Write With More Confidence and Effectiveness for All Digital and Advertising Media.
Special Winter Pricing: Regularly $1,110 is now 50% off—$550. Enroll here (series beginning March 7th).
Note: The December 2024 series has been rescheduled to the March 2025 series.
Introduction:
In this three-part copywriting Masterclass, you’ll be introduced to the essential principles of copywriting for digital and advertising channels, and explore the role that good copy plays in influencing behaviors and driving purchases. If you’re looking for inspiration for your email, ads, website, social posts and video scripts, you’ll come away with a greater feeling of confidence and a desire to experiment. You’ll also benefit from useful tips in writing longer web copy.
The course covers the role that tone of voice plays in cultivating a unique brand identity and how writers can adapt content and messaging to specific audiences. You’ll have the opportunity to take part in discussion with other participants while trying your hand at practical exercises and receiving constructive commentary and critique. Share your ideas in the interactive session online and get live feedback from instructor Phil Woodford, a top copywriter, creative director, and trainer. This course is limited to 15 participants.
In Module 1, you’ll focus on fundamental rules and practice writing headlines for advertising and short-form captions for social media. There’s an opportunity to consider the close relationship between words and imagery.
Module 2 is centered around audience and tone of voice as we explore website copy from both B2C and B2B environments.
The Masterclass concludes in Module 3, with advice on writing longer-form web copy, email, and video scripting.
In this course, you will:
- Gain confidence in your own practical writing skills.
- Learn techniques to make your copy more impactful and effective.
- Focus on your readers and tailor copy to their needs.
- Discover the best ways to approach copy and content online.
- Explore the challenges of short attention spans, good usability, and SEO on the web.
- Pick up techniques that can help you create more effective email, social posts, ads, and video scripts.
This interactive course has a student limit and sells out quickly. Enroll now to ensure your place.
Copywriting Masterclass, Module 1: Essential rules for writing and techniques for engaging the reader.
Description:
Good copy doesn’t emerge by magic. It’s most often the result of a writer observing several clear rules and principles. In this session, you’ll learn how to approach the writing task and gain tips on best practice.
After drawing up a checklist to guide you in your marketing copy, you’ll spend time exploring short-form communications, such as ads and social posts. How can we make them stand out in a world where people’s attention spans are diminished, and everyone is confronted by an increasing volume of messages?
Key Takeaways:
- An understanding of the copywriter’s various roles as interpreter, salesperson, and psychologist.
- Key inputs a writer needs to create better outputs—the role of the marketing communications brief.
- Best-practice principles for writing in plain English, structuring copy effectively, focusing on your audience and conveying a clear central message.
- The principles of persuasion that help convince readers to act.
- Techniques for short-form copywriting in advertising and social media, including ways of approaching headlines designed to interrupt and engage.
- The relationship between words and images and how both can play a part in creating an effective communication.
Copywriting Masterclass, Module 2: Audience and tone of voice.
Description:
Copy is usually stronger when it is written for a specific audience—making use of segmented data and effective targeting. In this module, you’ll look at the use of personas in marketing communication and the way in which writers adapt their copy to different readers, reflecting their aspirations and motivations.
There will also be an opportunity to examine tone of voice in shaping perception of brand and to observe some of the devices writers use to establish a rapport with an audience. Your instructor will encourage you to explore website content during the session, drawing conclusions about the strategies of the writer and their understanding of the reader.
Key Takeaways:
- An awareness of different models of tone of voice – brand-focused, audience-focused and situational.
- The use writers can make of demographic and psychographic profiles in a marketing communications brief.
- Comparisons between different writing styles and tone of voice in both B2C and B2B environments.
- Appreciation of the use of personas by copywriters and the role they can play in targeting copy effectively.
- The importance of omission in copywriting—making informed decisions about what to include and exclude in a communication.
- Tips on experimenting with tone of voice—practical exercises beyond the course.
Copywriting Masterclass, Module 3: Writing for different media and channels.
Special Pricing: Regularly $1,320 is now 50% off—$660.
Description:
In this final session, you’ll have the chance to explore some of the rules that surround web writing in the 2020s—whether it’s the pressure to impress search engines, the science of usability and user experience or the need to engage people instantly in a world of diminishing attention. You’ll also look at some of the techniques that create more successful emails and different approaches to video content, including strategies for short-form video on social platforms.
You’ll be shown the way in which story-telling principles can be applied by copywriters, particularly in longer pieces of online content such as articles, blogs, case studies and thought leadership .
Key Takeaways:
- Rules for writing online—taking into account the input of usability experts on scanning, chunking and page layout.
- The best approaches for delivering impactful headings and subheads on web pages.
- The relationship between copywriting and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and general principles to follow.
- How to use key words in copy while retaining naturalism and aiming for ‘elegant variation’ in your writing style.
- Story-telling principles, including the application of the Freytag pyramid to the world of business writing.
- Structuring and sustaining longer pieces of copy and strategies for creating powerful ‘kicker’ and intro paragraphs.
- Tips for effective scripting and the role of the writer in shaping the narrative and effectiveness of online video.
- Principles for more compelling emails—including subject line tactics to enhance open rates and options for A/B split testing.
How to Convince Your Boss Why You Should Take this Class:
Greater confidence: You’ll come out of the course with a more detailed understanding of the copywriter’s role and craft skills, allowing you to work more efficiently and effectively.
Greater competence: You’ll learn rules for copywriting best practice and be more aware of some of the potential pitfalls to avoid, leading to fewer errors.
Greater understanding: You’ll explore the way copy works across different media and platforms, helping you to craft words that are more appropriate and engaging. You’ll create more effective, social posts, emails, web pages and video scripts.
Greater cut-through: You’ll experiment with headline-writing techniques and examine the close interrelationship between words and images, leading to more impact with ads and social posts.
Greater adventurousness: You’ll be happier to experiment and try new approaches to copy, which may open up opportunities for more effective and impactful communication.
The Presentations:
- The workshops are hands-on and practical.
- The workshops are live so that you can ask your questions.
- Step-by-step instructions in numbered lists with the links so you can do this yourself.
- Included are lots of illustrations and examples.
Download Material:
- Video of the presentation with slides and audio.
- PDF of the complete presentation.
Who is the course for?
Marketing professionals at a range of levels and those working in communications, design and related fields.
The Presenter:
Phil Woodford
Phil started his career organizing and marketing international conferences for an engineering institute in London, England, before pursuing a career as a copywriter. He became an agency creative director and subsequently embarked on a freelance career, in which he works as a writer, trainer, consultant and lecturer. His current clients are based in the UK, France, Italy and the USA.
- Honors degree in Sociology from the London School of Economics.
- Master’s degree with distinction in Occupational & Business Psychology from Kingston University, London.
- Course Director for the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) since 2006.
- Member of the Judging Panel for CIM’s Global Marketing Excellence Awards 2023.
- Professeur Référent at OMNES Education – France’s largest private university network.
- Former visiting lecturer at University of the Arts London; University of Westminster; Birkbeck College, University of London; and St Mary’s University, London–teaching in a diverse range of areas including advertising, media trends, business writing and presentation skills.
- Mentor to freelance and in-house copywriters.
- Co-host of a weekly news review show on Colourful Radio, broadcast from the Africa Centre in London.
- Trustee of Off The Record, a London-based charity which provides counselling services for young people aged 11 to 24.
Website: www.herecomesthecavalry.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-woodford-9160421/
Workshop dates and times:
WINTER 2025
Module 1: Essential rules for writing and techniques for engaging the reader.
Friday, March 7, 2025
from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PST.
Module 2: Audience and tone of voice.
Friday, March 14, 2025
from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT.
Module 3: Writing for different media and channels.
Friday, March 21, 2025
from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT.
SUMMER 2025
Module 1: Essential rules for writing and techniques for engaging the reader.
Friday, July 11, 2025
from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT.
Module 2: Audience and tone of voice.
Friday, July 18, 2025
from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT.
Module 3: Writing for different media and channels.
Friday, July 25, 2025
from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PDT.
