No matter what you sell or how, your business needs good copy. Social media posts, company blog entries, mailing content, short ad slogans or sales text on a landing page – wherever writing is involved. However, there is a problem. How to write to a Polish client? What to do and what to absolutely avoid? Are the rules of copywriting in Polish distinguished by something special?
We have collected common mistakes often made by copywriters and marketers writing in Polish! Here is your guideline for any copywriting and content marketing campaign!
Table of contents:
- I am the best
- I am so professional
- Sales formulas
- Writing for robots
- Strengthening your brilliance
- Translating – not creating
I am the best
I have 25 years of work behind me. It took me ten years to get to where I am today. I am the best expert in the world. I only work for the most demanding clients. I appreciate professionalism and passion. We are pioneers in the industry.
Do you recognize that? Your potential customers recognize it too.
If we were to identify one feature that Poles appreciate the most (also in business), it would be modesty. It is obviously not the case that it is not worth showing off your experience or sharing the company’s mission. Of course, in website content, mentioning the years on the market or the hours spent on improving the product, would be welcomed.
You just need to know HOW to do it with taste. So that instead of being a jerk and trying to show how ambitious you are, try to seem like a professional who is worth trusting and entrusting money.
What to do instead?
Suppose you work on sales content for websites. Instead of boasting about years of experience or another diploma, choose one or two real examples of situations in which you helped clients and describe them. Avoid building sentences in the first person singular (or plural if you’re communicating on behalf of the entire company). You are definitely better off when you focus on the customer. When you can show something instead of talking about it, do it. Each paragraph, photo or print picture must be relevant. This type of content creation will always be more welcomed by the audience than empty words.
I am so professional
Our goal is to make every effort to improve the quality of our outsourcing services and to best serve our clients by constantly expanding our offer.
Sounds like meaningless gibberish?
Because it is.
Unfortunately, countless companies still have such sterile communication with their audience. Of course, you may wonder if the more relaxed American type of sales will work for Polish recipients. Yes and no – it all depends on the industry. However, it is crucial to be aware that even the most “serious” industries, such as law, accounting or finance, requires boring, long, meaningless content in Polish.
Remember that if you press long, “professional”- sounding sentences packed with difficult words into your LinkedIn post or “about the company” description, it does not mean that people will perceive you as a professional.
What to do instead?
Treat your website visitors like… people. Just remember that the truly wise are those who can describe difficult issues in simple words. Good copywriting is not about trying to be smart, but about selling effectively and meeting your client’s expectation. Each text should always be checked for comprehensibility for an outsider. If you do not have such a person, you can always use ready-made tools (such as a Jasnopis) that will show you at least the minimum education that the recipient would have to have to understand the text.
Sales formulas
Every day she smeared her skin with onion juice. You won’t believe what effect she has achieved. Check it out!
If you do not spend time on the Polish internet on a daily basis, you probably do not realize how great of a meme such sales formulas have become. It means only one thing – old, well-known formulas do not work for the typical customer anymore. The internet is full of long lists with ready-made sentences that need to be included in the content for advertising purposes. Please, take them with a pinch of salt… Something that works in many countries will not necessarily work in Poland. Especially if you don’t write text from scratch but try to translate it from different languages.
What to do instead?
You can still include sales formulas in your content writing. Some of them work.
You just need to ensure they still work and attract people and (under what circumstances). Comprehensive, good copywriting formulas in Poland are, for example:
- calculations – eg. 5 ways to lose weight that work.
- sentences pretending to be questions – eg. First, effective way to lose weight?
- Taking out “suffering” – eg. Lose weight quickly without dieting and sweating at the gym!
- never again – eg You will never have to limit calories again.
- gives X without Y or / subtracts X without Y – eg. Our supplement kills kilograms without any sacrifice.
We always suggest starting with testing and analyzing. After all, not all of them will be successful in absolutely every industry.
Writing for robots
Our hairdressing salon Krakow offers the best hairdressing services in Lesser Poland. Our hairdressers in Krakow are real professionals. Book your hairdresser in Krakow right now!
You see the pattern? There are still people on the market who advise that this type of SEO text is a good thing for Google robots. Yes, overloading the content with as many keywords as we could, indeed, positioned in Google quite well. A dozen years ago! It is not how SEO copywriting and optimization works right now.
Google’s algorithm is getting more and more intelligent. Thanks to the possibility of contextual search, it can amaze us more than once with what accuracy it sometimes “reads” in our minds. Marketers still have doubts about adjusting the algorithm to the meanders of the Polish language: word variations by persons, numbers, types or cases. This is where the advice comes from that in order for the search engine to understand us well, our key phrases should be written only in the denominator. How inconvenient it is that the reader of mankind is of secondary importance…
What to do instead?
We provided the simplest advice previously. Write to people. Not for robots. Apparently, not everyone knows it, but the algorithm understands Polish and is getting better at dealing with variations of words or phrases. If that was not enough – it even understands synonyms! Optimize your content for SEO but have a real human in your mind.
What’s more, the position of a page or article in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is influenced by a number of factors, of which the keywords or phrases themselves play an important role. But not only them. The following are also important: relevance of the content to the search term, the degree of exhaustion of the topic (therefore there is no one specific length of text that “works”), linking to trusted sources, and even a footer about the author. Global SEO rules are the same around the world Poland is no exception.
Strengthening your brilliance
One of the most prominent copywriters in history, Claude Hopkins, wrote:
If fine writing is effective in any way it is a detriment. It suggests an effort to sell. And every effort to sell creates corresponding resistance.
Bragging about your amazing sense of humor, unnecessary prolongation of the text, getting to the bottom line late, sprinkling over-intellectualised jargon – most of these things get on the nerves of customers. Poles like to joke around, but when it comes to spending their hard-earned money, they definitely prefer a brand’s professional approach to business.
Waffling, long stories (not to be confused with good storytelling!) or an excessively “salesy” style (i.e. a lot of exclamation marks or bold slogans in the style of PROMOTION END IN 2 HOURS) will make a customer simply run away from you without even considering any cooperation.
What to do instead?
Respect your customers’ time and get to the point quickly. Better to just tell about the facts and not waste your time. Well, unless you really have something interesting to say. Instead of just the style, it is better to focus on the appropriate design of the text.
A good copywriting text is written with two types of clients in mind: analytical and spontaneous. The former likes to get a lot of information; the second, in turn, prefers to have the most important details clearly marked, as they only scan the text. Whether you create content for mailing, descriptions of products, blog entry or Facebook post – the power of your editing should be bullet points, lists (of benefits), bolds, numbers, tables and…
Good, old ENTER.
The more you try to sound brilliant, the more apparent it is how earnestly you want to sell something. Who needs it?
Translating – not creating
Last but not least mistake, commonly made by many foreign brands that enter the Polish market – content translation.
Okay, we get it. Maybe you’re just starting and don’t have the budget to create content exclusively in Polish. Maybe you want to test the market. Maybe you know some excellent Polish and English translators. We still believe that even the best translation won’t be the same as content written from scratch in the native language of your target audience.
Yes, translated content can be correct, and with a good editor and proofreader, it can be error-free, too. But will it truly engage Polish readers? We’re not so sure.
Remember, sales content is all about words. It’s the entire message those words carry. It’s cultural nuances, characteristic phrases that often can’t be translated, the tone of the language, and the character of your audience. A good ad often plays with language in ways that can be lost in translation.
What to do instead?
Invest in Polish copywriting or content writing services. It’s as simple as that. This could be a content team in a Polish marketing or PR agency, a copywriting agency, or a freelancer – depending on the size of your brand and your needs.
These were just six main tips for Polish copywriting. We have many more in store! If you are looking for personalised help in better reaching the Polish customer, please contact us for more information.