You want to craft great messaging, but your plate is overflowing with tasks and to-dos. Owning a business means wearing many hats, but sometimes, the best thing to do is pass a hat to someone else — and we believe copy is a great place to start.
Below you’ll find our greatest tips for hiring a copywriter. Outsourcing copy can give your website, social media captions, blogs, emails, & sales pages a needed boost, and this service is extremely valuable to your business in the long run. Here’s why.
It’s professional.
Good copywriters are trained in messaging that sells, and they’re also flat-out good writers. They can craft copy in a voice that feels like you, but also is great for SEO and reader-to-customer conversions. They’ll also give you error-free copy with correct grammar and professional spelling. Believe us, no one is likely to buy your product if it’s not spelled correctly on your site.
It’s quick.
While you might spend months poring over your email nurture sequence or your sales page, trying to make everything perfect, a copywriter can typically offer you high-quality copy on a fairly tight turnaround. When you interview a new copywriter, ask them about their lead time — but you’ll typically have your deliverables in a matter of weeks.
It offers an outside perspective.
An experienced copywriter knows their industry well, and they can provide valuable insight about what works, what doesn’t, and how to take your messaging from good to great.
If you’re wading into the outsourcing waters for the first time, it can be scary to hand over your messaging to someone, especially someone you probably don’t know personally. But there’s no reason to fear! We have some tips that will make your first foray into a copywriting deal simple and smooth.
5 Tips for Hiring Your Next Copywriter
Provide a detailed description of your ideal customer.
It is imperative that your copywriter know and understand your ideal customer. Considering that no one knows your ideal customer as much as you, we suggest that you provide them a detailed description. We wrote an entire article about this here. We’ve also created a very simple, easy to use workbook that can help you spell it all out for the ultimate success of your messaging.
Be clear about your brand voice.
A coherent brand voice matters — not only because it helps you attract the right customer, but because a consistent voice across platforms will make your brand recognizable and reliable. To ensure that your copywriter knows this voice well, provide them access to your core values and customer avatar. It’s also helpful to give examples of sales pages or articles you love from similar brands. The more information you can provide, the easier it will become for the copywriter to execute your vision.
Outline your content.
As we just mentioned, more information is always better. If you send a copywriter a simple blog topic with no further information, they may take it in a different direction than you’d imagined — and it wouldn’t be their fault! Outline the content you’d like written and provide it to your copywriter to finesse and finalize. The ensures that the content on your site or in your customer’s inbox is your messaging.
Explain your goals.
Let the copywriter know what you hope to achieve with each piece you send their way, from big projects like website copy to smaller pieces like blogs and emails. It’s frustrating to copywriters when they have to visit your website and piece together a sales page with no direction. If they have a better grasp on your goal, they’ll produce better, clearer content. If you plan to offer a Call to Action, provide that as well.
Ask questions.
Not every copywriter will be a great fit for your brand — but you’ll never know until you get to know them! In your discovery call (which you should always have), make sure to ask about their writing style, the type of brands they enjoy working with, their rates (per word or per hour?, is a deposit required?, etc.), and their typical turnaround time for deliverables. Then, before you start any work, make sure you have the agreed-upon terms in writing. This will keep things moving along professionally and ensure that you and the copywriter leave happy!
Hiring a great copywriter can be the key that unlocks countless sales for your business! Follow this simple guide, and you’ll be on your way to copywriting success. For more content that will take your business from surviving to thriving, subscribe to our SOWBO YouTube channel!
