In my years as a freelance copywriter, I’ve seen countless examples of terribly written copy.
I’ve seen company websites with self-centered messaging that make me roll my eyes ten times faster than the speed with which their prospects are likely closing the tab.
I’ve landed on websites with convoluted, “smart” sentences that don’t clearly tell me what the company does unless I start reading the copy word-for-word. I’ve encountered business owners who sacrifice their messaging for the sake of SEO and end up with generic, keyword-stuff copy that no one reads.
All of this made me arrive at one conclusion: too many business owners don’t understand the value of good copy, which is exactly why they unintentionally end up with badly written copy that hurts their business.
In this article, I want to shed light on why underestimating the power of copy is costing those businesses money and why you should, in fact, invest money into a good copywriter.
Why Is Copy Important? It’s Just Words!
As a business owner, you might be wondering why is copy important… after all, it’s just jotting down a few words describing your business on your homepage, right?
If that’s what you think, you couldn’t be more wrong. That’s probably one of the most common misconceptions business owners have about copywriting - and it’s the most dangerous one.
Copywriting is much more than writing. In fact, the actual writing is only 20% of producing great copy.
To know what to write on your website, email campaign, or landing page and which words to choose to create a message so powerful that it will drive your readers into taking action, you first need to create a foundation.
And creating a foundation that’s solid enough to guide your writing means understanding the intricacies of your business, offer, and brand.
It means getting inside the heads of your target audience to really understand what they’re thinking. It means understanding them so well that you can emulate their thoughts in your copy.
Why will they buy your products or services? What is the problem your offer helps them solve? Why would they choose your brand over your competitors? What’s your brand's personality, and how do you want to come across?
Knowing these things helps copywriters like me come up with a persuasive sales message that clearly tells your potential customers what they’ll gain by investing their hard-earned money into your products or services and why they should choose you over someone else.
Copywriters aren’t just writers. We’re also marketers, psychologists, and branding experts.
Underestimating Copy Means Bad Copy
When you don’t understand the value that good copy brings to your business, you’ll inevitably end up underestimating it. And when you minimize it, you’ll slap a few paragraphs on your website without too much thought.
Or worse - you’ll think you’ll be able to save some money by asking your intern to write your website copy for you instead of investing in a skilled copywriter.
When you don’t see the value of copy, hiring a “copywriter” that charges $100 per website on Fiverr instead of one that charges $5,000 feels like you just found a secret cheat code.
This results in poorly written website copy that hurts your business more than it helps. At the risk of sounding like a bitter copywriter - if you’re going to build a website with terrible copy, just don’t build one.
There’s an undeniable correlation: underestimating the power of copy often results in bad copy. And while in the short term, you may not notice the difference, in the long run, it’ll end up hurting your business.
Here’s why.
Bad Copy Miscommunicates Your Message
How many times did you misunderstand what someone was trying to communicate to you? How many times were you struggling to express something clearly and got misunderstood by someone else?
It happens to all of us, all the time. That’s because words aren’t just words. They carry more than just their meaning.
We often use the wrong words simply because we don’t understand the nuances in their meanings or because we say them in the wrong tone of voice. And we end up being misunderstood or confusing our listener without knowing why.
That’s the worst scenario that can happen to you in your business. Imagine your potential customer landing on your website and feeling incredibly confused after reading through the copy on your homepage. Do you think they’ll buy from you?
They won’t. They’ll likely close the tab and go back to their search.
And that’s precisely what happens when you ignore the power of copy - whether on your website, email campaigns, sales pages, or anywhere else.
You end up with poorly written copy that doesn’t communicate the value of your products or services clearly enough to gauge the interest of your potential customers.
So, they’ll buy from someone who communicates the benefits of their products or services clearly - even if what they offer isn’t nearly as good as yours.
Bad Copy Doesn’t Persuade Anyone to Do Anything
Imagine what would happen if you could convince everyone who lands on your website to buy from you or at least sign up for your email newsletter. Your business would keep on growing to unimaginable heights.
You’d have more customers than you’d be able to handle. You’d need to expand your inventory and team and implement new processes to manage the ever-growing customer base.
That would be amazing, wouldn’t it?
That’s precisely the purpose of copywriting. Your copy’s main job is to persuade your target audience to buy your products or services. Or at least take some action that can take them further down your sales funnel - like signing up for your email newsletter or downloading your lead magnet.
But when you underestimate the power of persuasion that your website copy holds, you end up with copy that doesn’t convince anyone to do anything. Or worse - you end up with copy that puts people off because it’s confusing, self-centered, and boring.
Good copy persuades. Bad copy repels.
Bad Copy Makes You Lose Money
From the bad UX design of your website to not having identified the product-market fit, there may be a thousand things that influence your sales.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that you’re doing everything right.
You’ve tested your products or services, you know that’s exactly what your audience wants, you invested a good chunk of money into your website design, and you’ve got all the marketing funnels set up properly.
You’re rocking it on all fronts - except for the copy.
If you ignore the importance of copywriting, your copy is likely terrible. And then, yes - in this scenario, bad copy is to blame for your lack of sales.
Without good copy, your prospects won’t see the value of your products or services - even if they could truly change their lives.
They’ll land on your beautifully designed website only to be welcomed with convoluted sentences that don’t clearly tell them why they should invest their money into whatever you’re selling.
Without good copy, you’re leaving money on the table.
Bad Copy Hurts Your Brand Image
There’s another aspect of copywriting that many business owners don’t take into account - and that’s your brand image.
How you talk about your brand, products, or services on your website, email campaigns, and social media determines how people perceive you. The words you use create an image of you in your audience’s minds.
Bad copy - so copy that is self-centered, convoluted, and boring to read - will create a perception of a brand that doesn’t care about them and doesn’t understand their needs.
By underestimating the power of the words you use in your messaging, you’ll end up creating a brand image that doesn’t align with what you truly are. Or worse - you may even unintentionally create a brand image that repels your audience instead of attracting it.
Creating Copy with ChatGPT Is a Bad Idea
I know what you’re thinking.
“Ok, Karolina, I understand that copy is important now. I’ll go ahead and create some with ChatGPT.”
Nah-uh. That’s a terrible idea. You’ll only make things worse.
Yes, ChatGPT - and any other GPT-4 powered AI writing tool, for that matter - is a great tool to help you write copy - if you know how to use it. The point is you can’t produce good copy with it unless you know how to write good copy in the first place.
ChatGPT isn’t a skilled copywriter. It only knows how to regurgitate information that’s already to be found on the internet or rephrase the words you feed it. But it doesn’t have critical thinking skills. It doesn’t understand human beings - yet (if you’ve seen Westworld, you know what I mean).
That’s why it cannot produce copy that triggers emotions and persuades your customers to buy your products or services.
As a copywriter and content writer, I use ChatGPT all the time to help me with writing. And I know for a fact that it can’t produce an entire sales page copy from scratch because it doesn’t even know how a proper sales page copy should be structured.
If you don’t know how to write great copy, you’ll end up shooting in the dark. Even with the help of a highly intelligent robot.
Words Hold Power. Use Them Wisely.
I often feel like copywriting is still very underrated. Many business owners would rather spend their marketing budget on things like design and SEO, completely ignoring copywriting.
I think that’s because many don’t truly understand the value of copywriting. They don’t truly understand how much power words have.
If every business owner invested as much time and money into copywriting as they do into SEO and design, more businesses would thrive instead of dying a slow death.
But I’m a copywriter, so maybe I’m biased.
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