Do You Know Good Copy When You See It?

Can the people in your company recognize high-quality copy?

There’s a high likelihood they can’t, according to The State of Digital Copywriting, a recent survey of 365 marketers, copywriters, content editors, content strategists, and consultants by Sticky Content. Sixty percent of survey respondents said that one of their biggest challenges to good digital copywriting in their organization is that “people don’t get what good copy is.”

Why don’t organizations know how to judge the quality of their content?

Additional survey results give two critical clues:

1. Only 18% of content marketers involved with content roll out copy according to a content plan, and only 9.8% always use a creative brief.
2. Only 32% have a standard content structure for their writing.

These results indicate that a majority of organizations don’t know what good copy is because they haven’t thought through what they want to achieve with their copy and what they want it to include.

Why do I say this?

First of all, a content plan/creative brief is by definition a plan for what copy should look like when it’s completed. If you don’t have a content plan/creative brief, it’s very hard to achieve your objectives because no one knows what they are. A plan/creative brief should define the key issues your copy will address, including:

• Target audience/buyer persona
• Objectives for the piece
• Customer problem you’re trying to address
• Key messages

The fact that more than 80% of content creators don’t have a plan means they’re creating copy with no sense of direction and no way to evaluate whether they’ve gotten where they want to go.

A content structure is another way organizations spell out expectations for copy. A content structure defines all the elements the organization feels the copy should incorporate. Usually it comes in the form of a template that demonstrates what content a piece should include, where that content should appear in a document, as well as what a particular type of content should look like from a graphical perspective.

I recently worked with a company that was in the process of defining its content structure for product datasheets and solution briefs. The product datasheets deliver information on a particular product, such as a firewall. The solution briefs talk about comprehensive solutions that typically include multiple products, such as a multilevel security solution.

The content structure for the two-page datasheets included a brief statement of the problem, a description of the solution, and a list of 3 to 5 key benefits and how various features deliver these benefits in a bulleted format. The solution brief was meant to go into more depth in a 4-page document that thoroughly mapped out the customer challenge, the solution, the benefits, as well as related solutions from the vendor. This document also included a graphic and a statistic that illustrated the problem.

A well-defined content structure enables the writer to easily determine the critical content to include in each piece to meet the company’s objectives and how to present the content in a manner that’s consistent with other pieces describing the company’s product line. Without a content structure, it’s impossible for the writer to truly know what the company wants to include. Each piece will therefore include incomplete or inconsistent information, which makes it impossible to build a strong and consistent brand.

Here’s what happens when no content structure exists or the writer doesn’t follow it. The same client that created the structure described in the previous paragraphs produced one solution brief that didn’t follow the content structure. The piece ended up being a confusing hybrid that contained significant amounts of redundant information and was difficult to follow because it lacked the simple structure of the other solution briefs.

What’s the optimal way to implement content structures? I worked for one large company that did a terrific job of creating content structures. This company defined every type of document they planned to produce in their content hierarchy, whether it was a solution brief, an industry solution brief, a product datasheet, a white paper, or a case study. For each type of content, the company created a template that defined the look and feel of every element on the page, including headings, subheadings, illustrations, and captions. It spelled out all the sections each document should contain (executive summary, challenge, solution, benefits, conclusion) and how to structure the content in each section. The company also produced guidelines for the voice and terminology the documents should contain.

When people say that those in their organization don’t understand what good copy is, that tells me that no one in the organization took the time to think about what they wanted the copy to do for the organization, what audience they wanted to do it for, and what they wanted to say to their audience. By filling out a creative brief/content plan for every project, you can map out precisely what objectives you want the piece to achieve. By creating a content structure, you give your writers a roadmap for how to get there. At that point, you just need to make sure that the writing is crisp and clear and you’re good to go. You’ll have a piece that everyone knows is good content.

Comments

[Srujani Panda]

Hi Cheryl. You make a good point about how 'a well-defined content structure' enables the writer to easily determine the critical content to include in each piece to meet the company’s objectives.

What amazes me is how easily this is overlooked - especially in B2B marketing communication where you HAVE precise messaging and a plethora of structures (like SCIPAB, Challenger Sales, etc) to choose from. The idea should be to drop all pretense, zero in on exactly what you want to communicate, and stick to a well-defined structure. No one expects you to write a novel.