A lot of business owners say to us, ‘we don’t really need your services… I know everything about my business and can write the copy myself’. And you know what? They make a good point. No one does know your business better than you. Why relay your knowledge to someone else, when you can write it yourself? Or if you have a knack with words anyway, why engage a copywriter at all?
Copywriters are more than just writers. And they aren’t copyright lawyers either, as we often find ourselves explaining to clients!
A copywriter can add immense value to your business, without actually doing any writing, and here’s how.
1. Content strategy
If you want to write your web copy and blog posts yourself, more power to you! But before you start writing, it can be useful to have a strategy in place to guide your style and tone. This is where a copywriter can work a bit of magic for you.
At Avion, we’ll run an interactive workshop for an hour or two to nut out your brand story, tone of voice, vision and values, as well as your communication style. You’ll come away from this with a shiny document that outlines your writing strategy with helpful ideas for what to write about and where to publish! We’ll also look at your target audiences and competitors to assess where exciting opportunities exist.
With your content strategy in hand, you’ll be ready to go out and write consistent, beautiful copy that matches your brand – every time.
An example?
We held a comprehensive strategy workshop for The Churchill Club in early 2018 to help them boost brand awareness and engage new members.
2. Editing and proofreading
Do you 100% trust your spelling and grammar skills? Do you?! If you’re writing content yourself, it can be helpful to get someone to look over it for you, to pick up any stray typos and do a sense check. We copywriters even like to have this done on our own work, that’s why we peer review each other’s writing.
If you work in a world that has quite a lot of technical jargon (we’re looking at you, lawyers and medical professionals!) you’ll probably want to get someone to ensure your writing is understandable to your audience, who may not be familiar with technical language. That’s where a copywriter can get the red pen out and rework your content to make it accessible and engaging.
An example?
We recently helped Monash FODMAP standardise and simplify content for their website through a rigorous process of auditing and editing content.
3. Content planning
You’ve written stuff – but now what? Working out where, when and how you should publish it is another thing copywriters are pretty nifty at. We can take your content pieces (or your planned content) and put together a handy calendar for you to know when to post things up and on which channels. This way, you don’t need to think about the next steps once your content is done – just take a look at the content plan.
An example?
We worked with AITSL to transform a large organisation’s various content streams into one strategic, combined content plan.
4. Optimising digital content
If you’re not receiving the desired results on your website, blog or app, there might be some really simple fixes a copywriter could make to turn everything around.
We can do an audit of your existing content and apply some strategic amendments, to ensure it’s fully optimised to meet the user’s needs. Optimising your content, and how it’s structured on the page, can help navigate them towards the desired response – such as purchasing, clicking, reading something or going somewhere else.
Often, small pieces of content, known as microcopy, can be added in to guide a user through a process. So, for example, if people aren’t subscribing to your newsletter, we might suggest you add a brief sentence underneath it that says, ‘We won’t spam you, we promise! We’ll just send you the latest tips and tricks once a month.’ Small content changes like this can greatly boost user experience (UX) and, in turn, make your copy more effective.
We can also optimise your content for SEO by adding metadata or reworking some specific keywords into the copy to help you rank better on Google.
An example?
We were engaged by WorkSafe to write metadata for 1600+ assets in 2017, which resulted in their webcopy being more optimised for SEO.
5. Key messaging
If you’re not getting the kinds of clients or leads you want, there may be a problem with the way you’re framing your business when you write about it. When it comes to conversations, key messaging is everything. We can work with you to define your values and brand positioning, so you know exactly how to write about your business or product in a way that attracts the right kind of clients.
Your key messaging can be applied to everything from the homepage of your website (so users know immediately what you do), to your social media posts (so your audience receives consistent messaging from your business), to your brochures and print collateral. By seeing the right messaging across all your marketing materials, your customers will know what you’re about, and what value you can offer them. That’s why it’s so important to get these messages right.
An example?
We worked with Vinnies CEO Sleepout to audit their website content and refine key messaging for a digital transformation project. This resulted in punchier, more concise messaging, more appropriate for their goal of driving donations.
While copywriters really are experts at writing (it’s what we do, after all), sometimes you may feel like you have the basics covered yourself. If writing is something you’d like to do yourself, you may still benefit from the other skills a copywriter can offer. Whether it’s laying out a strategy for you, helping you with key messaging, editing your work to ensure it’s flawless and consistent, or creating a plan to deliver your content, we’d love to add value to your business. Get in touch to start a conversation about how we can help today!
