Page 13 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

ads. Nor will it teach you how to become a freelance copywriter.
What it will do, I hope, is prime your imagination with a set of ideas
you could try out in your own copy to improve it and help you sell
more stuff.

A final note: throughout the book I use the words “reader” and
“prospect” more or less interchangeably. “Reader” because this is
about writing, and “prospect” because it’s also about selling.

The ideas

Ideas are the lifeblood of great copy. Here are 100 of mine you
can transfuse into your own writing. Not all are purely about
copywriting: as well as running my own business I have often been
asked to advise clients, so my insights into the selling process go far
wider than the copy you write for your website or sales letter.

Most of the ideas draw on copy I have written for hundreds of clients
since I started my agency, Sunfish, in 1996. Sometimes I have
quoted directly from it, other ideas use the copy as a springboard
for a more general discussion of a particular technique. In each
case I have tried to give you a sense not just of what works, but
why it works and how you could use it yourself. I like telling stories
too, which is why so many include situations and dialog from jobs
I’ve worked on. And although, like most independent and freelance
copywriters, I’ll sell anything, or almost anything, I specialize in
subscriptions copywriting, which means a fair few examples are
drawn from the publishing industry. These ideas, though, have a
much wider application, especially if you work on products with the
potential for repeat purchase of any kind, not just subscriptions.

Some of the ideas talk specifically about web copywriting. But you
can apply all of them to almost any channel. People do not react
differently to copy just because they’re reading it on a screen rather

4 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS