Copywriter: What Do They Do, And How Do You Become One? Everything You Need To Know — Mentor Monkey

There are many memorable ads on television, billboards or poster, which is stuck in our minds right? Who is behind on such creatives? A copywriter is behind all creatives in online and offline platforms.

Who is a copywriter?

A copywriter is a person who writes engaging, creative, and relatable content for various platforms for different target audiences with varying calls to action. Copywriting is a dynamic, valuable, and knowledgeable trade. If you know how to play with words and console people with gestures, then copywriting is the perfect job for your personality.

Copy is the text that helps sell any product and service, and copywriters are the professionals who create this copy. Copywriting is growing and evolving every decade; new things are adding up for more clarity and engagement. The articles in newspapers, magazines, and weekly comics, advertisements you see on television, social media, posters, and billboards are created by them. 

A copywriter is a master of persuasion who uses language and words to convince readers to take a specific action. It depends on the reader to engage with a company, download a report or buy a product. They often specialize in SEO copy, sales writing, or direct response advertising. Ranges from digital ads and print advertisements to emails, landing pages, and brochures produced by one such person or a copywriting team.

Types of copywriting 

It is crucial to know your niche and area of interest before any professional degree and gather all required information about other genres. There are three types of copywriting that helps to write a productive creative for any brand or company. 

• Direct response – have you ever seen broachers and pamphlets in your mailbox? Yes, it is because of a direct response action. The primary purpose of immediate response copywriting is to drum up customers for local businesses.  
• Online – mostly brands prefer online marketing for their products. It’s way too cheaper than the traditional way of marketing with a broader audience and healthy response.
• SEO – this copywriting is done through high page ranking. It includes specific keywords for the target audience for the online search. 

There are other forms, but most of the audience falls into this specific one. 

What do copywriters write?

They accumulate the words, phrases, taglines, headlines, sentences, and paragraphs that sell products or services. In short, they write a ‘copy’ for the readers. It is connected to the promotion of goods and services. Copywriting is writing which helps to persuade the audience in structural form. Typical responsibilities for a copywriter, what they do range from research and writing to collaboration and optimization. Their standard duties are researching concepts, writing style, analyzing, and optimization with good communication skills. A copywriter is known as a “creative” because they make up the slogans or copy for advertisement campaigns.

Copywriting appears on a different platform with different criteria. Few examples are:

• Print ads in newspapers and magazines
• Creatives for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat
• Podcasts for television and music applications
• Attractive headlines on billboards and poster 

Difference between content writing and copywriting

Copywriting and content writing sometimes overlap, and their roles get confused at times. But their core objectives are different. The main aim of copywriting is to make the sale; they also address customer problems and requirements or evokes emotion for effective response.

For example, the ‘Share a coke’ campaign highlights the emotion of friendship. But with content writing, the goal is to educate, create awareness, entertainment, helping and prospective customers. This copy is usually for the long run, like posts, blogs, articles, and scripts. The role of content writing is to deepen the relationships between the target audience and respective brands and companies. 

Critical factors for copywriting

It is essential to choose the right career path along with your niche. Let’s understand the work, outlook, and salary in copywriting field. 

Where do copywriters work – Every brand and company needs a copywriter. An advertising agency that manages creatives of brands and other services hires copywriters. You can work in the education sector, fashion, health administration, journalism, space tourism, and more. An in-house marketing team is the most common job title where you can find a job to lead a marketing strategy for a company. You can apply to an advertising agency that handles media platforms for different brands and companies. You can start freelancing as well and then build your start-up. You can also work remotely for productive experience and valuable connections. 

Income of a copywriter – The initial stages’ salary and perks depend upon the work and efforts you give to your client. You can start your career with paid internships, and then you can grow your connections. And as a professional, you can earn around 35k-45k as per your monthly projects. 

Outlook for copywriting – In the growing internet world, it is essential to respect humankind instead of computer language and sources. We have noticed copywriting is shifting to technical sources, which decreased the job roles for many professionals. As long as companies need to communicate the value of their product or service, they will require support from copywriters.

How to become a copywriter?

Many of us have this thought in our mind, you need strong writing skills to become a copywriter, right? But the reality is different. Specific qualities required to become a copywriter, and those are- 

There is no single route to become a professional copywriter, but a bachelor’s degree is the minimum required for a job posting. Most helpful bachelor’s degrees are in mass communication, marketing, journalism, creative writing, and English. A certification degree isn’t fully required, but if you have one can open more opportunities for you. 

You need unique soft and hard along with few specifications to attain good career opportunities in copywriting. You need to learn diverse subjects to write about them with confidence, which requires a blend of curiosity and tenacity on top of relevant data. Some essential soft skills for copywriters are taking direction, creativity, curiosity, empathy, fast learning ability with a growth mindset.

Writing in complex skill is all copywriters’ wants, but a strong foundation of marketing skills is equally important. Copywriters are also strategic marketers as well as creative thinkers, along with experience. A copywriter’s few hard skills are writing and wordsmithing skills, including copywriting-specific skills and knowledge, research skills, spelling, punctuation, and grammar, understanding of strategic marketing, and basic SEO skills. 

How can you apply for the job as a copywriter? 

Before applying for a job:

1. Start working on your resume and cover letter.
2. Try to add exciting qualifications to your CV, which give attention to hiring people and opens opportunities for you. You can apply through various websites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed, Naukri.com and Monster.
3. After applying for a specific job role, start preparing for an interview session to help you succeed in your professional life.