LESSON 1: WHAT IS COPYWRITING? || STEEM SKILLSHARE COPYWRITING MASTERCLASS

Hi friends, welcome to the first lesson of our copywriting training. Today, the main focus of the lecture will be what is copywriting. By the end of today's lecture, you should be able to answer that question.

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CONTENT OF LECTURE

• What is Copywriting
• Advantage of Copywriting
• Levels of Copywriting
• Some Branches of Copywriting.

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Introduction

People often confuse the term copywrite with copyright, with the former being the skill I am about to teach, and the latter a term often used in law. The main reason for this confusion is because the skill itself is relatively new, and so very few people actually have an idea about this skill, talk less of practicing it.

Of recent copywriting has become one of the most valued skills as related to sales and marketing. This skill basically gives businesses and individuals the ability to increase their sales and maintain good relationship with their customers by simply writing. Oh yes you heard me. Sounds too good to be true? Well, I'll showing you exactly how to use this skill to do just that using this course, so stay tuned. Once this skill is well mastered it would help you increase your business' revenue significantly with little to none extra cost incurred. Well, let's begin.

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What Is Copywriting?

The easiest definition for Copywriting is salesmanship in print. But Copywriting is more than this. Copywriting actually refers to the use strategic words and patterns, inorder to get people buy your products.It also involves the study of human behavioural patterns and psychology, inorder to influence them buy your products.

Copywriting also includes maintaining good relationship with a customer, even after a sale has been closed. For example, assuming you sent out a sales copy to a customer via their email and they purchased a product, asking them about their experience with the product and their product reviews will increase the probability of them making a repeat purchase.

Copywriting is so powerful because just by improving on your sales copy, you'll be able to increase sales without having to spend a dime on advertisement expenses. This is possible when you focus on product benefits, rather than product features in your sales copy. What that means is instead of telling your customers how cool or how awesome your product is, you should be telling them instead how your product can help solve their problems. This increases the probability of a purchase. A good sales copy can also easily close a sale without you putting in any extra effort. Throughout this course, I'll be showing us the strategies I've learnt overtime, so as to help us all increase sales, no matter the business your into. Someone Who practices Copywriting is called a copywriter.

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Advantages

• Copywriting is a High Income Skill
The fastest route to financial independence and ultimately financial freedom in our time today, is getting a high income skill. Copywriting is a gem, and has become of the most high paying skills. This is because they're extremely needed by businesses both big and small, but very few are available. Learning this skill will also help you increase your business' revenue and you can also work as a freelancer on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork.

• Copywriting is scalable
The more you learn and become better the easier it is to earn even more than a 6 figure income. That is 10×ing what ever you earn presently or even more.

• It is a Perfect work from home skill
As I earlier mentioned, you can work as a freelancer with this skill. It's flexible you can do it from anywhere, all you need is a phone and internet connection. A laptop is a added advantage. If you decide to get an office that is fine.

• Copywriters are always needed
Company's are always looking for ways to increase sales. A company which cannot sell will eventually be kicked out of the market by her competitors and because you have a part to play in the sales of a company or a brand, you will always be needed. A copywriter is like a doctor, who is needed for business operations. Everyone need more sales and the one who can provide that will always be needed.

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Levels of Copywriting

• Freelance Copywriters
These are Copywriters who work for freelancing sites like Upwork and Fiverr. Upwork and Fiverr are online market places where people in need of a particular skill can come to hire these services and pay. But of course, a certain percentage of your income is taken by the freelance platform. Freelance Copywriting is usually a good place to start.

• Agency Copywriters
These are Copywriters who have their own agency. They work on behalf of themselves. All the money earned goes to the individual.

• Corporate Copywriters
These are Copywriters who work for companies, writing their sales copies, newsletter,email marketing, product description, amongst others. For example, if I am a copywriter who works for Microsoft only, then I am a corporate copywriter.

• Celebrity (Personal brand) Copywriters
Here you build a name and fame. Here you have an audience you can sell to at anytime.You are making an impact and helping others on the Same road.Perhaps the most well known celebrity copywriter in the world today is Dan Lok (you should definitely look him up).

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Some Branches of Copywriting

• CONTENT MARKETING
This is the one way to get people to buy your products or services easily. It's also one of the biggest branches of Copywriting because you are adding value first. Everyone likes value. It's now about showing your customer how your product can be of help to them. Customers are usually very reserved when you sell to them directly, especially if they are your cold audience.

Your cold audience are those people that have never heard about you before. Even if you sell hot tea to your cold audience, they will not buy. You need to warm up your cold audience by feeding them with value so as to gain their trust. Your warm audience are people that have heard of you from other people before. Your hot audience are those people who have previously bought from you and trust you and your products. The mistake most people make is that they are selling a hot product to a cold audience. The most attractive way to sell to your cold audience is to use content marketing.

• EMAIL SEQUENCES
This is another branch of Copywriting. Email marketing has not be killed, People are still making a lot of money from email marketing. As a Copywriter you can also be given a job to write email for a clients. It's call email sequence. Once someone come into your email list, you don't just start selling directly. You must give some form of value for some time. Before you now sell to them.

• SALES LETTERS
Sales letters are direct sequential adverts and it's one big branch of Copywriting. Sales letters are longer with lots of testimonies and proofs that your products works.If you ever bought health products online, I can assure you that , that was a long sales letter. The two major ingredients are Social Proof and Testimonies

• WEBSITE CONTENT
Copywriters write the content you see on every website. This is one of the highest paying branches of Copywriting.

• SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
This branch of Copywriting is very lucrative if you know your work as a Copywriter. Your Copywriting skill will be very useful in pulling in content daily. How you market their products, the word you use will also be as a result of what you've learnt from Copywriting.

• PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Go to Alibaba, Amazon, Ali Express, konga, Jumia and all other e-commerce websites. They all need products descriptions. Those companies know that the better the product description the faster the urge to buy. That's why they hire a Copywriter to write a copy for them.

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CONCLUSION

Well, that's all from lesson 1. I hope we got to learn the basics about Copywriting is all about. As the weeks go by, we'll learn more about Copywriting and how to write good sales copy. Thank you for reading through the lesson. See you next Wednesday with Lesson 2 .

Thanks for reading 👊
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