Good Copy: What Is It and Why Should You Bother

Copy is the text used for marketing purposes. It’s the product description in a product listing, the caption under a brand’s Insta post, and all the words spoken in the sponsors section of a podcast.

Good copy is pretty easy to recognise, but not so easy to do. Put simply, good copy makes readers and listeners react the way it wants them to. This includes actions like clicking on a provided link, but also more complex things like feeling happy. Angry. Or caring about an issue they knew nothing about just an hour ago. So how can you write copy that does what you want it to do?

For starters, good copy comes from good research. You want to sell a stew pot. To sell that stew pot you need to ask yourself questions. Who are you selling it to? What do those people want from a stew pot? And how do you build on those things to make your copy stand out to them? Let’s say you’re selling to a home cook; George. George is 35 years old, likes to cook for his kids on the weekends, and is tired of using his old shoddy stew pot with the burn marks on its base. From that, you know he wants a durable stew pot. But there’s another want there.

And on that note, good copy connects. You want to sell a stew pot. Stew pot connects to stew and cooking which in turn have connections to things like warmth and family. George wants a stew…