Imagine your company is the proud parent of a gorgeous new brand. And you’re about to go live with a fancy website that’s pure joy to use.
You rub your hands together with glee, anticipating the brand launch party. This is a labor of love for everyone; you’ve never felt more in sync with your team. Pioneering your new brand and website will be a morale-boosting moment for the entire company.
So! How does your web copy stack up against your competitors’? Entrepreneurs and marketing executives will sometimes decide to take on the copywriting themselves to save cost on the total project. Most people have at least basic writing skills, and it’s not like you need specialized technological skills or software to do it. Maybe they even have a content writing team they want to let loose on it.
Unfortunately, sounding natural on the page doesn’t come naturally. And content writing is not the same as copywriting.
Not sure if you really need a copywriter? Here are 4 reasons why hiring one is an essential value-add for your new brand and/or website.
1. WE’VE GOT SALES CHOPS.
You’ve got about 10 seconds to convince a visitor to your website that your company, product, or service is worth exploring. Your prospect has, say, 15 or more competitors to choose from, all offering different features and a range of price points.
While skimming your first few headlines and images, their cursor is poised over the back arrow. You could have the most mind-blowing visual brand experience on the planet. But if your web copy is not effective, it was all for nothing. (If you have a typo on your home page, forget it -- you’ve lost their trust too.)
A pro copywriter will know what messages and words are essential to drive sales and what noise to mute. They’ll know how to structure and stagger your copy for optimum clarity and emotional resonance, to cut right to your audience’s pain points and needs.
We know what sounds good to your audience and search engines, and we know what feels good.
2. WE’RE ZOOMED OUT.
You may have a complex product with a lot of bells and whistles. You think, “I’ll just write my own marketing copy because I know my business best.”
The problem is, you may be too close to it. You’ve spent so much time and energy sweating the details that you want to talk about all of it, but don’t know where to start. It means everything to you.
You don’t remember what it was like when your product or service was a distant dream or a foreign concept. When you had to ask the critical questions. It seems so monumental to you now that you may not understand your audience’s hesitations.
But a copywriter will come in with that big-picture clarity the human mind just can’t retain after so much sweat equity. Jumping in and out of people’s minds is all we do all day: researching audience psychographics, writing, and rewriting to perfection just so we can tackle the next deadline. Sure, there’s science you can learn. Sure, there’s an art to it you can hone. But if you can pay someone with years of expertise to do it while you focus on running your business . . .
Let’s put it this way: would you tattoo the back of your own head? Personally, I’d rather let a pro with better tools, skills, and perspective do it.
3. WE CAN ALSO ZOOM IN. FAST.
Even if a copywriter is brought in as a pinch hitter at the 11th hour, they should be able to wrap themselves in quickly. In what can seem like a magic trick, copywriters make your story feel essential and complete. They conjure up the missing pieces of your semantic puzzle that feel familiar and right—like they had always been there, but fell down the cracks once while you weren’t paying attention.
Good copywriting is not magic. But it is years of reading about how to write persuasively for different mediums, trying it out every which-way, and evaluating how different audiences react to each nuance. That doesn’t sound like a fun Friday night to most people. But it’s a copywriter’s rollerskate-dance jam with rainbow glitterfetti.
4. WE KNOW BRANDS.
If you’ve hired a creative agency to build your brand and/or your website, we’ve laid the groundwork together already. The agency copywriter or copywriting team will know your new brand inside and out. They’ll also have intimate knowledge of how your messaging should complement and develop the rest of your brand story.
One of the copywriters has probably been meeting with you for weeks to craft the perfect voice, tone, and writing style for your organization. And if you have a team of ace copywriters on your own staff, they will devour that communications style guide and make your new brand voice sing. But if not, it makes sense to add your creative agency’s copywriting services to your scope of work.
A good copywriter knows how to make loyal customers out of curious prospects.
Then guess what? You don’t have to worry about it. Like my favorite subway conductor used to say to a packed car, “if it don’t fit, don’t force it.” Save yourself the time and risk to your beautiful new brand, and let a pro handle it. But whatever you do, don’t reboot your brand with blah copy.
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