Copywriting has always been about motivating people into
either believing in something, or buying something, or both.
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Well, for starters, we copywriters have an extraordinary challenge laid against our words. In these scary financial times in the United States, (and spreading around the globe) any copy that we write has to not only sell products and services, but we have to craft words in a way that will encourage the buying public to withdraw from their financially conservative frame of mind; as it is well known that when there's trouble on the money scene, people instinctively become acutely aware of every cent in their pocket. This is only natural. What isn't natural is the oxymoron: When sales are in decline, that is the precise time for businesses to ramp up their marketing and advertising efforts. Thus, when good money is spent on advertising, it had darned well better pay off. In hard times - especially today with gasoline prices skyrocketing to unheard of heights and the home mortgage default rate accelerating just as fast - all strategic marketing and advertising programs must be planned and executed with critical precision, wasting no effort. The days of ill-conceived marketing strategy, and capricious advertising campaigns are fast coming to a close. The money just isn't there anymore for businesses to play promotional games. Add to the state of present advertising affairs that the entire delivery of a sales message is in a rapid state of change. Stationary ads placed in magazine and newsprint at least had a fighting chance of being read due to the fact that the reader of these media have to physically hold, turn pages and linearly read from left-to-right and down the printed page. With print media, time is on the side of the advertiser. The longer a reader spends on a printed page, the better the chances the various ads would at least get noticed and acted on. Now, things are different. Increasing numbers of the buying public are instinctively resorting to doing their shopping research on the Internet. Need a book? People jump right onto Amazon.com and quickly find what they're looking for. And, usually at a discount price - a price that more than compensates the shopper vs. having to drive to a local bookstore, hoping to find THE book, while in the process negating any savings by using increasingly higher priced gas. Internet shopping not only saves gasoline, but it saves the shopper huge amounts of time. Therefore, advertising today has to be primarily designed for the Internet. Even television ads for businesses, and other institutions, carry within the ad format a web site address. Internet advertising places at the disposal of today's shopper the entire global store front, and as is the case, the shopper has much more to choose from, but at the same time, has to cope with a deluge of shopping options. Faced with so much to view, and less time in their lives to do so, shoppers are looking for advertising messages to deliver the sales pitch within a time slot ranging from three to 10 seconds. If they do not get the message in that time period, shoppers will simply click out of one advertiser's web site and quickly move on to a competitor's. It is vital, therefore, that any advertising copywriting must be crafted in such a way that the reader will want to remain and finish reading the sales message. Ask any professional copywriter and they will tell you that it takes a master wordsmith to come up with the right 'hook' for sustained website visitor retention. That's where I come into the picture. When I craft advertising copy for my clients, I do so with the intent of not only selling a product, or service, but go a step further to come up with a copy delivery that will hold the shopper throughout the entire message. It's my job to make it worthwhile for the shopper to hang around and take in the full thrust of the advertising message. My copy appeals to the reader's emotions, to their pain, to their needs, or pleasures, to their insecurities, and, to their common sense. In other words, my copy TALKS to the shopper in a conversational manner and institutes a dialog between the advertising message and the reader. If this is the kind of advertising copywriting you are looking for, then I am
your copywriter. Together, we will get the job done. |
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