Why you should use your budget to invest in a copywriter

While many business owners and marketing managers write their own copy for their websites, blogs, and sales pages, there are some instances when hiring a professional copywriter is a good investment to make. 

There’s a huge difference between someone on your staff who simply writes well and a professional copywriter who understands the nuances of SEO and how to write for the web. Not only can a professional copywriter create content from a technical standpoint, but there are also benefits from a sales standpoint as well.  Here are some reasons why you should elect to hire a professional rather than someone in-house to write your copy.

1. When you lack the expertise
2. You lack the bandwidth
3. More technical writing is needed
4. Inability to be objective
5. When the situation is critical

When you lack the expertise

If you or your team have some writing experience but it’s not specific to the platform you are writing for, it’s a good idea to outsource. For example, if you are creating a landing page for a marketing campaign that you want to convert leads or sales, hiring a copywriter with this skill set can make the difference between an ad campaign that converts at 30% and one that converts at 2%. 

Similarly, if you are writing for content for your website and you want to create some compelling blog posts and want to actually KEEP people on the page, it’s important to find a writer who knows how to write for the scroll and the skim. When you create a page with a lot of text, it’s important to break it up with headlines and white space for an audience with ever-shrinking attention spans. A good copywriter will also write in the tone of voice that represents your company while engaging readers to help entice longer site sessions.

If you are creating web pages, you will want to work with a writer who knows about SEO and can help you optimize each page so that search engines can more easily find you. 

You lack the bandwidth

Even when you do have writing talent in-house, your copywriting needs may significantly exceed the output they’re capable of. You can ask your in-house writers to crank out more copy, but that can lead to burnout if done on a consistent basis, and in the long run that will hamper productivity. This is a situation that many companies encounter as they grow, because the need for copywriting will continually increase, but the available talent on staff may not. 

One area we also find in working with clients is having them dedicate actual resources to copywriting goals. Internal marketing efforts can sometimes take a backseat to other objectives and as a result, keep getting pushed down the priority list. If you’ve been meaning to invest in copywriting but find yourself unable to dedicate the time to create content, it could be worth looking into a copywriter to help delegate your tasks. 

More technical writing is needed

Even if you know your industry front to back, when you have to explain some technical aspects of it, it can be a real challenge! For instance, you may need to have a white paper written to describe the technical advantages of a product your company makes. You may need to create an in-depth case study and be able to explain the story of a company using your product and service in a very technical and results-oriented way. In cases like these, it simply makes good business sense to spend the extra money and hire a copywriting specialist who will be able to take a complex concept and break it down in an easy-to-follow way. If your readers are getting caught up in industry jargon, technical nonsense and verbiage they’re relatively unfamiliar with, they’ll become overwhelmed. Attracting website visitors is the hard part, don’t lose them to industry acronyms/wording they’re not going to be familiar with.

Needing help with more technical writing can also apply to creating copy for search engines. If you are creating web pages, you will want to work with a writer who knows about SEO and can help you optimize each page so that search engines can more easily find you. 

Inability to be objective

Sometimes it’s very difficult to be objective about your own business. Being on the inside, you might be well aware of all the details that go on behind the scenes, but your customers may have zero interest in all that, and instead, they might be fascinated by other aspects you’re totally unaware of. Or you may have been in your business for so long, you are unable to really “dumb-down” your content. You may over-explain for use industry lingo, without even realizing it. It happens! Us Odd Dogs are known for going on diatribes about SEO with our friends and family only to be met back with blank stares. We sooooo get it. 

Someone from outside your company or industry will have a less objective view of your business and will be able to express that to readers in a way that you can’t. You might take something for granted completely, which an external copywriter would recognize as something really great to write about. 

When the situation is critical

If your company is about to embark on a crucial marketing campaign, or if you are launching a new product for which there are high expectations, you should probably entrust the copywriting to a professional. A professional copywriter will be able to create headlines that garner immediate attention from readers and will produce high-quality content that indicates your authority in the field, and of course, write copy that converts!

A good copywriter will produce material that quickly gets to the point without including a lot of excess verbiage or fluff. Content that is customer-centric and clearly conveys the benefits of your products or services will be exactly what you need for this kind of critical event. A really good copywriter will be a language perfectionist and will understand all the subtle shadings involved in tone, structure, and language used to persuade readers.

If you lack these types of skills, and there’s no one in-house who has them either,  it would be a great investment to find a great copywriter to work with. 

Want to learn more about effective copywriting on your own? Check out The Secret to Selling Anything by Harry Browne. Need a more done-for-you approach and are looking to hire a copywriter? Drop us a line!