I was young so I didn’t really know any better. It was my first full-service advertising agency gig and I was trying to fit in. When writing copy for the variety of clients the agency serviced, I’d been mentally putting myself in the customers’ shoes in order to appeal to their needs and wants. That just made sense to me. That’s when I found a note in my box.
It was from the President of the agency and it said something like, “You’re doing a great job, but you need to pay more attention to our style. Your writing varies too much. It will come over time. Keep up the good work.”
Huh? Pay more attention to our style? I was confused. Was that why companies hired agencies? Because they liked their style and wanted their advertisements to look like all the other ads the agency produced? Apparently so. Coming from a previous job in the advertising department of a regional chain of ladies clothing stores, I didn’t know any better.
It wasn’t until I got away from that agency that I discovered I was right and the President was dead wrong.
Listen carefully. It’s not about your style… it’s about the customer.
You can’t write for buyers of women’s shoes the same way you write to someone shopping for a new mattress or a patient suffering from E.D. OK, I take that back. You can write to them all the same way, but the copy will fail.
One of the best traits a copywriter can have is to be curious about why people do what they do. If you can key in on the “why” then write to match the emotion and motivation behind it, you’ll see enormous improvements in the response.
Read Karon’s copywriting blog at https://www.marketingwords.com/blog.