Often an overlooked area of content creation, copywriting is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customer. The written word is powerful and more impactful than we give it credit for. Copywriting anchors your visual communication – and when it’s done right, it can complement your brand’s aesthetic like a cheese and wine pairing. Words are seemingly endless – and if you pick and choose the correct combination, you can really make an impact.
Misinterpreted as a quick, simple task, copywriting requires careful thought, planning and research – with a few key variables to keep in mind, of course. The English language has (according to the Meriam-Webster online English Dictionary) a whopping 470,000 entries. That’s almost half a million words at your disposal – each conveying a whole range of different meanings when combined with one another. So, with such an infinite quantity of lexical combinations and opportunities – how can you select the right ones in your copy?
Words are the vehicle of communication, they have the power to persuade, inform and educate. When used properly, they have the power to evoke any emotion under the sun. Copywriting is more creative than people think it is – and there are a few factors accountable for its effectiveness.
Who are you talking to?
Firstly, get to know who you are speaking to. Study your buyer persona and imagine how they’d speak. Words are subjective – and we are all affected by them differently.
In the same way that your brand’s aesthetic is designed to catch the attention of your customers – use the same principle to craft your copy. Copywriting is about getting to know your buyer persona inside out and really digging deep, so you know exactly who you’re selling the brand to.
Imagine how your customer speaks – and which demographic features affect their linguistics. Where they come from will affect local dialects, while education, media and literature consumption will affect a range of vocabulary. Understanding their personal tone of voice is important and studying your buyer persona will narrow down your tone of voice.
Are you advertising a consumable product to young people with a disposable income, or a professional consultancy service to business owners? Younger audiences are more likely to relate to colloquial language or slang, injected with informality and humour. Whereas if you’re speaking to an SME owner you’d write more formally, with flowery words, with less exclamation points, and longer sentences anchored with formal business terminology.
Keep it on-brand
As well as considering your customer, keep your writing true to brand. It’s a good idea to develop some brand tone of voice guidelines as a template for your copy and content – with some direction as to how your different platforms will affect the style of writing. Social media may differ from your web content or packaging copy.
Come up with some semantic fields which your copywriting can fit into. These are the ‘themes’ which you can categorise words into, which can really help convey your message.
A good comparative example of tone of voice is Oatly. Their copy is highly colloquial, informal, and humorous. But it is also bold and perhaps a little controversial – appealing to younger left-wing audiences who are statistically more likely to purchase alternative milks. Their marketing is confident, and their language is conversational, backed with environmentally political statements. The copy is integrated with the graphic style, and the freestyle aesthetic choices reflect the informality of the copy – it looks scribbly and arty. Their packaging copy even labels the nutritional information section as ‘The Boring Bit’.
Compare this to Alpro, whose target audience lies more heavily within the 25-50 age bracket and produces more family-friendly marketing content, which speaks more to the middle-aged generation, and focuses on the health benefits and taste. Their Instagram bio reads
‘Making plant-based deliciousness since the 1980’s. Damn we’re getting old.’
This is drastically different to Oatly’s bolder, sarcastic, and more politically loaded Instagram bio, which reads
‘We exist to make it easy for people to eat better and live healthier lives without recklessly taxing the planet’s resources in the process.’
So, developing a tone of voice can really help develop your brand and helps to shape content portrayed on all platforms. Thesauruses can really help with this – they allow you to swap dull, boring words for more exciting, impactful words that are true to the brand. Impactful, well-thought copy should convey your brand's values and ethos just as much as your aesthetic design choices. Brand tone of voice is like a template on which to base your content creation.
Monzo shared their brand tone of voice publicly, to make themselves as transparent as possible.
Every word adds up to people’s perception of who we are.
