Often, I find that businesses make quite a significant investment in the development of their website and the design but then budget limitations mean that they decide to write their own content.
I often get phone calls from businesses who’ve gone down this route but are finding that the website might be attracting visitors but no leads (so the copy isn’t converting) or simply not attracting many visits (due to poor SEO). That’s often when they ask me for help.
Investing in a professional copywriter is a long-term investment in the business. Yes, this is an upfront cost but it could mean all the difference between making that high-value sale or not. Can you leave that to chance?
In this blog, I’ll share with you five points to consider when deciding whether to hire a copywriter.
Making the right first impression
If you’re running a business, your website is often the first interaction potential clients will have with your business – so it’s crucial to make the right first impression.
Time-poor clients will often make very quick judgements about your website – and whether you’re the right fit for them. So, your unique selling points need to be very clear and prominent upfront. Readeres don’t want to be digging around for information about your services or prices. If this information is hard to find, you can bet that they’ll just head to a competitor’s website instead.
A professional copywriter is experienced in writing high-impact content that converts potential customers into paying customers.
Understanding your audience
I often call copywriters armchair psychologists because understanding people is just as important as writing copy in marketing. When I’m hired by a client to write website copy, I dedicate a lot of time to researching their audience and potential buyers before I even start thinking about the copy. I want to understand customer pain points and what keeps them awake at 3am. If I don’t understand who the copy is aimed at, how can I write copy that resonates with your ideal customers?
As a professional copywriter, I conduct all kinds of research – whether that’s online research, competitor research, reading through testimonials, using the product or service myself or chatting with existing customers. That way, I can understand what makes my clients’ customers tick – and how I can write copy that taps into their interests and motivations.
Bringing more traffic to your website
There’s not much point having a great website if it’s not optimised for SEO. These days, I’d expect any good copywriter to understand SEO key principles and write SEO-friendly copy.
It’s all about weaving the right keywords into your copy to aid discoverability on search engines and drive more traffic to your website. SEO research is time-consuming and quite complex. If you’re not familiar with SEO, I wouldn’t recommend winging in. Get a professional copywriter to set you on the right path.
Finding a unique angle
Often, when I’m chatting with a client about their website, I discover a new angle or point that the business owner may have overlooked. I worked with one client on a website refresh not so long ago. We’d had a briefing call and it was only near the end of the conversation that she told me the very moving reasons why she’d set up her business – which followed a family tragedy.
There was no mention of this story on the client’s existing website – and this was such a key part of the business owner’s journey. With her permission, we shared a potted version of the story on her about page – which helped readers understand her values and motivations. This about page became one of the most read on the website. People work with people, not brands, after all.
When I’m working with a client, I spend a significant amount of time on the briefing stage and research – learning more about each client’s story and finding different ways to connect with readers. This process can often tease out new or unique angles that businesses might not have considered. A client will often say to me during a meeting, ‘I hadn’t quite thought of things that way’ or ‘That’s something we’ve not really talked about previously’. It’s hard to see the wood for the trees when it’s your own business.
Saving you time
In my experience, it’s easy to underestimate the amount of time it actually takes to write website content. I often chat with business owners who’ve been trying to write their own website content for months (and sometimes years).
When you hire a copywriter, you can outsource that time-intensive, laborious task to a professional – freeing up your time to focus on your day job.
If you’d like to have a chat about your website, why not book a discovery call with me to talk through the different options for your needs and budget?
