There's nothing fluffy about copywriting
So, it appears that there’s actually more to copywriting than just trying to elaborately smuggle Take That song titles into everything you write. Copywriting, it seems, is increasingly a marketing science.
‘What’s that?’ I hear my fellow copywriters cry, the oversized comedy pencil dropping from between their greasy fingers in shock and dismay. Actually, that’s quite far from the truth. Most copywriters these days are recognising the importance of the technical influences impacting on our role, influences that previously could have been safely (and smugly) passed off to the tech chimps.
But now, rather than simply sitting down at the keyboard and applying our most ferocious alphabetical judo, we must consider a range of factors beyond the prettiness of a word or the pithiness of a phrase.
SEO has always been part of our role – a fortuitous set of circumstances seeing as, at times, it seems like copywriters are the lone voice of dissent against some pretty appalling ‘black hat’ practices. Generally, as a rule of thumb, if you feel that keyword stuffing is going to benefit your brand or enhance the user experience in any way then you have two options. A. hire a copywriter. B. beat yourself to death with a bag of shatterproof rulers. Never Forget that.
But even beyond our SEO policing, there are many other technical issues which now fall into our remit that historically have not been a part of the creative process.
Data and analytics are not particularly in keeping with our Don Draper sensibility of how a copywriter must go about their business (i.e. drunk, leery and with little regard for the feelings of others). But nevertheless there are few copywriting jobs these days which are not informed by rigorous quantitative insights into the behaviour of our audience. Could It Be Magic? No friend, it’s analytics.
Far more than focus groups and customer surveys, analytical plotting of the entire consumer journey through multi-channel funnelling into ultimate conversion is of quite staggering benefit for a copywriter. A multi-channel approach is not worth the name if it is simply ‘coordinated’ in the loosest possible sense. This very modern approach to marketing is about understanding how these diverse platforms impact on each other throughout the customer experience and that is surely something the copywriter is able to influence, providing we understand how, when and why our customers are talking with us.
But it doesn’t even end there. There’s optimisation considerations; copy that works on web, tablet and mobile. There’s understanding business assets, liabilities and goals and recognising how each piece of copy utilises and impacts on these and at what stage of the process. And, though it may fill some of us with a clammy sense of panic, it’s fair to say that a single, inflexible brand tone of voice isn’t enough now, especially with the kind of precision segmentation we’re able to work with.
But of course none of this is to say that anything other than compelling, persuasive, thoughtful copy is going to carry a conversation through to conversion on any platform. Make all the technical considerations you possibly can, if your copy reads like you’ve been spitting Alphabet spaghetti onto the bonnet of a moving car then your analytical tools will have a very easy time measuring its total lack of success.
Yet, all of these advancements mean it’s a wonderful (if a little more arduous) time to be a copywriter. Data is something of a dirty word in many of the ‘softer’ marketing roles, but a refusal to acknowledge that it can help make us infinitely more efficient in our job is so foolish you might as well lock yourself in a wheelie bin and get an acquaintance to push you into traffic.
After all, Everything Changes.
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Andrew Boulton is a copywriter at Together Agency. He’s come a long way, but he’s not too sure where he’s been.