Copywriters are responsible for crafting powerful, persuasive messages that get readers to convert. In other words, a good copywriter does much more than just write well.
There's a broad set of essential skills you must have under your belt—from knowing how to write concisely and turn complex ideas into easy-to-digest messages to tapping into your target audience's mind to resonate with it.
That said, this post will go through the most valuable skills in copywriting.
Whether you're new to this industry or already experienced, mastering the skills below are the cornerstones of becoming a successful copywriter.
What you will learn
- Basic copywriting skills—from researching to writing easy-to-read SEO-friendly content.
- Copywriting formulas and psychology tips to empathize with readers and keep them engaged.
- How communication skills apply to both copywriting and healthy client relationships.
- How to boost productivity and creativity via copywriting tools and time management.
What are copywriting skills?
Copywriting skills comprise a wide range of qualities that are essential for writing effective marketing content. These skills include the ability to research, creative writing, generating engaging content, understanding the target audience, and of course, strong grammar and writing.
Copywriters also need to have other soft skills such as adaptability and a solid work ethic to deliver high-quality content on time.
Since copywriting sits at the core of marketing, writers should also hone in on their technical skills.
Strong marketing knowledge is absolutely essential for copy that's effective across various channels—from social media posts, ad copy, and emails to blogs, and more.
Which is the most important copywriting skill?
The answer to this will depend on what your goal is and why you are writing copy. It could be your creative thinking ability that allows you to craft messages that instantly attract attention, or it could even be the ability to accept feedback and adapt to a client's voice of tone.
14 copywriting skills to be a successful copywriter
While mastery over the written word is an obvious skill to possess as a copywriter, good copywriters possess a mixture of several different qualities. These abilities differentiate the very best editors and writers.
The good news is that you can develop or learn most of these skills by yourself.
Here are 14 skills that will make you better at writing copy.
1. Attention to detail
Lack of attention to detail will have a major negative impact on your copy.
Sure, typos and spelling mistakes can be inevitable, especially in long form content like blog writing, but spotting and fixing these errors is crucial.
Otherwise, you'll hinder your content's credibility, and readers will probably click the back button right away.
This Twitter post is pretty ironic, isn't it?
It's good practice to always proofread your content.
It's best to leave it sit for a while before you check it.
If your content is fresh out of the oven, you'll likely know it through and through and may subconsciously ignore typos or other mistakes.
Spacing out your copy and breaking it into multiple smaller pieces will give your eyes breathing room and make it easier to spot mistakes.
The same thing goes for fact-checking. Although the internet gives you access to endless amounts of information at your fingertips, not all of it is true.
Including false data will mislead your audience and wreak havoc on your reputation.
It's best to double-check information from at least three different sources before including it in your content.
But attention to detail doesn't stop at fact-checking and correcting mistakes.
The best copywriters observe their target audience and learn what makes them tick, then capitalize on their learnings to create impactful copy.
2. Understand reader psychology and use it
Knowing a thing or two about psychology is excellent for persuasive writing.
It helps tap into the minds of your target audience and create compelling content that connects with readers.
Adopting psychological principles can elevate your copy.
A few popularly used psychological triggers in copywriting are:
- Urgency. This is commonly reflected in limited-time sales and offers like upsells once you have already purchased an item.
- Scarcity. You've likely seen "limited stock" - a classic example of scarcity. It can also be conveyed in other similar ways such as "First X buyers receive Y" and so on.
- Priming. Priming works by exposing users to short term memory associations that favor the introduction of a primary offer.
- Decoys. Most often seen in pricing, a decoy agent is used to make other offers seem like a much better value for money.
- Authority bias. Users attribute higher degrees of importance to an authority figure so you'll often see brands associate themselves with other non competing authoritative brands or personalities.
There are other writing skills in psychology that aren't as common.
The Pratfall Effect, for instance.
This principle helps you appear more relatable to your target audience by admitting your own mistakes.
People are more likely to trust a person who acknowledges their shortcomings over someone who just talks about their success.
This blog post is a good example. The author admits his five biggest mistakes in the headline to connect with the audience and spark curiosity.
The headline also puts the author in a relatable position, earning the reader's trust.
The stated amount of money spent on Google Ads serves as proof that the author is qualified to share his thoughts.
3. Communicate effectively
Without a doubt, writing requires communication skills.
You must turn complex ideas into digestible information that everyone can understand.
Brevity is key—your copy must be straight to the point. Don't write paragraphs upon paragraphs if you can express an idea in a single sentence.
Otherwise, you'll drag your content out and cause readers to lose interest.
This is also where knowing your target audience comes into play.
You need to relate to readers, so use a language similar to theirs. Throwing technical jargon and difficult words at your target will only disengage readers.
This blog post is a good example of a poorly written header with an easy to read body.
The header is unnecessarily convoluted, but the sentences are short and sweet in the paragraph. The article's conversational tone is engaging and easy to comprehend.
However, communication also extends to interpersonal skills.
The marketing industry is highly collaborative—you'll always be in touch with clients, editors, and potential prospects.
So don't be afraid to ask questions, engage in conversation, and state your needs.
You need to know your client's requirements so you can write copy that works for them. Meanwhile, your clients need to understand your working style so they can set realistic expectations.
4. Use copywriting formulas
Copywriting formulas help streamline your workflow and write more compelling copy.
These are tried and tested copywriting frameworks designed to hook the audience and boost productivity.
Like the Problem-Agitate-Solution (PAS) formula.
Let's dissect the Problem Agitate Solution framework to see what it is.
- Problem: Identify and acknowledge your reader's pain points. This helps you empathize with your audience and spark curiosity.
- Agitate: Emphasize the problem's gravity. This adds a sense of urgency and causes readers to react emotionally, getting them invested in your content.
- Solution: Explain how your product or service solves the reader's problems. This prompts readers to convert or keep reading your content.
Here's an example depicting the PAS framework.
The blog starts by bringing up the difficulty in hiring a salesperson for a startup. This problem is further agitated by mentioning their personal experience, and how different qualities are important in hiring a sales professional for startups.
The author mentions their personal experience to persuade readers to read past the introduction and presents the solution to a good hire.
Other popular copywriting frameworks include the following:
- Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA): Use a hook to attract the reader's attention, then appeal to their interests through factual information. Turn that interest into a desire by showing your product's or service's benefits and conclude with a call to action.
- Before-After-Bridge (BAB): Clearly highlight the readers' pain points, then paint a picture of how their lives would look if their problems were fixed. Your product or service acts as a bridge toward solving the readers' issues.
- Features-Advantages-Benefits (FAB): Highlight a product's feature, mention the advantages that come with it, and then elaborate on how readers can benefit from the advantages in question.
5. Conduct thorough research
Good content involves a lot more than having strong writing skills.
Excellent research skills can help position you as a subject matter expert to write content that's credible and authentic.
Spend time researching reputable sources and linking them in your post.
It not only adds credibility, but it can also help readers verify your claims.
Internal linking practices are also beneficial for SEO. Search engines use these links to determine your content's usefulness and relevance in their assessment of your content quality.
Digital Marketing Institute's blog post for example, includes a link to a Reuters report under the "uncertain economic climate" text.
It just goes to show that the author is stating a fact that a well-known news organization has verified.
The blog also adds context and backs up its statements through statistics from Google's Consumer Insights.
With the rise of AI writing tools, we risk creating universally generic content on the same topics.
It is through research and personal insights that your content will stand apart from others writing on the same topics.
6. Consider user experience
Well-written copy is sometimes not enough to keep readers engaged—especially in longer pieces like blog posts.
Reading through walls of text gets tiring after a while and will likely cause readers to lose interest.
Make sure to write with user experience in mind—readers should go through your content as easily as possible.
For instance, images and graphs help break text monotony and add additional context to your copy.
Surfer AI now includes images in your AI generated articles.
But what if your content doesn't lend itself particularly well to images. Some topics just don't have relevant images that make sense.
In such a case, you can improve the user experience with simple text formatting.
Here's an example from Slack.
The blog post doesn't include numerous screenshots but the use of changes in the text format offers readers visual support making the content easier to read.
The copy is well structured and spaced out through headers, bullet lists, and whitespace.
This makes it easy to scan, despite the large amount of text. The sentences are also easy to understand—they are short and use simple language.
Making your online content easy to skim can decrease page bounce rates and increase dwell times, which are considered ranking factors by search engines.
Including a table of contents in the introduction can make it easier for readers to skip ahead and get to the sections they want.
Ensure that your web content is also accessible for a screen reader.
Speaking of accessibility, include alt text in your images.
They help describe the content of an image to people who use screen-reading tools. Search engines use alt texts to understand an image's context.
7. Embrace feedback
Criticism is sometimes a hard pill to swallow, but it's useful if constructive.
As a copywriter, you will work together with clients, editors and sometimes other people involved in content marketing, like graphic designers.
Each party involved may offer suggestions for improvement.
You should accept useful feedback and implement it within the content creation process. This will not only help meet your client's requirements but also improve your copywriting skills.
Additionally, each brand has a different perspective on what good copywriting is.
Some may value brevity, while others emphasize showing off your personality with more words.
Stay open to new ideas and adapt your content to fit different requirements.
Being flexible can often be an important copywriting skill for a client. A skilled copywriter will adjust the content's tone of voice to appeal to target audiences.
8. Demonstrate creativity in your writing
Copywriting is an art form, so creativity is second nature.
Think outside the box and don't be afraid to show off your personality.
It makes your copy more engaging and memorable, especially in an oversaturated market where originality is hard to come by.
Take a look at what KFC did.
The advertisement copy doesn't make any sense—at first glance, that is.
It's a word jumble viewers must solve.
If you take the time to rearrange the letters, you'll uncover the following words: "original," "spicy," and "bbq"—KFC's trademarks.
Although unusual, this Scrabble-like mini-game is an excellent example of thinking outside the box. It gets people directly involved in solving the puzzle, which makes the words that are found easier to remember.
But I get it; writer's block is real, and coming up with original ideas is not always easy.
You don't have to be as left-field as KFC though.
Here are a few ways you can get your creative juices flowing again:
- Switch gears. If the time allows it, consider taking a break from your current project and starting to work on something else for a short while.
- This helps disconnect your brain from the task at hand and give it a rest. You should feel refreshed once you come back to the original task.
- Set up a schedule. Set up time slots specifically dedicated to creating content.
- Over time, this will train your brain to remain fully focused and creative during the said schedule. Consider experimenting with different times of day to see when you're most creative.
- Use AI tools. Copywriting tools like Surfy can expand on a few sentences. You can use these drafts to either pick up some ideas or jump straight to editing the text.
9. Display empathy with your readers
You must compose persuasive copy that inspires empathy and connects with your target audience.
Showing readers you understand and care about their issues is essential for crafting a memorable, long-lasting message.
For instance, this blog post by Garden of Life acknowledges the reader's pain point about setting health goals.
The language used conveys the ease but determination required to follow through with changes for setting wellness goals.
Try to paint a picture through short, relatable stories or anecdotes that highlight your audience's main pain point.
This helps establish an emotional bond with the audience. You can also add a bit of humor for that extra oomph.
10. Posses marketing knowledge
Copywriting sits at the core of any marketing campaign—be it social media, email advertising, content marketing, and so on.
For instance, copy for landing pages can go into detail about a product's or service's benefits to persuade visitors to convert.
In contrast, PPC advertisement copy should be short, catchy, and straight to the point, while its goal is to push for click-throughs and get users to visit those landing pages.
Although hands-on marketing experience is not required to land a copywriting job, a deep understanding of how different marketing channels work helps you adapt your copy accordingly.
Additionally, copywriting is crucial for brand positioning and image.
Duolingo brands itself as a fun way to learn new languages, while the brand image is heavily involved in meme culture.
The copywriting in this particular post cracks a sarcastic joke while sticking to the language-learning positioning.
Using the right brand of voice can communicate your brand's unique personality.
11. Use SEO to rank
Search engine optimization practices help boost organic traffic by ranking web pages higher in the search results.
Search engines aim to provide users with the best possible results for their queries.
As such, well-written, high-quality content is one of the cornerstones of a solid SEO strategy.
While writing long-form blog posts is standard practice for SEO, it helps to learn some basic SEO writing skills.
Keyword optimization, for instance.
These are search terms users type in the search bar when looking for something on the internet.
Including these in your content can ensure that they appeal to both search engines and human readers.
Structuring your article through header tags (H1, H2) and including related keywords within subheadings and your paragraphs helps search engines understand your page's content and structure.
Addressing common questions in a concise yet detailed manner can help your content rank in the featured snippet section of the search results, increasing visibility.
However, beyond basic SEO copywriting skills, it takes experience and effort to learn more effective methods that can help your content rank well in search engine results.
Using a fully-fledged SEO platform like Surfer can help you perform SEO tasks at the ease of a few clicks.
Idenfifying keywords and their optimal frequency for an article, for example.
Or even write a new article with AI in twenty minutes.
So all you are left to do is edit and publish the article.
Instead of investing that time in learning a new skill, you can dedicate those hours to growing your business or finding new clients.
It's helpful to be versatile as a writer so that your services are appealing to a variety of clients—someone who wants a social media post as well as someone who may need SEO writing skills.
12. Retain a learning mindset
Good copywriting skills aren't developed overnight.
As seen, there's a lot to learn in this trade. You need to continuously practice writing and editing skills to establish yourself as an expert within the industry.
Besides, marketing is an ever-shifting field—new trends pop up and content algorithms frequently change.
You need to stay up-to-date with those changes so you can deliver effective results.
Here are a bunch of online resources to keep your copywriting skills in check and stay updated with the latest marketing trends:
- Copyblogger: A blog with informative articles teaching the art of copywriting and content marketing—from copywriting techniques to marketing tactics for freelance copywriters.
- The Copywriter Club Podcast: A podcast that features interviews with successful copywriters and covers various aspects of copywriting and freelancing.
- AWAI (American Writers & Artists Institute): Provides comprehensive training programs, courses, and seminars in copywriting and content writing.
- Surfer Academy: A collection of training videos and live sessions that's all about content—from how to build up a content strategy and handle keyword research to leveraging AI tools for better productivity.
- SEO Writing Masterclass: An online course that teaches you the latest SEO tips and tricks, how to write content for various stages of consumer awareness, handle competitor analysis, and more.
13. Be adaptable
This quality lends itself from retaining a continuous learning attitude.
The writing industry as a whole is in a state of flux and faces increasing levels of competition from the ever-increasing popularity of AI writing tools.
That said, you need to adapt to and embrace these new technologies, and take advantage of the capabilities they provide.
Doing so can help you improve your productivity and free up time for other activities.
For instance, you can use an AI copywriting tool like Surfy to rephrase, edit or research content in a fraction of the time it would normally take you.
Here are a few other AI copywriting tools you may consider:
- Grammarly. A simple grammar, spelling, and punctuation checker that also delivers personalized suggestions based on your selected audience, tone of voice, and more.
- ChatGPT. ChatGPT generates creative, context-aware content quickly, enhancing productivity and idea generation for diverse copywriting needs.
- QuillBot. It offers AI-powered paraphrasing, summarizing, and grammar-checking capabilities, enhancing content originality, clarity, and effectiveness.
- Wordtune. This app uses AI to rephrase and refine sentences, enhancing readability and style, making it a great tool for writers seeking to improve the flow and engagement of their copy effectively.
14. Manage your time effectively
Whether you're an in-house or freelance copywriter, time management is crucial—you need to allocate dedicated time for ideation, research, creation, and editing or proofreading.
Primarily, it ensures that you can meet strict deadlines, which is important to maintain client satisfaction and trust.
As a professional copywriter, you will often have to juggle multiple projects at once.
Good time management skills are needed to set priorities, give each job the right amount of time, and avoid taking on too much.
As such, you get to minimize the risk of getting overwhelmed and missing deadlines. Besides, managing your time properly also means you give yourself some room for breaks, which helps prevent burnout.
Poor time management can lead to last-minute rushes, and you don't want to write in a stressful environment.
Writing is inherently a creative process that cannot be rushed.
That said, plan work ahead of time, establish a routine, and eliminate any distractions during work hours.
Key takeaways
- Copywriting comprises a set of crucial skills that go beyond content creation. Understanding marketing and human psychology triggers such as urgency, scarcity, priming, decoys, and authority bias can enhance the persuasiveness of your copy.
- Attention to detail is essential for maintaining the credibility of your content and involves proofreading and fact-checking.
- The ability to convert complex ideas into digestible information is key. Effective communication also involves using language that resonates with your target audience and maintaining clarity in your writing.
- Leveraging formulas like Problem-Agitate-Solution (PAS), Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA), Before-After-Bridge (BAB), and Features-Advantages-Benefits (FAB) can help in structuring compelling copy and boosting productivity.
- Strong research skills are important to establish credibility and authenticity in your content. It involves spending time researching reputable sources and using internal linking practices beneficial for SEO.
- Being receptive to constructive criticism from clients, editors, and other stakeholders is crucial. Learning to write copy is a continuous process. Make sure to stay in touch with industry news, be open to feedback, and check out resources that you can learn from.
Conclusion
Learning these skills might seem overwhelming at first, but they should come naturally to you with experience and practice.
Start with the basics. Work on your proofreading and research skills to ensure you deliver error-free content. You can then move on to more complex concepts, like reader psychology and how to write copy for different channels.
Also, experiment with copywriting formulas right off the bat—the sooner you master these, the easier you'll write irresistible copy that attracts conversions.
