The Importance of Research Before Writing

With tight deadlines, quick turnovers and pushy clients, it can be tempting to skip the research stage and drive straight into the writing when working on a new project or with a new client.

The research stage is absolutely fundamental to producing high quality, relevant and unique work. It’s too often skipped in attempt to get the work out the door faster in effort to meet a client deadline, but skipping this important stage can leave you with sub-standard work, and a sub-happy client. Many clients will always want things done yesterday, which can put pressure on you to get work over to them as quickly as you can.

Just because you’ve been handed a tight brief and have a few months or years copywriting experience, doesn’t mean you should just dive right into writing without spending time really getting to know the client you’re working with, their product, its audience, and the industry.

The research stage is paramount for gathering context about the brand, from competitors in the space to the audience or customers you want to engage with. If you’re writing a tone of voice doc or website copy for a client you’ve never worked for before, you want to give yourself enough time to conduct the enough research before you start drafting the structure.

The time you allocate will obviously vary depending on the type of project, but if you’re writing a tone of voice doc or website copy, then you want to allocate at least 1 day for the research stage.

Here are a few tips to get you started if you’re not sure how to go about researching before starting on the next writing and planning stage.

1. Make sure you do your keyword and SEO research

If you want to reach the right people organically (vs direct traffic, which comes when people deliberately seek you out) you’ll want to ensure you’ve done your research around keywords and phrases your ideal client is searching for. Google Adwords (using the free Keyword Planner) is good for this - type in what you think people will be searching, and then take a look at what else comes up. Google Adwords shows you the number of average searches as well as the competition. You want high monthly searches but low competition phrases and keywords threaded throughout your copy. If you don’t have a Google Adwords account, Google Trends is a great alternative as it enables you to see patterns and trends on Google searches. Search by country or worldwide, and then compare and contrast the number of searches for competing phrases over a period of time.

2. Spend enough time researching around competitors

Competitor research is an essential step in the writing process, enabling you to see what other brands are doing in the space and how best to differentiate your brand from the crowd. Coming up with a list of the top competitors, how they’re positioning themselves, their tone of voice, language and messaging will hugely help you to set your brand apart and come at the writing with a fresh angle.

When looking at competitors, you can also check out brands that might be just outside the brackets, but have similar values to those of the brand you’re writing for. Think outside the box and don’t just stick to the obvious competitors, but use Google to seek out brands that are doing it well, and use them as inspiration.

3. Make sure you really understand the market space

If you don’t understand the space that the brand is in, then writing about the product is going to be a lot tricker, and chances are you’ll miss the boat on just what the audience are looking for. For example, if you’re writing for a brand in the fitness industry but have zero connection with or interest in the industry yourself, then you’ll find it much harder to get inside the minds of your ideal customers.

Understanding the market space means understanding the people who engage with it, and what they’re looking for in a product. it also means being aware of the common language, the jargon, keywords, customer pain points, and more, so make sure you do your research properly and get familiar with the industry.

People don’t buy a service, they buy a solution. Give them the solution.

Good luck! And, of course, as always, I’m here to help - get in touch if you need some more tips on how to properly research for a copywriting project.