Mastering Copywriting: Why Basics Matter More Than AI

Lucy the cat guarding a toolbox. Photo by Pete on Flickr

Disclaimer: This article has been tweaked in Claude.AI. While I wrote most of it myself, I did get Claude to run through the article for clarity and SEO optimisation.

Before copywriters, heck, before any writer even thinks about using AI (and this includes tools like Grammarly), they need to have mastered the basics of writing. This is a non-negotiable. If you do not know how to even hold a tool, what gives anyone, especially you, the confidence to utilise AI and not have it utilise you?

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." - Paraphrased Law of the Instrument

This sums up a lot of people’s approaches to writing, especially those looking to make money from copywriting. You’ll find lots of guides about how to write better, why one style works and another doesn’t, and now, how AI will make copywriters obsolete by taking their jobs.

And then you read about how the same people who were gleefully advancing that idea are going to writers and asking them to rewrite the garbage the AI had put out… but wanting to pay at a much lower cost because “the AI has done most of the writing!”

/exhales

If you can afford it, avoid those kinds of clients like the plague. They’re not interested in ensuring their products and services are an actual benefit to anyone, but in earning money as easily as possible. And you’re a product to them.

Instead, learn to master the tools, and then apply your own judgement, reasoning, and flair to it. At the end of the day, we work to sell whatever product it is we have been hired for, whether it’s a tangible product, a service, or even ourselves.

The Skills Needed for Effective Copywriting

The second, most important rule for a copywriter (and yes, this is specific to copywriters) is that your words are not your own. When we write, when we produce, when we create, we put on the persona of our clients, our customers, our company, and NOT OUR OWN.

The rules by which we operate are not the rules we learnt in creative writing, in journalism, in content creation - unless we have been specifically hired to use our specific voices in the advertisements, collaterals, materials, whatever it is the client has been producing to sell, our tone of voice does not matter. And let’s be honest, very few of us are actually hired for our individual voices. Instead, we are hired for our skills with words.

Essential Copywriting Skills To Master

Excellent Command of Chosen Language**

This is the first non-negotiable. You must be familiar with your target language. Not fluent, familiar. Whether it’s English, French, Mandarin, or Tamil, you must be able to read, speak, and write with it. Bonus points if you think in that language. I am technically bilingual - I speak English and another language fluently, with passing comprehension of several others but I would not even attempt to consider writing in those other languages. My command is good enough for communication - it is not good enough for commercialisation.

Yes, that was an obvious wordplay, but that is the starting level of command you’ll need to be able to write in your target language if you’re considering being a copywriter. A marketing copywriter must have good command of their target language because then it enables them to focus on the next skill.

Knowing How to Sell

The ability to sell an idea is not an innate talent; it is an acquired skill. On paper, it is very straightforward - the skill of selling is to convince someone to give you money for a good or service you provide (or your client’s). The art and skill of selling is convincing that customer why you or your client is the best choice, not your competitor’s.

For most digital marketing copywriters, our collaterals are shown to customers who already have the intent to buy, so what’s left is to convince them to do so. The skill you’ll need to pick up is knowing how to appeal to the customer and triggering the action to purchase. A marketing copywriter must be able to understand, target, and overcome customer objections to make that purchase.

Ability to Sort Information

Personal pet peeve of mine, but a marketing copywriter should be able to understand and order information from the most important to the least. Then you need to be able to reorder it based on what will get the customer’s attention. In this day and age, impressions count. At a glance, what do you want your prospective customers to take away? If your customer sees your text Google Display Network ad, what is the information you want them to remember?

How can you test this? Assume your customer will only remember (at most) your brand name and one bit of trivia as they scroll by. What is the key information you absolutely must get into their head?

A competent marketing copywriter must be able to identify, sort, and display information that makes sense to the reader aka customer. Not to the brand.

Why Harp on All This?

Because we start as we mean to go on. Understanding the purpose, objective, and direction of your marketing strategy will enable you, the marketing copywriter, to not only write better copy, but effective ones that speak to the humanity of us all. GenAI, like a hammer, is a tool. But if we do not identify when and how to use that tool effectively, we will fall into the trap of thinking everything can be solved with a hammer, when the truth is, that tool will only make things worse.