Easy Copywriting Market Research to Create Unstoppable Copy

by Monica Di Santi

September 12, 2024

“Copy is not written. Copy is assembled.” – Eugene Schwartz

People have frustrations, hopes, dreams and desires.

You, as copywriter, only have to channel those feelings towards your product. This is the copywriter’s task—point the already existing human desires in a group of people to your product.

Market research is the gathering and analysis of available information about your target audience, industry and competitors,with the aim of discovering relevant facts and reaching revealing conclusions, and so understand a company’s target market.

To write profitable copy you have to conduct a market research, because you have to speak to a specific group of people who have needs and pains that your product can solve.

The good news is that all the information a copywriter needs is already out there in the market. You only have to discover it and use it as the foundation of your profitable copy.

Go out there, find the answers you need,put them together in a persuasive way and...

Voilà! Success is yours.

What you need to understand is that those potential customers have certain characteristics such as:

• demographic features ( age, gender, education, occupation)

• psychographics characteristics ( personalities, lifestyles,interest, opinions, beliefs, values)

• behaviors ( purchasing habits, online activity).

All these pieces of information are of vital importance because they describe your buyer persona, who has certain preferences and will pay attention to you if you speak about what they are looking for.

Remember no matter how well written your copy is, if you don’t talk to the audience about what interest them, sales won’t happen. That’s the reason why you should research and find out what the target audience love, what makes them tick, what keeps them up at night.

How to Start your Market Research

You can start your copywriting market research asking your client questions about their product, company and project requirement. As you send the company written questions, you'll get a back a written report known as copywriting brief brief.

The copywriting brief is an important written record where all the background and context information about a copywriting project should be written in details.

The brief also includes information about the project's goals, deadlines, word count, keywords,offer, and much more.This is a great start but you should also do your own research.

  Start with a brief now   

What to Research before Writing Copy?

In spite of all the valuable information you have got from your client, it's always a good idea to do your own research.

You are wondering why.

The point is that all the info you've already got, comes from insiders, technical and marketing staff, the owners themselves.That's a great start.

But, you, as an outsider, and new to the topic and company, will be able to reach your own conclusion, closer to the audience's point of view. You have the great opportunity to bring a fresh insight to the topic to complement the previous information.

When people work in the same environment for years,they certainly become expert in the subject but they take for granted details a new comer won't. And that's the reason why you have to do your own research. You bring not only your expertise as a copywriter but also add freshness to the topic.( new angles and perspectives)

Product, Company and More

You need a deep understanding of the product you sell. So, it's quite helpful to learn

To research your product is collecting information about the development of the product, its purpose, how successful it has been in the past, how many upgrades have taken place.

Add features, benefits, previous campaigns reports, brand voice, USP.

Learn how successful this company is, what portion of the market they have,their leadership in the industry. Consider news and recent events. Also include audience's opinions and trends in business.

Politics and economy is also good to be included, to have a broad picture of the current situation.

You can gather data from the internet to round off the data you have.

Ideal Customer

With your buyer persona in hand, determine where these people hang online, what they like and don’t. And what they believe in.

Reviews and opinions are very revealing of the way people feel about their positive and negative life experiences.

Go to social media platforms and read their comments to discover what topics they love to talk about. Here pay special attention to the emotions they express as they are gems for you copy.

Competitors

Competitors are those companies in the market that sell the same or similar products, solving the same problem and targeting the same audience.

So the first step is to identify who those competitors are. Search for them on the internet, using the category your product belong to and make a list of the results.

Choose the most relevant companies and learn about their industry position and size. Then study their marketing strategies, websites, social media accounts and advertising method.

Find out their weaknesses and strength and determine a gap that can be advantageous to your company's position and your copy.

Conclusion

As a copywriter you write killer headlines, and well-developed leads. You also master persuasive techniques to write great copy. But if the sales letter or whatever you're writing doesn't consider all the information gathered in your market research, your copy is doomed to fail.