Good copy

How to become a better ad copywriter (and writer in general)

When I was 19 I sat in a coffeeshop one morning, and then a pub that afternoon. In a giant breach of privacy, I transcribed every conversation I overheard.

At the time I still wanted to be a novelist. I’d recently shared a draft to a friend of mine – and his main feedback was that my dialogue was shit. I did this transcription exercise with the aim of improving my written dialogue.

17 years later, my aspirations to be a novelist have long gone, but what remains is a desire to always be improving my copy.

From university, my first job was as a copywriter with journalism on the side, and then I got into content marketing.

Through masses of feedback, as well as data on readability and engagement, I’ve come to write in a particular style. And it’s that style which I owe a lot to how good I am at producing ads today.

Today is a selection of practical methods I’ve adapted over the years that have always worked for me.

While the focus for these is improving writing with the aim to get better at advertising, I’ve taught a lot of this to teams I’ve worked with for all forms of comms.

The better you can write, the more influence you’ll wield. Whether it’s a Slack to your colleagues, a note to investors, or a hook on YouTube.

15 ways to write better ads

1. Use Hemingway to reduce sentence complexity

Head here and pay $19.99 for the Hemingway app or if you can’t afford it, use the web version. Don’t be wowed by the AI features, you’re going to ignore those.

Hemingway is great for one major reason: it highlights when sentences become complex.

At school and university, we’re taught to write badly. We’re told to write with complex sentence structures and flowery words. This is then continued in academia, law, science, and other similar fields.

Ever tried to read an academic paper? It’s basically impossible.

Hemingway tells you when your sentences become too long. It tells you when words are too complex and there could be shorter ones. And it gives you a reading age.

You want a low reading age. The simpler your copy is to understand, the more people will pay attention to it. Everything outside of this is just ego. Stop thinking about yourself, and think about the customer. They don’t have time to work out what you’re saying, spoon feed it to them.

After Chrome, Slack, and Notion, this is the most important tool you have.

2. Read your copy out loud

The second most impactful thing is reading it out loud. This helps shortcut whether what you’ve written makes sense. It may have a low reading age but that doesn’t make it good.

Read it out loud, ideally to someone else. Notice yourself stumbling on a sentence? Or meandering because you can’t remember what you meant? Brilliant go back, and re-edit.

3. Copy other writers’ writing

When I was a novelist, I’d sit with copies open of Ernest Hemingway or Tom Wolfe, and re-write the novels into my docs. It was a lesson in really thinking through sentence structure, and pacing.

As a copywriter, I’ve done the same thing with copy from ads.

If I see a piece of UGC I really like, I’ll still to this day, sit down and transcribe it word for word. Again structure and pacing comes through, but more importantly you get the sense of storytelling.

So much is said of the ‘hook’ but what is really important is how you capture and maintain attention. Finding content that captures you, then transcribing it is a great way to learn this process properly.

4. Transcribe conversations: real and scripted

Transcribing conversations you overhear is a great step to understand how people really talk. You’ll also realise how much of a sentence is noise and fillers.

Once you’ve transcribed it, read through that copy. Now consider how much copy you’ve written to fill 10 seconds of one actor’s time. The ‘natural’ 10 seconds likely says a lot less.

Do this, but then also do the same with conversations from TV shows and films. Here you see the other side: copy that has been beautifully crafted. The best writing feels natural, even though when you compare it to real life is anything but.

5. Pay attention to what catches your attention

Go sit on the tube for 30 minutes swapping carriages each station. Look at the ads that capture your attention. Look at the signs. Read the stuff that you notice. Pick up the paper, and scan it and make note of what you want to read.

What is it about that copy that caught your eye? Was it it the choice of words? How it was styled? Maybe how it spoke to you (or someone else)?

Become a student of other writing out there. Read ten times more copy than you write. And really, really pay attention. Learn to be mindful and observant. There is so much good copy out there just waiting to be read – when you do read it. Think critically about why.

6. Quote customers directly

Always start with a direct customer quote.

If you need a headline for your website, for a UGC hook, or for your email subject line – start with a customer quote.

Often the quote is enough by itself. Some of the most scalable and successful ads I’ve ever run were direct customer quotes, nothing else.

But if not, they also give you a jumping off point for thinking differently about something.

Remember you’re job is to talk in your customers language. Respect them – don’t force your own tone of voice down their throat.

7. Write ads for hours and hours and hours

Too often people treat writing ad copy as something they spend ten minutes on when sat with a designer whose asking ‘what should it say?’

In no other line of work does that get to a great result. If you spent 10 minutes in Excel every month, you wouldn’t expect to get good analysis out of it. Nor with product development, or engineering, or any other practice.

But because we all “write” we believe we can all write well.

Writing well is a discipline and a practice. Bret Easton Ellis when he was 18 and wanted to be a writer, sat at a desk and wrote for eight hours a day.

I’ve written at least 1,000 words a week on some subject or other almost every week for the last 17 years. To get good at copy, you need to practice.

Don’t wait until you need to write an ad.

8. Learn to think through writing

I have always found writing the best way to think. Writing forces you to structure your thoughts. When it comes to problems – be they philosophical, economic, or work – I have found it a great way to think through arguments for and against. But more than that, it’s allowed me to dive deeper into where I have gaps.

When words are on the page, there’s nowhere to hide.

Unlike a slide deck, where you can easily hide behind simplicity and design, in writing there is nothing else.

Next time you have a big problem to solve, write yourself a memo.

9. Write to specific people

I’ve got friends who are just getting into supplements, and those who are deep into supplement optimisation.

If I need to write a health ad that’s ‘top of funnel’ I’ll write directly to my friend who just asked for advice about supplementing for the first time. If it’s for a more sophisticated aspect – perhaps a product feature update – I’ll write towards the optimiser.

No matter what I’m selling, I can always find someone to write to that I know.

Sometimes that literally begins with

“Dear Mark” at the start of my copy, which I delete at the end.

10. Your first paragraph is often unnecessary

Very often people make an excuse for why they’re writing:

This brand new flavour of ProChips, the protein chip brand I’ve been loving for years, is unbelievably good.

I used to hate the taste of pea protein, but the new flavours here are so much better.

Naturally we begin with the introduction. The excuse for why we’re writing. That’s fine, get it on the page, then delete it. The bit that follows is 80% of the time a far better opener.

11. Go to the person who makes the product and get them to start talking

I stole this one from Ogilvy, but remember using it early in my life at Pact.

I was talking to someone on the team who said “we roast our coffee and send it to you within 7 days, most supermarket coffee sits on the shelves for months”. The default with something like that is to talk about flavour, but that hook was what brought to life why there was a difference.

Go to the factory and talk. Ask the product teams. Ask the customer support teams. Ask everyone.

12. Interview customers at the point of purchase

Why do customers buy from you? If you can answer that, you’ll be able to acquire more of them.

Often customer research examines those people who already love the product who last bought a while ago. That’s bad. That means you don’t learn what was motivating that exact purchase.

Instead aim for those at the point of the purchase. The infamous Clay Christensen / Jobs to be Done talk is the go-to resource on this.

Interview new customers over old customers.

13. Cut out exclamation marks

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Worse than laughing at your own jokes, exclamation marks often read like they’re asking for permission to communicate with you – and so they add one in to come across as less threatening. They immediately reduce seriousness and impact.

14. Avoid clichés

If it’s a cliché it won’t be as impactful. As well as the usual commonplace ones, I often see these pop up in copy:

• Life’s too short for bad xxxxxxxx

• Give the gift of xxxxxxx

• You asked, we delivered

• The xxxxxx you’ve been waiting for

15. Edit on a different day

I’m terrible at proof reading because I don’t have an eye for detail. I’m even worse on the day I wrote the original draft.

On the day of writing, my intention is still in my head and so my memory fills in the blanks. Always do editing on a different day to drafting – and if deadlines are approaching, then pair up with someone else to help with the final draft.

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There’s plenty more I’ve not covered here. And I should also point out that I’ve by no means come up with most of this stuff myself. I’ve read probably 100 books on marketing and advertising over the last ten years, been taught by a dozen or so incredible people, and have been fascinated by the written word since I was a child. All of this has come from somewhere.

But when I think of what works and what doesn’t, these are probably the 15 that stand out. What’s on your list?

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