Before you sit down to write your first word of a copywriting task, it’s important to know your purpose and audience. These two elements of writing go hand-in-hand and work in tandem with each other no matter what you’re writing, whether it’s a nationwide campaign for a new client or a grocery list for yourself. Often in advertising and marketing, these two points are very clear, but sometimes, they can be more nuanced.
To identify exactly what you’re communicating and to whom, ask yourself some questions about your overall task.
What’s My Purpose?
When writers sit down with a blank page, we usually ask ourselves, “What am I doing?” As a marketing agency, our overall purpose is to persuade an audience to do something. This goal, however, is quite broad, so the next step is to break it down into specifically what you’re persuading your audience to do. This is your call to action, or CTA, which commonly includes any combination of the following:
- visit a website
- follow a social account
- purchase a product
- use a service
- attend an event
If you’re persuading an audience to use a service, such as a restaurant, you can organize your purpose into smaller goals, such as, which services or products do I need to highlight? All-you-can-eat spaghetti?
Who’s My Audience?
Once you identify your purpose, you can focus on your audience. Your primary audience is people who already love all-you-can-eat spaghetti. Just as important is your secondary audience: people who don’t know yet that they want all-you-can-eat spaghetti. Each of these audiences require a different set of persuasive strategies:
All-You-Can-Eat Spaghetti Lovers: Terrific! Tell me why I should go to your restaurant and when.
Potential All-You-Can-Eat-Spaghetti Consumers: First, tell me why I want to eat that much spaghetti, and second, tell me why your restaurant is the best place to do it.
Again, start with a list of questions that each audience may ask about the product you are promoting. People who are all-in with eating endless amounts of spaghetti need to be persuaded to eat at this specific restaurant. The second audience, as you can see, requires additional persuasive strategies.
With all copywriting tasks, breaking down your purpose and audience into a series of questions significantly helps to structure your entire copywriting process. Your answers to these questions become the main elements of the task as you create the perfect spaghetti campaign.
If you’d like help answering these questions for your business, contact us! We can help you identify your purpose, evaluate your audience, and find the best CTAs to reach them.