Top 3 Copywriting Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

Creative Business

Oct 21, 2020

Click to watch the IG Live!

When going through copywriting reviews, there are three glaring mistakes I usually see.

“I-centric” copy
Confusing copy
Having too many CTA’s

These are serious the copywriting mistakes I see everywhere and they make my brain hurt! But the great thing is that these are easy to fix.

When I got to speak with Becca of Alto Design Co (an amazing Squarespace website designer who designs sites in one day for service-based entrepreneurs) this morning in our Instagram Live, I dished my best copywriting tips!

If you have 30 minutes to spare, dive into the full Live here!

Below are the 3 biggest copywriting mistakes I see as a professional copywriter, and how to fix them.

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Copywriting Mistake #1: The Copy Is All About You

A HUGE MISTAKE I see is when the copy is all about YOU. I call this “I-centric” copy.

Guess what—you’re a service-based entrepreneur or freelancer. Your job is to help others.

To do so, you need to talk about:

Your ideal audience’s pain points
Their struggles
How you can help them solve their problems
Your credentials, unique values, and skillset that will get them from Point A (struggling) to Point B (success after working with you)

Do a quick evaluation of your copy, especially your homepage and your about page.

How many of your sections start with “I”?

How to fix this?

Flip your copy upside-down. Talk about THEM first.

Only after you’ve highlighted your customer’s struggles, and they can self-identify as someone who needs your help, can you introduce yourself.

Make your copy “you-centric.”

Copywriting Mistake #2: Your Copy is Confusing

If someone lands on your site, skims your copy, and can’t explain to someone else what you do and how you help other people, your copy isn’t clear enough.

A visitor needs to be able to fully grasp who you are, what you do, and how you serve others—all within a few seconds.

To avoid confusing copy:

Avoid using multiple titles for yourself. (Even though I’m a copywriter, I could also say that I’m a marketing strategist, website designer, minimalist marketer, content writer, published author, mom, wife, etc… but ultimately I choose to market myself as a copywriter and only a copywriter.)
Share your link with a trusted friend or advisor who knows nothing about what you really do for a living. Can they grasp what your offer is, and can they tell others about it clearly using their own words?
Make sure all of your copy is relevant to your main selling point and what you do.
Optimize your above-the-fold copy to be attention-grabbing and clear.

Copywriting Mistake #3: Having Multiple Calls to Action (CTA’s)

The fix to having too many calls to action on any given page is simple: only have one CTA per page!

I know it’s tempting to ask someone to book a call with you, send you an email, sign up for your newsletter, follow you on Instagram, join your Facebook group, check out your shop, etc… but to be optimized for a clear customer journey, one CTA is all you need to have per page.

Essentially, each page on your website is a landing page or a sales page. (Blog posts are different.)

A landing page is designed so that a visitor will take the one action you are calling them to do, which is usually a vote of trust and confidence in what you do (i.e. newsletter subscription, following, downloading a freebie, etc.)

A sales page is what it sounds like—it sells a product or a service. (I know you wouldn’t dream of sending a hot lead to a blog post on a sales page, right? The point of a sales page is to sell your product or service, not to show them a long list of content that they might enjoy for free.)

Yes, you can have one call to action repeated multiple times within your copy on a page, but it should all point to the same thing.

One might argue that a homepage is different, and I agree: a homepage is honestly rarely landed on first-thing, and it might end up being the second or third thing a visitor clicks on after coming into your website sideways (via a landing page or a blog post that you’ve marketed).

A homepage is the perfect place to give a summary of your offers, have a sign-up spot for your newsletter, and more… but honestly I’m seeing more entrepreneurs do away with the traditional homepage in favor of a page with one CTA in order to lead their visitors through a guided experience (or in “icky” marketing terms—a sales funnel).

We cover SO 👏 MANY 👏 THINGS in this IG Live, including:

SEO tips
When it’s the right time to hire a copywriter (and when it’s not)
Blog content marketing strategy
Optimizing your site for sideways entries (i.e. when someone lands on your website not on your homepage)

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing (Friends, it’s only 30 minutes long)… then here’s the transcript for you to skim through!

Note: This only includes the relevant section of the IG Live. The rest will be transcribed later and put into future posts!

  
    Click to Read Video Transcript
  
  Becca: So let's start with some introductions, cause I know if you guys cannot catch this live, we're going to save it for an IGTV later. So if you want to introduce yourself to my audience and then I can do the same.
Jenn: So I am a professional copywriter. I help specifically online service based entrepreneurs. I've sometimes gotten requests for local brick and mortar type businesses, but that’s not my jam. So I'm gonna pass you to someone else. But yeah, I love helping entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, especially mompreneurs since I'm the mom of two myself. I'm based out of Philadelphia or Philadelphia suburbs. I have a background in design. I actually just recently switched careers, so I kind of have that like design and copy mindset.
Becca: Awesome. Then we'll have to talk about that in a second later on. I'll do my intro now. So I am Becca. I am a Squarespace website designer and I design sites in one day. Of course, that requires a lot of  collaboration with my clients and copy is the thing that I get the most questions about by far. So I'm so glad that we're chatting today. I also work with service based entrepreneurs and my favorite part is when they're launching their business and they tell me like I had this bad experience with another designer or I tried to DIY and I just got stuck. And then they realize how easy and how fun websites can be. So that's my favorite part.
Jenn: One day turnaround. That's amazing. I love that.
Becca: You know, I feel like the industry got a bad rep for a while. And part of it is I want to be able to help change that and turn the tide. But I also know that when you're starting a business, you don't have a lot of time and for projects to take months, it's not always feasible. And so, you know, one of my clients or we started working together, she knew her design date. She was really gung ho to get everything that I needed ahead of time. And she actually planned a launch party. They do clean beauty. So she planned a launch party because she knew that her site was going to be live and her business was going to be out in the world. So she was able to do all of these things in pretty quick succession because she knew when it would all happen.
Becca: So I would love to hear just about copywriting mistakes, because I feel like everyone kind of thinks like, I know that there's a science to copywriting, but I know that there are also some things that we can like look out for and avoid to just kind of miss that bucket of a copywriting fail.
Jenn: So I offer free copy reviews for people who aren't quite ready for a full consultation or a full hire. But the first thing I always see, and this is specifically for online entrepreneurs, is the copy is always “I-centric”, meaning that they're always talking about themselves. Like, “This is what I do. Here's my background. Here's what I like to do as a hobby.” You have to remember that, especially as a service based person or freelancer or what have you, you are actually helping someone else solve their problems. So you have to make it more “you-centric.” And yes, you have to talk about yourself in terms of what your credentials are and things like that. But there's a way to turn that on its head so that you kind of actually ended up flipping your copy upside down to talk about them first. And then at the very bottom of the page, you can talk about yourself and your background.
Becca: Oh, I'm so glad to hear that because that means I am on the right track when I look at client's copy and I say, it's all about you. Scratch it, flip it, reverse it. I actually have a little plug here. I see Galen has joined us. She's Local Creative Co. She has a Square Summit coming up and I'm speaking at it. And that's one of the things that I talk about in my session, if you will, is your copy is all about you. And that's the first mistake that I go through about conversion copywriting. So what's mistake number two?
Jenn: I guess I would say confusing copy. So a lot of times people assume that somebody visiting your page and knows what you do or knows like 50% of your story, meaning like what services you provide. So a lot of times it can be either too much copy, or copy that isn't clear enough. So you have to really know above the fold, bam, what you do and how you can help others. If you have a list of 10 titles that you fall under, that's too many, and it's confusing. So just making sure your copy is really clear and attention-grabbing from the get go and that above the fold, before you scroll down, is the place to do it.
Becca: Okay. And do you want to go for a third?
Jenn: Yeah, the third ties in with design and a lot of times people have multiple calls to action on a page. You can have one call to action repeated multiple times. But if you have: book a call with me, or contact me, and follow me on Instagram, join my Facebook group all on one page, that's way too many things. You really need to have a separate page for each of those call to actions. And those are called landing pages. If it's a freebie, it's a landing page. If it's a paid offer or product, then it's going to be a sales page. But yeah. Only have one call to action per page.
Becca: Well, you know, I think I have my newsletter on my homepage, so I might need to go make a little change there.
Jenn: That'd be a little bit of an exception. As long as your main call to action is the highest contrast and the most clear of what you want them to do. I mean, on your page right now, you have custom website design, let's get started, book a call. I mean, those are all geared towards the same place, so that's perfect.

Guilty of these copywriting mistakes? (Don’t worry—we all are at one point or another in our careers….) Ready to hire a pro copywriter? Send me a message. I’d love to help you!