"We don't have any competition. We're a truly a one-of-a-kind company." I've heard that line from clients for years. I wish it were true, but it's simply not. In fact, it wouldn’t matter if you held a monopoly on your particular product or service; you'd still have competition. How? Because your competition doesn't come from a singular source.

There may be no other businesses that sell product or service you sell, but you still have competition. Once that's understood you have a greater advantage when it comes to copywriting. You can recognize other options your customers have before them and can position yourself as only logical choice.

Know Who Your Competition Is

Competition comes from a variety of sources. Yes, there are those who sell same things you sell, but there competition comes in other forms, too.

The Same But Different

Charitable organizations are a good example of "same but different." Your group may be only one raising funds to save purple spotted toad of northern Antarctica but that doesn't mean you'll receive a flood of contributions from everyone you call. Why? Because there are a million and a half other charitable organizations out there all vying for same money from same people.

None of these other groups is trying to raise funds to save purple spotted toad of northern Antarctica, but they are trying to get individuals to donate to their causes. That makes them all your competition.

How do you get around this problem? Assuming your traffic generating efforts or your mailing list is highly targeted, you'll want to make a strong case for this little toad. In your copy, let readers know why purple spotted toad is important to environment (he's only toad in existence that carries antibodies that can cure cancer). Tell them why world would be a much sadder place without our bouncing little friend. (In addition to being only purple toad in world, this guy is only food frosty wilder beast will eat so he's vital to food chain).

Just like with any other type of copywriting, list benefits of purple spotted toad. Why is he important to nature, how will ecology suffer with his demise and what will happen to rest of Antarctica if he becomes extinct? All of these are vital to convincing your audience that they should favor you with their contributions instead of some other organization.

Everyone In Search Results

But having a flair doesn’t make them an expert in field.

I’m an expert ad copywriter. But I can’t write a journalistic piece to save my life. I have no experience in this area, and it’s just not my bag. So I happily leave this task to reporters. Likewise, a retailer, marketer or salesperson should leave writing to writer. Yet they seldom do.

A copywriter is forever trying to explain why he inserted a word where he did, or why he chose one expression over another. Frequently, a client or employer takes a writer’s carefully constructed piece and turns it into a wordgarbage wasteland. An atrocity... of verbosity!

If you’re such an offender, shame on you! Let your writer do job he or she was hired for: to make you look good. But if you insist on meddling with marketing, critiquing catalog and butchering brochure, you may as well learn how to do it right. Master secret to writing that packs a punch and makes people view you as a credible source. Learn tricks of trade that will get you taken seriously!

Use concrete examples to prove your point. Repeating an idea in different words leaves your writing flat and empty. "We’re great! We’re so awesome! You won’t believe how cool we are!" Why are you cool? Did you help a billion people save money last year? Did you rescue an endangered species from extinction? If you can’t back your claim with solid evidence, no one will believe what you say. Be specific! “I’m thinking of you” might win brownie points, but “I’m thinking of you in that little black dress you wore last weekend”—now that’ll actually get you somewhere!

Resist temptation to cheer for yourself. You’re good, and you know it. But if you must crow about it while doing your peacock strut, tell it to your mother because no one else cares. The world’s consumers aren’t interested in what you can do. They’re interested in what you can do for them.

Don’t pepper your writing with bad puns and kitschy wordplay. This is a weakness of mine. Puns come to me at strangest times... in shower, while I’m driving, as I’m trying to fall asleep. I want to paint world with my puns, but alas, this is not appropriate! No one wants to click on their financial advisor’s website and see him raving to everyone in free world that he’s “so money, baby!” Puns are fun, but true meaning of a well-turned phrase is one that’s used at right time and in right context.

Use active voice. I forgot about this for a long time, and my writing suffered for it. The active voice lends a certain dynamic quality to your writing. “The teacher wrote words on blackboard” employs active voice. “The words on blackboard were written by teacher” illustrates passive voice. Don’t be passive! Avoid any form of verb to be, such as ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was’, ‘were’. Practice this by literally using your own voice. Read your writing aloud, doing your best “announcer” impression. If as you read, you find yourself lapsing into a sing-songy elementary-school kid reading his essay out loud, you probably failed assignment.

Get rid of “asides” in parentheses. They might look cute in an email to a girlfriend, but ‘”asides” that stray from main point of an informative paragraph make you look like a scatterbrain. Interrupting a thought with an unrelated remark is distracting to reader. It’s a comedic tactic that plays out well in informal writing, but just doesn’t fly in real world.

Avoid following: double negatives, redundancy, dangling participles.

The double negative: “It’s not impossible.” Why not just say, “It’s possible.” A negative plus a negative really does make a positive, even in writing!

Redundancy: “We’re also offering free gifts to our members too.” ‘Also’ and ‘too’ may be at opposite ends of sentence, but they’re serving same exact purpose and that means one has to go. Better: "We're also offering free gifts to our members."

Dangling participle: Beware dangler in this sentence! “Shivering with cold, Anne’s hat barely covered her ears.” Here, ‘Shivering with cold’ should modify Anne because she’s one who is shivering. The way this reads now, Anne’s hat is one with goosebumps. Acceptable: "Anne’s hat barely covered her ears, and she shivered with cold."

Employ parallelism. Parallelism helps reinforce a point with repeated sentence structure. Bulletpoints best illustrate parallelism. An example:

The product effectively:

- relieves headaches