A guide to ethical and authentic copywriting

Copywriting can feel overwhelming. And when it comes to selling a service online, it can feel like there are an impossible number of moving parts. You need to understand the psychology of buying, how to do effective customer research, what the neuroscience of emotions means for you and your business, and how to harness the power of stories.

Breaking copywriting down

At its simplest though, you just need something to sell, an engaged audience of people to sell it to, and you need to be able to ask clearly for the sale. In this post, I’m going to focus on the last of these three elements, asking clearly for the sale, since this is where learning copywriting skills, or working with an experienced copywriter can help you.

Ethical copywriting: you don’t need to be pushy to sell

My clients are often so averse to coming across as pushy that they barely sell at all. But it’s worth thinking about how the psychology of buying works - what goes into a great buying experience? Why is it fun, energising or satisfying to buy what we want, and how can we leverage what we know about that experience for ourselves to create a great buying experience for our clients?

Your secret weapon

One of the things that is most effective is to focus on great customer research - if you really understand exactly what your audience wants and needs from you, and you can express that using the exact words that they would use themselves, you’ll have the beginnings of great sales copy. Conversely, if you skip this step, you may be left wondering why no one seems to connect with your beautifully written and perfectly structured page.

Understanding the science behind stories & emotions

Your customer research is the first step in understanding how to benefit from the neuroscience of emotions - how can you connect better with your clients? And then, how can you use the power of stories to maximise your emotional connection? We all tell stories every day (over the dinner table with family, on the phone with friends) but we don’t always bring this superpower into our copywriting.

Service and Sales

Things that get in the way of writing a good sales page include self-doubt, which can hold you back from selling entirely. A great reframe here is to use all your customer research to develop services (and sales copy to describe these services) from the perspective of your clients - what do they really want and need and how can you provide and describe that?

Easy ways to sound like yourself

Another thing that holds people back is not being sure of how to write copy that sounds like you - no one wants to sound robotic or formulaic. But if you focus on developing your own voice through some simple, easy to implement tricks, you can ensure your copy will always sound natural and authentic. And, counter-intuitively, learning copywriting by using a template can actually help you sound more like yourself, because you can focus all your efforts on writing in your own authentic voice, without having to also think about what goes where on the page.

Understand your brand voice

Developing a clear and consistent brand voice is part of copywriting - your sales copy can’t sound jarringly different from the rest of your web copy, or from your social media posts. You can change tone in different circumstances, but you need to sound like yourself across different platforms.

The ethics of sales

If your main fear is of being manipulative, or coming across as pushy, you need to focus on ethical sales techniques. It’s absolutely possible to learn to write an effective sales page without pressuring anyone, or leaning on their pain points - instead, it’s about making sure that your potential buyer feels seen, heard and understood, and that you’re providing the service they need at a price point that’s fair both to you and to them.

Learn copywriting - top tips

And then there are the copywriting skills you need, which involve writing clear, easy-to-skim text that connects emotionally and moves people to make the buying decision that’s right for them.

The basics of writing a sales page include understanding how to structure your page to create the best flow for your reader, how to write informally and conversationally, using your clients’ own words, and how to make sure you focus on the value you’re providing.

If this is all starting to seem intimidatingly complicated, check out the simplest fix for your copy. And remember that you can improve your writing simply by building a regular writing habit, which will do wonders for your content marketing as well as paying off with better copy.

Get professional help with effective ethical copywriting

If you want 1:1 support on your messaging and web copy, have a look at how we could work together.