What is Copywriting?

There are as many definitions to copywriting as there are copywriters in this world. In its strictest sense, copywriting is the act of writing advertisements (like headlines, slogans, brochures, direct mail packages and even websites) with the goal of making a sale. While this definition is correct, it is also far from being complete… so let’s take another shot.

The most poetic definition of copywriting I’ve come across, was written by one of the my favorite advertising copywriters in our time: Bruce Bendinger, who in his remarkable book “The Copy Workshop Workbook” writes…

What I like most about it is that Bruce took extra care to single out the most important aspect of copywriting: salemanship. Unfortunately, too many copywriters just don’t understand what he is referring to when he talks about salesmanship… so for the sake of clarity, let me try to come up with a more technical and complete, albeit less poetic definition:

Copywriting is the art and science of writing words to promote a product, a business, a person or an idea; and carefully selecting, editing, weaving and constructing those words in a way that they’ll persuade the reader into taking a specific and measurable action.

As you can see, the term “salesmanship” is not only referring to the final sale of the product. The end goal of copywriting is not always to sell the product in a single blow, but to persuade the reader into taking a specific action. This “action” can be subscribing to a newsletter, calling the phone number on screen, clicking a link, sending an e-mail to their friends, etc. Any of those actions will be used, in turn, to advance the sale further.