“Hello. What seems to be the problem?”
“Doctor, I’m just not sure what’s wrong with me.”
You slept eight hours last night, but you’re still tired. It’s like you didn’t sleep at all. You tell the doctor about that niggling pain in your abdomen. He asks about food.
You tell him you hate things you thought you loved, and love things you thought you hated. And, worse than that, sometimes you just throw up in the morning for no apparent reason.
It’s all since that wild night when you weren’t as careful as you could’ve been…
You know what’s causing your symptoms. You know what’s happened.
The positive test you did last week probably gave it away.
So what on earth are you doing here, and why are you pretending to be uncertain?
Experts Build Your Confidence
The thing is, even though you know you’re pregnant, you need someone with more experience and expertise to tell you that. You don’t feel like you can call it, because this doctor has done the training and been here many times before.
It’s the same with some clients who use a freelance copywriter.
Recently, I worked on a project that involved developing headlines for a big brand. The brief started loose, with a sense of tone and style but very little in terms of content.
I came up with a selection of witty, clever options that suited the brand and got a benefit across.
Later, the brief got a little more specific. By which I mean it became the copy.
You see, this particular client got in touch with two phrases they wanted to get in. Phrases that had been developed internally, by people who are experts in marketing, but not necessarily experts in copywriting.
Now, I had specific words to include, in a very limited amount of space.
So what did I do?
I took the two phrases – pretty much intact – and put them together.
The client loved that.
Freelance Copywriters Guarantee Quality
There are lots of reasons that someone might want to use a copywriter. Most of us bring:
- Experience on working with other brands
- Knowledge of what sells and what doesn’t
- Time that an in-house team wouldn’t have
- Dedicated to making things sound “right”, with a suitable lilt, rhythm, and vocabulary
Those are the key skills that allow a freelance copywriter to write well. To write better than the next person.
But those very same skills also act like a quality guarantee. They let you effectively use the copy you’ve already got in mind, with the added confidence that an external expert has physically written it down.
That makes life easier when you present campaigns to the rest of the agency, or people at the very top of your organisation. It also ensures that any extra waffle is stripped out.
It’s your copy, but better.
So yes – freelance copywriters write well, just like a doctor can prescribe medicine and carry out treatment. But that’s not always what clients really want.
Sometimes the most valuable thing you can be is a seal of approval for copy.
