Cognition #9: How I study copywriting | The 5-step formula!

Successful businesses thrive on how their copywriters create copies that speak to the audience in a way none of their competitors can.

Copywriting is a core facet of any business, and as a copywriter, you need to reinvent your skills and outplay yourself to write the best copies.

By skills, I don't mean how you write. It's about how you think.

Today's issue is all about shaping your thinking as a copywriter.

Welcome back!

We're gonna cover,

1. Three ways to learn copywriting.

2. The 5 step formula!

3. Non-technical, aka fun segment.

What's the wait for? Let's get Cognitive.

Three ways to learn copywriting

A) Knowledge consumption

This includes taking courses, reading case studies, books, blogs, etc., watching YouTube videos, and more.

You learn from the experts and understand copywriting in theory.

B) Real-time writing

You apply your learnings.

You write for clients.

You realize how different copywriting is in real.

C) Observation, analysis, and frameworks

You look at how your peers or favourite brands do it.

You observe what they do.

You analyze what's right and wrong about their copies.

You build your own frameworks.

This form of learning is underrated and is the least spoken about.

Hence, in this issue, I've decided to break down the 5-step formula to leverage learning via observation, analysis, and frameworks.

Here we go!

The 5-step formula!

Step 1: Collect your favourite copies

You always have a set of people and brands you admire.

Consistently follow their work, and whenever you feel they've written a kickass copy, take a screenshot and save it in a separate folder.

This is how I save the copies I like. 👇🏻

Do this for a month, and you'll have a folder with killer copies.

Not sure where to start?

My favourite + famous brands with top copywriting:

1. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video.

2. Zomato.

3. Durex.

4. Nike.

5. Apple.

6. IPL franchises.

7. Grammarly.

8. Tinder.

That's all I could recall right now.

Most copies I saved are from the random websites or social media pages I visit during my research.

So that's the first step.

Find your favourite brands. Follow their work. Save what you liked.

Remember: Don't just take a screenshot and save it in the folder. Instead, name the picture mentioning why you found the copy impressive.

For example, if I like the personalization in CTA, I name it in the following way:

[Brand name]—Personalization in web copy CTA.

Step 2: Perform analysis

Pick the copies you saved and try to find answers to these three major questions:

A. What's the brand's objective?

Any brand in the world is either building or selling—and they want to communicate it to their viewers, customers, followers, visitors, etc.

What brands are trying to communicate is a message.

Why brands are trying to communicate is the objective.

Some brands want to tell about their products.

Some want to share updates about their future collaborations.

Some might be building in public + sharing their experiences.

Try to find what brands are trying to communicate, and why.

B. What's their approach?

Durex integrates excellent writing with beautiful designs.

Zomato capitalizes on food cravings and public events.

IPL franchises rely heavily on wordplay.

Different brands approach copywriting differently.

Understand how they approach their objectives with their copies.

Creativity is another aspect you can focus on while analyzing copies.

C. Why target audience liked it?

Your ex is the second toughest person to understand. The first category of people is always your audience.

It applies to all brands.

When a copy does well, you can see it in its engagement. This is where you need to analyze the audience's behaviour.

What made the trick likable to the audience?

Is it the trend or moment?

Is it creativity?

Is it relatability?

Is it the power words?

Find answers from audience's POV.

In most cases, we just form templates.

Step 3: Build Frameworks

In most cases, we just form templates.

We like a copy. We look at the lines. We tweak a couple of words and feel we've recreated a copy.

But I don't think it takes us anywhere. At least in the long run.

I believe if you must learn something, you have to understand it from its core—and you do it by following the second step: when you look from both brands' and audiences' POVs, find styles, tones, objectives, approaches, etc.

That is when you build your own frameworks.

Analogy:

To explain this to you, imagine a sphere in your hand.

Forming templates is scratching the sphere's surface and finding a couple of things here and there to edit or replace—to customize according to your requirements.

Building frameworks is dissecting the sphere, getting to the core, and understanding its mechanism. Once you have an idea of how the core is formed, you build your own sphere around your own core.

Also, you can build multiple spheres once you understand the core, but can never do the same if you keep scratching the surface.

Same goes with copywriting.

The core of copywriting consists of:

1. Brand's message + objective.

2. Target audience and relationship with them.

3. Understanding of the event and how it is related to the brand.

4. Approach, strategy, etc.

Once you understand the core of any brand, you can write multiple copies. With QUALITY.

The best thing about frameworks is there is no right way.

Your analysis may be completely wrong and exactly the opposite of what the brand was thinking, but the beautiful part is you'll go through a thinking process and discover your writing self.

Step 4: Beyond the copy

I asked to collect copies from your favourite brands because you're a constant consumer of their content or product.

There are a few subconscious elements like the brand's history, the perception among the audience, etc., you understand only if you follow the brand for a long time.

These play a big role in how the target audience reacts to copies.

Looking beyond copies helps you when you write for popular brands. Because now, you can look at the previous posts and analyze the culture and style of copies + find the relationship with the audience.

However, this analysis can't be implemented when you write for startups or for brands building their audience relationship from scratch as there is no data to look into.

Step 5: Make and refer notes

It's necessary to document and make notes of your analysis and frameworks. 'Coz, it takes less than a day to forget everything.

Even more important habit than making notes is to refer them from time to time, especially when you're writing for clients.

You can't always remember everything instantly. Referring to notes while you work helps you recall everything you've learned and developed.

So yeah. Here we end the five steps you can work on to become a better copywriter.

To summarize everything in one sentence, I'd say,

That's Cognition #9's technical segment for you.

Fun is about to begin!

Non-Technical aka Fun Segment

Favourite quote from a book

Although the context is about willpower as a muscle, I see it as the importance of taking frequent and adequate breaks.

I understand we want to work more and more, but taking enough breaks prolongs consistency and protects you from burnouts.

Movie I watched this week

I want to share a documentary with you that I watched long back.

I'm a big admirer of both Michelle and Barack Obama, and this documentary is something I'd recommend everyone to watch.

It's a three-episode documentary.

Originally in English. Available on Hotstar.

Watch the trailer here. 👇🏻

Tweets I loved

YouTube video I loved

The theories in this conversation from Raj Shamani's podcast, Figuring Out, were interesting. Not something we already don't know, but I liked the presentation of thoughts.

Loved the title though: A Nation of Idiots.

Will check out the book.

Song I'm listening to on a loop

Heard this song after a long long time and couldn't resist sharing.

Love the music and aesthetics. Too sexy.

That's it from today's edition.

Hope it was fun. Will see you next week!

Until then, stay safe, take care, and build frameworks!

Love,

Vikra Vardhan.

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