How to Get What You Need from a Copywriter
Despite our obvious bias — Ray Access is a company that performs copywriting services after all — we’ve learned a thing or two from our clients and our experience. Working with copywriters can be as easy as ordering a pizza … or it can be fraught with missed signals and unacceptable deliverables. How can you get more of the former and less of the latter?
Copywriting is an art and a science. Give the exact same assignment to two different copywriters, and you may get two very different articles back. When trying to make sense of it, you invariably want to blame the writer:
- You didn’t follow the directions.
- This isn’t what I asked for.
- How did you get this from my request?
The Blame Game
Whose fault is it really? You know what you want. The writer thinks she understands. And yet there may be a hidden chasm between the two of you. In reality, maybe both parties are at fault.
Working with copywriters is often less like ordering pizza — with a specific number of toppings, crusts and sauces. Instead, working with copywriters is more like designing a house. There’s an obvious foundation, but from there, the sky’s the limit. The more choices you have, the more differences there can be in the final product.
Defining Your Choices
It’s the copywriter’s responsibility to tease vital information from her client. Every writing project begins, therefore, with some distinct questions that every copywriter worth her salt should ask:
- Who is the intended audience of the article? Writers need to know gender, age, profession, and more. The more information you can give to a copywriter helps make the resulting article targeted and more effective.
- What’s the purpose of the article? Is it rhetorical, to persuade the audience into action? Is it informational, to impart insight? Or is it entertainment, to delight the readers?
- How will the article be published? If it’s a blog post, that specifies a particular type of writing. If it’s for a magazine, then it has to have a different focus. The media affects the message.
If you want to be successful working with copywriters, be clear about how you answer these questions. Still, copywriters need to keep asking questions until they’re satisfied that they fully understand the assignment. When there are too many choices, the results can vary widely.
Tone It Down to a Point
Once you’ve defined what the article is about, make sure your copywriter knows what tone to adopt. The tone plays a large role in how the article is perceived by readers. There are many, many ways to deliver the same information, such as:
- Playfully
- Dead seriously
- Friendly
- Factual
- Formally
- Humorously
- Anecdotally
Ray Access spends the time to get the tone right, because only when your article is delivered the right way will it connect with your intended audience. We work with new clients to find the balance between professional quality and on-target effectiveness. Sometimes, it takes several back-and-forth efforts to get it right.
Know What to Expect
When working with copywriters, you generally want to avoid surprises. A surprise is getting an article, blog post, website page or press release that isn’t anything like what you expected. Just as journalists are trained to ask the right questions, copywriters know to ask for clarification when needed.
But assumptions still get in the way, most often unconsciously. Assumptions lead to unasked, and unanswered, questions. So become detail-oriented. Spend more time at the beginning of a project so you won’t have to use even more time at the end of it — on revisions, rewrites and do-overs. Take it from professional copywriters.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
