The right words can persuade people to take action – whether that’s signing up for your newsletter, scheduling an appointment, or buying your latest product. The wrong words can also lose you custom, making the customer leave without you ever knowing that you lost them! This is why I’m sharing twelve common copywriting mistakes and what to do instead.

1. Making it all about “Me, Me, Me”

Writing from the wrong perspective is a classic mistake. Naturally, you want people to know all about the great stuff your business does but customers aren’t really concerned about your company’s grand achievements or what you had for breakfast – they want to know what’s in it for them. In other words, how is your product or service going to benefit the customer? Why should they part with their hard-earned money or hand over their email address?

How to fix it

Make your copy about the reader.

Who is your ideal customer? Before putting pen to paper, consider your ideal customer and put yourself in their shoes. Think about:

• What problems are they trying to solve?
• How is your product or service going to solve that problem?
• How is it going to make their life better?

Then, write with your customers in mind and speak directly to them.

Addressing your customers directly and showing (not telling) them how you’re the ideal person to solve their problem, will help you to connect with them and increase engagement. An engaged customer is more likely to make a purchase or sign up for your services.

2. Not having clearly defined objectives

The aim of copywriting is to persuade someone to take action, whether that’s to book a call, order a product, or sign up for regular updates. Without a clear purpose of what you want to achieve with your copy, it is challenging to write something that will inspire people to take action.

How to fix it

Before setting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), get clear on your goals. What do you want your copy to achieve? Be as specific as you can. For example, do you want people to:

• Follow a link for more information?
• Schedule an appointment?
• Make a donation?
• Buy a product?
• Sign up for your mailing list?

Knowing this will help you to write better copy that turns readers into customers.

3. Using too much jargon

A common mistake is to think that using lots of technical language or industry jargon will make a business look clever. However, more often than not it alienates the customers it’s intended for.

Unless you have a very specific audience that expects a certain level of jargon, you want people to understand your message. Otherwise, they may just switch off and go elsewhere.

How to fix it

Keep it simple with clear and succinct writing in a style readers can relate to. Knowing your audience is the key here.

Consider the technical level of your audience. Are they insiders to your industry? Then using industry terms may seem appropriate. However, if they’re not, remember that your audience isn’t necessarily as clued up as you and may not understand the insider lingo. Instead, write in plain English and if you can’t avoid using a technical term, provide a brief explanation of its meaning.

4. Lack of a consistent writing style

Inconsistencies in spelling, grammar, and tone look unprofessional and can be confusing. A consistent writing style reinforces a brand’s image, making them more memorable.

How to fix it

Create a style guide for your business that outlines writing rules such as:

• What spellings do you use? (e.g. organisation or organization; adviser or advisor?)
• For headings and subheadings, do you use Title Case (capitalize each word) or Sentence case (only capitalize the first word)?
• Do you use the Oxford comma?
• How do you write numbers? (e.g. spelled out or written as digits)

Once you’ve decided on a style (e.g. to Oxford Comma or not), stick to it in everything that you write.

Additionally, consider how your brand speaks to your audience, which is known in the marketing world as Tone of Voice (TOV). The tone you write in should reflect the personality of your brand. For example, are you formal or casual? Is your brand authoritative, caring, cheerful, or serious? Do you use humour? How technical is the language that you use?

Decide on a TOV that matches your brand personality, and make sure it’s written down in your company style guide.

If you don’t have the time to write a style guide, you could use an existing one, for example, the Guardian Style Guide or The Elements of Style. Existing guides also make good starting points for making your own. Alternatively, you can ask someone to write one for you (some copywriters and editors offer this service).

It’s easy to fall into the trap of being inconsistent, which is where a skilled proofreader can help. If you can provide them with your style guide – bonus!

Get in touch if you want to chat with me about compiling your style guide.

5. Not checking spelling and grammar

Typos and spelling mistakes happen to the best of us. Often we’ve been staring at our work for so long we become blind to those sneaky little blunders. However, it looks sloppy and can cause customers to wonder if you’ll make mistakes in your work too.

How to fix it

At the minimum, a simple grammar and spelling check using your word processor is both easy and quick. For more in-depth checking, you can also use tools like Grammarly, Scribens, or Hemingway Editor. An extra pair of eyes is also valuable for catching mistakes. Ask a friend or colleague to take a look or hire a professional editor or proofreader.

Not sure if you need an editor or a proofreader? Check out my article about the difference between copy-editing and proofreading.

6. Large blocks of text

Big blocks of text are an effort to read, especially on a screen. If your text is too difficult to read, people are more likely to click away.

How to fix it

To make your content as easy and effortless as possible to read, break up your text. Paragraphs are much more visually appealing and less daunting than one long stream of text. If your text is going to be read on a screen, make your paragraphs shorter to aid readers.

Use headings and subheadings to break up the text and if you’re including a list, use bullet points. Use numbers when your points need to be in a certain order. Visuals such as images or video also help to break up a text.

7. Not backing up your claims or checking facts

Sometimes I’ll see people make bold claims without any evidence or without citing their sources. Trust is an important factor in the buying decision process. Making claims without supporting them or forgetting to fact-check doesn’t help to build trust or confidence from customers.

How to fix it

When making a claim, stating a fact, or using statistics, ensure to check it and credit sources to back you up. Providing sources builds trust with readers and showcases subject knowledge.

Show people why they should work with you and not your competitors. For example, use:

• Statistics (e.g. 95% of our customers gave our advisers a 5-star rating.)
• Case studies
• Client testimonials

8. Not sharing the benefits

Another frequent mistake is to focus on the features of a product or service (i.e. what it is and all the bells and whistles attached) but not the benefits. While the features of your product or service may be brilliant, what your customers really want to know is how it’s going to improve their life. In other words: the benefits.

How to fix it

Write about the benefits (i.e. advantages) your product or service brings to the customer. For example, why are three blades on a razor better than two?

By focusing on the benefits to the customer, your copy will be more persuasive as you are appealing directly to the problems they want to solve.

9. Using the passive voice

Good copy makes readers sit up and take note. Writing in the passive voice can really slow a text down, sound awkward, or even muddy the meaning. None of these things are very good when you want to grab a reader’s attention and keep it. In a passive sentence, someone or something (known as the subject in grammar lingo) receives an action. For example: The house is painted green by the Hulk.

How to fix it

If your text is taking its time to get to the point, try employing the active voice. As opposed to the passive voice, where the subject receives an action, the active voice describes someone or something doing an action. For example: The Hulk paints the house green.

Notice how the active example is more concise, while the passive example slows you down with more words. The active voice makes a sentence more immediate and will have a bigger impact on your reader than writing in the passive voice.

Tip: Tools like Hemmingway or Grammarly Premium can help you spot when you’ve used the passive voice.

10. Using too many intensifiers

An intensifier is an adverb that strengthens or weakens another word. Examples of intensifiers include:

• very
• absolutely
• really
• so

Intensifiers can be useful; however, when used excessively, they make a text more difficult to read. It also weakens the overall text as frequently used words can lose their meaning.

How to fix it

Either drop the intensifier altogether or use a stronger, more descriptive word instead. For example, “The cake was delicious” is stronger than “The cake was very tasty”.

11. Not telling the reader what to do next

You’ve put lots of time into your copy. It’s engaging, persuasive, and all-around great copy. But wait! What does the customer need to do? How do they buy into this amazing product or service?

People aren’t mind readers. If you don’t tell them what they need to do next, they’re more likely to click away without taking that all-important action (whether that’s to book an appointment, add an item to their shopping cart, or sign up for your informative newsletter).

How to fix it

Include Calls to Action (CTAs) in your copy telling people what to do next (e.g. sign up for the newsletter here).

A CTA can take various forms, including being part of the copy, stand-out text, or a button. They don’t always have to be at the end either and can be scattered around the page. Think about where they fit naturally in the text and add them.

Get creative with the wording of your CTAs. They don’t always have to be “Buy now” or “Click here”. For example, on my website, the contact buttons read “Let’s Chat” instead of “Contact”. “Let’s Chat” sounds more friendly; a key factor in my brand’s Tone of Voice. What works well with your brand tone of voice?

Be clear about what action you want your reader to take (e.g. download a report or read another blog post) and how this can fit naturally within the context of the page or document.

12. Too much focus on writing for bots

SEO is essential for getting your articles high up in search engine results. Therefore, it’s worth taking time to do some keyword research. However, be wary of using too many keywords in your copy. Too many keywords crammed into a text can make it feel forced or unnatural and won’t do you any SEO favours as it’s against Google’s spam rules. (Filling a page with keywords is known as keyword stuffing, but I like to think of it as keyword vomit!)

How to fix it

As it is humans (and not search engine bots) that will be handing over their money for your products or services, always remember to write for humans first. If a word doesn’t fit into the text, don’t use it.

And that’s it! Twelve copywriting mistakes to look out for and avoid, helping you to write stronger marketing copy and connect with your readers. I hope you have found these tips helpful.

If you’d like to learn some SEO copywriting tips, check out my post 9 SEO Copywriting Tips to Drive More Traffic to Your Professional Services Website. You may also like 5 Copywriting Tips to Engage Your Readers.