At its essence, effective communication all comes down to one thing: filtering out relevant information. Relevant information gives brands their particular stand-out-from-the-crowd identity. With relevant information, managers can keep their employees in the loop. And relevant information brings people to a level of knowledge from which they can comfortably make a decision – it could be the introduction to a banking study or an article in a business magazine that might cause a person to invest their money a certain way. Or maybe it’s the product descriptions and blogs for toys and electronic devices that make holiday shopping even a little bit easier. But efficacy of conveying this information extends well beyond the content itself. The quality of that content is equally, if not more, important. Our copywriters are not assembly line workers who churn out texts by rote. They are actually information enhancers, the creative minds behind content that produces added value.
You need the right answers, content, text formats and structures if you have any serious intention of capturing and retaining readers’ attention through copywriting. You need a couple of other qualities as well: text experience for print or the Web and, certainly, a feel for the very people whom your text is designed to reach. The members of our internal and external copywriting team passionately apply their linguistic, cultural and technical expertise to meet the exact demands that company and brand communications must meet today. After all, corporate copywriting and storytelling are two essential ingredients that go into successful internationalization.
This is what copywriting is all about
Copywriting is a special form of generating text. It lays the lines of communication that connect brands to people. Clearly defined content is created with a particular target group in mind and offered in the format that suits the particular medium – be it a product or service that is to be sold or a contemporary form of internal and external corporate communications. We are not talking here about texts laced with threadbare advertising-speak. Copy has to do much more if you want your messages to ever hit their particular information target.
The secret to the sauce is one single ingredient: use for the reader, an individual who has a clear priority. Something else is at play as well: the credible communication of a company’s purpose – the value that they believe they provide to society. These days, you need to share content with some real meat behind it if you really want your message to resonate with people or if you are expecting to persuade consumers to buy your products or use your services. Our copywriting is tailored, written word for word with our clients’ exact objectives in mind. We are talking about content that strikes a chord deep within the intended target group, the kind of information that people will love to read or, in a marketing context, will be liked and shared.
Getting a lay of the land
Before our copywriters write the first word of a text, we hold a briefing with our clients to gain an overall impression about what we want the words to achieve: who we want them to reach, what kind of impact they should have on the reader and what style of communication best achieves this impact for a brand or product. What sort of response are our clients trying to trigger from readers? Which questions and problems are weighing on the minds of readers? Just how does the product being advertised or the information being provided address these questions? Our copywriters dive deeply into an issue, thoroughly explore the material and basically set up shop in the target group’s neighborhood to write content that will resonate with exactly those readers and customers whom the text is supposed to reach. Our copywriters speak your language and map out your DNA. Good content is like a catchy tune. It lingers in people’s minds, and every time their thoughts wander back to that tune, it generates more value. To make that song really sing, good content requires a detailed and efficient briefing.
The essence of the briefing
At Leinhäuser, the briefing lays the foundation of successful copy. Our clients are therefore accustomed to answering a list of targeted questions up front that will save on time in the long run, preventing a barrage of follow-up clarification. We also help define the goals to be met and the needs to be addressed. Working with our team of native speakers, our account managers take a journalistic approach to their work and use an initial questionnaire to find out key details and important background information. We explore the particular products and services through a detail-oriented and brand-conscious lens for product-marketing projects and are equally at home in the fast-paced, image-centric corporate communication world. Our ultimate goal is to prepare content that unmistakably reflects the tone and style of our clients themselves. The data and information provided in the briefing will sketch out the big picture, the overall objective of the content to be communicated. Together with our talented team members, we fill out the lines with the creative strokes and splashes of color that draw out the text’s personality. In our role as an external service provider, we are able to compose texts in a wide range of languages and topics that you may not be able to access within your own ranks – with our English and German copywriters doing most of the heavy lifting. Over time, however, our copywriting team will likely start to feel more like an extension of your own internal team.
We have the creativity and professionalism to turn your ideas into reality, with CI-compliant wording, the right format, the appropriate feel for culture and the market, and a clearly defined message delivered on the right channels.
Wide-ranging requirements for language and format
In online marketing, nothing is more constant than change itself. Target groups switch channels seemingly on a whim, and the ideal approaches for publishing texts on each of the various social media channels are constantly in flux. As a result, our copywriters must do something more than simply draw on their extensive experience to anticipate the needs of readers and what will hook them. They also have to be conscious of limits placed on text length and other requirements of the target platforms. At the same time, the clients’ guidelines regarding corporate identity have to be kept in mind at all times. The interplay of all of these requirements and successful communication with readers add spice to copywriting jobs.
Leinhäuser Language Services will help you prepare copy for your
- Corporate communications
- Print and digital stories
- Marketing and advertising texts
- Blogs
- Websites
- Banners
- Newsletters
- Brochures
- E-mailings
- Speeches
- Presentations
- Press releases
- Social media
SEO – to increase the visibility of your words online
In your writing, you speak directly to your customers with an advertising goal in mind. As a result, you naturally want to create content that is both highly visible and easy to find. A fundamental understanding of search engine optimization is essential and will increase range and impact. Flexibility is the keyword here, because the algorithms of such major search engines as Google are subject to constant tinkering. This is why up-to-date SEO know-how is part of our portfolio. If the project allows for it, we will optimize copy in terms of productive keywords that we have researched for our customers. In the process, we keep our eye trained on target-group and market-specific search habits and follow client-specific guidelines. We will structure your texts in such a way that search engines will spot them while ensuring that the writing still flows and doesn’t read like a stilted pre-fabricated form where someone just filled in the blanks with keywords. Naturally, the content will fulfill the criteria of relevance for the particular target market and in terms of the search engines typically used in the target market.
Added-value copywriting
Leinhäuser’s roots run back to the translation of corporate communication and product-marketing content, including the adaption of sales-generating texts for marketing. The greater the need to provide content that speaks precisely to the target market, the greater the role that our copywriters play in the translation work – in the form of a second editing phase that hones the message of target-language texts. We keep our eye on the entire process and identify at an early stage where needs for optimization exist.
Our range of services is constantly evolving to more closely meet the needs of our clients so that your message sings its way into the minds of the right audience.
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