Hiring help is a funny thing: As business owners it can take us a while to make the decision to hire help. But once we’re sold on it, we get very excited about all of the tasks we can take off of our own plates and put on our new resource’s!
Especially for business owners who get tripped up by their own messaging—or just don’t know where to start!—finally hiring a copywriter can feel like a weight being lifted off your shoulders. You might be tempted to just go ahead and give ALL of your writing work to your copywriter; anything that comes across your desk that needs to be written goes right to them!
Except…that’s not necessarily the wisest way to use this resource (or manage your funds).
Now, don’t get me wrong: If you’re bringing in money hand over fist, your growth is predictable and headed only up and to the right, and you’ve got a healthy profit margin…go ahead and hire out all of that writing work!
But if you’re not quite there yet, you’ll need to be a little bit more strategic about what projects to hire out.
Here’s a good rule of thumb:
Invest first in what’s going to make you money.
Meaning, what projects are going to have the biggest and most immediate impact on your revenue?
Likely, it will be projects like sales pages, sales email funnels, ads, video sales letters, upsell copy, etc. Things that, as you improve them, you can immediately see the positive results.
Many business owners take the road of outsourcing their most immediate, regular, and annoying projects—blog posts for example. And while it can be a relief to not have those on your To Do list (which, yes, should be a consideration, too!) your blog posts aren’t going to have an immediate impact on revenue. You should certainly outsource them if you want to, but it might be worth waiting until your other messaging ins performing so well, that your business can easily cover the cost.
One more thing to consider is that you should be prepared to test your copy. In fact, it’s smart to build that step into the process. Your copywriter will research your business and target audience, will learn your brand voice like the back of their hand, and put together the very best copy they possibly can. But…they’re also not a mind reader.
A copywriter can know, with 100% certainty, in advance which iteration of a subject line or a headline will perform better. They can make recommendations and they might nearly always be right, but it can still be worth testing your copy in case small tweaks can positively affect performance. A few percentage points difference in click-through rates, open rates, or conversion rates can have major impacts on your business.
Projects that impact your revenue are great opportunities to work with your copywriter to create, test, and refine messaging so that it’s performing—and earning—as well as it can.
Want the ins and outs of exactly how to hire a copywriter? Get our free guide here.