If you are a freelancer or an online business owner, you need to be able to write business copies by yourself so that you can grow your business.
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The truth is, you can outsource the job to someone who is in that field, but it just helps to know much more about the task you are giving out.
For instance, if you do not know how to write business copies, how will you recognize a shoddy copy when you are given one?
Also, you might just need to write a business copy such as a short email newsletter or an Instagram caption that is very urgent and looking for where to hire someone to write the business copies for you might not be the best thing.
But, if you know how to write business copies, all you have to do is to grab a pen and paper and get your creative juices flowing.
Now, I’m not against you hiring a freelancer if you are an online business owner.
And I am definitely not saying a freelancer should not give the task to another freelancer.
It is pretty cool to get someone to do these jobs for you. But if you are starting out without a huge budget, that might not be the best call for you.
So in this blog post, I’m going to share with you the 6 kinds of business copies that you must know how to write either as a freelancer or as an online business owner.
But first, I want us to take a look at why it is important for you to know how to write business copies, no matter the category you fall into.
Freelancers
As a freelancer, when you are just starting out, you need to grab all the gigs you can get, so there’s no point giving it to someone else.
But if you are no longer new to the game, you may want to think twice about handing out those copies to someone else to write for you.
This is because, you need to put your signature on as many gigs as you can, you need to have a body of work that you will show to prospective customers when they come offering you jobs.
Knowing how to write all these different kinds of copy is the key to building a robust portfolio in copywriting.
By not limiting yourself to knowing only one kind of copywriting, you open yourself up to more opportunities and you become versatile.
The more versatile you are as a copywriting freelancer, the more money you can charge in the marketplace.
I’ve seen some freelancers, who excessively niche down so much so that no new gigs come their way.
For example, a freelancer who only limits his/herself to writing scripts for video ads, say, for real estate companies alone will not be able to take on a job of someone who wants to write a landing page copy for their new online course.
Online Business Owner
The reason why you must be able to write business copies by yourself as an online business owner is because you need to know the nitty gritty of the business that you run.
If you outsource your copy to a freelancer and they turn it over to you after they are done, you need good judgement to tell whether it was well-written or not.
If you are just getting started with your online business, you may not have the budget to hire anyone yet, and so you’ll need to get the skills that are relevant to your business.
When you learn how to write copies, you’ll become a better marketer, you’ll be able to write from the heart because only you know your business.
It will also enhance your writing and business skills and accelerate your business success.
If you want to start your own online business or you’re struggling with it, then grab my free guide on how to start an online business from scratch below.
What is Copywriting?
Now before we go ahead, I want to inform you that there’s a video on YouTube that covers this same topic. You can watch it below.
What exactly does it mean to write copies?
Copywriting is the process of writing words intended to prompt a specific action by the reader.
When you write copies, you write it with the hope that the reader will take the action you want them to take.
Maybe you’re trying to get them to buy a product or to download a document, watch your video, register for an event, etc.
If you rely on digital marketing to get your business out in the open, copywriting is going to be a huge part of your marketing strategy.
So, to the crux of the matter, what are the 6 kinds of business copyyou must be able to write either as a freelancer or an online business owner?
1. Social Media/Ad Copies
Social media plays a vital role in your business’ success, it is not to be taken lightly at all if you want to succeed.
You need to be able to craft highly engaging copies to use on your social media platforms if you want to see any results.
Beyond beautiful visuals and well thought out videos, copy is what compels your audience to take action.
If you share a new product on Instagram for example and you back it up with a compelling copy that not only talks about the benefits of the products but also reaches the audience on an emotional level, you’ll get people to take the desired action.
Every post that goes up must be well planned, this means that you must have a goal before posting any content.
What is the purpose of every post? Do you want your audience to visit your website or join your email list?
Or, are you selling a product and you want people to buy? Register for your online course?
Whatever it is, make sure that there is a purpose for your content. This is what will drive your copy.
Most social media copies are organic which means, you are posting your content naturally without running any ads.
Ad copy on the other hand is written for content that is going to be sponsored. Also called advertising copy, it encourages the potential buyer to take action and purchase a product.
When you are wriing any copy for social media, you want to take the platform into consideration.
Every social media platform has best practices, what works on them and what doesn’t. For instance, a lengthy Instagram post cannot go on Twitter, except you post it as a thread.
When writing a caption for your Reels or TikTok, keep in mind that people will barely read the caption because they’d scroll away after watching the video.
So you must have a basic understanding of all the social media platforms you use.
2. Website Copies
Website copies are usually static.
The content on your website changes only once in a while, preferrably whenever you are doing a rebrand or when you are trying to change your products, pricing and so on.
Website copywriting is the process of writing digital content for landing pages, product pages, blog posts, and everything in between.
Your web copy must be compelling enough to keep peeople engaged and lead them to take the desired action.
Before you start writing any content for web, you must have a clear primoary goal and this goal will be based on the kind of business that you run.
For example, on the homepage of my website, everything is written so that you’ll take a specific action that is both important to me and meaningful to you.
The copies that you write on a website can be divided into 2 broad categories: For informational purposes and for advertorial purposes.
Informational web copies include blog posts, white papers, case studies or FAQs, etc.
While advertorial copies are landing pages, sales letters, product descriptions, service page and so on.
This is why having a goal for each of the copies you write on your website is very important.
If you are a freelancer, you’ll need to be able to write a compelling copy that will get your client’s website’s visitors to take the action that is required.
Another important thing to note before writing a website copy is to figure out the audience the business is for.
Since my audience are online business owners, my web copies are directed to them.
A landing page copy is similar to a website copy, the only difference being that the landing page copy is written to get the reader to take immediate action.
Maybe you want them to buy a product immediately or register for an event, or download a guide, your landing page copy must be explicit.
When you are a writing landing page copy, you have to make sure that your writing is really simple and straightforward.
You also want to make sure that it is well formatted and easy to read through, it’s a sales page so it must be pleasing to the eye.
And finally, focus only on one idea. Don’t try to sell too many things at the same time. Sell just one thing.
3. Email Newsletters
One of the best ways to keep your audience and convert them easily is through email marketing.
When all social media platforms fail, your email list will remain and you can continue to contact your audience.
Email newsletters are email copies that you write and send to your email subscribers periodically, to inform them about new updates in your business.
Emails are more personal than social media, and many people tend to use them regularly, so marketing to people in their emails is a great way to convert your audience.
There are diffecernt kinds of email that you use to get your audience engaged with your brand. But before we go into that, let’s look at some terms in email marketing.
1. Automations
This is a sequence of emails that are sent after a subscriber takes a specific action like signing up to an email list, making a purchase, or clicking a link.
They are called automations because they are set up in advance to deliver at a specific time when a user takes a specific action.
Automations allow you to sleep and make money on autopilot.
2. Campaign
An email campaign is a sequence of marketing efforts that contacts multiple recipients at once.
Email campaigns are designed to reach out to subscribers at the best time and provide valuable content and relevant offers.
3. Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is a free item that you give to your audience in exchange for their email address.
For instance a free ebook, a free report, a free seat in your closed class, a webinar, etc.
This is a typical example of a lead magnet.
I have a video that teaches you the meaning of some terms in digital marketing, you can watch it here.
Welcome Series
Here, you send a series of emails to new subscribers as they join your email list via any lead magnet or any medium that you have set up on your website.
In a welcome series, you can have about 5-7 emails automated, set and ready to go out as soon as they join your list.
The email is typically how you intoduce yourself to the subscriber, talk about what you offer and let them know how you can help them.
You want to make sure that you pitch a sale at the end of the series. Maybe sell your online course, sell a product or service you think they’ll love to buy.
Email Course
An email course is a series of teachings or lessons that you deliver to a student after they sign up for it.
Also, like a welcome series, you can send more than 5 and up to 7 emails either daily or at a predetermined period.
An effective email course teaches the subscribers one thing and it can take any format such as videos, infographics, text, images, etc.
An email course is a great way to build your list and add people to your business database. Many content creators use this method to build their email list.
Before you create an email course, you want to first decide on what you want to teach. It must be related to your business and must be relevant to your target audience.
Drip Campaigns
A drip campaign is a series of automated emails sent to people who take a specific action on your website.
You might send an email drip campaign to someone who signs up for your online course, for example.
Or, you could send a drip campaign to people who add an item to their online cart without buying it, also called abandoned cart emails.
For example, you can set up a drip campaign to deliver to someone who places an order in your store or abandons their shopping cart.
You can also send a drip campaign to someone who attends an event at your store and has not placed an order in a while.
Weekly Newsletters
All of the above kinds of emails are automated, but your weekly newsletters don’t have to be.
According to Russel Brunson in his book Dotcom Secrets, sometimes you just open up your computer and send emails to your audience to inform them of what is going on in your life.
Not the boring stuff but the things you think they’ll be interested in.
If you want to learn all you can about email marketing, this is the book you should read.
This book will teach you how to create the best email newsletters that will pour customers into your business.
Once you start using what the book says, get ready to turn people down because you are out of stock or overbooked.
4. Proposals
In my YouTube video on this same topic, I mentioned that I hated writing proposals, which I shouldn’t be saying in public. LOL.
But the truth is, I dread proposals because I had a bad experience with one years ago.
A proposal is a document that you write in order to persuade the reader to implement a proposed plan or approve a proposed project.
As a freelancer one of the business copies you’ll be writing regularly are proposals.
You’ll be writing a lot of proposals to brands and prospective clients to get contracts from them.
As a business owner, you’ll also be writing proposals to brands or businesses that you want to collaborate or get contracts from.
Your proposals will include strategy ideas, delivery time frames and estimated costs, before finalizing the terms and signing a contract for approval.
What makes a good proposal?
A good marketing proposal can be the key to landing that next big client. A bad one can mean lost business and a dip in sales for the quarter.
To increase your marketing proposal’s chances of success, you need to find the right mix of persuasiveness and professionalism for your target audience.
When pitching to brands, you want to be persuasive enough to provide the client with a compelling reason to consider the marketer’s services.
I really don’t have much to say on this, I’ve already talked about how much I hate writing them. But you can get templates for proposals on Canva or Google Docs.
5. Script Writing
Another kind of copies you’ll be writing often are scripts for videos as a copywriter.
Scriptwriting is the process of creating a narrative that tells a story, typically for a movie or television show.
But for the purpose of this blog post, we’ll be talking about scripts for video ads, YouTube and so on.
If you want to create a video that not only tells a story but one that will get people to do something, you need a script for it.
Many YouTubers, myself inclusive, script our YouTube videos. This is because we need talking points to make sure we are flowing very well.
For all my videos, I always write a script, not something cumbersome, just an outline of what I’m going to be talking about.
You can also use video to tell your brand story either on a large scale production for the likes of television or a simple YouTube channel or social media video.
6. SEO Copywriting
This is the process of using SEO strategies to write copies that drive traffic to your website and gets the audience to take the action you want them to take.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is the kind of writing you do to get your wbesite to rank top on search engine result pages by optimizing your content with targeted keywords.
These kinds of copies are done on a blog and on website pages and before you start, you need to do what is called Keyword Research.
Keyword research is finding the keywords people are using to search for a term that is related to your brand, your busness products or services or that is generally related to anything you want to write about.
Once you have figured out what these keywords are, you then incorporate them in your copy so that your content shows up when people are searching.
In Conclusion
Now that you know the kinds of business copies you must know how to write, why don’t you get started?
In case you missed it, in my last blog post, I spoke about how to build a personal brand on social media.
Also, check out my videos on YouTube and get learning.