Content is the king of digital marketing. There’s no denying that marketing strategies that involve content usually perform better because it delivers unique value.
If you’re hesitant to incorporate content in your digital marketing because you consider it a waste of money, you cannot be more wrong.
According to the statistics by Optinmonster, 91% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers say content is key to their digital marketing strategies. This source also reports that:
- 72% of marketers say content helps them increase engagement
- the same percentage (72%) of respondents say content helped them increase the number of leads
- for 53% of marketers, content is the top priority
If you’re worried about the financial side of creating content, to reassure you, Optinmonster reports that content delivers a 60% returning customer rate, so it’s definitely money well-spent.
Of course, it would be foolish to say that any content can get you results as positive as this.
In reality, developing high-quality content is not easy. Whether it is an online ad, website content, or a social media post – any digital marketing copy should follow certain guidelines to deliver the results that you and your audience expect.
So, if your purpose is to start writing a truly effective digital marketing copy that brings value, here’re some useful tips.
At A Glance
How to write an effective digital marketing copy
Right now, you might be confused: are we calling all written content a copy?
Definitely not, so let’s get rid of that confusion.
When we talk about a digital marketing copy, we mean any content that has one main purpose – to sell.
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a digital marketing copy is a landing page that tells you about product features, and its main intention is to promote this product.
Nevertheless, you can make a digital marketing copy out of anything. A long-form sales page, email messages, online ads, social media posts – all these types of content can serve as a digital marketing copy.
Can a blog post be a digital marketing copy?
Sure, but it will depend on its nature. Many companies try to earn money by blogging, but it doesn’t mean that every blog post sells something. There’re blog posts that simply share knowledge. In this case, you’re dealing with content writing, not copywriting.
Then there’re blog posts that focus on telling more about the features of the product with a selling CTA at the end. Such blog posts have the right to be called a digital marketing copy because they fulfil the main purpose of copywriting – to sell and to promote.
With this information in mind, let’s dive into our tips.
What all effective digital marketing copy have in common
1. Use the Right Formula to Structure Your Copy
Professional copywriters know that half of the success of a digital marketing copy is behind a good structure.
Indeed, a solid copy needs something that will gradually guide the reader towards the final selling point without making it too obvious. You can’t just start your copy with a CTA to buy your product. Consumers often consider such copies spam, and for a good reason.
So, what’s a good formula to structure your digital marketing copy?
Good news – there’re many of them. We’ll touch on the 3 most common ones, determine what makes them different, and when it is appropriate to use each of these formulas.
1) Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA)
We’ll start with a standard one. AIDA is one of the most common structures in copywriting. Its goal is to:
- capture the attention of the reader using a bigger font or other noticeable visuals
- forge interest using facts, statistics, or storytelling
- ignite the desire for the product with successful use cases
- drive action through a powerful CTA
A good example of this formula in action is Apple’s landing page for iPhone 11:
Let’s break it down.
You can see that this copy starts with a sentence written in a font that’s bigger than other text on the page. This title appears before other parts of the copy, therefore effectively attracting the visitor’s attention.
Under it, you can see the main body of the copy, in which both interest and desire components are present.
Apple drives interest by introducing innovative features that a new iPhone has and shows that they’re superior to what the customers have seen before.
Then, you can see how Apple boosts the desire to buy the new iPhone by telling that with its new camera, the customers’ memories will look better than ever.
The copy finishes with a CTA that’s highlighted to make it stand out.
Read: 11 Ways To Increase CTR To Your Posts
When to use AIDA?
As you can see, this formula is perfect for landing pages. But it also works well for online advertisements, social media posts, and other kinds of short promotional copies.
2) Bridge-After-Bridge (BAB)
This is another common formula in copywriting. The components of it are very simple and yet are very effective for selling:
- Bridge – you describe the life of the reader before they got to use your product.
- After – you show them their life after they start using your product.
- Bridge – you connect these two worlds together, explaining how your product will help them get the life they want.
The BAB formula often appears in cold emails, aimed at pitching a product or service to a potential client:
In this example, you can see this formula in all its glory. The email starts with an introduction, after which a sender describes the addressee’s current professional hurdles and shows his understanding of the situation.
Then, the sender shows how solving these hurdles would impact the addressee. In conclusion, the sender offers his services as a solution, followed by a subtle CTA.
Where else can you apply the BAB formula?
This formula is quite universal, and besides cold emails, you can often see it in online ads. However, there’re cases when it’s also applied in blog posts.
Buffer is a good example of implementing this formula in a blog article. You can take a look at their “Buffer Is Moving to a 4-Day Workweek” to see how you can also apply the BAB formula to your blog.
3) Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)
This formula is a bit similar to the previous one, but its elements follow each other in a different order:
- First, you identify the problem
- Then, you agitate this problem, make the reader feel all the pain of it, so to say
- Finally, you offer a solution
In other words, this formula is used to hit the reader with their most annoying problem, twist the knife a little bit more, and then shows them how to solve this problem.
You can see the PAS formula in action in the following tweet:
The approach is very simple: the user asking a burning question and keeps building agitation around it. After that, they offer a solution with a quick CTA to complete the copy.
How else can you use the PAS formula?
This formula is PERFECT for social media posts. You don’t need too much text to make the PAS copy work, and you can incorporate visuals and emoji to make your point. You can also apply this formula to the copies of your ads.
2. Employ Cognitive Psychology Approaches
An effective digital marketing copy is not always about using the right structure. It’s also about knowing how to capture the attention of the reader. Formulas sometimes aren’t enough for that.
That’s why professional copywriters are also psychologists a little bit, and using psychological tricks isn’t something new to copywriting.
Of course, every situation is different, and you should really know your target audience well to understand which psychological approach would work on them.
If you’re just starting with copywriting, you can give a try to the curiosity gap and the FOMO approach to help you create an effective digital marketing copy.
Let’s take a closer look at these 2 approaches.
Curiosity Gap
From the name of this approach, you can already guess its main purpose.
The curiosity gap uses the readers’ curiosity to force them to click on the headline or continue reading an article. This approach comes from cognitive and behavioural psychology and tries to predict and shape the reader’s behaviour.
The main goal is to tease the reader and give them a sneak peek at what’s coming next, but not give away the answers right away.
If you’ve ever visited BuzzFeed, you’ve already seen headlines using the curiosity gap approach:
In all these headlines, you can see that the resource is trying different ways to lure visitors into reading. It’s either an incomplete statement or the use of words like “here’s”, “only people who have”, “which”, “just”, etc. The curiosity gap headlines also often use question marks.
How effective is the curiosity gap approach?
To check this cognitive psychology trick, CopyHackers, an online copywriting academy, used A/B testing. The results are astonishing.
Reportedly, the curiosity gap approach brings a whopping 927% lift in clicks. However, according to the source, it wasn’t as effective in terms of engagement.
It can still work, though.
If you use this approach for a short digital marketing copy, like an ad, engagement is not what you’re looking for. What you want is for the visitor to click on the headline.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
Nobody wants to be left behind. The feeling that you get when you find out you’ve missed something really cool and interesting is very devastating. Nobody wants to experience that.
That’s why the FOMO approach exists. It creates an urgency to become a part of something or to buy something before running out of time. That’s why you can often find this approach in email copywriting:
In the example above, you can see how the image and the text below it create the urgency for the product and intensify it with a message that the offer will end soon. This is FOMO in action.
How effective is the FOMO approach?
Indeed, good examples aren’t enough to prove that this approach works. We need some convincing numbers.
If you take a look at the statistics, you’ll see that the fear of missing out is very common among consumers:
- 56% of social media users experience FOMO because they feel the need for real-time updates
- 69% of millennials also experience FOMO because of that same reason
- 60% of millennials also claim they made a purchase after experiencing FOMO
As you can see, consumers, especially millennials, consider the fear of missing out as a driving factor in decision-making, including their purchase decisions.
That’s why FOMO works so well for creating an effective digital marketing copy – it appeals to human nature.
3. Break Down Your Digital Marketing Copy Using Listicles
How often do you see headlines with numbers in them? If you’re a BuzzFeed fan, you know that this resource is famous for them:
This is a perfect example of a listicle.
A listicle is usually an article made out of lists on any topic. Listicle articles often use a flexible format and can include smaller listicles inside the text. In fact, this article is a listicle too!
How effective are listicles in copywriting?
To answer this question, let’s turn to science.
In an interview with HuffPost, Dr John Medina, the author of Brain Rules, explains the effectiveness of numbers in titles and in content in general.
According to him, our brain perceives information with numbers better and considers it more credible.
Most importantly, our brain loves bite-sized content. That’s why we don’t like to read big chunks of text so much.
According to the researcher, it takes our brain 20 milliseconds to perceive every letter, and it needs to closely inspect every letter of every word. Imagine how much work our brain has to do to read a large piece of text? It’s real work out for it!
Dr Medina’s findings explain the necessity of using listicles to break down your digital marketing copy.
An effective copy should engage, and if it’s not organized and broken down into meaningful parts, it won’t fulfil its main purpose, which is to sell.
So, what’s the lesson here?
Use listicles!
4. Benefit from the Power of Storytelling
Another factor that determines the effectiveness of your digital marketing copy is how you present it. One way to do it successfully is through storytelling.
Right now, you might be thinking – how am I going to fit the entire story in a social media ad?
You’d be totally right to ask that question. It makes sense that storytelling is more fitting for the longer types of content, like promotional articles and blog posts.
However, it doesn’t mean that you cannot apply storytelling to social media ads as well.
For example, if you’re making a video for such an ad, you’re probably also writing a script for this video, which is also considered a digital marketing copy. Storytelling can help you create the natural flow for your video and make it more engaging.
Regardless of what you’re using this approach for, a good story always follows 3 main rules:
- A good story always focuses on the target audience and is relevant to their interests, beliefs and needs. That’s why, make sure you research your target audience thoroughly before you sit down to write your copy. A bit later, we’ll talk more about how you can do it faster and more effectively.
- A good story is always easy to read; that’s what makes it engaging. If you want to incorporate a story in your digital marketing copy, keep an eye on consistency. Using editors and proofreaders from the best sites for writing papers will help you achieve that.
- A good story is always easy to follow. The narration is simple, and the events in a story are easy to decipher. When writing your copy, focus on making your narration more down-to-earth. There is no need for embellishments and too many metaphors.
What’s more important about storytelling in copywriting is that the story should always reflect your brand’s values. Storytelling is also a marketing tool after all, so use it to your advantage.
5. Get Your Data Right
In the previous section, we mentioned that a copy should always focus on the target audience. However, getting your target audience persona can be complicated, considering how many details you need to keep in mind – demographical, biographical data, needs, interests, hobbies, etc.
If you don’t have time for extensive research but still want to get everything right, social data can come to the rescue.
Social data is a general name of the information collected from users online (mostly, social media). This information describes:
- demographical data
- biographical data
- user feedback (likes, shares, comments)
If you’re active on social media, you already have all this data at hand. Let’s take a look how you can leverage it for your benefit.
1) An in-depth understanding of your audience
The biggest hurdle of studying the target audience is determining your target audience persona. It’s at this point when you need to take into account all the details.
Social data can give you all the answers you’re looking for. If you’re actively using Facebook for your business, you can check out the general demographics of your followers in the Insights:
As you can see in the image above, you already have access to some important demographic details, including age and gender.
This is especially helpful if you’re going to write a digital marketing copy for a Facebook ad.
2) A closer look at your audience’s interests
Apart from getting information to describe your target audience persona, social data can also give you a hint at your audience’s content preferences.
For example, on Twitter, you can check out your audience’s interests and get ideas for your digital marketing copy:
Also, on every social media platform, you can check out how your followers react to different types of posts.
Using this information, you can do a quick analysis to determine which copy to write.
3) A better understanding of your audience’s activity
One more audience-related metric that you can get from social media is their activity. This metric is extremely important during a marketing campaign when you need to upload several digital marketing copies and make sure your audience sees them when they’re most active online.
Social data can provide you with this information as well. For example, if you go to your Facebook Insights, you can find this data next to the post-by-post engagement breakdown:
From this graph, you may notice that the audience is the most active at 5:00 AM. This is the time when the followers usually scroll through the Facebook feed. Consequently, there is a higher chance for your content to be discovered.
As you can see, social data can be of great help to make your digital marketing copy effective. You get more insights about your audience through these data, so your copy can become more targeted and meaningful.
Besides, becoming friends with social data will help you make your digital marketing efforts more fruitful, as you deliver your content on time.
You may have noticed that there is a lot of bad content on the internet right now.
Why does it happen?
Unfortunately, many brands focus their marketing efforts on increasing revenue. Sure, money is important if you want to grow your business, but what about value?
You cannot base all your marketing efforts just to get revenue, otherwise, you’ll create a wrong image for your brand.
This is exactly the reason why content fails so often. What you need to keep in mind when writing your digital marketing copy is that in order to make it effective, your copy should represent your brand’s values and deliver value to your audience as well.
These tips were put together exactly for that purpose – to help you achieve meaningfulness when writing your copy. Keep them at hand, and you’ll be able to properly structure and shape your content, delivering a high-quality, effective digital marketing copy.
Stay inspired!
