In this Digital Age, the need for Copywriting and Content Writing skills are growing by the minute.
Today, just about everyone is trying to sell something online. And with lockdowns around the world, the need to learn Copywriting has grown even quicker because anyone who wishes to sell and market online will need to have some Copywriting knowledge and skill.
Copywriting is also known as “Sales Copy”.
This is a special kind of writing that applies certain rules and psychological sales triggers within the text or copy of an advertisement or post.
However, the problem is, not everyone is versed with this special skill to write sales copy that converts to sales.
This is why, these days you will see many advertisements on social media and the internet promoting Artificial Intelligence (AI) Copywriting apps, and Done-For-You Copywriting Templates that people can use to write their Sales Copy.
But here’s the problem with all the above-mentioned – they lack emotions – and software can never have “feelings”, and this is exactly what we need when we write to sell our products and services to other human beings – feelings or emotions.
As a seasoned Copywriter with over 30 years of experience working in international and local advertising agencies, and also my own advertising agency, I have found that these “quick fixes” to write sales copy, do not really work and can be a waste of your money.
I have also purchased “Done-For-You” Copywriting Templates and have used AI Copywriting software and apps.
Here are my pros and cons of using these two solutions to write Sales Copy for Advertisements:
“DONE FOR YOU” COPYWRITING TEMPLATES
Pros:
- They work as a good guide for beginners to Copywriting, but because there are no “lessons” on why we should write copy as in the template, the writer may get completely lost.
- The Done For You Copywriting Template that I bought online had many samples of Sales Copy (they were not really “Done For You”).
- There was sample copy for all kinds of uses, such as, Copywriting samples for Advertisements, Sales Letters, Email Sequences, and lots more.
Cons:
- What I found when I opened the file after the purchase was a whole lot of samples for various purposes – but this overwhelmed me, and I have not opened the folder ever since (14 months now) nor used anything from the pack.
- Also, I found that many of these samples are not relevant to Asia. They may be relevant in the West, but not Asia. Asian’s think and operate differently – we do not take too well to Hard Sell like it is done in the West.
- It is very difficult to even edit or change sentences if we do not know the Rules of Copywriting.
AI COPYWRITING SOFTWARE
Pros:
- For Beginners, this is great to give you some ideas for Headlines and Copy, and sometimes it does come up with some good headlines that can actually be used.
- It can help as a good guide for newbies to Copywriting.
- You do not need to pay for this as there are several Free versions online.
- Headline Generators Apps are sometimes great to give you some inspiration. They follow the Copywriting Rules because the creators of the app know about it, (but the user may not which may make this not useful). Please see the sample below. In this app, we need to insert our Keyword, and the app will generate Headlines. You will note that some of the Headlines cannot be used without editing, yet there are some which can be used as is:

Free Headline Generator: I inserted the Keyword “Copywriting Course”, and the app created the Headlines on the right
Cons:
- I have used these, but as stated above, if the writer knows nothing about Copywriting, Sales, and Marketing Rules – these Copywriting apps or softwares (especially the paid ones) are useless.
- Without some formal knowledge, training, or experience, a beginner Copywriter may not know which is the better headline.
- Many of these Headlines follow a 100 years’ old Copywriting formula that uses long Headline Copy. This may not always be the best strategy for a Headline.
- The Headlines and Body Copy lack the human touch and emotions.
- Softwares are not emotional as a human being is, and so copy generated by machines may not resonate with a human being.
Conclusion
After viewing and testing many of these Shortcuts to Copywriting, my conclusion is – NOTHING CAN SUBSTITUTE A HUMAN BEING. Because at the end of the day, a human being is a very complex mechanism that even the brilliant human mind cannot fully comprehend, which is very much needed when communicating with another human being. Technology, robots, and artificial intelligence can never match up to human emotions, which is very much needed in writing sales copy to create desire, action, and sales.
Even Grammarly, an app to check your grammar as you write your copy, makes a lot of grammatical errors and sometimes proposes changes of what is right to something wrong. This is why the human mind MUST be wiser and ahead of all this tech stuff. They are unreliable.
I would highly recommend that if you wish to market and sell online and offline like a pro, it is best NOT TO TAKE SHORTCUTS and learn this great Copywriting skill that helps you bring in an income, the right way – Learn it.
By Joy Nandy – Founder of The School Of Digital Advertising
View Malaysia’s ONLY Certified Online Copywriting & Content Writing Courses
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