The 7 Copywriting Skills You Need to Get Results

With more than 4,672 marketing copywriters working in the United States, you must have a stellar skillset to stand out from the crowd.

This means mastering all the right copywriting skills and deftly putting them into practice in every ad copy, blog post, whitepaper, email, landing page, or social media post your write. And even if you were the only copywriter in the world, you would still need refined copywriting skills to write copy that turns heads.

As a B2B content creation company, we’re no stranger to the struggles of copywriters, particularly teething copywriters learning the ropes in this field. To help you write copy that stands out from the crowd, we have researched seven skills for copywriting. But before delving into how to write stellar copy, it’s important to know what copywriting is.

What Is Copywriting?

Copywriting is the art of writing compelling words to convince your audience to take a particular action, like purchasing a product or subscribing to a service. Copywriters write "copy" in different formats. This includes:

• Blogs
• Journal articles
• E-books
• Product descriptions
• Case studies
• Billboards
• Posters

All these assets are designed to drive the readers toward a positive outcome.

John E. Kennedy described advertising as “salesmanship in print." Because it's encouraging customers to take specific actions — and is essentially a form of advertising — copywriting fits a similar definition. The cardinal role of copywriters is to create quality content that markets specific products and services to target customers and solves the pain points of existing customers.

But even if you’re a natural writer, excellent copy doesn't appear just out of the blue. You must first master the skills needed for copywriting. Then you can hit the ground running.

Here's a look at the necessary skills for copywriting in detail.

What Skills Do You Need To Be a Successful Copywriter?

As a copywriter, you’ll wear many hats. Whether you work as a freelancer or in a company’s digital marketing department, everything writing-related will be thrown at you. That’s why these seven copywriter skills must be up your sleeve.

Solid Writing Skills

To write engaging copy that converts, focus on polishing these three writing skills:

Sentence Structure

The sentence structure of your copy dictates the overall flow of your content. Long and complex sentences decrease your copy’s clarity, while short and simple sentences boost legibility. Ideally, your sentences should average 15-20 words, and your paragraphs should contain five to six sentences.

The KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) summarizes how you should structure your sentences. Modern readers are turned off by long blocks of text on their screens. Instead, they love sectioned content that’s readily scannable. After all, 43% of readers skim through blog posts.

Structuring your sentences well makes your content more reader-friendly and enhances the overall aesthetics. It makes it easy for readers to quickly gather the main points of your copy, even if they don’t read through the entire text.

Grammar

Bad grammar can make a well-thought campaign seem poorly put together. One instance of poor grammar in a social media ad copy can quickly give a brand bad press if the error goes viral.

Besides diluting your credibility as a copywriter, bad grammar also undermines the customer’s journey. Research shows websites with poor grammar and spelling have an 85% higher bounce rate than those with proper grammar and accurate spelling. Remember, online readers subconsciously associate your grammar skills with your competency. If you write content with lots of grammatical mistakes, potential customers will doubt the quality of the products or services you’re promoting.

As a rule of thumb, you should proofread your copy to eliminate all grammatical and spelling errors before publishing. Aim for 100% error-free content, especially for email and SMS marketing campaigns where you may not have a chance to correct grammatical mistakes once published.

Vocabulary

It’s tempting to unleash your linguistic arsenal and use fancy vocabulary in your copy. But that won’t yield results if your audience doesn't understand complex language and industry jargon. Likewise, if your copy’s readability level is below your target audience’s reading level, they may brush it off as too simplistic or under-researched. That’s why you should first establish the literacy levels of your target customers so you use matching vocabulary in your content.

According to the Public Relations Society of America, the reading level of the average U.S. adult is 8th grade. However, the reading level goes higher or lower depending on your target audience. For instance, a B2C audience may have a lower literacy level than a B2B audience. This can be especially relevant when using industry-specific terms in your marketing.

In principle, you should avoid heavy vocabulary and jargon that may impede your reader’s comprehension. Before you publish any copywriting, you can measure the readability level of your content by leveraging readability tests. This will help ensure the language is appropriate for your target audience.

Excellent Research Skills

A day in a copywriter’s life involves scouring through troves of web assets and resources, searching and verifying loads of information. It takes hours of research to write a factual and updated copy addressing your customer’s pain points head-on.

Whether you’re writing a short 500-word listicle or a 2500+ word long-form article, you must do detailed research and present accurate information. When researching a topic, it’s best practice to turn to authoritative websites run by institutions or companies.

For instance, if you’re writing a population and demography topic, search the U.S. Census Bureau website instead of personal websites or Wikipedia. The point is to get information directly from the original authority sources, not the reporting channels.

Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is a valuable skill, particularly when writing run-of-the-mill topics. It's not every day that you’ll write a unique never-before-written topic. Often, you’ll have to create content for topics that have already been extensively researched and published online.

For instance, if you’re writing copy for a car dealership, you may have to write about the same car models that hundreds of other dealerships are writing about. In such all-familiar cases, your creativity is what distinguishes your content from the rest. You’ll bank on your creative thinking skills to find new angles and perspectives to write about the same car models in a fresh way.

At the very least, every decent copywriter will have good writing and research skills. Your inherent creativity will give your copy the magical spark needed to stand out from the pack.

Analytical Skills

Content writers shoulder the tremendous task of analyzing complex topics and breaking them into easy-to-understand formats. The difficulty of exploring topics varies across industries. Say you’re writing about medical, science, technology, and law-related issues. You’ll analyze complex data and academic journals more routinely than if you’re writing about fashion and luxury topics.

Additionally, you’ll count on your analytical skills to manage and review your content’s engagement analytics, like the bounce rate, click-through rate, page views, and average session durations. You should have a working knowledge of content analytical tools like Google Analytics to track your content’s performance.

Basic SEO Knowledge

Search engine optimization (SEO) skills are one of the most valuable technical assets modern copywriters should have. Mastering SEO copywriting helps you write content that ranks high on search engines.  

If you write great content but fail to optimize it for search engines, your target customers won’t find your copy. This would negate your purpose of creating the content in the first place.

These are some of the basic SEO copywriting skills you should be familiar with:

• Keyword research
• Establishing keyword intent
• On-page and off-page SEO
• Optimizing H2s and H3s to structure content
• Writing powerful headlines, metadata, and calls to action (CTAs)
• Incorporating visuals such as infographics in your content

While it takes time to master these SEO skills, it gets smoother once you grasp the basics and put them into practice.

Communication Capabilities

Communication and interpersonal skills are some of the essential non-writing copywriting skills examples you’ll need to be an all-around copywriting maestro. Good verbal communication skills come in handy when:

• Attending content brainstorming sessions or content marketing events
• Collaborating with other departments or clients to drum up content strategies
• During sales pitches, when persuading new clients

Although the better part of your copywriting career will involve hardcore writing, these non-writing roles will come up as you start new projects and touch base on campaigns. Having excellent communication skills will help you ace these roles.

Flexibility

Because of the fast-paced nature of the content marketing world, it’s common to find yourself chasing tight deadlines or working on urgent projects. Sometimes you’ll have multiple copywriting jobs lined up, and your clients or boss expect you to deliver on time.

Such instances are commonplace in a copywriter’s career. That’s why you need good time management, prioritization, and flexibility skills to handle offhand changes calmly and professionally.

How To Develop Better Copywriting Skills

Writers never stop learning. That’s the beauty of working with words. As such,  it’s only natural if you find yourself constantly searching for how to improve your copywriting skills. Use these five tips to up your copywriting game.

1. Know Your Target Audience

Here's a case in point to better understand writing for your target audience.

Say you have two friends, Luke and Bill. You and Luke have been friends since childhood, and you know all his backstories, from his first prom date to his firstborn child. On the other hand, you and Bill only share a nodding acquaintance, and you aren’t sure you can guess his second name right.

If you were a realtor, would you use the same email pitch for Luke and Bill? If you want the best results, you definitely would not.

With Luke, you would be more personal because you know his background. You would write a more informal and up-close email like,” Hey Luke, I know you and Jackey enjoyed the World Series more than I did. We’ll get you next year! Speaking of baseball, I finally found your dream house on Sherman Oaks — a three-bedroom home with enough yard space to barbecue and teach Jason how to steal bases...”

With Bill, you would maintain a more formal tone like, “Hey, Bill. I hope you’re well. I know you're still on the hunt for your dream home. I just had an incredible space open up that ticks all the boxes on your checklist. Would you be interested in buying a three-bedroom house on Sherman Oaks with plenty of yard space?...”

In this case, you would have a better chance of persuading Luke to purchase the house. However, your approach to Bill is still personal enough that it has the potential to hook his interest as a new customer.

The same applies to copywriting. When you know your target audience on a deeper level, you have a better chance of writing copy that speaks to their hearts.

Learn and identify your customers':

• Lifestyles
• Hobbies
• Family life
• Economic and social background
• And more

2. Do Your Research

Research the methods and techniques that successful copywriters apply in their content and try to refine and blend these styles uniquely in your copy. The more your research and read great content, the faster you’ll improve your copywriting skills. You can learn much from your more experienced peers by closely researching and reviewing their content.

3. Take Online Courses

Luckily, there are many online copywriting courses you can take to advance your copywriting skills. These courses will teach you all about copywriting, from basic formatting of different content types to research hacks and data presentation techniques.

You can find free online courses that will teach you the ins and outs of copywriting. However, if you take online copywriting courses as a beginning copywriter, ensure you practice the skills you learn by writing dummy copies. This way, your writing skills will evolve rapidly, eventually making you a better copywriter.

4. Look for Opportunities to Gain More Experience

The copywriting industry is dynamic, with lots of diverse content. You may start by writing B2C content or short-from articles, but that shouldn’t stop you from graduating to B2B or B2G content, whitepapers, ad copy, ebooks, case studies, and other intricate content.

Great copywriters always seek new avenues to challenge and somewhat proof-test their writing skills. Don’t be afraid to venture into new topics and content formats. Many copywriters settle in their niches after trying their hand in several fields. It’s wise to gain experience writing different formats in your formative years. Having a range of copywriting skills is especially beneficial if you decide to build a copywriting business in your career.

Take Your Online Content to the Next Level

Now that you know what the copywriting skills required of a copywriter, you have the necessary ingredients to join the ranks of the best in the industry. And if you’re looking for copywriting jobs or copywriting services, Compose.ly is your go-to platform.

At Compose.ly, we have a rich pool of seasoned and vetted copywriters waiting to craft top-end content for businesses. We also have multifold copywriting jobs for talented content writers looking to work on new and exciting projects.

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