The 10 Cardinal Sins of Copywriting

Copywriting is not the principal task of fund initiators, brokers, developers, sales organisations or real estate companies. Yet texts are needed and used all the time: for mailing, prospectuses, exposÈs, press releases, statements of account, image brochures, topical brochures, etc. Many of these texts fall short of the intented effect because certain basics of composition have been ignored when drafting them. Naturally, these principles do not just apply to the effective copywriting for real estate companies or real estate products yet this is one area where they are most consistenly violated. 

1. Nondescript Target Group

Copywriters frequently spend little time on the question of what target audience they actually have in mind. It is impossible, however, to write good copy without having a clear picture of the addressee you wish to reach. What does your reader wish to know? What captures his or her interest and what does not? Which rhetorical register is appropriate? What kind of reservations against a given product or your company may exist? If the text is supposed to address a variety of target groups it could make sense to compose different versions of your text. A case in point: a politician would hardly give the same talk to a farmers' union as he would to an association of civil servants or to an employers' association.

2. Writing for Colleagues and Superiors

The style of many texts suggests that they were not actually written for their target groups at all, but rather for the author's superiors and co-workers. In such cases, an image brochure primarily serves the purpose of self-intoxication by celebrating the grandeur of the company who produced it: "Boy, are we ever great!" The self-congratulatory and inflationary use of superlatives in image brochures is often motivated by the copywriter's desire to please the management or the board of directors rather than the customer.
 

3. Empty Catchphrases

Is your work "customer-oriented" as you aim for "custom solutions" that are developed by "top experts"? Should your "real estate be a part of every portfolio and form a key component in an optimised asset structure"? If so, you better close the book on empty rhetoric such as this. Unless you want to bore your customer. No matter how often you affirm that you are particularly committed to "after-sale care for the customer", etc. why would anyone want to believe you? Surely not just because you said so. So unless you are able to substantiate your claims (through solid figures), such claims are worthless. And rather than insisting that yours is an "innovative product", you would be better off explaining as specifically and intelligibly as possible what the exact nature of your innovation is. Fifty percent of any image brochure copy consists of rhetorical claptrap that should simply be cut. It is to be hoped that something of substance remain. Here is a text sample from a fund prospectus, exemplifying what is meant by "claptrap": "Our work is paced by your satisfaction. For us, getting closer to you means responding to your desires and investment needs better than others. We recognise your custom requirements, and offer you just the right solutions with the best development potential. This marks the very basis of our success. Our name stands for top service and consulting. We favour quality over quantity. Principles such as these help us to develop new markets, as we make the most out of their innovative potential, and always strive to bring you products that are the perfect solution for you."
 

4. Boring the Reader with Well-Known Facts

Never bore your customer with accounts that are self-explanatory and common knowledge to boot. For instance, if you wish to sell a real estate product as an old age provision you need not explain to your customers in the form of general disquisitions that the government's retirement plan is far from sufficient. Today, this would hardly be news. Instead, surprise your customers with new, so far unknown, facts, findings and figures. If you tell your reader that "the legal retirement payments are unlikely to secure your standard of living in old age", the reader is bound to be bored. If, however, you tell the reader that a person 30 years of age today will earn -0.4 percent in returns from the government's retirement plan, or that a contributor will receive half of the paid-in amount in the form of retirement payments at best, this will most likely be news.
 

5. Unprofessional Copywriting

There is reason to believe that 90 percent of all people take a fair amount of pride in their penmanship. In truth, writing constitutes one of the most complex skills, mastered perhaps by one person in a thousand. Unless copywriting has been part of your quotidian chores, you should seriously consider delegating the formulation of press releases, brochures or mailing to a trained professional. If you prefer to try your hand at writing your own copy, please bear the following rules in mind: Avoid long sentences. Split any given sentence in two whenever it is possible to do so! Better yet, break it up into three clauses, if you can. Never try to affect a different style in writing than the one you use in conversation, as your discourse is likely to sound contrived. Once you have finished drafting your text, be sure to go over it again several times and to cut any slack.
 

6. Boring Openings

It is always the first impression that counts. This goes for texts as much as for other things. Unsurprisingly, publishers often spend weeks or even months trying to find the perfect title for a book. Newspaper journalists are well aware of the importance of a good headline, and sometimes spend more time discussing just the right headline than in writing the actual news item. Also, any journalist or literary author knows: The opening lines are the most important ones, while the first paragraphs decide over the fate of the entire text. If you bore your reader with uninspiring phrases and empty rhetoric (see above), he or she will not even bother to read what comes after.

7. Texts Are Not Teamwork

"Too many cooks spoil the broth," as the saying goes. Text will turn into a hodgepodge when created by "collective effort": Everyone involved will have something to add and changes to make, resulting in a compromise oeuvre that is usually the worse for wear. So leave the actual copywriting to a single writer who is really at home in his craft. Limit yourself to reviewing the finished text for semantic errors. And do resist the temptation to let every employee and every member of the board tinker with text. Its quality can only suffer in the process. The great advertising specialist, David Ogilvy, once said: "No advertisement, no TV commercial, and no product image could ever be created by a committee."
 

8. No Positioning Strategy

If you lack a positioning strategy for your company and your products, this will become painfully apparent when sitting down to write your copy. Because you will have to explain to your customer in just what ways and positive ways at that your product or company differs from the rest. If you are unable to provide such an explanation, you should ask yourself whether there is really a market for your product at all. The key criterion for a good text is that it must explain to the reader what sets your company and your product apart, and why he or she should choose it over others. That is why you ought to have a clear idea of the customer's alternatives when writing copy.
 

9. Failure to Handle Sales Objections

Texts are intended to generate sales. Any salesman can tell you just how important the handling of sales objections is for the sales talk. Strange to say though, some copywriters seem to see no need to defuse possible objections in written presentations. This may well be due to the fact that written disquisitions are a one-way form of communication. Unlike in the course of a sales conversation, the addressee (in this case, the reader) is in no position to voice reservations, objections and criticism. Which makes it all the more important to defuse the key sales objections. Naturally, the rule to "let sleeping dogs lie" continues to apply, and in no case should you argue from a defensive position. However, if sales objections practically suggest themselves, or if they are frequently verbalised, you cannot simply ignore them.
 

10. Using Buzzwords

If you are trying to stand out you should not jump on the bandwagon of every fad. Among other things, this goes for the use of buzzwords. Today, it seems that any given thing needs to be "sustainable" or "exciting". It makes you wonder why. As recently as ten years ago, these terms would have been very rarely used, or would have been used in an entirely different context. Try to avoid buzzwords as well as unwarranted technical jargon. Of course, if sophisticated terminology is commonly used by your target group there is no reason not to follow suit. Nevertheless, it would not do to pepper your discourse with faddish shop talk unless your customers does the same.