When you’re company needs copywriting services, meaning high quality copywriting services, for its marketing efforts, it’s important to be sure that your marketing achieves the goals you have set for your content plan. Furthermore, that the high quality copywriting services you employ result in leads for your business, otherwise, what’s the point?
With your focus on lead generation, it’s important for business owners to understand what defines “high quality copywriting services”. We like to define high quality copywriting services with the acronym TARGET:
- Targeted
Who is the target market you have aimed towards with your copy and content push? There is no effective way to begin a content marketing plan, even with high quality copywriting services, if you don’t know to whom you are speaking in the first place.
Keep the following points in mind about your target when evaluating high quality copywriting services – does it hit the mark?
- What’s your audience’s demographic profile? (age, gender, geographic location)
- Triggers: What factors drive their interest?
- Motivators: What is the “carrot” that will move them from interest to conviction?
Targeting copy also relates to the SEO value of any online post, copy or article. Good SEO copy includes:
- Keyword phrases in copy, titles, descriptions and alt tags
- Graphics with keyword-oriented titles that tie into the copy writing
- Between a 2-4% keyword density overall. (2-4 keywords for every 100 words of content.)
- Accurate
What sources are cited by the copywriting services? Are there references to sources, sites or publications that provide their data and statistics? No matter how great a post, article or release sounds, if the source is unreliable, the copy is unusable.
- Relative
How relevant is what you have to say about your products, services and industry to your target audience? To put it simply, you need to be talking about something they want to know and that will propel them through the lead generation process.
- Graphic
Is there a compelling visual that attracts a glance if not a stare? Is the image encompassing enough to illustrate your value proposition even when the majority of the copywriting is not read? Selected visuals should be high quality and serve as a graphic accompaniment to not only bring the point of the copy home, but to also draw a curious reader further into the content.
- Engaging
High quality copywriting services should, above all else, be engaging enough to hold a reader’s attention and welcome a Call to Action (i.e. “enter your email address to download this e-book for your industry”) If copy is overly-SEO oriented (too many keywords that don’t sound natural) or dry in nature (stats with no “human touch”), readers won’t get to the “point” of the writing, meaning a lost prospective lead.
- Timely
You’ve heard the phrase “Timing is everything” right? Well, when it comes to copywriting services, it couldn’t be true. A great copywriter has done the market research to understand the target market’s wants and needs, their beliefs and motivations. With this knowledge, and a steady finger on the pulse of the most relative industry, they can craft work that speaks about WHAT your target wants to know WHEN they want to know it. That’s a one-two punch of engagement that can be the difference between a potential prospect and a sales-ready lead.
High quality copywriting services are not a dime a dozen. If anything, it takes a solid understanding of the points above to give business owners the know-how they need to find the right copywriting services provider for their business. Remember, at the end of the day, your marketing plan is all about driving leads, and finely-tuned copywriting is a powerful tool when utilized correctly.