Jun 11, 2014 By Stu Heinecke

What Copywriters Can Teach Marketers About Communication

in Featured, Marketing

Marketers want and need to use written materials to communicate to their target audience. And they can learn a lot from those who do it for a living, copywriters. In his new book, Write Everything Right!, Denny Hatch takes the reader through a master class on writing effective copy.

The book is an encyclopedia of great, record-breaking writing samples and advice from some of the biggest names in direct response and well beyond. This is a book designed to help you engage readers of your e-mails, ads, blogs, articles and more, spreading your message while gaining attentive followers, motivated prospects, and a steady stream of new clients.

So what are the biggest roadblocks we all face as copywriters today? Here are four identified by Hatch:

1. The Great Time Crunch

We're all running in too many directions at once. Technology hasn't lessened the burden, it's made it worse. As the great copywriter Vic Schwab wrote, "We're all uninvited guests" in the lives of those we hope to influence. The goal is to make your writing, "Easier to read than to skip."

2. The Literacy Problem

We continue to slide to new lows of literacy. According to Hatch, 50% of American adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level, 45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a fifth-grade level, and 44% of American adults read less than a book a year. The problem balloons exponentially in younger generations who text constantly, but have lost the ability to distinguish the correct spelling of the word, "You." To be an effective writer, you must find ways to connect with anyone, on any level.

3. Poor Attention Span

The Web, e-mail, texting, television, and video games have greatly shortened our attention spans to an average of just nine seconds. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse claims, "Technology is rewiring our brains." Our ability to focus is undermined by bursts of information, while our brains respond increasingly to immediate rewards or threats alone. Accordingly, keep your messages short, on point, and directed toward immediate action.

4. Information Overload

As Hatch puts it, "We are drowning in a tsunami of humanity screaming for our attention." 500 channels of television, social media tweets, shares, blips and boops, billions of e-mail messages, plus the essential interactions of our day have left us permanently overloaded. Your challenge is to break through it all with a compelling message.

Despite these challenges, written communication will always be a critical part of how we all do business. It's how we pull people toward us, how we turn them into prospects and how we motivate them to become clients and more. Drawing on Hatch's unmatched repository of winning campaign strategies and writing tactics can only make your own position stronger as a communicator.