Why Hire a Copywriter to Write your Site?
“The uninformed would be staggered to know the amount of work involved in a single ad. Weeks of work sometimes. The ad seems so simple, and it must be simple to appeal to simple people. But back of that ad may lie reams of data, volumes of information, months of research. So this is no lazy mans field.”
Claude Hopkins
Scientific Advertising
Many of our clients say - at first - that writing their own site sounds like a good idea. It’s cheaper, after all, and surely they know their business better than anyone else? But most clients are probably just too busy to sit down, plan what they want to say and then write the compelling, engaging selling copy their website needs.
We usually get a slightly sheepish call after a couple of weeks. They’ve tried to start writing the site, but things have cropped up, running the business has got in the way and there’s still nothing written.
The smart ones give up at this point and ask us to write it for them. The smarter ones didn’t even bother to try.
Good Copy
But writing is only about 20% of what a copywriter does. A good writer will meet with you, ask you a LOT of questions and want to hear the answers. The answers will probably generate a whole load more questions. He’ll want to know what makes your business different, what it does well, what it does badly, what your customers think - and he’ll want the picky little facts you thought no-one was interested in too. Good copy is all about content, not fluff, so your writer will want to shake you for as much content as you have. He will also work along side the SEO specialists to write professional copy that is Search Engine Friendly. Copy is an important of a website and this will ensure it has been done for search engines as well as the visitor.
Then, once your writer has a boxful of information, he can go to work. People need context, frameworks in which to put information. The writer’s job is to take the facts and information you’ve given him (and he’s found out for himself) and beat them into a framework and structure. Once he’s done that, he can start hanging words on the framework.
A good writer should challenge you with new perspectives on old material - he should be able to show the nuggets of gold in your business you’d missed.
By the time he’s finished, your site should have the words it needs to sell - compellingly, clearly and powerfully. And you can have got on with running your business.