How to Master Copywriting for Content Marketing Campaign

Intro

Picture this: The ad campaign your marketing team had worked on for the past week has been live for three weeks.

They expected a major hike in sales. But not all expectations turn into reality. And that's what happened to their campaign. Instead of the spike, they saw a major dip in conversions.

The team is shocked and questions what went wrong.

For them, everything was perfect. But you take a look and notice the content marketing copy didn't match the targeted audience.

Based on this experiment, it's clear that marketing copy is the bread and butter of your marketing ad campaign. It needs to be perfect to drive conversions.

Similar to how the content on your blogs influences people to read what you have to say, the ad copy persuades the reader into making the final buying decision.

But that's the tricky part. Even though your marketing campaign may score a 10/10 with your team, if the copy fails to align with your target audience, you've lost the marketing campaign you worked so hard for.

In this article, we'll share three ways to strengthen your content marketing copywriting campaigns.

Let's dive in.

3 ways to elevate your content marketing copywriting campaigns

Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard Business School professor, says that 95% of buying decisions occur in the subconscious mind.

So you need to pick your prospects' brains to understand how they perceive a product. And learn what their thought process looks like before and during the buying journey.

Understanding these two aspects enables you to craft intentional marketing copy that's spot-on.

Here are three ways to help you write, purposeful copy and reach your content marketing goals.

1. Develop your audience persona

The first question for your content marketing copywriting campaign should be: "who am I writing the copy for?"

When you know your ideal audience persona, you can understand your potential customer's mindset and create relevant content that speaks to them. And soon, you'll be swimming in conversions.

As a marketer, understanding your target audience and their habits is a crucial first step in running effective marketing ad campaigns. This holds true for copywriting too.

Before you start writing your copy, ask yourself:

• Who is reading your copy?
• What are their challenges?
• What are their needs?
• What's their average income?
• What are their purchasing habits?
• What emotions influence their decisions?
• Do they need social proof?

Let's say you're writing an ad copy for a skincare brand with products for acne-prone people.

Here's what their ideal audience persona looks like:

• Persona Name: Alice
• Age: 21
• Salary: $10,000 per month
• Description: Alice is a 21-year-old professional in a 9–5 job who travels frequently. She has oily, acne-prone skin. She suffers from hormonal acne and avoids wearing makeup. She only uses natural, paraben-free products. She wants clear skin and wants to remove scars from previous acne. However, she's tired of using most home remedies and not getting results.
• Her emotions: Frustration, shame, and low confidence
• Purchasing habits: She's tried multiple natural, paraben-free products but couldn't see the transformation.
• Social proof: Yes, she wants to see transformations, especially testimonials showing how they got clear skin.

Pro tip: If you want to speed up the process, use a persona generator tool.

Here's what your audience persona generated from Hubspot's Make My Persona tool looks like.

(Image Source)

How it works: The tool gives you a list of questions to identify your audience persona. You need to answer the questions, and it'll curate the tiles like in the image above for you.

Note: You can choose to skip questions you find irrelevant based on your content marketing copywriting campaign.

2. Segment your audience based on the buying journey

Just like one product doesn't fit every customer, one sample copy doesn't fit every potential customer. That's why you need to optimize your copy based on the stages of the buyer's journey.

First, identify the customer's stage in the marketing funnel — awareness, consideration, or decision stage.

• Awareness: The potential buyer is struggling with a problem and wants to learn more about their challenges.
• Consideration: The potential buyer understands their problem and is considering a solution.
• Decision: They're aware of their problem and the solution — they are looking at different providers of their solution to make a final purchase decision.

Optimize your copy assets based on the specific stage of their journey. Here's an example of how to optimize landing page copy based on different buyer stages.

Awareness

Take a look at this landing page by Miracle featuring the Valentine's Day offer.

(Image Source)

Why it works: Along with promoting their offer to visitors, they educate them on why Americans have abandoned traditional sheets.

Because the brand sells antibacterial sheets that don't generate odors, they want to educate visitors about the quality of their products and why they should purchase them.

They conclude with the CTA "Try Miracle Now" to highlight their product as the solution. It encourages potential customers to buy from them.

To double their chances of conversion, they even offer a freebie and a 20% discount.

Consideration

Here's an example of Asana's landing page, where the brand highlights potential customer pain points and offers its product as the solution.

(Image Source)

What works: The headline highlights the pain point, and the sub-headline presents their product as the solution to consider.

Asana adds graphics highlighting their tool's different solutions — collecting creative feedback, getting badge sign-off, and launching brand campaigns.

After that, they insert the CTAs "Get started" and "See how it works."

If the potential customer clicks on the** See how it works** button, it directs them to another page that showcases why they should consider Asana. This page displays all the features their tool has in video format.

It helps the buyer understand their product, so they can consider it a potential solution to their problem.

Pro tip: Use vector graphics to elevate your brand assets and include them in your marketing copy to encourage engagement.

Decision

Here's a landing page by ClickUp displaying their pricing plans based on their target audience.

(Image Source)

What works: ClickUp lists each plan's features and includes the CTA to get started.

Because this is the decision-making stage and requires credibility, they've added their credentials and the awards the brand has received.

They’ve also added a slider displaying testimonials from their existing customers.

These features serve as social proof for potential customers and help nudge them toward a buying decision.

To top it off, they added an FAQ section that answers the most common questions prospects ask.

Answering these questions helps overcome any final barriers to purchasing. All of that information is available at their fingertips.

3. Focus on the benefits

If you read books by copywriting experts, they emphasize one thing: focus on benefits, not features.

Here's why:

• Features — What is your product's function or uses?
• Benefits — How do ‌features improve the consumer's life?

Take a page from ClickUp's book with how they write their homepage and the headlines.

(Image Source)

What works: The headline "Simplify work and get more done" highlights how the brand can solve consumers' problems with its product.

Since ClickUp is a project management software, they found the sweet spot between their product offering and how the solution can solve the consumer's problems — by simplifying their work.

Under the sub-headline, they highlight product features — plan, track, and manage. In other words, how do they help customers achieve the benefit?

How to implement: According to Copyblogger, use a method to detect whether your copy emphasizes features or benefits: the forehead slap test.

The forehead slap test focuses on two questions:

• What does the customer want?
• When do they want it?

With this test, you can identify if your copy contains fake benefits.

Every time you write new copy for your marketing campaigns, ask yourself these two questions and see the response you get. Also, use grammar tools to avoid typos in your copy!

To extract benefits from your product, follow this 4-step process:

1. Make a list of all the features of your product
2. Ask yourself why each feature is included
3. Get the answer to why and "how" does this connect to the prospect's desire or challenges
4. Dissect the roots and understand what's in it for the prospect on an emotional level.

The winning element — your marketing copy

Make sure your marketing copy always focuses on benefits first and features later.

Whether you write a landing page, ad copy, or email copy, focus on the headlines and highlight what's in it for the prospect.

That's the main focus. Use a keyword research tool to help you with search intent.

And if you want to amplify the headlines, use different copywriting formulas like AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and PAS (Pain, Agitate, Solution) — you'll quickly see the impact it has on your campaign.

The world is your oyster. It's time to write some copy and drive conversions. Think outside the box and get your creative juices flowing.