.
• Use images to emphasize your point.

Tip 7: Speak Your Audience’s Language

You might be an industry expert but you cannot be certain that every member of your audience is. They may not be familiar with a lot of industry jargon and complex words and that shouldn’t deter them from understanding your message. It is important to balance out using industry-specific terms with being comprehensive to your readers.

Keep your copy user-friendly and accessible by getting rid of unfamiliar words or jargon. Instead of engaging the readers, hard-to-understand verbiage can make them feel alienated. It may even prompt them to move away from your website.

Remember, you can only build meaningful relations with your customers if you speak their language. You can always use editors like Hemmingway and Grammarly to catch overly complicated words and sentences and provide alternate word suggestions.

Tip 8: Use The Right Keywords 

SEO plays a huge role in any type of web content, but that doesn’t mean you write only for the sake of SEO. Especially because search engines have become smarter and know when you have over-saturated your content with keywords hence, doing this won’t bring your site ratings up on Google search.

It is always better to keep it natural and use organically relevant keywords in headings, subheadings, and body copy.

This is where you should spend some time investigating what your customers want, what they search for, and their association with you. This will help you create content that is SEO and user-friendly.

For starters, it is a good practice to add your primary keyword to the main headline or page header. It should also appear in the first and last paragraphs of your copy. Next, you can integrate your secondary keywords into your subheadings and body content. Just make sure it all sounds natural and doesn’t disrupt the flow of your piece. According to experts, using a keyword two to three times is usually enough.

Tip 9: Include Facts, Not Fluff 

Enhance your credibility by including quotes, statistical data, and original content in your web copy. The usage of statistical data and facts is so persuasive because it reinforces the points you make in your content.

Tip 10: Add Backlinks To Your Content

It’s a lot more convenient for users to find important links and navigate to relevant pages by clicking on links within one page or web-copy instead of constantly going back to the navigation panel. You can make your website and web-copy user-friendly and easier to navigate by adding internal and external backlinks within your content.

Google also rewards well-written web copies that have quality backlinks. By quality, we mean links of relevant, authentic, and useful information that will save user browsing time. This also boosts your business as users will learn more about your products and increase the average user’s session time on your website.

Even external links that might seem counterproductive since they navigate users away from your website are also important to create your authority and recognition as an industry expert. Not only users get the feeling that you are committed to providing them with the most sound information, it can also help you get link equity.

Tip 11: Make It Mobile-Friendly 

No matter how appealing your web copy is and how attractive your web layout is, if the web copy doesn’t fit your mobile screen, all the hard work is pretty much a waste.

More and more people have started accessing websites through their mobiles; therefore, it is important that you make your copy mobile-friendly. Here is how to do it:

• Change the font size to fit mobile screens.
• Write shorter sentences.
• Use short descriptions and the “read more” option
• Divide content into chunks by creating white space and color grading
• Divide your copy into smaller, easier to read paragraphs.

Tip 12: Add A Compelling CTA 

Once you are ready with a good web copy, it’s time to start working on your Call to Action.

The best way to create a compelling CTA is by using verbs. Always use verbs as the first word of your CTA. It is important that your CTA is clear and concise and says exactly what you want your reader to do.

Here are a few examples of good CTAs: 

• Get Started
• Order Now
• Get a Quote
• Subscribe
• Request a Consultation
• Download Now

Key Takeaways

If you want a web copy that converts, you need to adopt a friendlier, conversational tone and wave goodbye to industry jargon.  Simple sentences and short paragraphs will help your web copy stand out from the rest. Combined with catchy headlines and appealing visuals, it ensures your message is loud and clear.

Remember, there are millions of websites competing for attention from your target audience. Therefore, create a web copy that stands out, relates with your readers, and eventually retains them. If you require any help coming up with the best web copy possible, visit our web copywriting service page to get the best-in-class copywriting services.