TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is a copy strategy?

A copy strategy explains how you plan to write persuasive copy for a particular audience. The best marketing strategies are based on loads of customer research (we’ll get to that later) and communicate what makes either your brand or your product unique and highly desirable.

Marketing agencies will often sometimes create formal copy strategies for their clients. But your copywriting plan might simply be a collection of notes in a Google doc. It really depends on what you’re aiming to accomplish.

Focus on one primary goal

It’s easy to think too broad when crafting a strategy like this. Instead, focus on the one primarily goal you want to achieve with your copywriting or marketing campaign. It might be to:

Or something else entirely.

Either way, you’ll want to give a single ‘job’ to each of your campaigns. For example: you shouldn’t expect your landing page to convert free SaaS trials into paid customers — that ‘job’ will depend largely on your onboarding sequence and guided in-app tours. So ‘generating more paying subscribers’ wouldn’t be the right goal for a free trial landing page. Capisce?

(by the way: if you already have website copy written and aren't feeling so great about your copy strategy, you can always grab a quick website copy audit to get an expert opinion. Just sayin') 

It’s about connection NOT manipulation

Sure, a skilled direct response copywriter can supercharge your sales with inflated promises, fake urgency and ugly emotional messaging that makes readers feel like trash. To hell with that.

Not only is that style of copy unethical, but it’s also dangerous. In an age where reviews can make or break products and word-of-mouth spreads faster than the Omnicon variant, a bad sale is WORSE than no sale at all.

And yet there are still ‘bros’ out there with spam-tacular advertising like this:

*cringes*

This crap leaves a sour taste in the mouth of a lot of folks. And folks, as you know, tend to talk.

Your goal isn’t to ‘sell’ your audience. Instead, your goal is to connect with the people who are most likely to love your product, solution or service.

In other words, you want to start a relationship with your best-fit customers. These are the people who:

But first, you need to figure out who your best-fit customers really are.

And then determine what they really want.

That's because the best copywriting and messaging taps into the emotions that motivate your best prospects to act (FYI: a messaging strategist can help with this stuff). 

So you need to understand the psychology of your specific customers -- their deepest desires, their most dreaded fears. Without that insight, you're really just taking a guess on what messages will resonate with them. And you'll probably end up with generic, BS-filled content that people just ignore.

I know, I know — research is hard.

And it can be boring too (but I’m a weird guy, so I enjoy it). Now, you could get all academic and sift through a 60-page marketing research report like this one. Or you can focus on using these four research methods (in my eight years of copywriting experience, they’re often all you need).

a) Competitor Content Analysis

First, size up your competitors' copy and design so you understand what type of messaging your audience has seen already.

Study your competitors' copy to:

Document what you discover and keep that research handle so you can craft copy that stands out.

b) Customer review mining

Hidden within your customer reviews (on places like GetApp or Capterra) is a smorgasbord of words and phrases that can be ‘swiped’ and then used to write headlines, subject lines or crossheads that resonate with your target audience.

Watch out for things like:

c) Surveys & website polls

Surveys can be a good way to gather a lot of customer data quickly, but they can also cause a lot of problems. Why?

Because surveys are terrible at providing CONTEXT (don't let a certain monkey convince you otherwise)

That's why I always recommend pairing surveys with customer interviews. 

d) Customer interviews

These are the BEST way to get in-depth insights about your customers. Do these last to get more context about what's motivating your audience.

I get that all this stuff can feel overwhelming. So I put together a massive (and 100% free!) customer research guide to help you out.