Every business owner who hires a professional copywriter dreams of walking away with stellar copy that makes a meaningful connection with her Right People, but unfortunately, not every copywriting project goes smoothly or gets the desired results.

What can you, as the client, do to make sure you’re making a wise investment and starting off on the right foot with your copywriter?

In the spirit of education, here are are 13 things to know and do before you hire a copywriter.

1. Know what business you’re in. I can not stress enough how critical this is to the copywriting process going well.

2. Know what business you’re not in. Figure out which of your ideas are better off left for another business concept down the road.

3. Understand your Right People — the ideal clients you want coming to your site because they’re likely to hire you or buy from you.

4. Know why you’d rather work with a copywriter than write your copy yourself. Communicate this to your copywriter during the vetting process, before signing a contract. This helps establish mutual expectations for the working relationship and helps ensure that the process will go well and you’ll get the end result you want.

5. Know what pages you want to have written. Do you need or want a traditional Home page, like this, or do you want your blog to be your site’s landing page? Do you want a separate About page and Contact page, or do you want to roll your contact info on to your About page? Do you want to sell all of your products and services from one page, or will you have a separate products landing page and services landing page, with text links leading to longer and more in-depth sales pages for each specific offer? Get your Pages Needed list down on paper. Draw it out like a map if you’re a visual thinker. Don’t expect the copywriter to be able to ‘diagnose’ your business and tell you what pages you need.

6. Know what you want your site visitor to do on each page of your site. Think: one page, one goal. For example, on your About page, your Call To Action (i.e. what you’re asking the site visitor to do) might be to have people click through to your Services page. On your Services page, your Call To Action might be to have people click the Book a Session button, or send you a contact form. Note: It’s your job, not your copywriter’s job or your web designer’s job, to figure out what you want people to do on each page of your site. If you’re not sure what you want people to do on your website, you’re not ready to invest in a web design or web copy.

7. Ask your network for referrals to good copywriters. Use social media to ask who people you already know, like, and trust have worked with. Look for recommendations on other business owner’s websites (occasionally, you’ll find a copywriting credit in the site footer, along with the web designer’s credit). Check out many different copywriters’ sites to get a feel for how people work, the ‘default’ voice they write in (as many times, this voice will bleed into the copy they write for you), and check to see if they have samples of past work on their site.

8. When you find a few copywriters you like the looks (and the vibe and the voice of), Google their name to see what other people have said or written about them. Check out their testimonials closely and email their past clients to get a fresh take on the work they had done for them, and the results they got. Read interviews they’ve given to learn more about their philosophy on writing, business, branding, and marketing (all important components of a copywriter’s point of view and level of expertise).

9. Familiarize yourself with rates for good, professional, experienced copywriters. These days, it’s tough to find a copywriter in a competitive market who bases her project rates on less than $100/hour. Some copywriters in my circle of colleagues charge up to $200/hour for their work. That might translate to $500 for a home page, or $1000 for an About page, or $5000 for a sales page, if a writer is highly experienced with proven results. Note: It doesn’t matter whether it takes your copywriter an average of 2 hours or 4 hours to write a page of web copy. The work of copywriting is about delivering value, and rates are based on the value the copy adds to your online presence, not the writer’s word count or her speed. For this reason, most experienced pro copywriters charge by the project, at a project rate, not by the hour.

10. If you’re having your web copy written while your site design is in-progress (as opposed to finishing the copy before you start your web design), make sure your web designer knows you’re reaching out to copywriters and that the copywriter’s start and finish date may impact the site launch date. Don’t assume a writer can whip up copy for you in a week. Most active pro copywriters can start a client in anywhere from a week to a few months’ out. Always plan ahead and allow way more time for your project than you assume a copywriter would need. And always, always ask and clarify timeframes and turnaround times.

11. Be prepared to invest time in the copywriter’s intake process. If you’re getting ready to leave on a big family vacation during which you won’t be working, or you’re in a really heavy season with your own business and have little flex time in your schedule, this is probably not the best season for you to start working with a copywriter. Some copywriters prefer to do intake over the phone, and others prefer to work via written intake questionnaire. (Note: The copywriter’s preference trumps yours here, because she’s the one collecting the info and needs to do it in a way that makes sense to her brain and her creative process.) Make sure you know what you’re getting into with your copywriter in terms of an intake process, and make yourself available.

12. Understand what the copywriter’s revision process is like. The revision process can be one of the stickiest spots in a client’s relationship with her copywriter, due to misunderstandings about how the process will work. While there are working copywriters who welcome written collaboration with clients — I’ll write some, then you write some, then I’ll edit what you wrote and send it back to you — but most pro copywriters I know prefer their clients to leave the wordsmithing to them. After all, that’s why you’ve hired a pro writer, right?

13. Understand what great copy can and can not do. Great copy can make your site visitors say anything from, “Hey! That’s great copy! Who’s your copywriter?” to “Ohmygosh, I want copy just like hers for my site,” to “Dude, THIS is the guy I want to hire to help me with X, Y, or Z.” (In the case of your Right People, it’ll be the last one.) Great copy can help your Right People site visitors feel seen, witnessed, and understood. Great copy can lay the foundation for the relationship you want with your Right People readers and clients. Great copy can help you stand out in the marketplace and appear relevant in search engines. Here are some things great copy can not do (because these results depend on other factors, not solely the copy): make you an online superstar, guarantee you’ll rank on the first page of Google for your desired search terms, guarantee that you’ll sell as many of your products and services as you’d like to. Don’t get me wrong: great copy can help you do all of those things, but great copy doesn’t work in a vacuum, and it’s not a magic bullet.

So there you have it: 13 things to know and do before hiring a copywriter.

The goal of your web copy is to move your Right People from chemistry — that initial spark of emotional and intellectual resonance — into conversation, toward conversion. Great copy CAN help you do that. Approach the process prepared and your project will go smoothly and help you create the results you want.

In the comments, we’d love to know:

What’s been your biggest question about working with a copywriter? What would you still like to know?

(Image credit.)

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This is a Contributor’s Post from former Voice Bureau Collaborative Partner and now, Advisor to Visionary Solopreneurs, Tami Smith.

As a business owner, you’ve been told: an ideal client is a very clear description of the type of client you would love to have more of.

She or he may be an exact replica of a client you’re working with today, or she or he could be a combination of qualities you’ve seen in past and current clients.

You took this advice and you created your ideal client. You’ve even named her. (This is not so kooky as it may sound.) You care about her.

But even with your good intentions to cater to your ideal client through your business and your brand, something is missing.

You have a feeling you might have not be having the same experience as all those other people who rave about the power of knowing your ideal client, because you aren’t seeing or feeling much of a difference in your results.

Oh, the agony and the ecstasy of the Myth of the Ideal Client.

It’s true that ideal client profiling is supposed to be the Holy Grail of building a values-based microbusiness for the web today. And, well, we at The Voice Bureau agree.

But here’s what we see: it isn’t unusual for our incoming clients to feel like all the exercises they’ve done to define their Right Person were nothing more than going through the motions. If you’ve felt this way, rest assured, you aren’t the only business owner who’s had a temporary high of defining an ideal client, only to later feel like Meh. What was that all for, anyway?

An ideal client profile is supposed to be the most important aspect of your marketing. If ideal clients are so important, why doesn’t yours bring significant results?

There’s a good chance the way you created your ideal client is the real problem.

There are 6 common mistakes people make when creating an ideal client. Read on to see if you recognize your past efforts in one of these scenarios.

The 6 biggest mistakes people make when creating an ideal client:

Mistake No. 1: WISHLISTING

Wishlisting happens when you define your ideal client based on your wish list, or all the characteristics and qualities you would just love for her to have. This is the ideal client you “would love to have lunch with” and “hang out with” because she is just so darn nice.

• What Wishlisting sounds like: This could sound like anything based on what would appeal most to you, the business owner. If you’re childfree by choice, she’s childfree by choice. If you like cupcakes, he likes cupcakes.  [Abby’s note: We jest. A little.] Chances are, your Right Person Profile sounds a lot like your dream best friend (you know, the one who “really needs your services”), or like someone you wish existed.

• Where Wishlisting comes from: More than likely, we do this when we’ve absorbed the popularly taught notion that your ideal client is someone you’d like to have as a friend. This may indeed be true (as some of our Empathy Marketing clients find out), but it’s not the most effective place to start getting a picture of your ideal client.

• Why Wishlisting doesn’t ultimately work: When we use ourselves as the focal point — if I’d be her friend, she’d be a good client for me –– we risk letting our own ego, our own personal needs, or our own projections of ourselves creep into our Right Person Profile, thus missing the true needs of the person Most Likely To Buy from us.

Mistake No. 2: HODGEPODGING

Hodgepodging is when your ideal client is a hodgepodge of various people, usually all your favorite attributes out of the clients you’ve worked with so far.

• What Hodgepodging sounds like: “Hank is a 28-year old web developer and unisex jewelry designer who comes from privilege and money (and so has plenty in a trust fund to spend on my services), yet chooses to live a rather minimalist, ascetic life. He’s outgoing, kind, but can also be kind of a jerk in relationships and he doesn’t know why. He refers to himself as a ‘bacon-eating Vegan.’ He wants to travel the world on a dime, reduce his carbon footprint, create big social change (through his jewelry line), and have a great relationship at some point — after he figures out if he should chuck both of his current career pursuits and start a band. After all, you only live once, and why not let it be epic?”

• Where Hodgepodging comes from: There’s a notion that “if I could just take his grit, her experience, and his sense of humor, I’d have the perfect client!” But alas, people are not hybrids of many different people. They are themselves. Your Right Person deserves to have a complete, nuanced identity unto herself, complete with high sides, low sides, strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and challenges. (And, huge bonus: your Right Person, as unique as he or she is, represents many people.)

• Why Hodgepodging doesn’t ultimately work: Just like you and me, your ideal client is imperfect, full of internal tensions and paradoxes, and is consistently inconsistent. When we fail to regard and respect our ideal clients as the whole human beings they are, we miss out on lots of opportunities to connect with and serve them.

Mistake No. 3: CAVALIERING

You’re Cavaliering when you define your ideal client around all her problems or claim you can help her with “anything” because you have “the power of helping people get clear.” Like boiling the ocean, this is a problem of trying to solve too many problems at once, often using a single tool.

• What Cavaliering sounds like: “Miranda is tortured. She hates her messy closets — she thinks of them as ‘closets of shame.’ On the outside, she’s warm, competent, and pulled together. Her friends and neighbors would never suspect that underneath her cool exterior, lies a tidal wave of unopened mail, years’ worth of receipts, and clothing with the tags still on — all enclosed behind the perfectly painted-and-trimmed doors of her suburban upper middle class home. She’s not just messy, she’s desperate, lonely inside, and feels ugly and worthless because of what she’s keeping stuffed inside her closets. She wants to get a grip, she NEEDS to get a grip, and when she finds me, she knows that someone can finally help her get clear. She sees that I’ve done it for myself, and she automatically believes that I can help her do it, too. She knows I can help her with more than closet organizing — I can help her get clear on who she wants to be. Because I am that woman she wants to be more like.”

• Where Cavaliering comes from: The origin of Cavaliering is the misguided belief that people reach out for help when they are all but flattened by their pain, and thus respond to sales pages full of pain points and Calls To Action that promise to save them. Also, in some cases, Cavaliering comes from — dare I say it? — a God(dess) complex: too much ego projection into the business. This often sounds like: “I’ve been put on this planet to help women like you do X, Y, and Z! It’s my gift to the world and to you, so you, too, can live a fuller, richer, sweeter life — just like me.” Oftentimes, it’s presented in a more subtle way than that, but the subtext is still clear: my life rocks, and I can help you make your life rock, too.

• Why Cavaliering doesn’t ultimately work: Despite what some ‘turn up the heat’ marketers will tell you, people don’t seek solutions from the depths of their despair. Usually, people buy products and services from integrity-based businesses when they are in a more resourceful, emotionally integrated place. In fact, some values-based coaches and consultants have a policy where they refuse to start work with a client who’s in crisis mode. A healthy, resourceful buyer is still aware of his pain points (as awareness of pain points is a critical piece of the buying process), but he’s standing on his own two feet again, looking to the future, and ready to do something about his problem. He doesn’t need (or want) you to save him.

Mistake No. 4: STEPFORD WIFING

This is similar to Wishlisting, but instead of including ‘everything but the kitchen sink,’ Stepford Wifing draws the description of the ideal client into a very narrow view of the person, one who perfectly fits your needs, whims, and predilections as a business owner. (You’ve seen the movie or read the American cult classic novel, The Stepford Wives? It’s a satirical thriller.) Meanwhile, your ideal client’s imperfections are glossed over, as you narrow in on her extreme and oversimplified needs/desires.

• What Stepford Wifing sounds like: “Marika is a smart, savvy, fit 40-year old wife and mama who, although her family lives on a tight budget, always manages to pay for her premium fitness coaching with me. Despite staying home with 4 kids under the age of 10 while her devoted husband works full-time plus, she never skimps on personal time because she understands the importance of putting herself first. She manages to maintain her size 6 figure through healthy eating and regular intentional movement, though it isn’t always easy. All of this plus she uses social media like candy so she’s a HUGE brand evangelist for me!”

• Where Stepford Wifing comes from: Fear — specifically, the business owner’s fear that a “real” person with “real” problems and “real” challenges won’t hire her. So she draws her Right Person Profile to a (rather self-serving) tee.

• Why Stepford Wifing doesn’t ultimately work: When you gloss over a potential client’s challenges, struggles, and imperfections, you risk having her miss herself on your sales pages. If she can’t see herself reflected in your brand, she won’t buy, because she won’t believe you ‘get’ her.

Mistake No. 5: BANDWAGONING

Bandwagoning happens when you jump on the bandwagon of whatever the popular teaching is and use a list of over simplified, means-nothing-really-but-sounds-good qualifiers as your ideal client characteristics. Bandwagoning oversimplifies the holistic and the nuanced aspects of what it means to stand in your Right Person’s shoes.

• What Bandwagoning sounds like: “My ideal client is ready for what I have to offer, and happily pays what I’m asking without question because he sees the value in it.” Is this true? But of course. It’d better be. Is this all there is to understanding your Right Person? Absolutely not. Do these qualifiers help you see, clearly and with empathy, what your ideal client’s core needs and motivators are, his developmental desires, and his emotional triggers (for better and for worse)? Not even almost.

• Where Bandwagoning comes from: Again, fear. And then dismissiveness of the necessity for a deep understanding of who your business can serve best. Knowing your Right Person and practicing empathy as you design your brand conversation for her is a complex practice. It requires us, as business owners, to go deep and to set our own assumptions aside. When this gets too difficult, it’s all too easy just to say, “Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing: here’s all I need to know. The rest is just extraneous details.”

• Why Bandwagoning doesn’t ultimately work: When we design our brand and our offers based on assumptions about who our ideal clients are (or, worse, when we say, it doesn’t matter who they are as long as they need what I’m selling and will pay my price), we end up with a Throwing Spaghetti At The Wall To See What Sticks brand. We become a hammer, to whom everything and everyone looks like a nail. Boom! There’s a problem. I can design a solution. Boom! She’s got a symptom. I can address it!

Mistake No. 6: SHADOWING

In shadowing, a business owner unconsciously projects his or her own problem onto an ideal client. Projection is a psychological defense mechanism where you “project” undesirable or unacceptable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else, in order to distance yourself from the discomfort of experiencing them for oneself.

• What Shadowing sounds like: Shadowing can take many forms. But if reading your Right Person narrative — Ohmygod, that’s meeeeeeee! — feels like reading a page from your diary, you’re probably Shadowing.

• Where Shadowing comes from: The current microbusiness coaching landscape sometimes pushes us toward the idea that a powerful Value Proposition comes from taking people through the transformation you yourself underwent to get the results you got. While bringing your own personal experience into your brand can be a wonderful and valuable thing (in fact, how to invite your story in strategically is part of the work we do with Empathy Marketing clients), problems start when a business owner can’t see past her own projections of what her ideal client might want and need.

• Why Shadowing doesn’t ultimately work: Shadowing can often turn up online in the form of what a writer friend of Abby’s [Abby’s note: Hi, Angela!] calls a “vanity venture.” In essence, the business exists to reflect back to the business owner that she has done a good enough job of healing herself, or fixing herself, or creating for herself the result she wants. While this is by no means a ‘wrong’ reason to have an online presence, Shadowing is not at the heart of a values-based business that offers a viable solution in the marketplace.

Why these mistakes will keep you from realizing the benefits of an ideal client

Your ideal client isn’t one person, a hodgepodge, or a wish list of characteristics. An ideal client isn’t a projection or a tidy little list of how much she values you. An ideal client is an ideal list of qualifications that make someone more inclined to buy your solution, rather than less inclined.

Creating a persona — what we at The Voice Bureau call a Right Person — is a way to avoid the common mistakes in creating ideal client scenarios.

A Right Person persona should:

• Represent a buyer who shares the problem, paradox, and desires your solution is designed to address

• Highlight search intent (queries and questions being asked in search)

• Explain core motivators, desires, emotional needs, and buying preferences

• Provide a logical way to create content that is optimized for the core practical  and emotional need of your Right Person

Your Right Person Persona will become your ideal client profile. When you understand who she or he is, you understand what he or she wants from you, and why.

When you get to this next level of clarity and create an ideal client based on methods that are proven to work, you will understand the relationship between you and your ideal client. You will see how your strengths, experiences, and intrinsic Voice Values serve your ideal client.

Your ideal client profile, created in an empathic way, is the key to articulating your Brand Proposition and your USP, and it’s the key to crafting even more effective Calls To Action.

Knowing what to say and how to say it unlocks those places where you feel stuck.

Feeling stuck and frustrated about not being able to articulate a strong Brand Proposition isn’t an experience unique to you or your brand (thank goodness, right?). It is incredibly rare to find microbusiness owners confident and clear about how they are a better choice for their ideal clients.

We think it’s important for you to know that these things aren’t easy to do and to know that persona development can bring clarity to your entire process of bringing a new brand online, or realigning an existing brand.

Your Right People are important. Understanding yours at an intimate level will bring significant results when created the right way.

In the comments, Abby & I would love to hear:

What hasn’t worked for you so far in getting clear on your ideal client? What popularly taught advice has fallen flat for you? Have you had experience with one of the 6 Mistakes described above? We look forward to discussing this with you in the comments.

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Voice Notes is an occasional special feature. We take you inside the online brand presence of a business owner we think you should know — through a dozen evocative sentence-starters.

Abby (Chief Voice Bureau Officer) says:

I am so pleased to share a Voice Notes feature today on the unstoppable Sas Petherick, a Londoner (by way of New Zealand) coach and writer who I’ve been thrilled to work with on web copy and brand voice development. Sas has an unmistakable style (that we were careful not to over-groom) with a natural, easy, fun-to-follow voice. The timing of our feature coincides with the launch of her emBODYment program. emBODYment is for women who want an easy, conscious, trusting relationship with their body. Sas describes it as “a mind-body-soul mash-up of my own experience of losing 65 pounds, and my coaching toolbox (which is the size of Texas). ” There’s so much gorgeousness inside this work she’s created, and a strong focus on community. I’d be happy to hear you checked it out. (As of May 1st, 2013 — registration is open NOW.)

Sas Petherick, Coach & Writer

Sas Petherick is a coach, a writer, and the creator of the emBODYment program for women.
Find Sas on Twitter; Facebook; Pinterest; InstaGram

My top 3-5 Voice Values are:

Love, Intimacy, Audacity, Power, and Depth. (Note: Discover your own Voice Values when you subscribe to The Voice Bureau’s Insider Stuff e-letter. Look for the sign-up box in the upper righthand corner of the site.)

The iPhone app I wouldn’t want to live without it:

Tube Deluxe — essential for Londoners.

I find the richest social media conversations take place on:

Twitter, because it’s a many-headed stream of consciousness, with folk collectively weaving a story of sorts (I always thought James Joyce would totally get into Twitter). [Abby’s note: Ooh, he’d be a Twitter natural.]

On social media, I find I get most triggered when I see:

Misuse of the Oxford comma.

The album that feels the most like my brand is:

Workers Playtime. Billy Bragg is an English troubadour of the highest order and this album is jam-packed with the stuff of life: love, heartbreak, belief, and unapologetic liberal rants! Plus, there is something quite magical about work that feels more like play.

I do the work I do because:

I can’t not do this . My whole life, people have told me their stories and sought my counsel when all I could really offer was empathy. When I trained as a coach, it was like going from playing ping-pong with my bare hands to using a smart red paddle.

The best moment in my workweek so far has been:

Sharing some happy tears with a client who’d had a heart-opening conversation with a member of her newly-blended family. I am thrilled to witness her journey.

An unlikely source of creative inspiration for me is:

My fellow Tube commuters. Each morning I tweet out a Haiku about the most interesting person in my carriage (search the Twits for #tubeku). [Abby’s note: God, I love this!]

If I couldn’t do the work I’m doing now, I’d be:

The owner of an awesome café in Tetbury – an old English village with a cobbled market square and my favourite bookshop in the universe. I’d also like to bring back bartering.

I can never get enough:

Of New Zealand. My home country has my heart.

The truest branding advice I’ve ever heard is:

Be a voice, not an echo.

What I really wish you could see about yourself is:

Everything you are looking for is waiting right inside you. It’s never too late.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What inspired you in this Voice Notes feature on Sas? We look forward to connecting with you in the comments.

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Your business is personal.

If you’re reading this article, more than likely you agree with this statement.

As solopreneurs, microbusiness owners, the creatively self-employed — call us what you will — the onus is on us to decide where we draw the line between what’s on the table for ‘business’ and what we keep behind the curtain, or ‘personal.’

And when we consider this idea of being a ‘personal brand,’ or a business brand with a personal feel (like most of our clients at The Voice Bureau), the negotiation between ‘business’ and ‘personal’ gets all the more complicated.

Most of The Voice Bureau’s Right People clients don’t fight the idea of ‘being’ a brand. Around here, we hold that any individual or entity who shows up online, with a purpose, in any sort of a consistent way, is presenting (albeit unconsciously sometimes) as a brand. How you choose to live out your ‘brand’ is your business. (Pun intended.) Our clients tend to accept the idea that being a ‘brand’ comes with the territory of presenting value to the marketplace. Even if you don’t see yourself as a brand, other people will.

Over the past year, Tami and I have had many deep conversations about how we — and by that we mean all of us: she and I, and you (our reader), and our clients — show up online.

We notice what we choose to lead with in our brand conversations and we ask ourselves why.

A big part of our Empathy Marketing work is reverse engineering the rational and emotional logic that’s led a client to show up (or not to show up) online the way she does — both in search results, and more importantly, in her Right People’s realm of interest.

We’ve noticed that perhaps the most important part of leading a memorable, meaningful, and successful online business brand starts way before a Value Proposition ever gets clarified, before copy ever gets written, or before a website gets designed. It’s the inner work a values-based brand creator has to do to shape and lead a brand with strength, love, and intentionality, and be in integrity with herself every step of the way.

One Friday morning during our weekly collaboration call, Tami described this inner work to me as “developing the emotional competency to be a personal brand.” I just about fell off my chair.

I knew this was a conversation I wanted us to be part of — in public, with you.

We feel strongly about the need for this conversation today. We’re hosting three complimentary calls for our readership (and anyone else you might like to invite).

The series starts Wednesday, May 1st, PST. Details are here. We hope you’ll register and join us live or enjoy the recordings.

In the comments, we’d love to know:

What have you identified as being part of the Emotional Competency of being a personal brand? What goes into it, from your view? 

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