Tip No 2.
Research & Swipe
Now I can hear you thinking to yourselves what exactly is that all about...
Well, as with any kind of marketing you need to do proper and thorough research, without it you'll make expensive mistakes and if these mistakes are at your clients expense you'll likely not get another chance to work with them.
So, in the context of research for copywriting what do you need to do?
I'd always suggest the first thing you do with every new project is to identify your main competitors (hey, you might as well subscribe to their sites too). This will make sure you get hold of all their promo material (e-mails, squeeze page copy, special offer copy etc etc).
If the copy you're writing is for a client ask them who their competitors are they may have come across some you haven't or they may have done full and proper research themselves, this'll save you time and energy...
You're looking for information you think is useful in promoting through the written word the product it's designed to sell...
Research, simple yes?
OK, once you've identified some valuable information or ideas the next thing you're going to do is 'SWIPE' it...
When we talk about swiping what we're doing is copy and pasting the headline, body text, sub heads etc and then saving them in a file called a 'Swipe File'
This in time will become a very important and indeed valuable part of your business tools.
Although what we've done here is copy and paste someone else's ideas what we're not going to do is blatantly use the exact same format...
We've only done this to provide a template to work from, it might be there was one word in particular you thought would be great to use or you liked a particular phrase, these things are used to provide inspiration!
Don't worry all copywriters do this...
I promise you as time goes on your swipe file will become your most prized asset and you'll use it every single time you write a piece of copy as it'll save you no end of time creatively.
I hope this tip will be of benefit to you in your future writing, the tip will cover a step in the process many copywriters do not include...
It will make a HUGE difference though, I promise.
Until then, remember for access to my "7 Steps To Writing Sizzling RED HOT Copy" a FREE guide for aspiring copywriters visit...
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