The Power of Words in Copywriting

The power of words in copywriting is not to be underestimated. In the world of business, words matter. In fact, they matter quite a lot. They are the foundation of the majority of our communications, whether it’s Slack, Email, and Whatsapp or Annual Reports, Whitepapers, Social Media, Emails, Advertising, Key Messages or a Press Release.

Words have the power to explain, direct, and interpret the world we live in, as well as the power to convey emotion, create connections, and engage and immerse people in a topic or idea. For a brand, they do everything from communicating your brand values to differentiating your service, offering, or products.

Choosing the right words in copywriting

Most organisations, no matter how big or small will struggle at some point to find the right words to express what they want to say or what they want their company to communicate, either internally or externally. This can happen as a result of fast growth, a strategic pivot, an evolutionary period, a growth stage, or perhaps when a new revenue stream or business unit is created.

Often, when it comes to strategy development, the words chosen to articulate the strategy are as important as the development of the strategy itself. If you are trying to convince a room full of investors that your idea is going to change the world, then you want powerful copy and words that will ignite a response and resonate with them, not leave them cold or confused.

Using the ‘wrong’ words in your communications and marketing materials can sometimes be more damaging than not using any words at all. This is why the old adage ‘less is always more’ is one of the many rules in a copywriter’s rulebook. Jargon can also be a turn-off for a reader, regardless of how expert they may be on a particular subject. Using unnecessary jargon in your copy can make your brand feel inaccessible or overly complex. As Albert Einstein once said, ‘everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler’ – in other words, make it as easy as possible to understand without changing the meaning.

Not everything is ‘amazing’

However, in our bid to communicate with our audience, our words have started to lose some of their power and their meaning. For example, how many times have you seen a social post, ad, or email with copy telling you that something is amazing? In general, superlatives tend to be overused as brands desperately attempt to catch their audience’s attention. Superlatives include words such as amazing, fascinating, awesome, fantastic, incredible, shocking, stunning, unbelievable, surprising, mind-blowing. Yet, if you look at some of the most powerful and engaging ads in the world, you’ll be unlikely to find the word amazing in any of them. In fact, there are entire groups dedicated to their hatred of the overuse of the word ‘amazing’.

Copy Wheels

Emotion or Feeling Wheels can be a great tool for marketers and copywriters who want to pinpoint the emotion they want to convey or elicit with their target audience. Feeling wheels have been used within psychology for some time as a way to help children and adults express their feelings. However, these wheels have worked their way into the copywriter’s toolkit as a way to help create powerful feelings from copy.

There are also ’emotional copywriting spectrums’. Hootsuite’s ‘Wheel of Copy’ has defined 7 basic emotions that they suggest will help you create powerful messages. You can download their ‘Wheel of Copy’ here (this is not an ad). These 7 words are:

• Caring
• Newness
• Exclusivity
• Greed
• Reassure
• Urgency
• Pain

Don’t underestimate the power of words in copywriting 

Copywriters can be largely undervalued. After all, most of us can read and write, so surely bashing out a couple of hundred words about the brand won’t be too hard. Can it? But it’s not just about throwing a load of words and sentences down on a page, hitting a word limit, and clocking off for the day. Copywriting is a powerful art form that borrows elements from art, psychology, music, marketing, pop culture, history, mathematics, data science and much, much more. This is no exaggeration.

For example, think about the ads which have made you cry, the articles which have made you angry, and the social media posts which have made you laugh. Or think about the websites which have reached the number one spot in Google for very hard-to-rank keywords. How did they do it? Sure the website was well-built, the pictures look great, and the videos are “amazing”, but ultimately, it was the (SEO-optimised) copy that got them there.

Good copywriters know how to use the power of words to write for the audience they want to reach. They know how to tap into emotions like fear, ego, happiness, sadness, greed, and vanity. They know how to play with our innate human behaviours, and they use language to trigger responses and actions from us.

After all, there is a reason why you went out and bought that exact brand or worked with that specific company, and it wasn’t because you just liked their logo.

At Bright Company, we have written copy in Arabic and English for businesses, governments, charities, NGOs, healthcare organisations, SaaS solutions, events, the energy industry, FMCG, and many other types of organisations. We are experts in research-based whitepapers, articles, website copy, blogs, strategic messaging, message houses, narratives, press releases, social media copy, ghost-writing, key messages, mission vision values, search-optimised copy (SEO), ebooks, reports, trend analysis, ad copy, and just about any other type of copy. To put it another way, we’ve not come across a project too small or a challenge too big that we’ve had to turn it down. Yet. But we’re always happy to put that clean sheet to the test.

If you are looking for support with your copy needs, then let us know, and we’d be happy to chat further about our ‘amazing’ copy skills.