Running a business is one of the most stressful experiences, but it’s also one of the most rewarding, once you master the fine art of being a ‘chillpreneur’. Part of that is knowing what to outsource, what to do yourself, and what to hire someone to do for you. It’s a delicate balance, and the more costly it is to get someone else to do something, the more reluctant we generally are to pull the trigger.
If you’re staring at endless lists of copy and content that need writing to market and promote your business, you’re likely considering hiring a copywriter. There are a lot of reasons to do this that make great business sense. There are also a fair few that will make you second guess if it’s the right decision for your business.
To help you make an informed decision, here are the pros and cons of hiring a copywriter…
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The Pros…
Let’s start with the positive benefits you’re set to reap by outsourcing your copywriting needs to a professional typing monkey:
You’ll Free Up A Load Of Time…
Copywriting and content creation are incredibly time-consuming tasks. First, you have to think what’s needed, then you have to decide the best format to put it in, then you need to research the best keywords to optimise it for, then you have to actually write the damn stuff, then it all needs checking and proofreading, and finally, you have to upload it.
Once that’s done you still need to promote it and, of course, do it all again tomorrow.
One of the biggest pros of hiring a copywriter – whether you’re a time-poor entrepreneur or a super-busy CEO – is that it will free up a massive amount of your time.
You Can Focus On Your Zone Of Genius…
We all have stuff we’re exceptionally good at and, generally speaking, if we’re running a business that ‘thing’ is what our business is all about. Unless your business happens to be a copywriting agency, marketing agency, or freelance content creation service, the odds are the thing you’re best at isn’t writing.
By focusing on your zone of genius – the area of your business you do exceptionally well, better than anyone else, that thing that nobody can do quite like you (or at all) – you’re ensuring your attention is on the area of your business that will benefit from it the most.
Even if writing is an enjoyable experience for you, something you love doing, your business is much more likely to grow and reach new levels of success if you’re spending your time doing the things that nobody other than you can do.
It Will Declutter Your Creative Energy…
Love it or loath it, writing takes up a lot of creative juice. If you’re spending a lot of time trying to write the copy for your new website, or using up a day out of every week ensuring you have a stand-out article going out every week, it’s going to leave you drained.
There’s that much less energy and creativity to dedicate to other areas of your business that really need it. Aspects of your company that you want to really drive forward and push, but never seem to have the energy to look at.
It Will Reduce Your Stress And Workload…
You have an endless To Do list, an insane workload, and still feel like there’s just so much stuff you’re missing and not getting done. The problem with trying to do everything in your business yourself (aside from the fact it sucks all your time and creative energy), is that it’s incredibly stressful.
The ability to hand over a huge chunk of tasks to someone else, confident they’ll do a great job and you don’t have to worry about them, is a great way to lower those stress levels.
You’ll Be Ensuring Professional-Level Content…
Again, your special skill set probably isn’t writing. Even if you’re good at writing, unless you’ve been doing it professionally for a decade or more, specifically for the purposes of marketing, you’re not going to do it as well as a pro copywriter.
Outsourcing your copywriting ensures it’s penned to the highest possible standard, and reads a lot better than what you would have pulled together yourself.
Even if what you’d have DIYed would have sounded great, don’t you want it to be even better?
All Your Content Will Be Effectively Optimised For Search…
Search engine optimisation is a skill all on its own. Not all writers are search engine specialists, but in the modern age to create digital content that isn’t optimised for search is an absolute travesty.
In other words, if you decide the pros outweigh the cons and hire a copywriter, make damn sure they’re capable of optimising for search.
In an ideal world, you’ll find one fully capable of researching and creating a complete SEO strategy that ensures every word they write is designed to drive traffic to your site.
For you to do this yourself would require you to spend a good chunk of time learning SEO, and then even more time creating content, as you add the keyword research and optimisation to your already overloaded list of tasks.
You Will Achieve Complete Consistency In Your Marketing…
Some weeks you blog, others you don’t. Some days you post on social, other days you don’t quite get to it. Whether your newsletter goes out is 10 to 1 and pick em’.
Creating consistency in your marketing when you’re responsible for creating every piece of content yourself (or your team is trying to pull it all together while also doing their actual jobs), sets you up for failure.
Hiring someone to handle all you copywriting and content creation is the most effective way of ensuring complete consistency.
Your copywriter should be able to not only write and create your content, but also schedule it all for you if needed.
You’ll Never Have To Worry About Having Enough Content To Feed The Machine…
Marketing is a greedy, needy machine. Your blog constantly needs fresh posts, as does every one of your social media accounts. Your ads all need copy. Your products and services need descriptions and sales pages. Honestly, it’s endless.
The Cons…
While there a lot of great pros to hiring a pen monkey, there’s another shoe that inevitably has to drop. Here are the downsides…
You’re Going To Have To Pay For It…
There’s really no way around this one. If you’re outsourcing your copy, it’s coming with a price tag. Unless you’re happy to settle for bog-standard blurbs and unimaginative crap (and you’re not, I can already tell), it’s going to cost you a substantial amount.
Exactly how much you spend will depend on your project, the type of content you’re getting, and whether it’s a one-off (like a new website) or a longer commitment (like a content marketing service).
Doing it yourself neatly avoids this expense.
Loss Of Control…
A lot of business owners really struggle with this, especially if you’re a solopreneur, entrepreneur, or business owner who has built everything from scratch.
You’re used to being in control.
The words used to describe your business are incredibly important to you. They need to be perfect. They need to be exactly as you want them. You need to be confident that the way your business is presented to the world is perfectly in line with what you want.
It can be very difficult to imagine someone else being able to do this anywhere near as well as you can, let alone better.
This is definitely a mindset issue. You will either be able to move past it, or not. All i can say is that a great copywriter will work with you to hone your voice and develop a writing style that is exactly as you want it.
So, you may not be physically writing the words, but you’re still the one in control.
The Need To Edit And Feedback…
When you’re outsourcing something to free up a load of your time it’s easy to get frustrated when you then have to spend time on it.
Writers will need feedback, particularly at the start of your relationship. Ideally, you will have total confidence in their abilities and simply leave them to their work.
This is best for you, for them, and for the consistency of your content schedule.
It’s not always possible. In the beginning, you will need to give some direction so your writer can get started. Later you will need to feedback on what they have done, so you know they’re going in the right direction, and they are able to refine everything until lit’s perfectly in line with what you want.
This might happen immediately – I’ve had a few clients I’ve just ‘clicked’ with instantly and from the first draft I sent, the only comment I got back was ‘this is perfect!’. But for most people, there are a few tweaks here and there. And for some people, there is a lot of editing needed in order to translate what they were imagining into complete copy.
It can be difficult to articulate what you want, and explain how you want something to sound. It’s generally a lot easier to point out things you don’t like, and explain why you dislike them.
The Pros And Cons Of Hiring A Copywriter Boil Down To This…
Making this decision ultimately boils down to three questions:
- Do you have better things to be doing than writing?
- Will someone else do a better job of writing than you can?
- What is going to generate the most profit?
If you’re overwhelmed with work, stressed out, or simply know your energy is better spent elsewhere, outsourcing your copy makes perfect sense.
Likewise, you want your copy and content to be as effective as possible. Like it or not, a pro is almost certainly going to do it better than you.
Finally, you have to weigh up how much your time is worth. How much can you earn in the time it would take you to create that content? If you can earn more than it will cost, it’s already a win.
After that, you should also consider how much money your own writing will earn you, compared to how much profit you will see with professional copy on your side. Copywriting is an art. Whether it’s direct sales copy that gets people to buy, or informative content that attracts and nurtures a tribe of dedicated readers who, in time, become very lucrative repeat business, copy results in profit.
Is your business going to be less stressful and more profitable with professional copy (that you didn’t have to DIY) selling your shit?
The answer is almost certainly yes…
