Hiring The Right Copywriter 7 Tips To Make Sure You Get A Good One

Hiring a copywriter can be daunting. You can pay anywhere from third world subsistence rates all the way up hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on who you select and what you need done. None of that guarantees that you’ll get the result that you want.
In the end, all you after is someone who makes you far more money that you pay them. That is what marketing and copy that sells is all about.
1) Stop trying to improve the wrong thing.Sometimes you just can’t get the response rate you need to a certain ad or sales letter. I had a client that needed me to double the response rate of a really good ad. We had an honest discussion about the limits of my powers and found a way to get him what he needed in a different way. Be open to this discussion.
2) Be willing to look for higher ROI opportunities.It sounds stupid but sometimes the project you want to do may not be where the money is. I start all my new client engagements with a day of consulting in order to work out if we are perusing the best opportunities and to look at marketing strategies to pursue them. When this happens you make far more money than when you present some sort of ‘write to assignment’ for a copywriter.
3) Know your numbers If you don’t really know your numbers, nobody is going to know what is going on when you implement the copy you receive. If you don’t know your lifetime customer value, conversion rates, cost of sale, cost of lead and your goals for each of them it is almost impossible to judge if a copywriter’s work is successful or if the new strategy is working better than what it replaced.
4) Are they capable of doing the work? Do they understand your target market? How quickly can they get to know them? Do they know how to do the type of work you need done? For example, have they generated leads before, or done work in that media? Are they willing to guarantee a result? They should.
5) Overhauling your entire funnel. This isn’t necessarily a mistake unless you test. Not everybody tests. Everybody should test and good copywriters work with clients who can and do test. But your funnel is working to a degree at the moment so don’t be foolish and just throw the baby out with the bathwater. A smarter way to work is to find underperforming pieces and focus on improving them.
6) Watch out for copywriters who say ‘copy is king.’ I am going to burst a few bubbles here and tell you copy is not king. It is a perception thing. It is all the hidden strategy work and ‘slicing and dicing’ that allows copy to perform well. The best copy in the world isn’t going to get a good response rate when it is sent to poor people getting them to buy a luxury car.
7) Selecting a copywriter who just writes and doesn’t understand or ‘do’ strategy. Following on from point six, If a copywriter doesn’t understand strategy then you are wasting your money. The smart people reading this know that marketing magic happens when good copy is deployed in a strong system that is targeting the right market(s). At best you can only get good copy out of a copywriter who just writes. If you want to make more money you need to work with someone who is more than just a copywriter. If you look at all the ‘copywriting legends’ to a man they are almost all really, really good marketing strategists. Success leaves clues – get a copywriter who is also a good marketer.
Being willing to do a little leg work up front and find the right person to work with you on your marketing will save you a lot of pain, frustration and heartache in the long term.