Corporate copywriting is arguably the most invisible of the writing disciplines — it’s not sexy like fiction and hardly as impressive as journalism, but it keeps the wheels of your marketing machine greased and helps you present a unified face to the public.

Every insurance commercial that made you giggle and every jingle that ever got lodged permanently in your head was the result of a masterful corporate copywriter.

While there are a lot of different types of marketing pieces that fall under the umbrella of corporate copywriting, their goals are all similar. Whether you’re writing white papers, web content or ad copy for print campaigns, your corporation’s copywriting has the same goals, including:

Building a Brand Image. Your brand image is more than just a logo or a motto: it’s made up of all the things you company does. You can think of a corporate brand image like the personality of the business — and like in humans, inconsistent personalities make people uneasy. This is why the first goal of any corporate copywriter should be to craft a consistent brand image that customers will come to identify immediately.

Capturing the Attention of Your Audience. An audience that isn’t interested won’t pay attention to what you have to say to them, no matter how loudly or well you say it. Use your corporate copywriting to quietly attract those people who are interested in your product and hold their attention long enough to show them just how neat and needed it really is.

Communicating the Benefits of Your Brand or Product. Once your audience is paying attention, your copywriting machine has to switch gears and get to the heart of the matter. Telling people that they need to buy your stuff is great, but if they don’t understand what you’ve got for sale or why it benefits them, you’ll never move your inventory. You can use your corporate copywriting to show people how your product benefits them directly by making their lives easier, simplifying a difficult task or being hugely entertaining.

The best corporate copywriting does these three things consistently and without bold fanfare, and that’s the way it should be. After all, your potential customers only have so much attention to focus on you and if they’re forced to decipher overly disjointed messages, they may simply pass you by for the next guy.