Some of the most important things about writing copy that works

A quick read

The written word is a time tested innovation.

All writing is a package of some meaning that goes from sender to receiver. The nature of the contained meaning can vary wildly. A poem may seek to impress intangible feelings. In contrast, road directions want to render the best route as clearly as possible.

Since time immemorial, though, way before the panoply of writing forms we have on earth today, humans have been way into exchanging stuff with each other, aka, bartering. The history of this dates back to 6000 BC. The mass spread of written text only began after the printing press's invention about 7.5 thousand years later, in 1440 AD.

Like other forms of advertising and marketing, copywriting is in part the art and science of creating perceived value so that people take action. You can have a crappy product, but super effective marketing can cause it to sell like hotcakes. However, it doesn’t work the other way around. An inherently fantastic product does not necessarily mean it will sell.

People need convincing of the value of something before spending on it. Human nature is the antecedent feature behind it all, today in the modern world and millennia gone by.