How would you describe your copywriter?
- Some English major you bring in as an implementer at the last minute to make sure your messaging is basically grammatically correct.
- You don’t have one; everyone at your company pitches in on marketing and sales copy.
- Some junior person at your high-priced agency whom you’ve never seen.
- Someone in-house or outsourced who is part of your marketing team and spends at least 50 percent of his or her account time writing.
If you picked “1,” you’re not alone. I run into this attitude frequently. Someone has a message. They want to communicate that message, whether through press releases, Web copy, e-mail campaigns or whatever. They (think) they need someone to just “make it look pretty.”
Going down this road, however, is like owning a football team, hiring your coaches to devise an offensive plan, and hiring a quarterback on game day to execute this plan. I foresee a plethora of missed snaps, fumbles, botched hand-offs, and interceptions.
Too dramatic? Hardly. A good copywriter is more than a simple implementer. He or she needs to be completely in-tune to your products, services, markets, competition, story, challenges and goals to be the most informative and persuasive.
A good copywriter also will have ideas on how your message needs to be communicated…and disseminated.
If you picked “2,” you’re also not alone. Many small companies–especially in this economic climate–are trying to save money everywhere they can.
I would argue, however, that if you don’t have one person–in-house or outsourced–writing most of your high-level messaging, you’re doing yourself a major disservice. Your marketing manager is likely wearing many hats. He or she does not have time to craft all of the copy–or even spend the time on your copy that it needs. In addition, if everyone from your CIO to CEO are crafting external communications, what kind of centralized message do you really think you’re putting out?
And option 3? Well, this is also common. You spend tons of money on a PR or marketing agency. And then someone–quite often someone who has a great pen but very little business experience–is tasked at the 11th hour to implement the messaging that everyone else has come up with.
As you can imagine, I also hate this approach. Any agency worth its salt needs to have the copywriter present at your messaging and strategy meetings. Otherwise, there will be–repeat will be–a major disconnect in that implementation.
This approach can cost more hours on the back-end fixing problems. Would you rather spend money on a good product…or fixing a bad product?
Alas, for those of you who picked “4,” congrats! This is the way any company–from start-up to Fortune 500–should approach marketing.
If you don’t have the budget to pay a physical agency or someone in-house to concentrate on copywriting, there are alternatives: Independent contractors or virtual agencies you bring in on a project basis.
With both of these alternatives, you’re maximizing savings. And–usually–the quality of your marketing collateral. These are professionals who can make it on their own. They’re not trying to climb the corporate ladder. They enjoy writing and consulting.
They’re entrepreneurs.
They live and die with each client.
If you do have an in-house copywriter, or have a relationship with an agency or independent contractor, I recommend you “CC” your writer on any important issues going on at your company. The content he or she produces will be that much better as a result.
I also recommend you find a good writer early on in your marketing strategy phase.
Your writer ought to be a core part of your messaging machine. Not an afterthought.
-Justin
[...] a previous post, I lament the fact that copywriters are too often brought in as simple implementers–at the [...]