You Can Love Design But It's the Words That Win in Content Marketing

Love your design but words win says freelance copywriter

Reading David Baker's email marketing blog, I just had an "ah ha" copywriter moment.

He makes the point that we spend so much time, effort and money on creative, and maybe we should spend less on creative and more on content:

"We spend far too much energy on revitalizing creative. Don't get me wrong, good creative does pull, but does the effort involved warrant the output? Depending on your business, I believe most could compress creative costs 25% with rational approaches and better content management."

Is this music to the ears of a freelance copywriter? You bet it is, but not new music, rather classical. Good content, engaging content, customer-centric content...this is what We Know Words copywriters have been crafting for 10 years. That is what content marketing is all about.

And we have often as the freelance copywriter taken a back seat to the creative. Many times we've been called in as the website copywriter only to find the design and navigation are set...and aren't appropriate to the message.

Many times have we as the freelance copywriter been tasked with writing brochure copy or other sales collateral with very specific word counts...we couldn't write the right amount to get the message across, rather we had to write long or short enough to fit the already determined space...because the creative was foremost.

Now that we've entered the age of content marketing, and more and more emails are read on smartphones, words will matter more than ever. Content has always been king...but a bit of a tepid ruler, hidden behind a mighty council of designers.

But you know what? The right color doesn't get you found in Google. The right words do. The right logo doesn't get someone to click on your call to action in your email marketing. The right words do. And the design of your whitepaper is irrelevant if you haven't hired a whitepaper copywriter who builds a compelling case for your product...with words.

Thank you, David! I know this wasn't the direction you meant for your comment to go, but I appreciated taking it there just the same. :-)