How to make copywriting come alive? Learn these 4 tips

Copywriters need to constantly accumulate new words and expand their vocabulary so that they don’t have a blank mind or write outdated sentences when they start writing. Use the following four methods to consciously train your vocabulary skills.

When it comes to copywriting, you know that you need to have insight, understand users, and follow hot topics. You hope that it can be heartfelt, not self-indulgent, and persuasive, so as to open consumers' wallets.

You always quote the golden words of copywriting masters, and painstakingly study popular articles with over 100,000 views, trying to find ways to improve your skills.

This leads to a result: there are enough copywriters who have vision and understand principles, but too few copywriters with strong basic skills. There is a serious gap between vision and ability, which is the cruel reality faced by most copywriters in China.

Regarding the importance of basic skills, Ah Cheng’s description of Feng Zikai’s paintings is worth reading:

Later on, Feng Zikai often only painted a moon in a painting, and then inscribed "Appointment after dusk". It can be seen that to him, brush and ink were no longer important, and painting was no longer important. What was important was the joke he played on the viewer in the painting. Later scholars who followed this path often followed suit and neglected the writing, only to end up failing in mid-air and falling painfully. Everyone has to work hard to take root.

"Vocabulary" is one of the prerequisites for a copy to "take root". Its significance does not lie in how many fancy or even obscure words you use, but in being able to find the most accurate and unconventional word from your vocabulary when you want to describe a product, a concept, or an emotion. Accumulating a sufficient vocabulary is the basic condition for making all this possible.

Many people still think of "vocabulary" as learning a new language. When you learn a new language, you focus on accumulating and improving your vocabulary. However, for people who work with words, it is very necessary to have a higher vocabulary than the average person.

True literary masters can write masterpieces in vernacular that even children can understand, but this does not mean that they only have a vocabulary at the level of a child. In fact, any master has a rich "language pool".

How can you, through conscious training, stop worrying about a blank document and calmly use the existing vocabulary to "deploy your troops"? I hope this article can give you some inspiration.

Tips 1: Verbs are the backbone of copywriting

Verbs are the backbone of a sentence. The accurate use of verbs can make the copy vivid and lively, and can also reflect the strength of observation to some extent.

As a copywriter, it is your responsibility to understand the differences between different actions and the explicit or ambiguous meanings they convey.

Let’s first look at some excellent verb users:

The WeChat account " Yi Tiao " wrote the following headline in an advertisement for a facial cleanser:

1 minute to shake out the dirt in the pores.

The word "shock" makes people seem to hear the buzzing sound when the cleansing device is started, and the cruel scene when the oil and residual makeup in the pores are shaken off. Describing the function and effect of a product through a verb can arouse users' desire to use it immediately, compared with similar products with copywriting such as "Smart Skin Rejuvenation" and "Cleansing Tornado".

If you are a restaurant or a copywriter for a food public account , how would you write when you need to introduce the dish Mapo Tofu to diners? To describe the spicy and delicious taste of this dish, you might as well tell the diners about its equally wonderful cooking process:

This is Ah Cheng's description of Mapo Tofu in his article "Homesickness and Protease".

A series of verbs such as "stir-fry", "fry", "fry", "blend", "sprinkle", and "mix" restore the entire cooking process, making it efficient and powerful.

If you are a food copywriter, but you have not accumulated relevant vocabulary in your "language pool", it is hard to say that you have carefully observed and understood the food, and it is also difficult to recommend it to consumers in a vivid way.

The above two paragraphs are Wang Zengqi's description of food in his book "Five Flavors", which also makes wonderful use of verbs: "boil", "clarify", "cut", "cut", "spread", "blanch", "marinate", "swallow", and "drip". Some are slow and some are fast, some are heavy and some are light. These are textured texts, and reading them makes people want to live and eat seriously.

For lifestyle copywriting, you can make jokes to consumers and boldly use memes like “Eat Drink Man Woman”, but only with a solid foundation can you stand out from those copywriters who only apply hot topics and borrow buzzwords, and make what you write a little different.

The focus of vocabulary accumulation for copywriters in different industries is different. You can read relevant books based on the industry you are in.

If you are a real estate copywriter, you should have read Jan Gehl's "The Human City" and "Communication and Space", and Takushi Nakamura's "Architecture in Love". From them you can learn about architecture, space, and their relationship with human psychology and emotions, and you can also acquire a large number of related vocabulary.

If you are a copywriter specializing in lifestyle, such as travel, food, home, etc., then you have an inexhaustible supply of materials. Any famous writer has plenty of relevant writings. Read their collections of essays and you will definitely not return empty-handed.

Tips2: The essence of nouns lies in metaphors

Why can’t girls remember “ Lancôme New Essence Eye Mask”, “Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair Synchronous Repair Serum”, and “SK-II Facial Treatment Essence”, but can always mention “Little Black Bottle”, “Little Brown Bottle”, and “Fairy Water”? Why do we hear more and more makeup terms like candy lips, morning dew makeup, earth tones, cushion blush, velvet lipstick, and matte lipstick?

With a little analysis you can see that most of them use short and figurative nouns, which are easier for consumers to remember and become popular.

These nouns all use metaphors, using something familiar (and sweet) to compare something unfamiliar or difficult to describe.

The essence of using nouns lies in making good use of metaphors. For copywriters, the essence of metaphors is to reduce the cost of communicating with consumers while improving the effectiveness of communication. A bunch of unfamiliar professional words or adjectives can easily confuse consumers, but a light and precise metaphor can make them suddenly realize.

If you were a copywriter for MUJI, how would you market a bath salt? If you want to sell bath salts well, you first have to make people want to take a bath.

In the book "The Elements of Home" written by MUJI, "bathing" is described as follows:

For the Japanese, "heaven" is at home.

A place that makes people blurt out: "So comfortable! So great!"

That's the bathroom.

Fill the tub with clear water and soak your whole body in it.

For the Japanese, this is the most luxurious enjoyment.

A tank full of clear water seems to be able to wash away the worries of the world and provide full moisture.

Get naked and take a comfortable bath.

This place is a little different from other places in the house where all kinds of daily chores are accumulated.

It contains a feeling that is different from the usual.

That is why we have to stay in this "paradise".

Equipped with unique bathroom equipment,

So wouldn't it be a shame if this place was just a place to keep the body clean?

We have all been soaked in the amniotic fluid in our mother's womb, and then left that warm place and came into the world.

The bathroom can be said to be such a place.

Reborn in the warm water, change your mood and welcome a new day.

As one of the “elements” of home, this warm place, like a womb, allows the family to be reborn every day.

“Take a bath naked and comfortably, and enjoy the extraordinary moments in daily life. The bathroom is a place for family members to be reborn every day. It is a place as warm as the womb.” There is no clichéd description like “relaxing the tired body and mind”, but the bathroom is likened to a warm place like a mother’s womb, which allows people to forget the trivialities of life and be “reborn”.

Such copywriting is enough to arouse people's desire to take a bath, and it is also enough to lay the groundwork for the promotion of bath salts.

Making good use of metaphors can make a text interesting and easier to understand, but the worst thing about metaphors is that they should not fall into clichés. The first person who compares a girl to a rose is a genius, and the 100th person who writes this is a mediocre person.

If you want to improve your use of metaphors, you might want to learn from writers who are good at using witty metaphors.

Wang Xiaobo's:

"Loneliness sizzles like a drop of sugar on hot coals."

Acheng's:

"The caravan was like thick porridge, slowly flowing towards the mountain pass."

Fernando Pessoa's:

"Life is one great insomnia."

Neruda's:

"You are like a urn, containing infinite tenderness, and infinite forgetfulness shakes you like a urn."

These are all impressive metaphors.

Among ancient Chinese poets, Su Shi was very good at using metaphors. In his "Hundred-Step Poem":

"If a rabbit runs away and a hawk falls, a horse will plunge down a slope a thousand feet high. The string breaks, the arrow flies away from the pillar, and the lightning flies through the gap, and the pearls turn over the lotus."

The four lines of poetry contain seven metaphors, which are worth pondering.

In addition, you don’t have to worry that following the lead of literary writers will deviate from the essence of commercial copywriting. After all, we should not overestimate our learning ability. Learning from the best and always telling yourself that you still have a long way to go may be the right mindset.

Tips3: Use onomatopoeia and dialects

Onomatopoeia and dialect act like pepper in cooking, making your copy spicy and lively.

Last year, Japanese brand Uniqlo launched a short video , singing a rap in Cantonese, Sichuanese, Shanghainese, Northeastern Chinese, Minnan Chinese and other dialects, showing young people from different regions' admiration for Uniqlo down jackets. In fact, it used words familiar to local young people to express the characteristics of down jackets: "light" and "warm".

In the context of the Internet , as people's ability to make fun of themselves improves, dialects have begun to slowly change from a language with a earthy smell to a kind of magical and humorous existence.

As for onomatopeia, Yili Milk once had a set of copywriting-led print advertisements that used onomatopeia such as " gulp ", "click", and "chirp" to describe three scenes: drinking milk, breaking bones (not drinking milk), and the milk production environment.

For example, in the "Crackling" text, the content is "Drink a pack of Yili pure milk a day, and your bones will never make this sound in your life." Onomatopoeia is down-to-earth, making the product more relevant to consumers’ daily lives and building a more natural connection.

Tips4: Stop homophony and double crowns, stay away from four-character mottos

Stop using boring homophones and double crowns. That is the worst way to show off your copywriting skills. No lady will be moved by the copywriting like "I won't get spots on my skin tonight", and it doesn't matter if the copywriting like "Benefits" are deleted indefinitely.

This is no longer the era of "parallel four-character and six-character sentences, embroidered words and beautiful rhetoric". You need to try to reduce the use of those "four-character mottos" that think they are high-sounding but are actually silly, and communicate with consumers using modern people's language habits.

Automotive copywriting is the hardest hit by the "four-character mantra". Copywriting such as "Follow your heart and enjoy endless joy", "A moment of transcendence", "Dazzling in the world, proud of the world" and so on are not only incomprehensible and lack artistic conception, but also have no brand recognition at all.

Conclusion

It takes time for the "language pool" to grow. Anything that is achieved quickly is prone to decay.

You can use a small notebook to write down the interesting words and sentences you see and hear, and continuously inject fresh water into your "language pool". I believe that when you open Word and are about to start writing, you will feel much more relaxed.