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We got asked the other day – what do you think the most important aspect of marketing is? It caused us to pause, it’s something we’ve never really thought about as we’ve always viewed any marketing as a mixture of things that need to come together – the creative, the copy, the targeting, the budget. But, as we discussed it more, the focus began to narrow.

Over the last decade of working across marketing teams, product teams, sales teams, our team has seen good marketing, bad marketing, marketing that made us nauseous. But, what we’ve found working across hundreds of projects is that copywriting, which often takes a back seat to its cousin (the creative), is easily the most important aspect of any good marketing.

But, what exactly is copywriting? Copywriting is like a call-to-action, but on a bigger scale: Copywriters are trying to get people to feel, think, or respond — or, ideally, to Google the slogan or brand to learn more about the campaign. And where a blog post like this one has the luxury of hundreds of words with which to make a case, copywriters only have a few words to make their case (Source: Hubspot).

Good copywriting is the backbone of marketing. It’s sales but in written form. It not only enables communicate your message more effectively, more simply but allows your customer to navigate your brand and experience easier while connecting them emotionally to your brand. This leads to more engagement and ideally, more business.

Good copywriting is even more important in the financial advisor space. Why? Because 95% of advisors sound the same. The same message, the same material. Good copywriting, paired with different creative, can differentiate your practice from all the others in the market.

So, how as an Advisor, can you Become a Better Copywriter?

1. Write every day, publicly – a blog post, newsletter, series of tweets, LinkedIn post – doesn’t matter, write every day with the goal of adding value or providing an insight to your audience
2. Study great writers – who is doing it well in the space? Who’s doing well outside of your space? Take 30-60 minutes a week to really understand the people who are attracting a following through the way they tell stories
3. Study your audience – people usually respond differently than you assume in your head. They have different emotional reactions, make sure you analyze those reactions in your conversations, every day
4. Keep it simple – simple over complex, every single time. If you write a complex sentence or paragraph, think to yourself, will my audience get this or how can I simplify this concept?
5. Focus on structure – sentence and paragraph structure is everything. People scan in chunks, break up your copy with lists, bullets, line breaks
6. Test different ways in – there’s no perfect model, people are going to continuously change how they react to certain words. Test to see what works and understand it may not work tomorrow

Your marketing can only be as good as your operational efficiency. Doing it consistently well is all about the systems and templates you have in place, but copywriting is ultimately the X factor as to whether you convert or not.