Copywriting vs. Content Writing: Understanding Their Individual Importance For Your Brand

Building meaningful connections with customers begins with finding the right people to tell your brand’s story and our integrated team of marketing experts are here to help.

Let’s start with a universal truth: Any type of marketing is intended to convert prospects into loyalists. These days, the most successful brands are also successful storytellers. Brands hire a strong team of writers to create content that tells their unique story.

It would be easy to assume that copywriters and content writers are two sides of the same marketing coin. However, there are major differences between these roles and without understanding their individual impact, your brand could suffer.

To get your business on a path to success, our integrated agency of marketing experts break down the four key differences to look for when building a strategic writing team.

1. Goal – Arguably the greatest distinction between copywriting and content writing is the intent. Copywriting is focused on selling people on an idea, brand or ideology. It’s more product-focused and has direct conversion goals. Content writing is a more subtle approach to conversion that focuses on creating a positive brand association through valuable content that informs, educates, entertains or instructs readers. Instead of attempting to make a sale, content writing is delivering value with no strings attached.
2. Style – There comes a time to persuade and convert audiences, but it’s never all the time and it’s never the same marketing channels. Copywriting is commonly used on channels for sales-related actions such as product pages, sales emails, social media ads, website copy and PPC campaigns. With content writing, you want to create a valuable experience for your audience. Consider things like long form blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, newsletters, organic social media posts and tutorials all a part of your content marketing strategy.
3. Measurement – It’s a marketers best friend and can tell us how effective our strategies were for reaching the right audience. However, it’s important to remember the difference between long-term and short-term success. Copywriting is commonly measured in the short-term since it’s goal is to encourage a direct response. Alternatively, content writing is intended to build rapport and trust which should be measured as a longer-term strategy.
4. Outcome – If the key difference between copywriting and content writing goals is persuasion versus education, then the outcomes should reflect the same. For example, if you’re trying to sell a product then copywriting should convince customers that it’s worth buying. If you’re trying to create a positive brand association through content writing, then you should see an increase in consumer trust and engagement.

To recap, both copywriting and content writing are created to convey a specific message to a target audience. On some level, they both require a good quality of writing and commonly need the support of creative design and smart branding to make an impact.

The reality is that no marketing tactic lives in a vacuum and the most successful brands understand the power of an integrated approach. If you’re considering expanding your writing efforts for 2022, then let’s connect. See how COHN’s integrated team of marketing experts can tell your brand’s story this year and beyond.