As a marketing manager – especially one without a large team under you – you may well at some point need to hire an external copywriter. But how do you go about finding the right one?
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as posting a shoutout on LinkedIn and waiting for your contacts to tag their favourite copywriters. To find a good match – one that will deliver results and be worth every penny that you pay them – takes planning.
Here is a step-by-step guide for marketing managers looking to hire a copywriter.
Have you got a detailed brief ready to send to your chosen copywriter? Without a good brief, you are setting your copywriter up to fail, no matter how good they are. To write effective copy, they need to understand things like:
Who the audience is that they’re writing for
How the product or service benefits the reader
What the copy is supposed to achieve
What you want the reader to do once they’ve read the copy
Why they might not want to or be ready to do that
If you aren’t used to writing copy briefs, it’s worth finding out if your potential copywriter has the experience to help you do this. Agencies tend to use freelancers themselves and are therefore used to creating as well as following briefs.
Have an idea of your budget
You might have a set marketing budget for the year or it might be that your company is a little less rigid and you can apply for what you need on a case by case basis. Either way, you’ll need to think about how you’re going to fund your copywriting project.
Obviously, the final cost will vary hugely depending on what you’re looking for and who you use. For example, a simple five page website selling yoga classes will cost less than a large and complex website for a financial analytics consultancy. And a freelancer who’s just getting started might be charging as little as £120 while a specialist might charge five times that amount.
Sticking with pricing models, some people charge on a day rate, others on a project basis. And agencies usually have some sort of blended rate to cover the various people who will be looking after your work, from the account manager to the writer and possibly a strategist or even the creative director.
It’s worth noting that some copywriters – particularly the more experienced freelancers and agencies – may have a minimum fee that they will accept.
Work out what type of copywriter you need
Not all copywriters are the same. Here are some of the different types of copywriter you might come across:
Content writers, who produce long-form copy like blog posts designed to add value and build relationship.
Advertising copywriters who are skilled at coming up with snappy campaign concepts and billboard lines.
Technical copywriters, who specialises in areas like SaaS or finance or biomedical engineering.
SEO copywriters, who can seamlessly weave keywords into your copy to improve search.
Brand copywriters, who can help you create a strapline or articulate your value proposition succinctly.
Conversion copywriters, whose specialism is creating landing pages and sales emails that will sell.
Although many copywriters will be able to work across more than one, few can do everything. If you need input into a range of copywriting projects, you might be better off looking for an agency with a bank of different writers that can be pulled in as needed.
Freelance copywriter vs copywriting agency
In fact, let’s take a moment to talk about the choice between using an individual freelance copywriter and a copywriting agency. The first thing to say is that one is not better than the other! There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
A freelance writer, being a single individual, is likely to have a degree of flexibility to the way they work. They might be able to come and work in-house with your team one day a week, for example, where an agency might not offer that service.
Because they don’t have the overheads of an agency, a freelancer is also likely to be relatively cost effective. Although make sure you get a range of quotes and that you compare like for like. In many cases our rates are lower than that of specialist senior writers!
The problem with freelancers is that the best ones get booked up fast. An agency, on the other hand, will usually have a stable of tried and tested writers they can call on, plus an in-house team to handle the strategy, brief creation, editing and so on.
This also helps when it comes to illness or holiday. With an agency you know there will always be someone available to look after your needs. And of course there’s that team we mentioned, bringing a range of experts together to help with all aspects of your project, not just the writing.
Starting your search
Once you know what you’re looking for and what you want your copywriter to achieve, it’s time to start your search properly. Having said that hiring a copywriter isn’t as simple as putting a shoutout on LinkedIn, that’s not a bad place to start.
Be as specific as you can with your post. If you need a technical copywriter, say so. If it’s an ongoing project that needs a commitment of six months, put that in your request. The more detailed you can be, the better the referrals you’ll get.
A Google search is also a good option, especially if you’re looking for an SEO copywriter. After all, if they’re good at what they do, they should rank fairly well.
But there are other places to search too, such as creative networks. Here in Bristol, for example, we’ve got Bristol Creative Industries (formerly Bristol Media) where you can search the membership directory by sector.
Checking the quality
Once you’ve got a few options on your radar, it’s time to work out whether each option is able to deliver what you need. In some cases it will be obvious – you need a website copywriter for your SaaS company, but Option A specialises in advertising copywriting for FMCG brands.
But when it comes to quality, it can be incredibly difficult to decide how good a writer actually is until you’ve worked with them. Hopefully they will have a website where you’ll be able to see examples of their work, testimonials and even case studies. If you want specific examples, get in touch to ask for them.
If someone has referred a copywriter to you, ask them about the experience they had with them. What kind of project did the copywriter work on? Did they help with the brief creation and if so, was it helpful? Did they deliver when they said they would? How many amends stages did the work need to go through?
Once you’ve narrowed your choices down to a small selection, arrange a face-to-face or video meeting with the most promising individual copywriters or copywriting agencies so you can get a sense of who they are and whether you get on. If they seem like a good fit, you can move forward to the quote stage.
Don’t forget the details
During your exploratory meeting, make sure to dive into the nitty gritty. Here are some additional details to establish:
What exactly is included? What are the deliverables? How many rounds of amends will you get? Will they do a final proofread of your website copy once it’s designed? Can they provide social sharing copy for your blog posts?
What are their processes? How quickly can they start work on your project? What’s their turnaround time? What tools do they work with (Slack, Google Docs etc)?
What are their payment terms? Will they invoice before the project or after? How long will you have to pay? Do they offer payment schedules?
What contracts need to be in place? Do they need to agree to sign an NDA? Will they want you to sign an SLA?
Making your choice
So let’s recap:
You’ve established the scope of your project and made sure you have access to a realistic budget.
You’ve thought about the kind of copywriter you might need, and whether a freelancer or an agency might be right for you.
You’ve used your networks and Google to come up with a list of possibilities and checked out their online profiles.
And you’ve met a few candidates, getting a feel for whether you get on and nailing down the details.
By the time you’ve gathered up all this information, you should be in a good position to engage a copywriter or copywriting agency that will be a good fit for you, your business and your project. It’s time to get in touch with your preferred choice and get your project started.
If you’re searching for someone to help you with a copywriting project, do have a look around our site – you can find out more about our copywriting services, read case studies, explore more blog posts or our FAQs, or get in touch if you’d like to chat.
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Do you have to wait for your reputation to rise or is there a way to establish your expertise right out of the gate? Our #WriterInResidence, Sam Whitlock, looks at five businesses that impress their expertise on you from first glance.
Typically, you will trust the opinion of only two types of people: people you know personally, and people who are established as experts. Whether it’s your go-to mechanic or marketing guru, your trusted financial body or film critic, your software developer or your camera manufacturer, you’re unlikely to want anything less than an expert.
As a business, if you play your ‘expert’ card right, you can find it easier to win sales, loyalty and opportunity with those who haven’t got you on their radar yet.
I should mention, demonstrating you’re an expert in your field isn’t right for every business. You don’t need to be a thought leader to sell toilet paper, for instance. Or if you’re Coca Cola, you don’t need to be the sommelier of fizzy drinks, you only need to be ‘the thing that everyone wants’.
But if you’re reading this, you’re probably looking to do more than make your next hard sell. So let’s look at some companies that are experts at demonstrating their expertise.
What Sony gets right from the get go is that although they are primarily an electronics company, they don’t spend much time talking about microchips and wiring.
If you check out Sony’s corporate site, they use stories to catch the eyes of investors, partners and talent. There are stories about using robotics to fuel creativity in Michelin cooking, using AI to analyse the movements of professional ping pong players, or using Sony’s new cinema camera to capture the perfect getaway in a Hollywood blockbuster.
They’re not primarily trying to establish themselves as hardware people, or even design people. Sony has cut out a piece of the market that aligns with their self-stated purpose: to fill the world with emotion through the power of creativity and technology. They’ve married tech expertise with the ability to inspire emotion – and it works.
Fjallraven makes backpacks, outdoor clothing and just about everything you need for your next hike. Although they probably know a little about looking good, and a fair bit more about outdoor pursuits in general, hiking is where they’ve chosen to hammer home their street cred (or maybe it’s mountain cred).
If you browse their ‘stories from the trail’ you’ll find location guides, tales told by trekkers and advice on how to camp in the tundra. There are a few pointers on the kind of outdoor wear you might want to take with you – but it’s not the be all and end all here.
Fjallraven wants to make clear: they don’t just understand materials and backpacks. They understand what it’s like to be on the trail, chasing adventure. When you read their articles, they come across as explorers who learned through experience the kind of kit hikers need. They’re not trying too hard to be Bear Grylls, nor do they sound like Mountain Warehouse simply trying to sell you another jacket. Fjallraven pitch it just right.
Expert is in their name but it’s also the essence of what this company does. While this one-stop-knowledge-shop is in some ways the gold standard for demonstrating expertise, it requires serious commitment to imitate. A build-the-basis-of-your-business-on-it kind of commitment.
While MoneySavingExpert is chock full of the information their audience is looking for – from how-to’s, to recommendations, to comprehensive guides – the scope of their content turns their site into a journal or magazine.
If businesses put their nose to the grindstone, they might be able to put out a blog post or two each week but unless they can hire their own inhouse editorial team, they’re not going to become a knowledge shop in the same sense as TechRadar, Which? or MoneySavingExpert.
So what should you aim for then? Well, if you’re trying to focus on a subject as broad as saving money, you’re likely to be overshadowed by giants in the field. But if you can settle on a narrower niche of expertise and share consistently on that theme, you will begin to establish your own place in customers’ minds.
FoundHea is a Bristol-based ethical clothing shop that established itself as an expert through research and curation.
It’s not just that they’re really picky with their inventory. On every product page they lay out exactly what each brand is achieving from an ethical standpoint – and even go out of their way to tell you how those brands could make improvements.
This transparency and unfiltered criticism goes a long way. FoundHea doesn’t come across simply as a more ethical place to shop but as an authority on ethical clothing standards.
‘Opinionated bookselling’ is what Mr B’s Emporium offers and while few people want anyone’s opinion, an expert opinion is a commodity worth capitalising on. And Mr B’s do it with gusto.
For a start, they bet on their opinions enough that they sell surprise recommended reads, in which you have no idea what you’re ordering except for it’s genre. Or you can go a step further and subscribe to be sent a book each month based upon your reading tastes, which Mr B’s gets a feel for by having a short consultation with you.
Looking towards their content, you can find recommendations from every member of their team online. You can read articles and listen to podcasts that highlight books from particular genres or that tackle certain topics. Mr B’s even produce their own catalogue each year to draw attention to the 101 books they most recommend.
In everything they do, they’re selling their knowledge. And the upshot of it is: you might not judge a book by its cover but you can judge it by Mr B’s recommendation.
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The idea that people don’t act in an entirely rational way is nothing new. Even the most dispassionate of us are emotional creatures at our core. Which means that our decisions are driven as much by our feelings and perceptions as they are by our cognitive deliberation.
What does this have to do with business? Well, if you want to sell – which is what most businesses ultimately exist to do – then you need to understand why people buy. And that means you have to understand the feelings and perceptions, as well as the rational choices, that drive their decisions.
In order to do this, it is helpful to take a look at the idea of emotional capital. Emotional capital exists in a number of areas, but for the purposes of this article we’re talking about external emotional capital.
In his book Emotional Capitalists, corporate psychologist Martyn Newman PhD defines external emotional capital as “the value of the feelings and perceptions held by the customer and the external stakeholder towards your business.”
He adds: “The only way to create real profit is to attract the emotional rather than the rational customer by appealing to his or her feelings and imagination.”
Notice that Newman talks about feelings and perceptions. People will have feelings about your business: “I like that brand, I can trust them”. And they will have perceptions, which are more about the stories they use to rationalise those feelings: “They care about the environment, they are experts in their field.”
From here, we can reverse engineer the idea of emotional capital in the context of content marketing. What stories can you tell about your business that will create the right perceptions in your audience? What feelings can you evoke that will create positive emotional capital, drive brand loyalty and ultimately increase sales?
How do you want people to feel about your brand?
The first step in your emotional capital strategy has to be to define what kind of capital you want to build. How do you want your audience to feel when they come into contact with your brand? What do you want them to perceive about your business?
For example, you might want people to believe that your brand is environmentally conscious, fair, good value and fun, and to feel happy and inspired whenever they interact with it. Or perhaps you want to be seen as a luxury brand that champions innovation and invites customers into an exclusive club, creating desire in those who are not yet customers and a sense of personal satisfaction in those who are.
The same works in the B2B space. You might want to be seen as pioneering and trailblazing, with clients and potential clients feeling inspired and excited by your brand. On the other hand, you may want to be seen as a quietly confident teacher or encouraging coach, evoking feelings of reassurance, encouragement and safety.
Perhaps you are in an industry where many brands are perceived negatively, such as recruitment, law or car sales. Here organisations might be seen as greedy, self-seeking or even dishonest, leaving customers and clients feeling irritated or frustrated. This can be a useful starting point for building a brand that is in direct opposition to this stereotype.
How content can build emotional capital
Emotional capital is not something that is created in a one-off event. It is built over every touchpoint that your audience has with your business. This ranges from your logo and branding to how easy it is to book an appointment, the functionality of your website to how polite your reception staff is.
Where content fits in is that it is perfectly suited to meet the “show don’t tell” requirement of building emotional capital. Rather than telling your audience how they should perceive you – your values, your expertise, your personality – you can demonstrate the relevant elements that will allow them to come to the right conclusions for themselves.
Just look at the Hubspot blog, packed full of insights written in a straightforward and encouraging tone. It’s easy to see why people feel that Hubspot as a brand knows what they’re talking about, that they’re experts, they’re helpful, they have their finger on the pulse. We can trust them.
To take a B2C example, Lego have recently started publishing a free magazine. The many activities and ideas inside underline the perception that Lego is a fun brand that cares about creating and developing young minds. It’s encouraging and exciting. They want us to have fun!
Using content to serve your audience
Content allows you to add value, to be helpful, to serve the needs of your audience and thereby create positive emotions. An example might be a swimwear company publishing a “what to pack for your beach holiday” checklist, or a leadership consultancy practice hosting a webinar about developing emotional intelligence at work.
On the flipside you can use a blog post to address your audience’s concerns about working with you, a buyer’s guide to help them avoid a poor product choice (and with it buyer’s regret), or a series of tutorials to help them navigate the challenges of getting to grips with your system. All will steer them away from negative emotions and perceptions.
This isn’t a quick fix exercise. Content marketing is a long game, as is building emotional capital. You can’t force people to feel or believe anything. But with a consistent approach that is both authentic and strategic, and by measuring and iterating continuously, it is possible to build emotional capital that will serve your brand well.
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Messaging is a tough nut to crack at the best of times, let alone when it’s difficult to explain what your business actually does. Our #WriterInResidence, Sam Whitlock, looks at five brands that waded into these muddy waters and made them clear as glass.
When it comes to clarifying your company’s message, it’s easy to misunderstand the problem. You don’t have to explain what your company or product does, necessarily. You do need to show your audience why they should care.
Some businesses are lucky. The market is known enough, their brand is simple or established enough that they can boil everything down to “Buy vintage clothes online,” and proceed to show you images of Christmas jumpers. Or they can simply say “All your admin sorted,” or “Get this and get it cheap,” and even at glance their target audience might be interested.
But if your organisation does more complex or niche work, you’re competing not only against a potential lack of interest but a lack of understanding too. Your branding can quickly fall into one of two traps: 1) Your message gets muddied by explanation. Or 2) Your message becomes generic and doesn’t truly tap into your actual brand offering.
To capture your audience, you need a crystal clear message that goes to the heart of what your audience cares about. Here’s five businesses that pull it off…
You and I might not know anything about JavaScript. But we can probably appreciate that developing a user interface is not generally not easy. If anyone is making it simple, that’s going to be a selling point. Telerick’s website is quick to fill in the gaps for more discerning browsers:
“Build feature-rich experiences for Web, Mobile and Desktop faster than ever.”
“Stop sweating over UI and focus on the parts of the application where you can truly make a difference.”
What jumps out at you here? Phrases like “Feature-rich,” “faster than ever,” and “stop sweating” are getting straight to the core of what developers care about: time, energy and the free rein to invent. And you don’t have to speak code languages to appreciate the value here. So if someone in a design department stumbles across Telerick, they’ll be able to recommend it to their more technical counterparts.
One of the key tricks Telerick is deploying here is to skip explanations and start making promises. They don’t waste their breath telling you how they’re going to do it (until you read on); they’re getting straight to “Here’s why you should care.”
Okay, so this strapline is dated because everyone (basically) knows what Slack is now. They’ve become so established that they don’t have to define themselves anymore. And their new homepage introduces Slack as “your new HQ” instead.
But there was a time when Slack was a skinnier, scrappier fighter trying to get its name out there. It had to define its place in the market while simultaneously ensuring businesses saw its essentiality. If it had settled on, “Slack: Your business’s messaging service,” it would have missed its simplest and central selling point:
Nobody likes email.
If Slack focused on telling you its many functions and time-saving, ease-of-use benefits, it would sound like just another business add-on. But an alternative to email… that’s worth having, surely. For sanity’s sake alone.
The beauty of clear messaging is that it makes conceptual, technical or nuanced ideas very simple to grasp. Slack doesn’t seem like a complicated tool to explain now – but that’s only because their branding team first did their homework. And speaking of this phenomenon…
The iPod worked magic in the mp3 market because their message was clearer than their competitors. While everyone else was trying to communicate that they had a digital walkman device thing, Apple were singing a simpler tune.
The phrase resonated with people so effectively because it spoke directly to their experience. This was a new device, potentially complicated, possibly unwieldy. For many, the idea of popping a CD into a player was much simpler than fussing around with internet downloads and limited storage. But Jobs’ team found a way to make iPod sound limitless and streamlined. Carrying around CDs suddenly seemed cumbersome compared to such a simple idea.
It’s interesting that the words you traditionally associate with tech: digital, future, software, power, innovation, were scrapped in favour of everyday language. While Google’s algorithms will require us to use the keywords associated with our industry (at least for the foreseeable future), we have to be careful we’re not letting that become an obstacle to our message.
UiPath – “We make robots so people don’t have to be robots”
Artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, machine learning algorithms…. can’t we just call them all robots and be done with it? There’s something very refreshing about the way UiPath uses language that could have been understood in 1975.
While many of the AI and automation companies use grand statements to elevate themselves as harbingers of the future, UiPath scales it back. Their message doesn’t meander through the technical hocus pocus but drives straight to the human benefit: your people will be free to use their time, energy and human intelligence more creatively.
There’s a time and a place for grand statements like: unlock the future, power your dreams, achieve the impossible. But they can sometimes be a little bit vague. As if they came out of a slogan generator. UiPath on the other hand, drives home a specific message that makes artificial intelligence seem warmer and more inviting. Almost human.
SEGA – “SEGA do what Ninendon’t” (and more offensive examples!)
A new generation of video game consoles has been released but their messaging can’t quite match the sassy, cheeky, crass tactics of early 90s SEGA.
At the time Nintendo had monopolised the video game market and even though SEGA were coming onto the scene with a more powerful console, it would be tough to get noticed in the 8-bit world that Mario had come to rule.
SEGA could have pushed their 16bit technology, which gave games greater detail and colour. Or they could have tried to imitate Nintendo’s campaigns that emphasised power. But instead of explaining the console’s capabilities, they made their message crystal clear through their outrageous tone.
Here’s just some of the copy from SEGA’s print adverts. And these are the tamer examples – (I don’t necessarily recommend trying these at home!):
“What’s blue and pisses over everything?” (answer: Sonic the Hedgehog)
“More balls than Linford Christie”
“Don’t be a mean git at Xmas”
SEGA tone was a clear differentiator from cutesy, child-friendly Ninendo. Their message was razor sharp: theirs is a console for adults, for teenagers, for people too cool for Nintendo (note: these days Nintendo are pretty damn cool too!). SEGA showed they weren’t just “another” console, or a better one, they were their own beast.
Explain what you do and why your audience should care.
You have 12 seconds.
Here’s one we did earlier:
We find the right words for expert-led businesses. We clarify their brand message and create strategic content to make them stand out as authorities in their field.
That’s the RH&Co value proposition in a nutshell. It took quite a bit of work and a fair few conversations before we were able to communicate this so clearly. And what we do is – in the grand scheme of things – relatively simple to explain. We’re copywriters, content strategists, marketers.
Many of our clients, however, are experts in complex subjects that don’t lend themselves to a one or two word description. We’ve worked with a number of them to create foundational copy, messaging and brand voice guidelines to help them clearly communicate what they do.
Here’s a few questions that we’ve found helpful to ask along the journey:
Does every stakeholder in your audience speak your language?
The first and most important step in any communication is to know – really know – who you’re talking to. If you’re a B2B tech brand with a no code/low code product and your target persona is a CTO or CIO who already knows the API calls they need, then talking at an expert level and using appropriate jargon is perfectly acceptable.
If, on the other hand, you first need to win over a stakeholder with less technical knowledge, you’ll need to think about what they might need to understand, what might confuse them, where they might draw the wrong conclusions or be put off by technical language.
The beauty industry is a great example of where brands do value proposition well. Sure, they might mention retinol or keratin or silica to give a gloss of scientific weight to their advertising. But they know that their audience aren’t scientists – they just want younger looking skin, glossier hair, and sparkling white teeth.
We also needed the messaging to resonate with a diverse audience made up of everyone from farmers and estate managers to ecologists and surveyors.
To avoid patronising the technical experts, we needed to talk about ‘data layers’ and ‘delivering biodiversity net gain’ but we also needed to summarise the essence of this multifaceted product in language every potential user could understand.
We settled on messages such as:
“Design a sustainable planet, together”
“Intuitive mapping, collaboration and insight”
And, to make it super clear who benefits, “Join our network of farmers, farm advisors, land agents, estate managers, ecologists, foresters, surveyors and landscape recovery projects”
So even if you’re not an ecologist looking to deliver biodiversity net gain, you can quickly see how The Land App’s product might help you achieve your vision.
Are your features clear in your value proposition? And are your benefits believable?
When it comes to encapsulating benefits vs features in your value proposition, the best description of the concept is the truth universally acknowledged by marketers: no one wants a quarter inch drill bit; they want a quarter inch hole.
The trouble is, these days, lots of brands are claiming to offer the same hole a million different ways.
Attract and retain your customers
Engage your employees
Transform your culture
And, of course, the classic:
Save time and money.
In the end it all sounds a bit like vapourware. Marketers mustn’t forget features in their rush to sell the benefits. Your SaaS product, ESG consultancy offering or L&D programme might be difficult to summarise, but don’t settle for broad, vague promises in an attempt to make it simple.
Rather than toning down the richness of the expertise involved to make your brand understood, it’s more about finding the right blend of features, benefits and language.
Futureground are a team of subject matter experts in the truest sense. Their partners have even described them as polymaths (think Leonardo Da Vinci) of the built environment. However, describing what they do is a much tougher challenge. Not least because it looks different for every single client they work with.
Some of their competitors have floundered here, describing themselves as ‘delivering sustainable solutions’, which is about as vague as you can get.
We went for something more concrete for Futureground:
Who is walking with you through complexity?
We’re sustainable place strategists with decades of experience working across the property lifecycle, and we can step alongside you as a critical friend in this complex world.
Sometimes this means forming an action plan. Often it means working closely with stakeholders. It always means asking good questions. Then we grounded all of that in social proof through case studies. You can find out more about the rebranding journey on the Futureground website.
Does your audience know they need you?
What made the Futureground case even more challenging was that their audience is often not problem-aware.
If your audience is problem-aware, they know they have an issue. But when they are pretty low problem-aware, they need some help defining the real issue. So perhaps they think they need more leads but what they actually need is better quality leads or better CRM tracking.
This is where you really need to drill down and understand your audience – so you can figure out how to position your solution in a way that makes them want to solve a problem they don’t know they have.
This is toughest when you’re looking to disrupt the market in some way. A product or service that sits in a category of its own, or across more than one category, so that people either have no idea what it is or confuse it with things it isn’t.
Let’s take Nespresso as an example. When they first brought out their pod-based coffee model, people may well have laughed. Why would you want to spend 40p on a cup of coffee you had to make yourself, when you can have any other instant for a fraction of the price?
But Nespresso knew that their audience wasn’t looking for a better tasting instant coffee. They were looking for a cost effective alternative to high quality take away coffee, which they could make in the comfort of their own home. And so that’s how they communicated their offering.
Slack played a similar trick in their initial marketing campaigns. They didn’t try to sell themselves as a messaging service or a digital workplace. Instead they simply said: ‘Slack replaces email in your company’. The people came, because while few companies knew they had a comms problem, once pitched against email, Slack made sense instantly.
Use this value proposition pitch format to help explain what you do
Whether you’re selling a complex technology product or you’re delivering your service via a disruptive new business model, it’s important that you can communicate your business offering in a way that is clear and easy for your audience to understand.
Use this pitch format to start honing your key messaging: For [your ideal customers or clients] who are [trying to do X or facing X challenge], [your product or service] is a [product category] that provides [key value proposition]. Unlike [closest alternatives] [your product or service] offers [key features].
If you’re struggling to put it succinctly, you have more work to do.
If you run it by a potential user and they don’t instantly grasp the value, you have more work to do.
You don’t have time to explain everything.
You can’t afford to be misunderstood.
You need a complex value proposition in a nutshell.
Every time someone in B2B describes their brand voice as “friendly but professional” we try not to sigh. Unfortunately, you could be describing virtually every B2B business in the world. No one wants to come across as unfriendly or unprofessional, right?
If you try to adopt a friendly but professional tone, your brand will usually slip into whatever the default tone is in your industry. If you run a creative agency, you’ll seem like all the other agencies. If you’re a hot new startup, you’ll sound like every other new tech company in town.
There’s really no good reason why companies should sound the same. The average native speaker has 15-20,000 root words in their active vocabulary. There’s plenty of potential for variety – why do we keep defaulting to terms like ‘transform’ or ‘unlock value’? And why, why, why do articles keep starting with the phrase ‘In our fast-paced digital world…’ ?
Even in B2B, you want to differentiate your brand from the competition. And you need to create an instant connection with your audience. If you take a backseat on brand voice, you’ll be skipping over one of your primary ways you build your brand’s success.
Brand voice is how an organisation’s words convey brand personality. It covers both what you say and how you say it, and is influenced by everything from sentence length to individual word choice, and the use of active or passive voice.
Brand voice can literally be as nitpicking as whether or not you use contractions (can’t, I’ve, they’re). We wrote the website copy for a law firm once and they insisted that there were no contractions anywhere, which resulted in them coming across as extremely formal and businesslike rather than warm. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just important to be aware that the language you use will impact how people perceive your brand.
It’s like meeting a person for the first time. Initially, your impression will be based on how they look, how they’re dressed and presented, their facial expression, how they catch your eye, etc. This is the equivalent of brand visuals.
Once they start talking to you, you’ll have much more to go on – not just what they say but how they say it – their accent, pitch and the pace at which they speak. You might conclude that they’re warm, well educated, no-nonsense, boring, try-hard, trendy, quick-witted or uptight. Your potential clients will judge you by your brand voice in the same way.
…their brand was a lot like Stephen Fry – intelligent and knowledgeable about all sorts of things but also lightly funny and humble and very real, appealing to people of all backgrounds and ages.
What can brand voice really achieve?
Pitched right, your brand voice can express your attitudes and values, build your reputation, and even attract your ideal clients. That’s no exaggeration. If your brand voice is distinct from the tone your competitors use, or it helps express old concepts in a refreshingly new way, there’s no reason it can’t be a big part of your brand strategy.
For instance, one of our fintech clients, Weavr, works in an incredibly complex field: embedded finance. In general, this market adopts a hyped up, tech normative voice (using words like innovative, transform, optimise, evolve, disrupt, supercharge, etc. etc.) or an academic one (think McKinsey).
After a workshop with our client’s commercial team, we suggested that they opt for a different tone entirely: that of a popular, cool, research professor who works alongside their students and demystifies complex concepts for them. The result was a voice that was clever but not too academic. Confident but not hyped-up and salesy. Really relatable but not gimmicky.
As you can see, this voice is much more developed than “friendly but professional” and it gave our client some really practical guidance. Rather than they could talk about making B2B transactions as “easy as ApplePay”. Their voice even guided some of their content strategy, such as the creation of a buyer’s guide that demystified an area that is rarely explained in their field – making the brand totally distinct from the competition.
How to develop your organisation’s brand voice
The best way to understand brand voice in context is to think about a conversation between two people – your brand and your client.
1. Start with who you are
First, you’ll want to create your brand avatar or persona. This is who your organisation would be if it was a person. A helpful starting point is to identify which of Carl Jung’s 12 personality archetypes fit your brand best.
Creating a brand avatar is an exercise best done with more than one person – often the business founder and/or the marketing lead at the very least, and ideally a representative from sales too. Really, you want the whole leadership team involved, at least in the initial brainstorming stages.
Together, discuss who your brand would be if they were sitting in the room with you. Would they be young or old? How would they be dressed? What values would they express?
If the concept still feels too abstract, try thinking about which celebrity your brand might be like. Years ago we did some training with a South West tourism organisation. During a brand voice session we suggested that their brand was a lot like Stephen Fry – intelligent and knowledgeable about all sorts of things but also lightly funny and humble and very real, appealing to people of all backgrounds and ages.
Some of your choices will be dictated by what you stand for. For instance, when we were helping to shape the brand voice of Nviro, specialist cleaning provider, we saw they wanted to change the culture surrounding the cleaning profession – celebrating cleaners and putting dignity before profit.
For Nviro, it was vital that they made no hierarchical distinction between their office team and their frontline cleaners. Also the word ‘staff’ would be completely off limits. The same went for any term that suggested Nviro were trying to avoid the word cleaner (like cleaning operative, or cleaning technician). In this team, there was no embarrassment or misgivings about the profession. They were cleaners. And they were proud of it.
2. Think about your audience
As a B2B brand you may think you’re marketing to businesses rather than people, but ultimately even the biggest corporate deal is made by real people. From the gatekeeper to the person approving the purchase order, it’s important that you understand what they need to hear from your brand.
Are they more motivated by targets and goals, or are they a person with a dream or a vision? Are they disillusioned or are they optimistic? Are they interested in technical detail or do they want concepts to be explained without it? Are they in a mood for humour? Or are they looking for reassurance?
One of our fintech clients, Moneyhub, was creating a product for an audience of lenders. Its personas were typically experts in the financial industry, but potentially distrustful of tech companies.
As a result, we recommended Moneyhub choose a voice that included technical financial terms – such as delinquency, manageable risk, etc. – but didn’t slip into techy language – unlock opportunities with the power of data, etc. – which could have alienated the brand from its ideal clientele.
3. Think about your competition
The trouble is, in this conversation, you might not be the only ones in the room. Your audience might be scouting out their options, and they could even already be in talks with a competitor. You need to make sure you sound like a real alternative, and not just more of the same.
When we were working with TPC Leadership to develop their brand voice, we had a challenge on our hands. The global company works in leadership development and cultural change, and if you’re familiar with the industry, you’ll know almost everyone in it sounds alike.
That’s partly because coaches and consultants are selling an intangible offering – and it’s very easy to reach for the same intangible words to describe it: ‘a transformational programme’ or a ‘people-centred approach.’
To make TPCL stand out, we suggested they don’t try to distinguish themselves by their offering and philosophy, but by making it clear what they stand for in bold and concrete terms. As a result, if you head to their new website, you’ll quickly see what they’re about.
Here’s an exercise: go back through the content you’ve produced, any pages on your website, posts on your social channel, or talks given by your CEO or managing director. Then try and pull out phrases that could have only come from your brand and not your competitors.
How to create practical guidelines for your brand voice
Now it’s time to pull these ideas together to create guidelines that everyone who writes on behalf of the brand – both internally and externally (PR agency, marketing agency etc) can follow. This will ensure you get that level of consistency you need to build trust and client loyalty.
Writing brand voice guidelines is a task best left to your marketing lead, or a brand or copywriting agency. It doesn’t matter how your guide is actually formatted, but you want to end up with a document that translates the ideas you’ve had about how your brand should come across into a guide that anyone can follow to produce content that fits.
If the task of creating brand voice guidelines falls to you, make sure you include a concise overview of your client and brand personas. Have a summary of your brand offerings, your values and what makes you distinct from your competitors.
Then spend time creating a style guide and some helpful examples – words and phrases to use or avoid, some sentences written in your brand voice and some in a way that wouldn’t be acceptable, so people can see the difference.
We all know the main types of pages your average website is made up of, right? There’s the home page, of course, which we always say should act a bit like the cover of a magazine. Then there’s the About page, where you can talk a bit about your story, your team, your values and so on.
Next you’ve got what you may consider to be the most important page or pages – those that feature your products and services. This is where you can tell people all about what it is you can offer them, how you can solve their problems and meet their needs.
You’ll also probably want to stick a blog page in there (or perhaps you’ll call it news or resources) and a contacts page of course. And then, that’s it. You’re done. Or are you?
In fact there are three other pages you would do well to think about in order to make your website really sing.
The thank you page
Have you got any forms on your website? Perhaps there’s one asking your visitors to sign up to your newsletter. Or maybe you’ve created a few lead magnets to encourage visitors to give you their email address in exchange for a really valuable piece of content.
If you have even one form, here’s a question for you – what happens after your visitor enters their contact details and hits ‘submit’? Are they taken to a bland page that says “Thank you for getting in touch” and leaves it at that? If so, you’re missing a trick.
If someone has just parted with their contact details, it means they’re interested in you – in your brand, in your expertise, in your value. So why not use the thank you page to serve them more of the same?
Keep them on your website and boost your dwell time by directing them to an interesting and relevant blog post, for example. Or highlight a low cost product or service that might augment the free resource they’ve just subscribed to and see whether you can make a sale. Whatever you do, don’t leave them hanging.
“No matter how careful you are about finding and fixing broken links, chances are one will slip through the cracks at some point.”
The FAQs page
One of the biggest issues we see on websites that haven’t been written by professional copywriters is too much information. Business owners are so keen to explain every last detail of their product, service, processes and USPs that they fill each page with overwhelming amounts of text.
A far better option is to create an FAQs page. Your visitors will expect this page to be text heavy. And because that text will be broken down into the various different questions, they won’t be overwhelmed by it. They’ll be able to scan to find the question they’re interested in and then just read that short answer.
FAQs are also excellent for SEO. In very basic terms, Google looks at your H1 and H2 headers and subheads first, before looking at body copy. So this is where you want to have a good amount of keywords and phrases. And an FAQs page naturally has loads of H2 subheads, which will contain relevant keywords without feeling forced.
Those subheads will also be phrased as questions, which are becoming increasingly important as the way we search changes. Where you might once have typed “copywriter” and “job description” into Google, now you might ask Alexa, “What does a copywriter do?” – and if your FAQs page asks and answers this question, you’ve got more chance of being seen.
The error page
No matter how careful you are about finding and fixing broken links, chances are one will slip through the cracks at some point. So what happens when someone clicks on one of those links?
Do they get a standard, soulless 404 error message written and designed by whoever your website is hosted with? Why not a branded error message that reflects your brand personality and tone of voice instead?
Not only is this sort of attention to detail the kind of thing that will make you stand out from the crowd, it will make your audience smile at the very moment when they could be getting frustrated.
Check out these awesome examples from Pixar and Innocent Smoothies if you want to see how to write an error page with style:
The thank you page, FAQs page and error page might feel like ‘extras’ that are not worth spending the time on. But in a crowded marketplace with not just hundreds but potentially thousands of competitors online, sometimes it’s the extras that make all the difference.
In the 90s the marketing industry declared that content was king. 20 plus years on it’s still hugely important but there’s a challenger for the throne: data. With so much content out there, understanding the real value of your blogging efforts has never been so important.
The trouble is that it’s very hard to accurately measure return on investment for a blog (although there are ways you can improve it). There’s a really good chance it will be one of the touch points in your customer or client’s journey towards doing business with you. But where do you attribute the value of the final sale?
As an example, we got a call from a potential client last year. During the conversation we were able to establish the steps she’d taken on her journey towards getting in touch:
First, she’d met Rin at a networking event some years before (touchpoint 1: face to face networking).
Then they’d connected on LinkedIn (touchpoint 2: social media).
Over the following months she’d enjoyed reading the RH&Co blog (touchpoint 3: blogging).
She’d also been impressed by the awards we’d won (touchpoint 4: PR).
And finally she’d spoken to a mutual work acquaintance and client of ours to suss out whether we were as good as we appeared to be (touchpoint 5: client referrals / testimonials).
So if you can’t attribute sales directly to your blog, what should you be measuring to help you determine whether it’s proving effective for your business? Start with these metrics…
Assuming your blog is hosted on your website – rather than, say, on LinkedIn, Medium or some other publishing channel – an increase in visitor numbers will show you that people are interested enough in your blog titles to click on them. You’ll be able to see where those clicks come from too, whether that’s a search engine or a social media channel and, if it’s search, what phrases led them to your post.
All of this can help you understand where your audience is spending time and what they’re searching for. For example, if you’re getting loads of traffic from LinkedIn but virtually nothing from Instagram, you might decide to ditch the Insta account. Likewise, by gaining insights into the kind of searches that are leading people to you, you’ll be able to create more content around these subjects and capitalise on that interest.
Bounce rate…
Of course, people landing on your blog is one thing – but if they don’t stay and engage with the site then you have some work to do. Bounce rate refers to how many people arrive on a page through search and click back to the search page without going further into your site. This alerts Google and co that your page wasn’t a good fit for that search – and it shows you that your post wasn’t that engaging.
Now some pages naturally attract people’s attention for just a moment or two – think a contact page, where someone just needs to find a phone number. But ideally what you want is for your readers to finish a blog post and then go somewhere else within your site before leaving. Creating further actions for your readers – for example, giving them internal links to follow – will reduce this rate and improve your SEO.
…and dwell time
SEO aside, though, bouncing away from your site is only really a problem if it is combined with low dwell time. In other words if your reader searches, arrives on your page and clicks away again within a few seconds. That’s a clear indication that they’re not interested in your post.
However, if they arrive and stay reading your piece of longform content for 20 minutes before clicking away, even though technically they’ve bounced (ie they didn’t click through to another page) clearly they enjoyed what they saw. So you’re doing something right.
What we’re saying is that these metrics are worth looking at but you need to be realistic about what you want to achieve and you need to understand the context before getting yourself too worried.
Next moves
So you’ve got people to your site and they’re sticking around, reading your whole blog post and maybe even clicking through to read another after that. What next?
Now it may be that your main goals for your blog are raising brand awareness and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. In which case, clicking through to a second post is a great result because it shows that you’re creating the kind of valuable content people are interested in.
But if you’re hoping to achieve something else – capture email data, for example, or get people checking out your services or booking a free consultation – then you need to track whether your calls to action (CTAs) are working.
Are people filling out the form at the bottom of your post? Are they clicking the link to your services page? If not, experiment with different CTAs.
Social engagement
If you want to make sure your blog is seen by as many people as possible, you’ll need a good social sharing strategy. After all, there are literally millions of posts being published each day and attracting the warm connections in your social network is far easier than trying to stand out on Google.
Keeping an eye on social engagement will help you get a feel of how well your blog is doing. You’ll start to notice which ones are getting the most likes, comments and shares, which ones are starting conversations and getting you noticed by the right people.
This is likely to vary by platform, which will help you shape your social sharing strategy. For example, industry insights might get great engagement on LinkedIn whereas behind-the-scenes snaps from your team may be more popular on Instagram. You’ll only know for sure if you measure the data.
Use this information to refine your blog offering to further boost engagement with the audience you want to engage with.
You’re never going to know exactly what your blog is worth to your business in cold hard cash but measuring your data will get you closer to the answer. It will also help you make better choices about the kind of content you create and how you distribute it, so that you can maximise your return on investment as much as possible.
When it comes to writing website copy, one of the things people find most difficult is the About page. Writing about yourself or your business can feel strange – in the UK we’re taught from a young age that speaking too much about our skills or achievements sounds boastful, and generally prefer a self-deprecating approach.
But an About page is about so much more than listing your achievements. It’s a place where you can share your brand personality and differentiate yourself from the competition. Where you can engage both customers/clients and potential employees alike, setting out your values and sharing a glimpse behind the scenes of your journey so far.
Here are a few key things to think about when writing your About page.
Yes, this might sound counterintuitive. After all, if you can’t talk about your brand on your About page, where can you? But you still need to understand which bits of the brand your audience will be most interested in and make sure to relate it back to their needs.
As an example, on our About page we start by saying this:
“You need powerful words to achieve significant business results. We know how to find them, how to put them together, how to make them sing. Plus we’re nice people, so working with us is fun too.”
There are lots of things we could say about ourselves but we’ve started by selecting the two things we know people care most about when choosing a creative agency: can you do the job and will I like working with you?
People buy people
Whether you’re a sole professional, a young startup or a blossoming SME, your About page is a chance to give your brand a face – or faces. This is where you’ll traditionally find the ‘meet the team’ section, where people can find out more about the individuals they might come across when they interact with your business.
There are different ways to present this section. You can include the whole team, the senior leadership team or just the client facing people. You can list names and titles only, include a short bio or use this space to give visitors a little glimpse behind the curtain with insights into things like hobbies or favourite karaoke songs – just make sure these are relevant and appropriate to your brand or they can feel cheesy.
We love the way that Bristol business McCann Synergy highlight a SynerGuy or SynerGal from their team on their About page each month. It’s a great example of the way they celebrate their employees – something that, as an employer brand agency, neatly shows that they practice what they preach.
An important note about authenticity: if you’re a sole business owner without a team, think carefully before using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. You might think sounding bigger than you are is impressive but it won’t be long before you’re found out and it’s really hard to rebuild trust once it’s been broken.
Share your values
Another thing that McCann Synergy include on their About page is a section on their values – in this case a video. Consumers are increasingly values-driven which means that they are choosing which companies they spend their money with based, among other things, on whether a brand is environmentally friendly or active within its local community.
Including your values on your About page can help you to define who and what you are as a brand, and set yourself apart from the crowd. SR2 Recruitment is a good example: Founder Chris Sheard was inspired to start the company after reading Dale Partridge’s book People Over Profits and his values are clear throughout the whole website including the About page.
But be warned – this is a very cynical age we live in and if you’re spouting values for values’ sake then you’ll soon find your audience dismissing you as inauthentic. Before you start writing about how you support local charities or embrace flexible working policies to create an inclusive workplace, make sure you can back up those claims if challenged.
Tell a good story
One thing that has been true of human beings since the beginning of time is our love of a good story. So think about how you can tell the story of your business. It could centre on how you as a business owner came to set up your company – as in our company video – or it could be about how your company has evolved over the years.
This can be a good space in which to share or back up your values in a “show, don’t tell” sort of a way. For example, rather than saying you’re passionate about something (which relies on people taking your word for it) tell the story that demonstrates that passion – like the inspiring tale of This Mum Runs does so very well.
Remember, you don’t need to write a novel here. Historic wine merchants Averys of Bristol uses a simple timeline format to quickly walk us through more than 200 years of the company’s history. As we always say, you don’t need many words, just the right ones!
Season with facts
Of course, values and stories can get a bit fluffy if you’re not careful. That’s why it’s important to include the right facts to give your business credibility and prove that you are who you say you are.
These facts might include qualifications, accreditations and memberships of awarding bodies, awards won, years active or number of units sold. You can also include some of the bigger clients you’ve worked with, prestigious projects you’ve been involved in, clippings from when you’ve been featured in the media and more. In short, anything that is indisputable in demonstrating an aspect of your brand so that your visitors don’t have to rely solely on what you’re saying about yourself.
Done well, an About page can be as powerful as for your website visitor as meeting you or your best salesperson.
If you want to check if your website is actually doing what it’s supposed to do, download our free website audit guide, packed with questions and quick fixes designed to help you analyse and improve your website copy. Or if you’d rather someone else did the legwork then get in touch with the team today to ask about our website copywriting services.
If you’re looking to commission a copywriting partner, you’re probably thinking about how good their writing skills are. But there’s an awful lot that goes into a copywriting project beyond the ability to wrangle the written word into the required number of sentences and paragraphs.
Why should you care? Because if you want to choose the best copywriter or copywriting agency – one that will produce results on time, on budget and with minimal hassle for you – then you need to make sure they’re skilled across all of these areas.
No matter how small the project, someone needs to be in charge of managing it otherwise it can get very stressful, very quickly. Project management starts immediately, and in this case includes arranging briefing calls or meetings, agreeing and ensuring deadlines are met, organising amends stages and handling any unforeseen circumstances that arise along the way (and believe us, most projects have these).
Behind the scenes in an agency there are also writers to be commissioned and internal amends stages to be done, plus copyediting and proofing (more on these later). Freelancers have limited capacity not only because they can only write for a certain number of hours every day but because juggling too many clients leads to balls being dropped.
Often we ask questions that challenge our clients to more clearly define what they’re after, which means that they’re much more likely to get a first draft that doesn’t need endless amends.
At RH&Co we’ve worked hard to put process in place that mean things run smoothly. Even in those moments when we’re paddling madly under the surface, our clients should only ever see the gliding swan on the surface. It’s our job to take the stress away for them.
Brief creation
The first and most important step of any project we work on is the brief creation stage. Even when a client comes to us with a written brief, we still add value by interrogating it, bringing our perspective on what’s possible, where problems might arise, and how we can achieve even better results together.
A good brief should cover a huge range of important elements from objectives to target audience to tone of voice. Often we ask questions that challenge our clients to more clearly define what they’re after, which means that they’re much more likely to get a first draft that doesn’t need endless amends. We can also help them clarify their strategy and set goals against which we can measure progress.
At RH&Co briefings are always handled by a strategist and a creative. By bringing in two different brains and skill sets, we ensure we deliver the best possible outcomes for the client. That’s one of the benefits of using an agency rather than a single individual.
Research
Before your copywriting partner can start writing, they’ll need to know what to write about. And that means research. This might involve making themselves familiar with your product, analysing data from a survey you commissioned, or hunting for a BCG or McKinsey study to lend credibility to your argument.
In many cases, research will include what we call ‘gold mining’ – speaking to your subject matter experts to draw out their knowledge and experience. This is especially important for expert-led businesses who want to establish themselves as an authority on a particular subject.
Copywriting is the art of persuasive writing so when we talk about top quality copy we’re not just talking about it being well written – it needs to be able to generate the results that our clients are looking for.
RH&Co was founded by a former journalist, and this interview-style approach runs through the whole agency. Whether we’re talking to a reluctant developer, a detail-oriented academic or a flighty founder, we know how to get the best out of them.
Writing skills
It’s worth pausing for a moment to take note of how much value your copywriting partner has already added before they actually start writing.
Once the writing does start, it’s about far more than being articulate. Copywriting is the art of persuasive writing so when we talk about top quality copy we’re not just talking about it being well written – it needs to be able to generate the results that our clients are looking for.
Will the landing page copy convert? Will the blog post engage the reader until the end? Has SEO been taken into account and are the CTAs strong enough?
That’s why we’re super fussy about who we allow on to our writing team. We have both in-house copywriters and a handpicked team of freelancers who have to go through a thorough evaluation process before they go on our books. Plenty of people are decent enough writers; there are far fewer good copywriters around.
Copyediting and proofing
There’s a particular blind spot that you get when reading your own writing, which is why it’s important that you always get a second pair of eyes on anything you create. This will help you spot unsupported facts, veering off brand, errors in continuity, moments of rambling, changes in tense, random typos and a whole bunch of other issues.
It’s difficult to articulate exactly what makes one piece of copy better than another but we’ve been doing this a long time now and we’re experts at spotting what’s good and what needs work before it’s client ready.
At RH&Co, any copy produced by the freelance team is copyedited in-house, while writing done by an internal writer gets a second look from another member of the team. In some cases we’ll get a third person to do a final proofread, just to be sure the copy we deliver is word perfect.
Administration
It’s worth adding this bit because it’s so easy to forget the millions of little things that keep a copywriting agency – or even a freelancer, if we’re honest – up and running. Invoicing, sorting out insurances, making sure the accounts are up to date, filling out tedious forms of one kind or another.
Without these jobs your copywriting partner wouldn’t exist to be able to take care of all the other stages of whatever copywriting project you need doing. Yes, they add a few pounds to your invoice. But in the scheme of things they are worth it.
By appreciating the many skills that go into a successful copywriting project, you’ll be better placed to choose a team that can support you in creating copy that genuinely delivers results. Hopefully you’ll also have a much clearer idea of why doing it in-house isn’t the easy option it might at first appear!
The Right Words.
Your monthly dose of copywriting, marketing and business advice.
