Recently I was asked ‘why more people become copywriters?’
It’s a good question. Copywriting is actually the skills that drives so many businesses to success. If you can convert traffic and eye-balls into enquires and then into paying customers, then you’ve all you need to build a business.
In my opinion, if you have ever thought about how to persuade another person, you are engaging in copywriting. Ever thought about how you could make a better TV commercial, you are engaging in copywriting. Ever though an email of a website is a waste of your time, you are engaging in copywriting.
Copywriting is not just for writing. It is the foundation skill for all selling, be it live or recorded, one-on-one or one-to many. All selling is packaging up a message into a media. E.g. Taking a sales script and adapting it to work as a sales letter, infomercial, website or a tele-seminar.
This question got me to thinking what were the big barriers preventing others from successfully becoming copywriters.
Copywriting Barrier #1 Unwillingness To Do The Learning. It takes a major investment of time to become a copywriter – just like any skill. It might take 100 hours of study to become passably proficient. 1,000 hours to become ‘good.’ And 10,000 hours to achieve mastery. Like anything it requires an investment to get copywriting.
Considering mastering copywriting affects so many areas of business especially sales and marketing that I don’t understand why it’s not a good investment.
Copywriting Barrier #2: Not Being An Armchair Psychologist. There is a bit of a misunderstanding about copywriting. It’s not writing. 80% of the actual work you do with writing copy is thinking about people and how they will respond to different ideas. The writing is the last part of it.
The best copywriters are all good students of people. Not just what people say but how the actually behave (yes, their actions and their words don’t always match). You really do need to enjoy keeping an eye on how people act. It’s endlessly fascinating to me – and as you get into the game you’ll enjoy it more and more.
Copywriting Barrier #3: Dislike of Writing: I’ll admit that the man on the street is about as afraid of writing as they are of public speaking. I’m not one to advise on this because I never really disliked writing or speaking. I suspect flashbacks to school and English essays are the big reason why people dislike writing. Thankfully, copywriting has as much to do with formal English as Facebook does to having actual friends.