What is the point of a copywriter?

28th September 2016 | Posted in Content creation, Marketing communications

Many people write these days. Content is a massive thing. So why pay a professional copywriter to create the words for your marketing programmes? Here are five reasons why they can bring real value to your business.

1. They don’t work for you. Well, not all the time anyway, if they are with an agency or freelance. And because they are independent, they’re not immersed in your culture or your products and services. So they don’t get it. You’ll have to explain to them. And then they’ll put that in writing in terms your customers will also understand.
2. They recognise jargon when they hear it. Every skill has its own language. Copywriters can cut through the tech-speak, the marketing talk and the insider conversation that takes place between professionals. They are translators from jargon to the outside world. In the IT world I’ve come across more than one company that not only talks tech, but its tech language doesn’t match up with any other tech company. Its marketing and sales people and its engineers live an existence in a bubble that doesn’t understand anything other than its own technology. Heaven help the integrators.
3. They’re not afraid. Well, within limits of course. But copywriters have to nerve themselves to ask questions at any level of your company. Because without a full understanding of your goals, strategy and offerings as well as your market, they can’t produce the words that tell your story to the world.
4. They can teach you stuff. Freelancers get around. Different organisations in different industries. Different marketing approaches. They take in the good and the bad of what they see and use it to refresh and refine how they work. And they can’t help but put all that learning on the job into practice when they’re working for you.
5. This is their profession. Good copywriters will have a history of writing good copy.