7 copywriting mistakes to avoid to increase sales

Find out 7 of the most common copywriting mistakes to avoid to help increase your sales and engagement rates.

Copywriting is a vital part of marketing. From web pages, blog posts and newsletters to adverts and social media, good copywriting is needed in all areas of your marketing. Without it, you will find it harder to attract your audience.

However, you need to know what you can and can’t do when it comes to writing. Some copywriting mistakes can be disastrous to a campaign and your business. So, to help you out we have put together a list of 7 copywriting mistakes to avoid, to increase your sales.

Copywriting mistakes to avoid

Not checking your work

Spelling or grammatical errors can be disastrous for your business. In fact in a survey, 59% of adults admitted they would avoid doing business with a company who had obvious spelling or grammatical errors. This shows it is vital to proof your work before you publish it to ensure it is all correct.

We recommend getting someone else to check your work as well, fresh eyes are always a great idea to check for errors. Don’t simply rely on spell check to pick up on mistakes.

Long, descriptive headlines

Many people may think that having a long, informative headline is a great way to attract your consumers. However, a short, snappy headline is most effective when it comes to the internet.

You want them to read it and instantly want to find out more about your topic of choice.  Headlines are very important for copy, a good one will make consumers want to read more and find out about your company. However, a bad one could cause consumers to click off straight away.

Keyword overloading

If you are creating copy you may also want to incorporate search engine friendly keywords to help drive traffic and improve rankings for your site.

According to BrightEdge research, 53% of all trackable traffic comes from organic search, so increasing your rankings is important to help your company appear on Google and other search engines.

However, a common copywriting mistake is thinking that you should use your keywords as much as you can to increase these chances, but this isn’t the case.

Make sure the keyword makes up no more than 5% of your copy. If you oversaturate your copy with your chosen words, it will sound unnatural and may also be ignored by Google bots.

Google on Tablet
Google and other search engines have gotten wise to keyword stuffing in recent years

It’s not me, it’s you

When writing copy for your website whether it is a blog post, webpage or newsletter make sure you are always keeping your consumer’s wants and needs in your mind. If you start talking about yourself and your company only, consumers will be less engaged and unlikely to remain on your site.

Instead focus on what you can do for them, help them to imagine your products or services in their life. Use the pronouns “you” and “our” rather than “we” and “I” to include your consumers and attract them using your copy.

Copy focused on the product or company

Connected to the previous point, another common copywriting mistake is focussing your writing solely on the product or services you are selling. What you need to focus on more are the benefits your consumers will reap from this.

They don’t care about the fancy features; they want to know what they mean for them and how it will affect their life. Rather than saying, for example “it has a high-speed connection” show them what it will mean for them, such as “you will be able to connect faster”.

Focus on the user to increase engagement with your content

Long paragraphs throughout

You may think that longer paragraphs may be more effective as it means less scrolling is needed. However, most users like to skim text, and this is much more difficult on larger chunks of text. In fact, according to HubSpot, 73% of those surveyed admitted they skim read blog posts. 

To make skim reading easier and more engaging make sure you split up your text into smaller, easier to manage paragraphs. This will not only make it more readable but will also look better and make it appear like there is less text.

Jargon laden content

Using jargon or complex words is a common copywriting mistake. Unless you are certain your target market will understand jargon, avoid using it to ensure you don’t alienate consumers. Make sure you use the language your target market uses and understands to help them relate more to the content.

If you have completed thorough market research on your target market you should have an idea of what language to use and what not to use.

There are so many different common copywriting mistakes, these are just 7 of the most common ones. We understand copywriting can be a long process and takes certain skills which you may not currently have within your business.

 The ability to write to a certain style, include SEO and make sure it is consistent with your brand can take a lot of time and resources. Therefore, we make sure we have a great team of copywriters to help support you with all your copywriting needs. From social media advertising to SEO we can help create great content to increase your sales and raise your brand awareness.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you improve your copy to attract more customers.