You’re probably too busy running a business to care about content writing and copywriting. No doubt your anxiety bucket is brimming without the stress of including copy and content to your website. And then there’s the added nonsense of understanding the difference between content writing and copywriting. Why wouldn’t you assume they’re the same thing, most marketing types do? To you, this stuff seems insufferably arbitrary. The thing is, it isn’t (but it also kinda is).
Anyway, here’s what we’re covering:
Content writing vs. copywriting.
The difference between content writing and copywriting is that content writing builds brand awareness, and copywriting makes the sale.
Content writing and copywriting – the similarities:
- They both know their audience really bloody well
- They both solve problems
Market research, and lots of it. That’s at the heart of proper content writing and copywriting.
Content writing examples.
Let’s keep things simple for now (and mildly reductive) by saying content writing is informational marketing guff that happens here:
- Non-sales pages (About pages/FAQs/guides)
- Blog articles
- Social media
Content writing is the business blurb pushing brand awareness; a regular drip feed of information demonstrating what you do and who that helps: AKA content marketing.
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Content Marketing Institute
Content writing is playing the long game.
“A stranger found you on the internet, and now they’re not a stranger anymore. They did catch your eye across a busy Spoons (the results pages), and they are very aware you exist. Does this mean you can change your relationship status on Facebook to ‘engaged’ now? Not quite.”
Blog articles inform and help the reader. They also attract search traffic, but not all blogging does that.
“Organic traffic is one lick of the SEO ice cream, so when your content strategy concentrates on getting seen on Google, it ignores something else content writing does, and that’s informing folks who already know about your business.”
Content writing is like telly ads, constantly tugging our sleeves, saying, “have I got a great product for you!”. The repetition keeps them in mind when we need the thing they’re flogging. And like TV advertising, content marketing takes time. It’s slow-burning brand attraction.
Copywriting examples.
We’ll continue being reductively simplicitic (don’t go anywhere, nuance does arrive) by saying, copywriting is actionable sales guff that happens here:
- Landing pages
- Service pages
- Sales letters
- Sales emails
- Advertisments
Copywriting asks the audience to make a quick decision. It prods a pain point and presents a solution. Yes, that’s copywriting, but more accurately, it’s direct response copywriting. IMHO, all copywriting should elicit an immediate response because if it doesn’t, it’s not copywriting, it’s content writing.
And yet…
“Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing.”
Wikipedia
Wikipedia and even marketers confuse copywriting with content writing, and that’s because marketing and sales are talked about interchangeably. Marketing tees up the sale, but the sale only converts with copywriting.
“Don’t misinterpret persuasion for arm-twisting. If a customer doesn’t want your product, no amount of brilliant copy will get them to part with cash. Conditions have to be right.”
FYI: SEO content writing attracts web traffic, sure, BUT SEO copywriting can attract search traffic AND convert that traffic. What?! Yes. Strangers to your business will buy relatively inexpensive items on your website when trust isn’t a biggie. (So the brand awareness hooplah is sidestepped.)
Copywriting is a bit like infomercials. The advert selling a telescopic brush that scrubs the hard-to-reach places of your shower urges you to buy now (and if you do, you’ll get an ‘amazing’ FREE bonus bundle worth £79.99).
The mutant hybrid of brand response.
Welcome to the long-awaited nuance! A marketing exec think tank somewhere decided to merge content writing with copywriting. Such shenanigans have resulted in a thing called brand response. What a snazzy (unremarkably prosaic) name.
“Brand Response is the marketing communications industry’s Genius of the And. It sounds too good to be true. It asks us to live with two apparently contradictory ideas at the same time. It can be defined simply as a strategic and executional campaign approach where brand-building drives response and this response, in turn, builds the brand in a virtuous circle of effectiveness.”
Marketing Society
“Circle jerk of effectiveness” is how I read that last line, but that’s to be expected.
Brand response delivers long-term and short-term objectives. You’re creating a buzz around your business (brand awareness) while asking those reading to do something immediately after the fact.
See what I mean about it being insufferably arbitrary?
First published, 19th April 2024.
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