If you’re anything like me, you will take a long time to get around to booking something as enormous as web copy for your entire site (I’m still thinking about web design options and graphic design for the future). It’s a big job and it’s not something to be taken lightly. You’ll need to search for the right one, and this may come by word-of-mouth recommendation (which a lot of my work comes from), via visits to a website, or finding them on social media.
What do we mean by a good fit?
A connection, a working relationship that is beneficial and harmonious to both parties.
You need to know the person you’re working with is going to be a good fit and be someone who you’ll feel comfortable with. Although you’ll get a feel for them via a discovery call and through the exchange of a few messages, this is very different from actually working together.
For larger companies this is less of a problem, they’ll have a budget set out for web copy projects, whether it’s a refresh or a fresh set of pages for a new business or a rebrand. There’s less of a sense of the personal and you may be working as part of a team. They will have subcontracted before and will have worked with freelancers more often.
The process, it's all about the process, but what is the process?
For smaller businesses, and entrepreneurs working solo, who may not have a generous budget to use right now, working with a copywriter 1:1 is a great introduction to the process. And as the process is explained, you start to get a taste of what it’s like and what you can tolerate and what you can’t. You also get to understand how I work, and I say ‘I’ because not all copywriters use the same processes.
The strategy, the process, the work and the pages
And also what you can expect from the experience and how that compares to the reality of it. It’s also a great way for me to meet new clients and help them to understand how I work, my strategy, the work itself and how we create a page, a mood, a vibe, a piece of copy that can reach inside the minds of your reader and make them feel like you really know them and how you can solve their problems.
This is the reason why I’ve created the reviews and the two different work-with-me strategy sessions. These are exclusively for those who are
On a smaller scale budget for now and
Also want to explore working with a copywriter to see if it’s something they wish to pursue for longer projects.
If you’ve never worked with a copywriter before it’s an exciting way to find out what it feels like to work with someone who creates copy for a living.
Relinquishing your power and some control to someone you’ve only just met isn't easy
This isn’t an easy thing to do, after all, you’re going to have to relinquish some of the power and control over how you do things. The copywriter is providing the words - but that’s not all, he/she is kind of acting as your interpreter, a conduit of sorts, a channel for conveying the benefits and features of what your business provides. They’ll hopefully work with you rather than against you, and produce something that will prove valuable to you, until you decide you need to change it somewhere down the line as you provide more products or services and expand or change your business.
Tell me what you want, or how you want it, but don’t expect me to do it rigidly and exactly if I don’t think it will work
Of course, you have to relinquish some control however and give into the process. I don’t walk into a hair salon and tell them how to cut my hair. I’ll give them an idea of the type of cut I want but will expect the hairdresser to tell me that perhaps that’s not right for my hair due to a variety of different reasons, such as texture/length/thickness. If I force them to cut it my way regardless of what they’ve said, then I can safely expect it to turn out differently from how I wanted it, or even for it to turn into a disaster.
Results, prospects, buyers and ROI
A good copywriter worth their salt is going to help you convert readers and prospects into buyers, so you get a return on investment (ROI), with results that will keep your business buoyant. This won’t happen overnight and you have to do some work yourself, e.g. provide fresh content on a regular basis to keep it fresh in people’s minds.
A good website doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it can’t be static, you have to keep adding, removing and changing it so it’s found on search engines. Improving your website constantly and providing fresh content helps demonstrate your expertise so that readers can easily find you on your website and be impressed by your knowledge and expertise..
It’s more than just words on a page
And copywriting is about so much more than just words. That’s why I trained, so I can produce words that sell by using tried and tested techniques. (without being over ‘selly,’ something a lot of businesses seem to worry about).
You can’t break rules and go your own way if you didn’t know what the rules were to start with
You’ll hear people say that formulas are dead and a simple flair for words is enough, but like anything, you need to know the rules before you can break them, and flair is not enough. That goes for grammar too. Grammar and punctuation can work differently on a web page than they would in print, but again you need to know the rules before you can break them.
Keep in mind you are selling no matter which way you want to look at it. But if you’re selling something to your target audience, then it shouldn’t be all about just the sell, but cleverly persuasive and smart. That's something that comes naturally to some copywriters and something others may work at for many years to perfect.
Let your customers write the words and let me design and craft the copy
I write for you but I don’t speak for you. It’s your customers who do that. Customer snippets woven into the body of your copy will resonate and attract your prospects like no other. Collating data for the sole purpose of creating copy for your site for those who don’t understand the process may seem counterintuitive to some businesses.
It goes against the expectation for some (not all) that copywriting is simply nothing more than putting a few carefully chosen words together. There’s voice of customer research to consider alongside competitor research, and some copywriters may even interview your customers for you in order to get a better understanding of your product or service and the impact it’s had. It's not counterintuitive, it's clever thinking.
Naturally, this won’t happen in the shorter strategy sessions, there’s a gentler and simpler approach here, but I do teach you the importance of listening to your customers and making note of what they’ve said and using it in your copy for future use.
I’m not writing Shakespearian sonnets here, but I am trying to write something special
Yes, there’s something poetic about copy, the syntax, the rhythm of the right words coming together and the discovery of the perfect headline through careful repetition, crossing out and rewriting until the perfect one jumps out at you. But there has to be some careful thought going into something that requires so much bang for your buck.
For this reason, alone many copywriters charge $$$$$ for their work and rightly so, many provide mind-blowing results. Results mean repeat business means sales mean making money.
A simpler approach, for now, that will hopefully help you to improve your knowledge and help your copy shine
Coming back to 1:1 working with me won’t give you all that now, but it will give you vast improvements on what you have or what you’ve attempted so far, and it might give you an excellent start even if it’s just one or two pages. A lot of the training I’ve had is more for bigger businesses that require more pages on larger sites. Your needs may not require any of this right now.
Guidance, tips and skills you can use again
The 1:1 sessions are designed for small businesses and solopreneurs (yes I know some of you hate that term) and help you to learn, write, get some tips and guidance on your copy and walk away with something you can utilise. I think they offer value for money and a short but useful online workshop (even though there are only the two of us) to give you enough of a kick-start into the world of copywriting. And who knows where that may take you…..
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That was a short blog on my copywriting strategy sessions available now. I also provide longer, deeper researched articles on request.
My one-on-one sessions can be found here 👇🏼. You can book and pay online.
If you want to jump on a discovery call first, either message me here, fill in the contact form at the bottom of my Home Page or message me on LinkedIn. That way we can see whether I’m a right fit for you.
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