Copywriting for the 21st Century

Third, the copywriting budget is meager, leading to a less experienced writer doing the job. As Mark Twain pointed out, it takes more time to write crisp, elegant and well-chosen messages than it does to babble on and on. When you don’t allow enough time or money for copywriting, or you have junior writers with no strong mentors to guide them, that’s what you get.

2. Write Smaller Segments
More now than ever, people scan or skim when they read. They seek meaningful headlines and subheads they can scan over, grab onto the ones they find relevant, and make decisions on how much to “drill down.” A terrific catalog spread tells the whole story of the products seen with the crosshead and subheads only. With some skill and thoughtful writing, you can achieve that.

Your product copy should never be longer than five or six lines before you break to a new paragraph. So the copy is easy to scan, lines should never be wider than 65 characters. Designers often don’t know how to break paragraphs logically, so it’s up to the writers to keep their thoughts concise and paragraphs short.

3. Have Faith in Customers
Studies tell us that when you rewrite and convert your 30-day, money-back guarantees to lifetime guarantees, returns don’t increase — they often decrease! Consider your guarantee the place you tell customers that you trust and appreciate them by giving them the respect they deserve. Nobody wants to do business with someone perceived to be “lawyered-up.”

4. Create Extra Value
Include quality, extra-value content that reflects the products you sell and the lifestyle of the reader. Recipes, historic information, brain teasers, how-to guides, Q-and-As, gift ideas, party ideas, tips. You get the picture.

This may seem like a challenge because it “steals” valuable selling space. But I have yet to produce a catalog where our quality, extra-value copy didn’t add to the bottom line. If nicely written, with focus and a strong reason for being, adding value is the touch of “salesman” needed to move a customer’s mind from consideration to purchase.