Neither, actually! When it comes to effective copywriting, it’s not really the size of your copy that matters. What does matter is whether each word you have used is serving a real purpose – what is the importance of copywriting for your readers? What benefits does it provide?
As a copywriting company, it is important to ask these questions before equipping your copywriters with projects so that everyone can follow the same script, goal, and theme.
The best copywriters regularly make the mistake of using too many words to convey a fairly simple idea; or using superfluous words that seem ‘unnatural’. The key to effective copywriting is to be aware of and use powerful words that can convey the message to your readers quickly and with high impact.
There is a faulty principle behind overloading words into a copy – ‘Put in as many words as possible so that the reader will at least retain a few of them’. Actually, quite the opposite happens. Verbose text is often ignored completely because it takes too much effort and time for the reader to figure out the message that is obscured by the words.
However, using just the bare minimum words needed to convey a thought is not the answer either. After all, the copy has to have style, color, and flavor to make it interesting to the reader. Even though you need to avoid using too many words, there is definitely a need for descriptive writing and storytelling sometimes that can make the reader visualize what you are telling him.
Finding a balance between too many words and too little can be a difficult task that only comes to those who practice the art of writing on a regular basis. As the best copywriters in history have put it, what you need is to treat words with care to ensure that you write just as many as you need to convey the message, no more, no less!