Why Hire a Copywriter

(Or, Why Should You Outsource Writing When You Can Do It Yourself?)

There are many reasons that businesses seek out and hire copywriters. Some clients simply hate to write and are thrilled to pay someone else to perform this service. Others enjoy writing but either do not have the time OR cannot afford to neglect their ‘real’ jobs to write what needs to be written. Still others have fears ranging from those that are budget-related to “how can anyone else know as much about my business/industry/customers as I do?”

Whatever the reason for hiring a copywriter, and there are many, it is always, almost without exception, a wise investment in terms of time, money and other valuable business resources.

For physicians, attorneys, consultants and other professionals, including business owners, the decision to hire a copywriter is an especially fiscally-wise one. Why hire a copywriter? For many reasons, including:

1. These are professionals whose services are billed at $150, $200, $300 – and more – per hour. For every hour they spend copywriting, they lose an hour in billable time.
2. Even if they are expert in their area of business (and chances are that they are), they are not professional copywriters. (Writing for academic or trade publications does not count as copywriting.) I have found that the ratio of their time writing to our time writing, as professionals, is somewhere in the vicinity of 1:3 or even 1:4. So for every three or four hours they spend writing (and not billing clients), they could be paying a professional for just one hour of professional copywriting. This means, as well, that the launch of advertising/marketing materials and campaigns can and will be significantly delayed due to copywriting time. New brochures, websites, newsletters and ads will not be seen or read by your prospective clients or patients for sometimes months (or more) because the writing of the words is taking so long.
3. Many of these professionals, while experts in their fields, are not experts at marketing their services and expertise. So even if and when they do go ahead and write their marketing copy, the finished product is in the vast majority of cases not actually marketing copy but what I call “story-telling” (or sometimes worse). They write on and on about ideas and observations, losing sight of the fact that the words are supposed to be selling a product or service, not simply telling an often-rambling story. Even after turning billable time into writing time, they have little of real marketing value to show for their efforts. Often, these professionals/businesses cut their losses at some point and end up hiring us – after they have already put in a considerable amount of time and effort.
4. One more point: We are not attorneys, physicians, financial advisors, high-tech professionals or management consultants. We can, however, write effectively about virtually any area of business or industry. We do not need to be the experts they are, we simply need to know enough about what they offer, to whom, how and why (and who else is offering it and how) to sell them, their practices, their services and their expertise to prospective (and sometimes existing) clients and patients.

More reasons to hire a professional copywriter

Professional Quality
Writing content may not seem difficult, but writing quality content takes skill.

Your content needs to speak to the reader, and depending on what it will be used for it may need to be structured in specific ways as well. Unless you’ve spent time and effort learning how to craft professional-quality content, it’s just not going to turn out the way that you want it to without the aid of a professional.

Speed of Production
Think about the last time you had to sit down and write out a significant amount on a topic.

How many times did you have to stop and go back to rewrite something, or fight against writer’s block? Writing content yourself can take quite a while, especially if you aren’t used to doing it. Professional copywriters can produce the content for you much quicker, getting you the documents that you need that much faster.

Top-Notch Research
If you’re considering hiring a professional copywriter, you likely want content that is factually correct and free of fluff and filler.

Copywriters are generally master researchers, digging deep into the topic to ensure that your content is both factual and topical. Depending on the topic at hand, the copywriter may even find details that you weren’t even aware of to make your content that much more authoritative.

Task Management
There’s a good chance that you already have a lot on your plate.

Hiring a copywriter takes one of the things that you need done and delegates it to someone else, freeing up some of your time for other important tasks. This lets you focus on other aspects of the job while the copywriter works on creating quality content for your project.

Cost Considerations
Some people balk at the idea of hiring a professional copywriter because they feel that the money spent on the copywriter could be better spent on other parts of the project.

Quality of content can make or break a project, though, and the money you spend outsourcing the content will help ensure that things don’t go south as a result of doing it all in-house. There’s also something to be said for outsourcing the work instead of delegating it to an hourly employee, especially if the extra workload could push the employee into overtime pay.

Easy Fixes
No one is infallible, and sometimes you’ll find that the content you’re delivered doesn’t quite fit what you need.

There may be an error in it somewhere, or it could just need some general tweaking in a few places. Most copywriters consider this to just be part of the job, giving you a quick turnaround on your fixes without you having to worry about how you’ll find the time to revise it.

You may be surprised at just how much hiring a professional copywriter can help your projects along. The more you consider it, you may even find yourself coming up with more reasons to add a copywriter that weren’t even covered here.

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