Where do Copywriters Find Their Ideas?

copywriters ideas Sitting at my desk, staring at a blank screen, hoping and praying that a little spark will fly out that will catch my copywriting creativity on fire. Sometimes this works…but usually not. A copywriter isn’t like a fiction writer. You don’t just ‘dream up’ an approach. After all, to make a spark, you have to have some movement. Some flint and steel rubbing together with enough friction to make something happen.

Where do you find friction? Down in the copywriters trenches. Deep in research where you’re trying to find out what really makes the targeted market tick. If a copywriter doesn’t start there, any idea he (I say ‘he’ because I’m a boy…I’m not trying to be chauvinistic…if it offends you, then just put an ‘s’ in front of the word) dreams up is just an extension of his own imagination. And that usually doesn’t sell very well. Such copywriters are either labeled as amateurs or college grads who never got their hands dirty.

The experienced copywriter is looking for something more definitive. We might look at the way a customer describes what they liked or disliked about a service or product. We find ideas in a discussion forum…one member ‘wishing’ for something that our client already provides. Sometimes finding an idea means talking to the salesmen and asking them to pitch their sales hooks to us.

Of course, this is just the spark. I mean if copywriters could just cut and paste from those idea finders, then copywriting wouldn’t be much of a specialty. This is where some of the creativity comes into play. A good copywriter sees a little niche in the mind of the target, and tries to find the words and ideas that will blow that little crack wide open into a full fledged campaign strategy.

For example, if a copywriter is finding ideas for a company selling used printers, he might try asking some of the past customers what they liked the most about their recent purchase. He finds one who mentions the packaging…it was all nicely boxed and taped the way a new printer would be. He is also impressed when he receives a drivers CD even though it was an old printer.

There’s the spark. Just a small one, but that’s all a good copywriter needs. Finding a good idea is all in seeing the fact that people buying used printers are out to save money…but they don’t want junk. The customer had gotten that same feeling of newness that he would have gotten out of something he bought from Staples. So the copywriter takes that spark and adds a little kindling…then blows on it and gets a flame.

The kindling is the market evaluation. Used printer dealers are a dime a dozen, and everyone knows it. So in this case, the copywriter pushes the Unique Selling Point (USP) to distinguish Company X from the competition. The USP becomes the headline, so it is the very first thing the audience sees. The following paragraphs reinforce the idea presented in the headline, and lead the audience to see Company X as the only choice for a used printer:

Tired of Your Old Printer?

Then Why Would You Buy Another Old One?

When you buy a remanufactured printer from X, you can rest assured that you’re getting more than a used printer…you’re getting a renewed printer.

Even if you can’t afford a top-of-the-line, brand new printer, there’s no reason you should suffer through someone else’s old problems. We give all of our used equipment new rollers, new drums, new fusers, new cartridges… giving it that like-new quality so every print will be clean, crisp, and without blemish.

I realize that this isn’t actually a formula. If it were, every single copywriter would come up with the same headlines (as a matter of fact, the copywriters who think there is a formula often do re-use the same worn out headlines).

The fact is, there is no formula for finding ideas. You do your research, you look around for something different, and you run with it. Sometimes you’re way off mark, and your preliminary tests are a total bomb. In which case you start over again. Other times your ad brings in a flood of business, you pat yourself on the back, and you move on.