Develop your Copywriting Skills

• Learn to construct concise, engaging and effective messages for marketing
• Understand the nature and applications for copywriting
• Improve your writing skills, and diversify your capacity to earn income from your writing

Course Content

Ten lessons as follows:

Lesson 1 - Scope and Nature of Copywriting

• What is copywriting?
• Types of copy and copywriting
• Difference between advertising and marketing
• Elements of an advert
• Buyer psychology
• Buyer profiles

Lesson 2 - Mastering Conciseness

• Preparation
• Lateral thinking
• Creative problem solving (CPS)
• In conclusion
• Using a dictionary
• Researching specific product information
• Improving conciseness
• Enhancing clarity

Lesson 3 - Creating Engaging Copy

• Creating targeted marketing materials
• Who is the market?
• What motivates a buyer?
• Narrowing the target/niche promotions
• Customer segmentation models
• Creating compelling reasons to buy
• Products as solutions
• Know the competitive landscape
• Nurturing inspiration
• Power of communication
• Making use of feedback
• Connecting copy with the buyer’s emotions
• Descriptive writing and engagement

Lesson 4 - Clarity, Structure and Headings

• Ogilvy – The father of advertising
• The Hero/Heroine
• Writing advertising materials
• Structure of copy
• How to make a statement more engaging
• Headlines
• Using subheadings
• Enhancing credibility
• Different approaches to copywriting structure
• Direct approach
• Indirect approach
• Techniques to enhance structure
• Bold, italics, callouts, and other emphasis
• Altering or disregarding convention
• Accessibility
• Different focuses = Different copy outcomes

Lesson 5 - Writing for Print Advertising

• Points to consider
• Size matters
• The elements of print media advertising
• Components explained
• White space/ negative space
• Advertorials

Lesson 6 - Writing for Direct Mail and Email

• Why is direct mail useful?
• Challenges for writing direct mail content
• Evaluating the impact of direct mail

Lesson 7 - Writing Media Releases

• Why media releases Are important
• Structure of a media release
• Writing a media release
• Selecting the right publications and journalists
• Press release structure
• Introduction
• Quotes and statistics
• Challenges with writing press releases

Lesson 8 - Writing for Broadcast Media

• Designing an ad
• Writing radio ads
• Writing online ads
• Writing verbal ads
• Writing a script
• What to be aware of in writing, publishing and photography

Lesson 9 - Writing for the Internet

• Unpaid advertising
• Paid advertising
• Influencers
• Influencer content
• Using smartphone reading habits to create engaging copy
• Creating online content
• Website copy
• Social media content

Lesson 10 -  Reviewing, Editing and Improving Advertising Copy

• Reviewing your work
• Focus on Headlines
• Editing your work
• Evaluating the success of advertising copy
• Plagiarism and self-plagiarism
• Intellectual property and ethics
• Market Success
• Conduct your research and analysis
• Evaluation and adjustment of a marketing campaign

AIMS

• Describe the nature, scope and purpose of copywriting for advertising and how it can elicit business.
• Develop advertising messages more concisely without detracting from clarity. 
• Explain engaging phrases and sentences that are powerful, concise and extremely clear in their message
• Analyse the structure of advertising material and develop advert elements which are relevant to the product, customer segment and advert content.
• Design compelling and effective advertising copy for print media. 
• Design compelling and effective advertising copy brochures, leaflets, emails, or any other direct mail marketing.
• Design compelling and effective advertising copy for media releases.
• Design compelling and effective advertising copy for broadcast media. 
• Design compelling and effective advertising copy for the Internet. 
• valuate advertising copy before use and post use, to improve marketing success. 
  
   

 Write to Sell Not to Inform

Copywriting for advertising is not the same as communicating information about a product. – one has a single purpose of eliciting a sale;  the other has the purpose of conveying information.
Copy writers, at base, write copy. Copy is the text that is used for advertising or some forms of publishing (magazines, newspapers). In the context of this course, copy will refer specifically to advertising materials unless otherwise stated.
Copywriting is distinct from other forms of writing in that the end goal is focussed on sales.