So, you’re looking to do digital marketing for your B2B organization. We’re here to lend a helping hand in figuring out the differences between a copywriter vs. content writer.
They serve completely different roles, which you must understand from the get-go. Depending on your marketing strategy, you might need only one such specialist, or both of them.
First of all, don’t get confused by the idea of “content creation”. A content writer and a copywriter both create content. To understand it easier, replace “content creation” with “text creation” in your mind.
However, the former focuses on SEO with longer pieces (with a lot of informational value). The latter will be the convincing force behind your PPC, social media and service/product pages (sales).
At X27 Marketing, there’s no need to worry about copywriting vs. content writing. We do both! Get in touch today to significantly boost your sales.
What is Content Writing?
Content writers create text focused on educating and informing. The purpose is entertaining the readers and providing solutions/answers to niche-related topics. While such text can also drive sales, it’s never its primary purpose.
Because of this, content writing is very tightly knit with SEO. Most industries have either a rich, or at least a moderate amount of informational keywords (pertaining to “what is”, “how to”, “x vs y” and other such types of queries).
The objective is increasing organic traffic by driving such searches to your website’s pages.
Content writers handle:
- Blog posts
- Email newsletters
- “Evergreen” content
- Longer social media posts
- Tutorials and e-books
What is Copywriting?
Simply put, it’s the creation of text that must be highly persuasive. For example, copywriters will handle your product and service pages. They’re the ones that must convince your leads to convert into customers, or to take other valuable actions on your platforms.
It doesn’t matter exactly what you want the lead (or the prospect) to do. Whether you need their email address in exchange for a discount code, or you want them to give your sales team a call, copywriters provide the text.
The powerful and convincing qualities of a copywriter’s text are there to encourage taking sales-oriented action.
You’ll need a copywriter for any of the following:
- PPC/CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) Ads
- Landing pages (for Ads or otherwise)
- Product/Service Pages
- Any sales content on your website
- Conversion-oriented banners
- Social media Ads and short posts
- Sales emails and SMS
Copywriting vs. Content Writing Key Differences
Realistically, there shouldn’t even be a copywriter vs. content writer debate. Basically, because there’s no such thing as content vs. copywriting. They’re each different. Let’s get into the details.
1. Content Writers Focus on Information
Writing content needs creativity, sure, but there’s also the need for a solid technical understanding of the work. A blog post about Android frameworks must have, you guessed it, correct information about Android frameworks.
Research is key, as all the knowledge the content writer aims to pass on must be well documented, correct, and niche-relevant. In fact, the value of content writing for digital marketing comes from this very idea.
Provide information that’s being searched for, and your inbound lead generation strategy is already starting by itself. Overall, content writers build brand authority.
2. Copywriters Inspire Emotion
Immediate action is what copywriters seek. Filling out a form, signing up for email marketing, downloading a file, calling the business; or of course, ideally, buying something.
Copywriters answer the question of “why this business?”, but also “why now?”. They create a sense of decision urgency, while also presenting the clear solution to the reader. Your business is highlighted as the obvious choice.
In this regard, copywriters look to address an audience that’s already introduced to the business, which has been previously engaged. That being said, prospects or leads that aren’t that sure of your business are targeted as well, and reliability is built on-page through text.
3. Content Writers Educate
Pushing B2B services or products to strangers is way harder than doing it to someone who’s at least a follower. Content educates and instructs, showing potential leads that you know what you’re talking about.
Moreover, you become a credible source for industry standards and practices. So, logically, since you’re also providing a service in that direction, it must be a quality one.
4. Copywriters Sell
No one’s more able or qualified to sing your brand’s praises via text than a qualified copywriter. They know the ins and outs of your strengths and weaknesses, and know how to focus on the good sides.
If you need to push transactional information towards your target group in an efficient fashion, it must be written by a copywriter. Their copy is convincing, data-driven and focuses on the gains of immediate action.
5. Content Writers Prepare Future Sales
While the purpose of content is not to sell, its nature can indirectly cause sales down the line. Additionally, content writers do not ignore selling altogether. Oftentimes, you’ll find references to the services of the business for which the content writer is producing text within that said text.
For example, think of references towards a content marketing service that increases traffic by a minimum of 50% in the first 6 months! X27 has also regularly increased sales for clients by up to 5X in the same timeframe through custom and SEO-friendly content.
So, don’t look at it as content vs. copywriting. Both professions have different specialists, who increase your traffic sales in different ways.
6. Copywriters Build on The Groundwork
It’s a regular practice for informational content to contain “lead magnets”. These are forms which reward the user with something in exchange for their email address (e-books, guides, tutorials, whitepapers, etc).
Copywriters then come in and structure conversion-focused emails for the leads gathered in that way. The intensity of the Calls-to-Action (CTA) gradually improve as the topics in the emailing funnel get more and more towards direct “buy now” types of copy.
7. Content Writers Closely Follow SEO Rules
There’s no value in “content” which is not keyword and structure optimized in accordance with competing top ranking pages. That’s just creative writing; a completely different thing.
Content writers either collaborate very closely with an SEO specialist, or have that knowledge themselves. They look into what educational search terms match with your business, and choose the best ones after thorough research.
An easy way of figuring out if a content writer is worth their salt is analyzing their content for a focus on keywords.
While we’re only touching the very surface here, look for keywords in the meta title, Heading 1, Heading 2s, and other organic fittings of the search term. It’s very important that you see the keyword in the text that was written.
8. Copywriters Adhere to Selling Principles
Key website pages (for sales) must also be keyword optimized for proper ranking, but the rules are less strict. So, copywriters look into delivering text that’s aimed at convincing prospects, and converting leads into customers.
Proper and innovative CTAs are strategically placed, and the copy is structured to create a build-up towards the Unique Selling Proposition of your brand. Whatever they’re writing, copywriters focus on messages and reasonings that will ultimately speak to people.
Content writers must create a balance between the “human” message and the spider’s (indexing bot/crawler) algorithmic thinking.
9. Content Writers are Long-Term Oriented
All digital marketing is usually oriented towards the long-term. But, for copywriter vs. content writer purposes, it tends to be more specific to the latter.
That’s because content is integrated into a wider SEO strategy that’s meant for organic ranking. Significant SEO improvements can only be seen after a minimum of 6 months.
So, content writers must also understand what they’re working towards. The target group is larger, so the content must speak to a diverse group of people and knowledge-levels.
It is common to have multiple pieces of content written for the same topic, using different keywords that are relevant for the subject. Internal linking between the parts of your content strategy also plays a role in this.
10. Copywriters are More Task-Oriented
There’s less need for a copywriter’s work to tie in with another thing they’ve done. Slogans and taglines are one-offs. The copy for an Ads set will only be written once. Similarly, scripts, email campaigns, sales letters and web page content (among others) can also be standalone.
Copywriters need to understand the whole image, but then present it into different bits and pieces that are laser-focused to the approach they’re currently working on. Everything they write has to speak to the prospect or type of lead they’re currently targeting.
It’s not content vs. copywriting. It’s what you’re trying to achieve. What kind of webpage or message you want to create.
Copywriting vs. Content Writing: Conclusion
Sometimes you need to persuade, and sometimes you need to add value through information. Most of the time, you need to do both.
But why spend all that time and energy on your content strategy and on creating sales-focused copy for your key pages?
At X27 Marketing, we’ve generated over $100,000,000 in B2B sales for our clients. Just get in touch with us, and we’ll handle your content and copy (among other services) while you focus on business scalability.
This way, you can drop the idea of copywriting vs. content marketing. We’ll just do both!
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