Copywriting: Common Copywriting Mistakes

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Below, I'll show you all the mistakes that are constantly made in advertising copy and content marketing.

In the course this lesson is part of, I'll teach you how to avoid them and what to do instead to create genuinely persuasive copy.

Writing Without Knowing Who You're Writing For

If you don't know exactly who you're writing for, you'll end up creating a generic message that fails to persuade anyone who reads your piece.

Different people have different problems and buy for different reasons.

A sentence that can convince one person may leave someone else completely indifferent, which is why good copy always starts with understanding your audience.

Before you write, you have to understand what problem the reader is trying to solve and what result they want to achieve.

You also have to understand how they talk about it, because the words someone uses to describe a problem are different from those used by someone selling the solution.

This means it isn't enough to invent the classic ideal customer in your head, as people with no copywriting experience often tell you to do; you have to observe real people.

Read the questions they ask online and pay attention to how they describe their difficulties.

Study reviews of products similar to yours.

During this research, focus especially on the phrases that appear most often.

When different people keep describing the same problem in similar ways, you've found words that can help you build a message the reader will immediately identify with.

Talking Too Much About the Company

One of the most common copywriting mistakes is filling your text with statements like "We're an industry leader" or "We have twenty years of experience."

The reader couldn't care less about this information, because the only thing they want to know is what you can do for them and what they stand to gain from reading your copy.

That's why the customer has to be the main character of your copy.

Even when you talk about your company, you have to connect what you say to a useful consequence for the reader.

Twenty years of experience only becomes valuable when you explain how that experience allows the customer to reduce a risk or achieve a better result.

Confusing Features With Benefits

"A 5,000 mAh battery" is a feature, while "Use it all day without looking for an outlet" is a benefit.

A feature describes the product, but most people today know the product better than the person who built it, while a benefit explains why that feature should matter to the customer, and this is something not everyone manages to understand.

People don't buy a technical specification simply for the pleasure of owning it; they buy what that specification allows them to do.

Consider this: the reader can learn about a feature through AI, but to understand how that feature can improve their life, they have to make the cognitive effort themselves.

If the copy does that work for them, the value of the product becomes much easier to perceive.

That doesn't mean you have to eliminate features, because that would be a mistake; you simply have to connect them to their concrete effect, so:

A 5,000 mAh battery that lets you use it all day without looking for an outlet.

Being Generic

Specificity is another extremely important element of copywriting.

Words like "quality" or "innovative" are weak precisely because anyone can use them.

If a sentence could be copied and pasted onto your competitor's website without changing a thing, it isn't effective.

"The best quality at the lowest price on the market" is a completely useless statement from a persuasive standpoint because it communicates nothing and provides no evidence that the claim is true.

"Best quality" compared to what?

In what way?

How can you prove it?

As you can see, specificity increases credibility because a vague claim like the one in the previous example can simply be made up, whereas a precise and verified statement leaves no room for objections, increasing both the persuasiveness and credibility of our copy.

Being Creative

Let's leave creativity to novelists; we're entrepreneurs, and our job is to stick to reality, simple explanations, and proven specifics.

A clickbait headline (a very creative one, such as "The Ultimate Technique to Sell Your House in One Day at the Highest Price on the Market!") destroys your credibility when the copy fails to deliver on a promise that is already absurd in itself.

Always stick to reality, never lie, and don't make up phrases or expressions just to make people more eager to read what you've written.

What good are 100,000 curious readers if none of them buys or takes the action you want?

The same applies to elaborate prose.

A piece of copy written in a Dante-like style, packed with sophisticated words and expressions chosen to show off, forces the reader to stop and figure out what you're trying to say.

The first time, they'll give you a pass; the second time, they'll start getting annoyed; and the third time they have to stop and figure out what you wrote, they'll leave.

The reader doesn't arrive on the page hoping to admire how good you are at writing; as I've already explained, they ONLY want to understand whether what you're offering interests them.

Look at the text you're reading right now: do you notice any unusual vocabulary or elaborate prose?

Am I giving you explanations that require you to be Einstein to understand them?

None of that; I'm simply trying to be clear and write in a way that's easy to understand.

You have to do the same.

Writing Copy That's Too Long

I fall into this trap pretty often myself.

To be a successful copywriter, you need the gift of concision.

The real problem isn't length itself but words that serve no purpose and are written only to pad out the text.

This lesson you're reading is already too long for my taste, but even though I've revised it three times, I still can't remove any sentences or words, so let's say it's acceptable.

I haven't included any useless introductions, and whenever there's a question, I try to get straight to the answer.

But if I started writing tons of endless examples for every single point, then I'd be overdoing it, and that wouldn't be good.

In copywriting, people want immediate answers to their problems.

Every part of the text, every sentence, word, and expression has to help the reader understand something or move them closer to making a decision.

If a paragraph does neither, you have to delete it.

That doesn't mean cutting important information just to make the page shorter; it simply means removing useless noise.

Using Vague or Missing CTAs

After reading the copy and reaching the end, the person has to know exactly what to do to get in touch with you or the company, and they also have to understand what will happen after they click.

A CTA like "Learn More" is one of the most useless CTAs you can write.

Learn more about what?

And more importantly, what will I find after I click?

These are questions that naturally arise in your customer's mind, and many of them will have no interest in continuing.

"View Available Courses" is much clearer, as is "Request a Quote."

These CTAs, although very simple, work extremely well because they reduce uncertainty and answer the unconscious questions we just discussed.

Applying Pressure or Creating Fake Urgency

"LAST CHANCE!"

"Today Only!"

"Don't Miss This Opportunity!"

These are things I personally hate.

They are blatant insults to your readers' intelligence, regardless of the market you operate in.

On top of that, people today recognize these stupid tactics.

If you say an offer ends tonight and it's still available tomorrow, or if you add a countdown timer that simply restarts when it reaches zero, you completely destroy the customer's trust, in addition to the fact that these practices are illegal in some countries.

Urgency and scarcity only make sense when they're real and verifiable.

A course held in a room with one hundred seats has real scarcity, because once those seats are filled, you can't accept anyone else.

An ebook that, once created, can be sold forever cannot have scarcity or urgency, because writing "Only a Few Copies Left" is a scam.

Using Too Much Technical Jargon

People who work in the same industry for years eventually start considering certain words normal even though they're anything but normal to the customer.

It's natural; after all, you encounter those terms every day... but your reader doesn't.

When you use professional technical language to explain something to someone who doesn't have your knowledge, you're basically writing a Wikipedia page that requires a manual on hieroglyphics to interpret.

In copywriting, this is dangerous because people are unlikely to want to buy something they can't even understand.

Every unfamiliar term interrupts the reading process because the customer has to stop and figure out what you mean, and as we saw when discussing elaborate prose, the same thing happens here.

When readers have to stop too many times to interpret the text, they lose interest.

That's why any subject, no matter how complex it may be, has to be explained using common words and expressions.

Simplifying doesn't mean treating the reader like an idiot; quite the opposite, it means doing your job well, because if you truly understand a subject, you should be able to explain it without hiding behind complicated words.

And your reader will appreciate it enormously.

Writing Uniform Walls of Text

Online, people don't read every word you've written.

First, they quickly scroll through the page, reading only the headings and subheadings to figure out whether it's worth continuing.

That's why the visual structure of the text also affects how people read it.

A wall of dozens and dozens of identical lines immediately communicates effort, because before the reader even knows what you've written, they can already see how much work they'll have to do to find out.

You therefore have to give the text room to breathe.

Subheadings help the reader understand what the next section will discuss, while short paragraphs make the argument easier to follow.

Failing to Provide Verifiable Proof

I saved the most important aspect of copywriting for last.

You can write copy that perfectly follows every rule and stylistic principle, but if you don't prove your claims, the text has no value.

Today more than ever, one of the strongest forms of persuasion, if not the strongest, is proving what you claim.

If you say your service produces a certain result, show a real case that proves it.

If you claim your customers are satisfied, let them speak for themselves.

Proof works because it reduces uncertainty; after all, the reader knows perfectly well that you have an interest in selling your product, so they can't automatically assume that everything you say is true.

Going back to what we discussed about specificity, just to give you an example, "Fantastic service" is useless and harmful because it communicates nothing and proves nothing.

Pairing that statement with a testimonial explaining what problem the customer had and what changed after the purchase allows the reader to compare that experience with their own.

Naturally, the testimonial has to come from a real, flesh-and-blood customer, and the reader has to be able to verify it independently.

Otherwise, that will look made up too.

So, as a general rule, always prove every claim you make.

If you don't, you won't look much different from the countless bullshit gurus who promise to teach you how to get rich without ever proving how.