It happened again the other evening—one of Marshall’s new professors asked me what I do. When I told him that I’m a copywriter, he said “Ohhh… so like you work with books?”

Nope.

He’s not the odd one out, though—it’s rare for me to tell someone what I do and have them understand it right away. But copywriting is not obscure, even though comments like this sometimes make me feel like it is. Let’s take a look at some things easily misunderstood about copywriting. If you’re a small business owner, or know someone that is—hopefully this can make a light bulb click for you so you can understand what copywriting is (and isn’t!) and how you can implement it in your marketing.

Copywriting is a different way of saying copyright

You know that spot in the front of your favorite book that says “Copyright 2018”? That little phrase is to ensure that no one makes a copy of work that is from a specific author. Copywriting is writing advertising, known as copy (I read online that it is called copy because it will be copied on the various advertising materials)

Copywriting isn’t very significant

Some business people have a low-key, slap-happy attitude about their marketing—as long as it looks good, it doesn’t matter a lot, some might say. But it does. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—if your potential client doesn’t understand what you are offering, they won’t buy it. I have seen many lovely websites or advertisements that catch my eye, but don’t tell me exactly what is being offered, how it can benefit me, and how I can buy it. If I have only a vague idea of what a product or service is, I am not going to purchase it. And neither is your ideal client.

Copywriting is pretty easy.

I’m all for writing your own copy, if you can—but it is effort to make sure that you are explaining your offer in the best way possible. Don’t just type something up really fast and throw it on your website—play with the words, tweak and reword, ask some friends or family members to edit or offer suggestions.

This post isn’t to make you think that my job is so hard and so important (even though some days it does feel like a lot of work!). Rather, I hope that it’s a little clearer to you why you should care about your own business’ copywriting and be sure to put strategy and vision behind even the littlest parts of it.