7 essential skills for operators - How do operators write good copy?

As an operator , you have to do a lot of diverse work every day. You have to strategize among thousands of things and proceed in an orderly manner. You must have strong skills to support yourself. Starting from today, I will explain the 7 major skills required for operations in 7 chapters.

Today we will first talk about the first skill of operators - the ability to write copy

1. Why do you need a solid foundation in writing?

It creates a sound that may attract you, move you, or influence you. In short, once you have listened to it, some changes will occur to you. Small changes lead to purchasing behavior. Some big changes have even become a value. This is the most essential value of copywriting.

However, in the era of mobile Internet , where everyone is a media, the capabilities and responsibilities of copywriters need new definitions and new ways of playing. For example, in the early years of Fancl, although it was promoted by public relations people, the copywriting was indeed remarkable. Now, no matter whether you are doing content operation or new media promotion, copywriting is always a basic skill. People with good writing skills will be popular everywhere, and as an operator, this ability can be realized more quickly in the Internet industry. For example, you can stand out among your peers in everything from writing banners to writing planning proposals. You can also establish your own reputation by publishing articles in the media and writing novels on literary websites. Good writing skills are of great value.

For example, the new iPhone 6's "bigger than bigger" is translated into "more than just big" in mainland China. It has also been used in new and entertaining ways by everyone. Although Apple on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is helpless, doing so has brought a new kind of "vitality". This is the vitality of copywriting. Everyone will be happy to accept it, and users will be happy. This is the value of our copywriting.

2. How do operators write good copywriting?

In my article "6 Steps to Successful Copywriting: There are Routine for Writing Good Copywriting", I mentioned that if you want to write good copywriting, you only need to follow these 6 steps to write good copywriting, namely: determine the goal - find the audience - refine the selling point - choose the channel - copywriting routine - modify the copywriting. This is the step-by-step plan for each step of the copywriting. Friends who are interested can go and take a look.

Today we will talk about another routine for writing good copy: product-brand-consumer

Let’s take the most popular shared bicycles as an example.

Product - the core is to refine the selling points. It is the characteristics of the product and the benefits it can bring to consumers.

For example: What material is the body of this car made of? Does it pose any safety hazard to the user? What does the color of the body represent? How heavy is this bike? Will it be hard to ride? As well as under what circumstances will the electronic unlocking and QR code of this vehicle become invalid, and whether it will cause trouble to consumers' riding.

Brand - the core is emotion. It is the symbolic value of the product, the brand tone, and what emotions and psychology it can evoke in consumers.

For example: What concept does this car promote? Is its positioning suitable for people of my age? If I say what brand of bike I rode today, what kind of evaluation will people around me make of me, etc.

Consumers - the core is demand . Both of the above serve the needs of consumers.

Why do consumers want to ride this bike? What do they like about it? Is its appearance fashionable enough? How will people around me look at me when I ride it? And do I need to use it on my way to work or school?

Each of us consumers may have many needs, some of which are strong and some are weak. A good product copy is one that captures the consumer's strongest needs and conveys the product's benefits and brand tone to the consumer in the language he likes.

1. Products

Products correspond to consumer demand. The essence of copywriting is to help consumers solve problems. A demand corresponds to an interest point, just as a problem corresponds to a solution.

A key word to be mentioned here is "magnification".

After finding out what consumers need, what you need to do is to dig deeper into this point and break it down into situations, experiences, feelings, and solutions. The standard model is: In what kind of situation will the user have such a demand? How does he feel inside? Which attribute of the product can help him solve this problem? What will his status be like after it is resolved?

If you explain the entire process above in a language that he can understand, it will be a qualified copy.

Because human memory has two characteristics: one is that it is limited, and the other is that it is vague. The more special and unique something is, and the more it deviates from our cognition, the easier it is to attract our attention and be remembered by us. On the other hand, as time goes by, we will forget the properties and parameters of things, leaving only a vague impression. In the shaping of this impression, our first impression of this thing plays a very important role.

Therefore, infinitely magnifying a feature can make the product easier to remember.

The more senses involved, the easier it is to remember. Therefore, when you imagine a situation, you may need to mobilize your vision, hearing, and touch. The richness of memory is much higher than that of a piece of text, making it easier to leave long-term memory. Therefore, Apple’s iPod’s slogan of “Put 1,000 songs in your pocket” was more attractive than “Up to 4G capacity”.

2. Brand

The use value of products is becoming more and more homogeneous. What impresses consumers is not the product itself, but the added value such as the emotional satisfaction that the product brings to people.

Coca-Cola has been ranked first in global value for many years, with a corporate brand value of up to US$70 billion. In China, someone once conducted an interesting experiment: consumers were asked to taste two bottles of cola drinks with the brand names masked. Most consumers thought Pepsi tasted better than Coca-Cola, but they preferred Coca-Cola when purchasing because drinking Coca-Cola meant that they were more tasteful and discerning. This shows that Coca-Cola brings cultural and conceptual recognition to consumers, allowing them to ultimately accept Coca-Cola.

3. Consumers

We need to explore the needs of consumers. When writing copy, we often need to understand what users are thinking, so that it can be penetrating.

How do we discover user needs?

If we use a vivid metaphor to describe the process of exploring user needs, it is like a wilderness hunter's survival guide. You need to know what preparations to make before going out (including the right mindset and understanding), how to catch rabbits after going out, and how to make a nutritious dinner based on these raw ingredients after returning home from hunting.

In the current environment, we divide consumer needs into the following six categories:

1. Low price demand

The demand for low prices is a demand that users in every era will not refuse. Although everyone is calling for consumption upgrades now, the consumption upgrades we are talking about are not simply considered from the perspective of price, but should be considered from the perspective of experience and adding a balance. If some consumers in the market are eager to complete a certain task, but because of the huge cost, they have to give up or buy an ineffective alternative, then they will desire a lower-priced and better-looking solution.

2. Novelty

If some consumers in the market are dissatisfied with a certain unchanging solution in the past, they are eager to try something new and better. We can think about it this way: When my consumers have done something in the past, have there been unchanging solutions that have limited the effectiveness of the past? Can my service provide them with better new options?

3. Convenience

If there are such consumers in the market, they are eager to accomplish a certain goal personally, but completing this goal is very troublesome and often requires a huge amount of time and energy. At this time, they desire a trouble-free and more convenient solution - this is the demand for convenience.

The essence of portability demand is to reduce the non-monetary components of consumers (compared to price reduction, which is to reduce price costs).

4. Personalized customization

If your target groups have different needs, they will hope that your product can have functions or experiences that are unique to them. I focus on customized demands, but it should be noted that if the consumer’s demands are not much different from mainstream demands, then it is useless to focus on customization.

5. Reduce risk

If consumers worry about certain risks in their purchases before and after they shop, they will want to switch to competing products that do not have such risks - they want 100% guarantees. I can think about it this way: What risks will consumers encounter when using the product? How can I eliminate this risk? When focusing on reducing risk demand, it is important to note that if risk is not the key factor that prevents mainstream consumers from using a certain product, then focusing on this demand is useless.

6. Know yourself

There are many consumers who have not realized the importance of doing something. If you remind them and tell them that this thing is important (which is equivalent to shaping a certain ideal self for them), they will be more likely to do this thing and consume your product. This is to make the user realize that he needs to find something, which is called creating cognition.

One of the black swans mentioned in Luo Zhenyu ’s New Year’s Eve speech “Friends of Time” last night was: creating cognition. We need to create a cognition. If you create this cognition first, you will be in a leading position in this field.

Of course, users’ needs are certainly not limited to these. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, human needs are divided into five levels from low to high like a ladder, namely: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs. We can verify this theory when we study consumer demand. In the process of finding essential needs, brands need to know how to do subtraction: strip away all the details and additional conditions and trace back to the root cause.

3. As someone who has experienced this, what books can I recommend to you?

The quality of copywriting ultimately depends on the depth of insight into users. If we do not have a relatively complete theoretical system to support our needs when exploring user needs, it will be difficult to write good copy.

So today I will recommend 3 books to you to help you enhance your theoretical level.

1. The Copywriting Training Manual by Joseph Sugarman

He is known in the advertising world as a legend in copywriting. His advertisements made countless customers willingly take out their wallets. His JS&A catalog was once the largest single-volume direct mail catalog in the United States specializing in space-age products. He has taught copywriting workshops in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

In this book, the author summarizes 15 axioms, 3 emotional principles, 10 graphic elements, 23 copywriting elements, and 31 psychological inducements, which are also the majority of the content of the book.

If you want to become a qualified copywriter, you need to have sufficient knowledge reserves, and knowledge reserves are achieved through daily accumulation.
I read a lot, have a wide range of hobbies, love traveling, am proficient in many skills, etc.

A thirst for knowledge, unparalleled curiosity about life, rich life experience, and no fear of work are the qualifications to become a good copywriter. In Sugarman's seminars, he asks his students to think: What is the definition of good copywriting? Is it possible to write accurately? Can it be taught? What kind of background does one need to be a good copywriter? Some copywriters will tell you that many of their best works have already taken shape in their minds before they put pen to paper.

Don't worry about the first draft. First drafts are usually terrible. As you hone your copy, you may need to add sentences, delete sentences, or even change entire paragraphs. The purpose of the first draft is to allow you to express and vent your emotions. Write them down and you can set sail from there.

This book contains a lot of ideas about copywriting and how to improve copywriting skills, which is very suitable for us to study and read in depth.

2. How Blondel’s Wall Street Journal tells stories

There are many ways to operate without spending money, and storytelling is a writing method that copywriters often use. For example, big brands prefer to use storytelling to gain the trust of users, and this effect is often the best. Through the growth story of the founder or the company, the product concept and company values ​​can be effectively reflected.

The book "How the Wall Street Journal Tells Stories" teaches copywriters how to tell a good story. The book points out that in order to conceive a good story, one should examine it from four angles: the scope of the story, the theme of the story, the way the story is reported, and the reporting angle of the story. Although this book is written for those who aspire to become journalists, these four aspects can also provide some inspiration for those of us copywriters who need good stories. We will not elaborate on the four perspectives in the book here. Students who are interested in storytelling copywriting can open the book and take a look.

3. David Ogilvy: Ogilvy on Advertising

David Ogilvy, I believe everyone who works as a copywriter knows him! Our operations staff have two common characteristics when writing copy:

1. The copy is too "flat", and only briefly introduces the product features.
2. The copy does not help promote user behavior, does not establish a connection with product sales, etc. If you also encounter these two problems when writing copy.

"Ogilvy on Advertising" is a book that guides copywriters on how to write conversion-oriented copy. Many times, we learn copywriting and creativity by taking Ogilvy as a benchmark. David Ogilvy founded Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising company that opened a new era in the modern advertising industry. His works are known for their creativity.

What users see is a catchy "slogan", a title or a very concise sentence, but behind this are the countless bitter tears of the copywriter, and this is also the value of our existence. If we want to infinitely magnify this value, we must learn Hong Qigong's "Eighteen Palms of the Dragon Subduing" as soon as possible!

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @艺林小宇 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!