Let’s start this post with a confession: it took me a long time to understand what copywriting is (and, for that matter, what copywriting is not).

Because as a grad student in an English department, thinking about marketing as a sales game and only a sales game, I was pretty sure that copywriting was just about slinging persuasive words, convincing people to buy your product by any means necessary, and doing your best to drive sales no matter the cost. You know, all Don Draper in Mad Men style.

Several years and hundreds of thousands of hours spent copywriting later, I can confidently tell you this: copywriting is about sales. But if you do it well, copywriting is not about selling by any means necessary.

Because as it turns out, selling by any means necessary doesn’t actually lead to long-term business health.

Start with the Basics: What Is Copywriting?

In the simplest possible, copywriting refers to the act of writing branded material. Aka: material that ideally ends in a sale.

By “branded material” I mean any piece of writing that is used to represent a brand or engage a brand’s customers. This can come in the form of:

But there’s more to copywriting than just putting together a few headers and paragraphs that look pretty among the white space.

Because if an experienced copywriter can’t perfectly match your brand voice while also strategically leading your ideal audience to understand what problem(s) your offer can solve (and why your offer is uniquely suited to do so)…

Well, your conversion rate will tank pretty fast.

And if a web copywriter writes the kind of super-scare-tacticy or totally-misrepresenting-the-product copy that ends in plenty of sales but not a lot of customer satisfaction…

(Think: the used car salesman stereotype that’s been around for a few decades or so.)

Well, that’s also not a strategy that will make your business that successful in the long run.

Because what’s the quickest way to turn every would-be repeat buyer, can’t-wait-to-work-with-you-again client, and wannabe loyal brand fan into a hater?

Set high expectations for what your offer can do. Then don’t deliver.

That’s why copywriting can be best understood as the act of matching message to audience, through words that perfectly match the brand’s and represent the offer (and its benefits) as realistically they can. While also throwing a little strategic spice into the mix.

So that the people who read copywritten material (aka: your audience) know exactly who your offer is designed to help and what problems it’s designed to solve.

And they also know (without a shadow of a doubt and without more than one or two seconds of hesitation) whether saying “yes” to your offer is the logical next step for them.

What Copywriting Is Not: How Ethics Comes Into Play

It’s not often you’ll hear “ethics” and “marketing” brought into the same conversation.

And if you do, it’s probably because someone you’re talking to is wondering “Is marketing ethical??” or a digital marketer with a heart is sitting around wondering how to turn all their conversion prowess into a way to change the world for the good.

But copywriting and ethics don’t have to go together like oil and water.

Because though we’ve all felt the oh-so-disappointed feeling of buying something that was supposed to totally change our lives only to have it break in 10 seconds flat or end up a dud…

(I still remember the total soul-crushing sadness I felt as a little elementary schooler when that “mermaid hair braider” I wanted just turned my head into a giant rat’s nest.)

We also know the soul-deep satisfaction that comes from purchasing a product that promises to solve one of our biggest pain points…

And actually delivers on that promise.

Which is why I’m ready to shout from the rooftops that copywriting isn’t a selling by any means necessary kind of game.

Because in a world where 5.07 billion people globally are connected to the web, and 4.74 billion people are active on at least one social media channel…

The last thing that will help your brand is getting a reputation as one that sells well, but doesn’t deliver on the promises described.

The Nintendo Virtual Boy: How Copywriting Helped Sell—While Delivery Fell Short

I’m not exactly what you’d call “a gamer.”

Unsurprisingly for someone who spends all day strategically slinging words, I’d prefer to spend the extra hours of my day reading a book instead of staring at a gaming screen.

But even my non-gamer self is aware of the market-failing reputation of the 1995 Nintendo Virtual Boy.

If this failure in the world of gaming has stayed off your radar somehow, let me fill you in.

In 1995, Nintendo pushed toward the yet-unrealized market of virtual reality with the Nintendo Virtual Boy. In promotional advertising for this new game console, the industry giant promised:

“True 3-D Graphics

Three-dimensional high-resolution graphics so detailed and clear you’ll swear you could reach out and grab them”

The only problem?

Once the Nintendo Virtual Boy was stripped from the pages of magazine advertisements and put into the real-life hands of customers, those “three-dimensional high-resolution” graphics didn’t exactly live up to the hype.

As Business Insider describes, “The reality of Virtual Boy was totally unlike what it promised. Games were little more than black and red nightmares, with low-resolution graphics and gameplay that would’ve been better suited to a standard game console.”

The Virtual Boy ended up being Nintendo’s biggest flop ever. Only 777,000 units were sold (compare that to the Super Nintendo, which has sold an estimated 49.1 million units worldwide since its release in the early 90s), and it was pulled from the market only a year after its release.

It wasn’t just that the Nintendo Virtual Boy wasn’t super fun to play (rumors that it gave players splitting headaches abounded, and the prominence of all the red and black is still called into question). It also just didn’t live up to its advertising.

Despite all the virtual reality hype in its pre-release marketing campaigns, customers who purchased the game console quickly came to realize that there wasn’t much virtual reality to speak of. Everything was just in 3-D.

Which meant that the one big promise that the Virtual Boy advertising campaigns made…

The promise that was literally in the name of the game console…

The promise that sent eager buyers to the stores and made them can’t-wait excited to try this new console out…

The promise of virtual reality…

Well, it fell flat.

And the Virtual Boy is (to this day, almost three decades later!) considered one of the biggest and most well-publicized flops in marketing.

The Big Swap: One Copywriting Tip to Rule Them All

So if copywriting is not selling by any means necessary, what is it?

Copywriting is a strategy-backed process of highlighting the many real benefits of your offer through on-brand words. So that the audience who needs exactly what you’re selling feels seen by your web copy, and can’t wait to take that next leap of faith by trying your offer for themselves.

And as far as the One Big Swap you can make to keep yourself away from the flop-ville status of the Nintendo Virtual Boy while running towards a long and thriving future of building a loyal customer and client base…

Well, it might at first seem like an overly simple one.

But despite its simplicity, this One Big Swap can be a game changer (and a conversion rate saver!) as you sit down to write copy that attracts your ideal audience and leads to repeat clients and buyers.

Ready for it? Here it is: Represent your offer as it is.

And nope—this doesn’t mean selling yourself short, being so humble that you forget to mention everything cool, or otherwise keeping all the “YOU NEED THIS!” best parts of your offer hidden from the light.

It means taking the time before you even begin writing your copy to understand the deeper benefits of your offer—how it can genuinely impact your ideal audience’s life and relieve them of the deepest and most achy pains.

And it means communicating those benefits on the page. With all the emotions, urgency, and celebration it takes to make your ideal audience feel like their pains are being seen, heard, and that a path to overcoming them is being opened up in front of them.

So that your offer is represented as it is—in all of its true pain point-overcoming glory.

Without false promises.

But with a full appreciation and recognition of why you are unique and how you’re uniquely suited to offer unquestionable value to your ideal audience.

So that you sell a product or service that your customers will be happy to have in their hands. One that will keep them coming back for more.