Now that the days of drinking whiskey for breakfast are (lamentably) gone, copywriters are often known as content writers. For the most part, they do the same thing: they educate, they inform, and, quite often, they call their readers to action. In a nutshell, they work with words.
They sort through hundreds of thousands of words and arrange them into a compelling message. One that will make your customers sit up and pay attention.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, we’ve put together a list of five top reasons why you – yes you! – should hire a copywriter.
- You’re Not a Copywriter
This is the number one reason why you should hire a creative professional. If you don’t understand the difference between red and blue wires, you should hire an electrician. If you don’t know how to calculate your taxes, you should hire an accountant.
The same goes for copy: if you haven’t had creative training (whether in a university or at a news desk) you won’t have the experience necessary to do the job right. You’ll likely make spelling mistakes, or grammatical errors, or, you might simply say too much.
Keeping it short and simple is very difficult when you’re passionate about your product, but with an average human attention span of eight seconds, you don’t have long to tell your story. A professional copywriter has the subjectivity and the skills required to deliver your message in the most concise and engaging way possible.
- You’re Just Too Busy
You set up your business for a reason: to sell your product or service. However, recent research indicates that you’re probably spend more than two thirds of your time tackling day-to-day tasks and problems, rather than implementing long-term goals and making real progress in your market.
The smartest entrepreneurs are the ones who value their time properly, by outsourcing tasks they’re not expert in, in order to focus on what they’re really good at.
A professional copywriter can provide you with fresh, engaging copy at a very competitive price, freeing you up to concentrate on the real challenge – growing your business.
- You Fear the Blank Page
If you shudder at the thought of staring at a blank page, wondering how you’re going to fill it with words, you’re not alone. Lots of people aren’t comfortable writing professionally, for many different reasons.
You might know what to say in conversation, but might have difficulty getting it down in words. You might worry that you’ll accidentally make a humdinger of a spelling mistake. Perhaps you’re just worried that your message might be misconstrued.
Whatever the reason, you can remove a huge amount of stress and pressure simply by asking an expert to do it instead.
- You Care about your Brand
When you launched your brand, you probably spent days, or even weeks, carefully deciding on a colour scheme, a logo, a website design, even the layout of your letterhead. You know that how you present your brand to the outside world matters a great deal.
There is nothing worse than seeing a beautifully-designed menu riddled with spelling mistakes, or a carefully-crafted business plan that is confusing, or even misleading.
Having gone to so much effort to make things just right, it’s a pity to see hard work marred by avoidable mistakes. If you care about your brand, you’ll hire experts to craft the perfect words to appeal to your market.
- You Need Specific Expertise
Content is a catch-all phrase for a huge variety of media, including images, video and of course, text, which happens to be our forte. That includes everything from a 140-character tweet to a 10,000-word business plan, and each type of copy requires very specific expertise.
This is particularly true in relation to regulatory and legal compliance, an issue which crops up very often in relation to GDPR, data protection and human resources. We often tackle these issues when working on websites, marketing copy or corporate communications.
You could hire a GDPR expert, or even a solicitor, and have them liaise with your content team or website designer, but that gets expensive, quickly. Instead, it makes sense to hire a content writer who is experienced and trained in law, compliance and copywriting.
Or, if you’re trying to pitch press releases to newspapers and magazines, why not hire a copywriter who previously worked as an editor? This means that he or she will know exactly what that editor wants to see, and what they’re likely to accept for publication.
There are many more reasons why you should hire a copywriter; you’ll want to keep your content fresh and varied, with a consistent tone, and a high level of professionalism. No doubt, you’ll also want to sell your brand, and an experienced copywriter will know just how to strike the right balance between persuasive calls-to-action and engaging, high-quality text.
Above all, you’ll want to hire a copywriter because they’re expert storytellers, who are only too happy to recount your unique tale.