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If you’re considering hiring a copywriter, you’ll want to assess a number of different factors. The two key ones are “Can they do the job?” and “Do I get on with them?” Inevitably though, at some point you’re going to need to find out one important fact: how much does it cost?

Of course, asking how much it costs to hire a copywriter is a lot like asking how much it costs to go out for a meal. It depends on whether you’re going to McDonalds or a Michelin starred restaurant. On whether you’re having one course or seven. On whether you’re having soup, pasta and salad, or oysters, lobster and steak.

That said, we can give you some factors to consider when it comes to costing your copywriting project, and some guidelines that should help you set your expectations realistically.

Day rate vs project rate 

The first variable comes in how people charge for their work. Some freelancers and even agencies use a day rate. For a freelancer, you’re paying for their writing time, plus a small margin to contribute to their other activities, such as admin and marketing. In an agency, you’re likely to be paying what’s known as a “blended rate”, which takes into account the various people who might input into your project, from account execs to strategists. 

Now for the actual numbers… New freelancers might start off charging as little £150 per day, and end up charging £700 and even beyond for specialist work or once they’re at a senior level. The top end of freelance rates and the bottom end of agency rates overlap – sometimes by a surprising amount. But not everyone uses a day rate.

At RH&Co, we don’t think they’re a particularly sensible model to work with. Yes, we factor in how long we think any given project should take. But what if one of our writers is having an off day and takes twice as long as they normally would to get a job done? We don’t think our clients should have to pay extra. Nor would we expect to charge less if, in a moment of creative genius, we whizzed through a piece of work in half the time planned.

That’s why we price projects on a, well, project basis. This balances time invested, value delivered, the complexity of the subject matter and a number of other factors. For us this feels like the fairest way to charge for our work.

The cost for retained copywriting work

You might want to engage a copywriter on a longer term basis. For example, you may want them to provide you with weekly blog posts, for which you’d most likely be invoiced on a monthly basis. Or you might decide you need someone available for a set number of hours or days each month, with the actual work being decided as you go.

With retainer work, you may want to – or need to – agree to a retainer rate. This is an ongoing (usually monthly) fee that tends to be paid over a set contract period. Agencies and more established freelancers will often get a service level agreement (SLA) in place so everyone knows what’s expected.

It’s harder to put a price on retainer work, as it very much depends on what and how much you need doing. If your retainer is based on a set number of hours or days then it will be fairly straightforward to work out. But if it’s tied to deliverables, then you’re back to the variations of project pricing.

One thing you can be sure of is that you will get more for your money if you commit to a retainer, as the copywriter or copywriting agency you employ can count on the work coming in. By removing uncertainty from their income projections, you can effectively earn yourself a discount.

Why it’s not about price per word

Newspapers and magazines tend to pay journalists per word. This is because the copy being produced is, in relative terms, fairly standard – a news article or a feature. Although we’re generalising for simplicity here, the more words involved, the more work is likely to have gone into the piece.

With copywriting, there is a much greater variety of projects. And word count is a less dominant factor when it comes to deciding on the value of the copy delivered.

Sure, a 3,000 word white paper takes more effort than an 800 word blog post. But a six word strapline can require more input than both – by a long shot. In this case, pricing is much more to do with the value that’s being added through conceptual input rather than the ‘writing’ itself.

Understanding what you’re paying for

One important factor to take into consideration when gathering pricing information from potential copywriters is what’s included in the cost quoted. 

Let’s take blogging as an example. On the one extreme, you may have a strategy in place, customer research done, titles set and a series of briefs written and ready to go. In which case, all your copywriter needs to do is craft an engaging narrative to tie together the information in the brief in a way that authentically represents the brand.

With our clients though, we’re much more involved in the process. Blogging contracts begin with a strategy and onboarding session. We advise on topic and title selection. Our briefings draw out the right information from the client’s experts, and keep them from getting lost in the detail. Once a writer has produced the first draft, a separate editor quality checks and proofreads it. We can even support clients with social sharing copy to help get their blog out there.

When we send an invoice for a blogging project or retainer, we’re charging for a lot more than just a few hours of writing.

Factors that will make your copywriting project more expensive

As you’ll have seen in the last section, there’s a lot more that goes into a copywriting project than pure writing. The more elements you add, the more you should expect to pay.

Here are a few non-writing jobs that you might want included in your project:

As you can see, coming up with a straightforward answer to the question “How much does hiring a copywriter cost?” is virtually impossible. The best way to get a sense of how much to budget for your project is to get out there and get a few quotes. 

Just remember to be clear about what you really need. After all, it’s better to pay that bit extra and get results, than spend a smaller amount and find it’s been wasted because you didn’t get what you were hoping for.

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Creating original content is one of the most powerful ways to establish your expertise as a brand and help build your reputation online. The challenge is that it takes time, effort and probably budget to do it well. Which is why it’s important to repurpose that content so you can share it in lots of different ways and increase the ROI you’re getting. 

Repurposing content in different forms also means you’ll catch a larger audience, because everyone has a different way they like to consume information, whether that’s through visuals, the written word, audio and so one.

The first step is to decide what your foundational content is. Are you going to focus on blogging, on video, on podcasts? Perhaps you’ll invest in white papers or webinars. You may well end up using all of them, but it’s hard to do lots of things really well, especially if your budget is restricted. Better to have one as your base and build off that.

For us, blogging is the heartbeat of our content marketing strategy. Blogging is a powerful tool for both social engagement and SEO, it doesn’t need lots of equipment to produce and can easily add huge amounts of value for your audience.

If you blog for your business, here’s how we’d recommend squeezing the most value you can from each post, to ensure that you’re reaching as many people as possible.

TL:DR

1) Write a valuable, strategically informed blog post

Step one is to create the original piece of content, in this case your blog post. At this stage, don’t think too hard about how it might be repurposed. You want to focus on making it the best blog possible, with a headline designed to engage your audience or perform well from an SEO perspective, formatting that makes reading it as easy as possible, and most importantly, as much value as you can possibly include. By doing this, your blog will start adding value from the moment it is published.

2) Share it on social media – more than once

Before we move onto repurposing per se, make sure you’re sharing your post as it is on social media – ideally more than once. Your first share can be a straightforward one, introducing the topic and encouraging people to click through and read it by selling the benefits of the post. You can also use questions, stats and quotes pulled from the blog itself to vary the social sharing copy and encourage more engagements and views.

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3) Summarise it in your newsletter

Your email list is made up of people who are at least moderately interested in what you have to say, so don’t deny them the chance to read your post. There are several ways you can share posts via email:

4) Turn it into a press release

If your blog post has a strong news hook, original research, controversial opinion or anything else that might be of interest to a journalist, why not repurpose it as a press release? Make sure to understand the publication you’re pitching to and what you’re hoping to gain e.g. do you want to write a similar piece for them or do you want to go on their expert contact list? Many online publications have submission guidelines that will help you understand how best to approach them.

5) Film a video blog

We’ve already talked about doing one thing well rather than lots of things poorly, but there’s no reason why a well written blog post shouldn’t help you create a video blog. Unlike brand videos, which are worth getting a professional for, video blogs can be filmed with a decent laptop or smartphone.

Again, there are several ways to tackle this. You could go through all of the points from your blog post in one longer video. You could chop it up into different sections e.g. if you have 5 tips, you could film one video for each and make a series. Or you can use video as a teaser, for example sharing just one tip and encouraging people to click through to the blog for more.

6) Use your post as a chapter in an ebook

Chances are that once you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ll have a collection of posts around several key topics. This is a great opportunity to create an ebook. As an example, we had three blog posts covering different sales and marketing challenges faced by B2B businesses, which we then turned into an ebook. These can be useful tools for your sales team to use as part of any outreach campaigns.

7) Record a podcast series

Another way to repurpose a whole collection of blog posts is to record a podcast series. Once again, you can do this in different ways. The most straightforward would be to simply record audio versions of each post for people who don’t have the time to read and prefer to consume their content on the go. But you might also prefer to be a little more free flowing and conversational, using the key points in each post as a starting point rather than a script. Or why not get a guest on to discuss each blog to get a variety of views?

8) Create an animation

This isn’t a cheap or easy option so we certainly wouldn’t recommend it for every post you write. But if there’s a particular piece of pillar content that is foundational to your content strategy, animation is a powerful way of getting – and keeping – people’s attention.

9) Put together a presentation

Next time you’re asked to give a presentation at a networking group or industry event, don’t stress about what you’re going to talk about. Dive into your blog and you’ll find plenty of inspiration. Chances are that many of your posts are a talk in themselves, containing an introduction, several main points, and a conclusion. All you have to do is create the slides.

10) Design an infographic

Depending on the information included in your post, it might lend itself nicely to an infographic format. These are great for sharing on social media and also rank well in terms of image search on Google. Remember, you don’t want to include all the words from your post in the infographic – it needs to be primarily visual, so take the core concepts and use text sparingly.

11) Send it to a prospect

Some blog posts naturally fit within your sales process. For example, you might have a buyer’s guide designed to help your audience make the right choice of product or service. Do put these posts on your website, but don’t leave them there. Send them directly to prospects too. You might do this at the same time as sending a proposal, for example, or as a follow up that feels a little more valuable than “Have you had a chance to consider our proposal?”

While all of these repurposing techniques take a level of input in terms of time and effort, they should ultimately take the knowledge you put into your blog – the research, the concepting, even some of the phrasing – and give it different forms. 

By doing this, you get the most business value out of the expertise you put into your post. And you reach more people, both by using different content forms that appeal to different people, and by simply showing up more times in people’s digital landscape.

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As a marketing manager – especially one without a large team under you – you may well at some point need to hire an external copywriter. But how do you go about finding the right one?

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as posting a shoutout on LinkedIn and waiting for your contacts to tag their favourite copywriters. To find a good match – one that will deliver results and be worth every penny that you pay them – takes planning.

Here is a step-by-step guide for marketing managers looking to hire a copywriter.

TL:DR

Define the scope of your copywriting project

Have you got a detailed brief ready to send to your chosen copywriter? Without a good brief, you are setting your copywriter up to fail, no matter how good they are. To write effective copy, they need to understand things like:

If you aren’t used to writing copy briefs, it’s worth finding out if your potential copywriter has the experience to help you do this. Agencies tend to use freelancers themselves and are therefore used to creating as well as following briefs.

Have an idea of your budget

You might have a set marketing budget for the year or it might be that your company is a little less rigid and you can apply for what you need on a case by case basis. Either way, you’ll need to think about how you’re going to fund your copywriting project.

Obviously, the final cost will vary hugely depending on what you’re looking for and who you use. For example, a simple five page website selling yoga classes will cost less than a large and complex website for a financial analytics consultancy. And a freelancer who’s just getting started might be charging as little as £120 while a specialist might charge five times that amount. 

Sticking with pricing models, some people charge on a day rate, others on a project basis. And agencies usually have some sort of blended rate to cover the various people who will be looking after your work, from the account manager to the writer and possibly a strategist or even the creative director.

It’s worth noting that some copywriters – particularly the more experienced freelancers and agencies – may have a minimum fee that they will accept.

Work out what type of copywriter you need

Not all copywriters are the same. Here are some of the different types of copywriter you might come across:

Although many copywriters will be able to work across more than one, few can do everything. If you need input into a range of copywriting projects, you might be better off looking for an agency with a bank of different writers that can be pulled in as needed.

Freelance copywriter vs copywriting agency

In fact, let’s take a moment to talk about the choice between using an individual freelance copywriter and a copywriting agency. The first thing to say is that one is not better than the other! There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

A freelance writer, being a single individual, is likely to have a degree of flexibility to the way they work. They might be able to come and work in-house with your team one day a week, for example, where an agency might not offer that service.

Because they don’t have the overheads of an agency, a freelancer is also likely to be relatively cost effective. Although make sure you get a range of quotes and that you compare like for like. In many cases our rates are lower than that of specialist senior writers!

The problem with freelancers is that the best ones get booked up fast. An agency, on the other hand, will usually have a stable of tried and tested writers they can call on, plus an in-house team to handle the strategy, brief creation, editing and so on.

This also helps when it comes to illness or holiday. With an agency you know there will always be someone available to look after your needs. And of course there’s that team we mentioned, bringing a range of experts together to help with all aspects of your project, not just the writing.

Once you know what you’re looking for and what you want your copywriter to achieve, it’s time to start your search properly. Having said that hiring a copywriter isn’t as simple as putting a shoutout on LinkedIn, that’s not a bad place to start.

Be as specific as you can with your post. If you need a technical copywriter, say so. If it’s an ongoing project that needs a commitment of six months, put that in your request. The more detailed you can be, the better the referrals you’ll get.

A Google search is also a good option, especially if you’re looking for an SEO copywriter. After all, if they’re good at what they do, they should rank fairly well. 

But there are other places to search too, such as creative networks. Here in Bristol, for example, we’ve got Bristol Creative Industries (formerly Bristol Media) where you can search the membership directory by sector.

Checking the quality

Once you’ve got a few options on your radar, it’s time to work out whether each option is able to deliver what you need. In some cases it will be obvious – you need a website copywriter for your SaaS company, but Option A specialises in advertising copywriting for FMCG brands.

But when it comes to quality, it can be incredibly difficult to decide how good a writer actually is until you’ve worked with them. Hopefully they will have a website where you’ll be able to see examples of their work, testimonials and even case studies. If you want specific examples, get in touch to ask for them.

If someone has referred a copywriter to you, ask them about the experience they had with them. What kind of project did the copywriter work on? Did they help with the brief creation and if so, was it helpful? Did they deliver when they said they would? How many amends stages did the work need to go through?

Once you’ve narrowed your choices down to a small selection, arrange a face-to-face or video meeting with the most promising individual copywriters or copywriting agencies so you can get a sense of who they are and whether you get on. If they seem like a good fit, you can move forward to the quote stage.

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Don’t forget the details

During your exploratory meeting, make sure to dive into the nitty gritty. Here are some additional details to establish:

Making your choice

So let’s recap:

By the time you’ve gathered up all this information, you should be in a good position to engage a copywriter or copywriting agency that will be a good fit for you, your business and your project. It’s time to get in touch with your preferred choice and get your project started.


If you’re searching for someone to help you with a copywriting project, do have a look around our site – you can find out more about our copywriting services, read case studies, explore more blog posts or our FAQs, or get in touch if you’d like to chat.

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Do you have to wait for your reputation to rise or is there a way to establish your expertise right out of the gate? Our #WriterInResidence, Sam Whitlock, looks at five businesses that impress their expertise on you from first glance.

Typically, you will trust the opinion of only two types of people: people you know personally, and people who are established as experts. Whether it’s your go-to mechanic or marketing guru, your trusted financial body or film critic, your software developer or your camera manufacturer, you’re unlikely to want anything less than an expert. 

As a business, if you play your ‘expert’ card right, you can find it easier to win sales, loyalty and opportunity with those who haven’t got you on their radar yet. 

I should mention, demonstrating you’re an expert in your field isn’t right for every business. You don’t need to be a thought leader to sell toilet paper, for instance. Or if you’re Coca Cola, you don’t need to be the sommelier of fizzy drinks, you only need to be ‘the thing that everyone wants’.

But if you’re reading this, you’re probably looking to do more than make your next hard sell. So let’s look at some companies that are experts at demonstrating their expertise.

Sony

What Sony gets right from the get go is that although they are primarily an electronics company, they don’t spend much time talking about microchips and wiring. 

If you check out Sony’s corporate site, they use stories to catch the eyes of investors, partners and talent. There are stories about using robotics to fuel creativity in Michelin cooking, using AI to analyse the movements of professional ping pong players, or using Sony’s new cinema camera to capture the perfect getaway in a Hollywood blockbuster.

They’re not primarily trying to establish themselves as hardware people, or even design people. Sony has cut out a piece of the market that aligns with their self-stated purpose: to fill the world with emotion through the power of creativity and technology. They’ve married tech expertise with the ability to inspire emotion – and it works.

Fjallraven

Fjallraven makes backpacks, outdoor clothing and just about everything you need for your next hike. Although they probably know a little about looking good, and a fair bit more about outdoor pursuits in general, hiking is where they’ve chosen to hammer home their street cred (or maybe it’s mountain cred). 

If you browse their ‘stories from the trail’ you’ll find location guides, tales told by trekkers and advice on how to camp in the tundra. There are a few pointers on the kind of outdoor wear you might want to take with you – but it’s not the be all and end all here. 

Fjallraven wants to make clear: they don’t just understand materials and backpacks. They understand what it’s like to be on the trail, chasing adventure. When you read their articles, they come across as explorers who learned through experience the kind of kit hikers need. They’re not trying too hard to be Bear Grylls, nor do they sound like Mountain Warehouse simply trying to sell you another jacket. Fjallraven pitch it just right.

MoneySavingExpert

Expert is in their name but it’s also the essence of what this company does. While this one-stop-knowledge-shop is in some ways the gold standard for demonstrating expertise, it requires serious commitment to imitate. A build-the-basis-of-your-business-on-it kind of commitment.

While MoneySavingExpert is chock full of the information their audience is looking for – from how-to’s, to recommendations, to comprehensive guides – the scope of their content turns their site into a journal or magazine. 

If businesses put their nose to the grindstone, they might be able to put out a blog post or two each week but unless they can hire their own inhouse editorial team, they’re not going to become a knowledge shop in the same sense as TechRadar, Which? or MoneySavingExpert.

So what should you aim for then? Well, if you’re trying to focus on a subject as broad as saving money, you’re likely to be overshadowed by giants in the field. But if you can settle on a narrower niche of expertise and share consistently on that theme, you will begin to establish your own place in customers’ minds. 

FoundHea

FoundHea is a Bristol-based ethical clothing shop that established itself as an expert through research and curation. 

It’s not just that they’re really picky with their inventory. On every product page they lay out exactly what each brand is achieving from an ethical standpoint – and even go out of their way to tell you how those brands could make improvements. 

This transparency and unfiltered criticism goes a long way. FoundHea doesn’t come across simply as a more ethical place to shop but as an authority on ethical clothing standards.

Mr B’s Emporium

‘Opinionated bookselling’ is what Mr B’s Emporium offers and while few people want anyone’s opinion, an expert opinion is a commodity worth capitalising on. And Mr B’s do it with gusto.

For a start, they bet on their opinions enough that they sell surprise recommended reads, in which you have no idea what you’re ordering except for it’s genre. Or you can go a step further and subscribe to be sent a book each month based upon your reading tastes, which Mr B’s gets a feel for by having a short consultation with you. 

Looking towards their content, you can find recommendations from every member of their team online. You can read articles and listen to podcasts that highlight books from particular genres or that tackle certain topics. Mr B’s even produce their own catalogue each year to draw attention to the 101 books they most recommend.

In everything they do, they’re selling their knowledge. And the upshot of it is: you might not judge a book by its cover but you can judge it by Mr B’s recommendation.

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The idea that people don’t act in an entirely rational way is nothing new. Even the most dispassionate of us are emotional creatures at our core. Which means that our decisions are driven as much by our feelings and perceptions as they are by our cognitive deliberation.

What does this have to do with business? Well, if you want to sell – which is what most businesses ultimately exist to do – then you need to understand why people buy. And that means you have to understand the feelings and perceptions, as well as the rational choices, that drive their decisions.

In order to do this, it is helpful to take a look at the idea of emotional capital. Emotional capital exists in a number of areas, but for the purposes of this article we’re talking about external emotional capital.

TL:DR

What is external emotional capital?

In his book Emotional Capitalists, corporate psychologist Martyn Newman PhD defines external emotional capital as “the value of the feelings and perceptions held by the customer and the external stakeholder towards your business.”

He adds: “The only way to create real profit is to attract the emotional rather than the rational customer by appealing to his or her feelings and imagination.”

Notice that Newman talks about feelings and perceptions. People will have feelings about your business: “I like that brand, I can trust them”. And they will have perceptions, which are more about the stories they use to rationalise those feelings: “They care about the environment, they are experts in their field.”

From here, we can reverse engineer the idea of emotional capital in the context of content marketing. What stories can you tell about your business that will create the right perceptions in your audience? What feelings can you evoke that will create positive emotional capital, drive brand loyalty and ultimately increase sales?

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How do you want people to feel about your brand?

The first step in your emotional capital strategy has to be to define what kind of capital you want to build. How do you want your audience to feel when they come into contact with your brand? What do you want them to perceive about your business?

For example, you might want people to believe that your brand is environmentally conscious, fair, good value and fun, and to feel happy and inspired whenever they interact with it. Or perhaps you want to be seen as a luxury brand that champions innovation and invites customers into an exclusive club, creating desire in those who are not yet customers and a sense of personal satisfaction in those who are.

The same works in the B2B space. You might want to be seen as pioneering and trailblazing, with clients and potential clients feeling inspired and excited by your brand. On the other hand, you may want to be seen as a quietly confident teacher or encouraging coach, evoking feelings of reassurance, encouragement and safety.

Perhaps you are in an industry where many brands are perceived negatively, such as recruitment, law or car sales. Here organisations might be seen as greedy, self-seeking or even dishonest, leaving customers and clients feeling irritated or frustrated. This can be a useful starting point for building a brand that is in direct opposition to this stereotype.

How content can build emotional capital

Emotional capital is not something that is created in a one-off event. It is built over every touchpoint that your audience has with your business. This ranges from your logo and branding to how easy it is to book an appointment, the functionality of your website to how polite your reception staff is.

Where content fits in is that it is perfectly suited to meet the “show don’t tell” requirement of building emotional capital. Rather than telling your audience how they should perceive you – your values, your expertise, your personality – you can demonstrate the relevant elements that will allow them to come to the right conclusions for themselves.

Just look at the Hubspot blog, packed full of insights written in a straightforward and encouraging tone. It’s easy to see why people feel that Hubspot as a brand knows what they’re talking about, that they’re experts, they’re helpful, they have their finger on the pulse. We can trust them.

To take a B2C example, Lego have recently started publishing a free magazine. The many activities and ideas inside underline the perception that Lego is a fun brand that cares about creating and developing young minds. It’s encouraging and exciting. They want us to have fun!

Using content to serve your audience

Content allows you to add value, to be helpful, to serve the needs of your audience and thereby create positive emotions. An example might be a swimwear company publishing a “what to pack for your beach holiday” checklist, or a leadership consultancy practice hosting a webinar about developing emotional intelligence at work.

On the flipside you can use a blog post to address your audience’s concerns about working with you, a buyer’s guide to help them avoid a poor product choice (and with it buyer’s regret), or a series of tutorials to help them navigate the challenges of getting to grips with your system. All will steer them away from negative emotions and perceptions.

This isn’t a quick fix exercise. Content marketing is a long game, as is building emotional capital. You can’t force people to feel or believe anything. But with a consistent approach that is both authentic and strategic, and by measuring and iterating continuously, it is possible to build emotional capital that will serve your brand well.

***

Messaging is a tough nut to crack at the best of times, let alone when it’s difficult to explain what your business actually does. Our #WriterInResidence, Sam Whitlock, looks at five brands that waded into these muddy waters and made them clear as glass.

When it comes to clarifying your company’s message, it’s easy to misunderstand the problem. You don’t have to explain what your company or product does, necessarily. You do need to show your audience why they should care.

Some businesses are lucky. The market is known enough, their brand is simple or established enough that they can boil everything down to “Buy vintage clothes online,” and proceed to show you images of Christmas jumpers.  Or they can simply say “All your admin sorted,” or “Get this and get it cheap,” and even at glance their target audience might be interested. 

But if your organisation does more complex or niche work, you’re competing not only against a potential lack of interest but a lack of understanding too. Your branding can quickly fall into one of two traps: 1) Your message gets muddied by explanation. Or 2) Your message becomes generic and doesn’t truly tap into your actual brand offering.

To capture your audience, you need a crystal clear message that goes to the heart of what your audience cares about. Here’s five businesses that pull it off…

Telerick.com – “Modern UI made easy”

You and I might not know anything about JavaScript. But we can probably appreciate that developing a user interface is not generally not easy. If anyone is making it simple, that’s going to be a selling point. Telerick’s website is quick to fill in the gaps for more discerning browsers:

“Build feature-rich experiences for Web, Mobile and Desktop faster than ever.”

“Stop sweating over UI and focus on the parts of the application where you can truly make a difference.”

What jumps out at you here? Phrases like “Feature-rich,” “faster than ever,” and “stop sweating” are getting straight to the core of what developers care about: time, energy and the free rein to invent. And you don’t have to speak code languages to appreciate the value here. So if someone in a design department stumbles across Telerick, they’ll be able to recommend it to their more technical counterparts. 

One of the key tricks Telerick is deploying here is to skip explanations and start making promises. They don’t waste their breath telling you how they’re going to do it (until you read on); they’re getting straight to “Here’s why you should care.”

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Slack – “Slack replaces email in your company”

Okay, so this strapline is dated because everyone (basically) knows what Slack is now. They’ve become so established that they don’t have to define themselves anymore. And their new homepage introduces Slack as “your new HQ” instead.

But there was a time when Slack was a skinnier, scrappier fighter trying to get its name out there. It had to define its place in the market while simultaneously ensuring businesses saw its essentiality. If it had settled on, “Slack: Your business’s messaging service,” it would have missed its simplest and central selling point:

Nobody likes email.

If Slack focused on telling you its many functions and time-saving, ease-of-use benefits, it would sound like just another business add-on. But an alternative to email… that’s worth having, surely. For sanity’s sake alone.

The beauty of clear messaging is that it makes conceptual, technical or nuanced ideas very simple to grasp. Slack doesn’t seem like a complicated tool to explain now – but that’s only because their branding team first did their homework. And speaking of this phenomenon…

Apple iPod – “1,000 songs in your pocket”

The iPod worked magic in the mp3 market because their message was clearer than their competitors. While everyone else was trying to communicate that they had a digital walkman device thing, Apple were singing a simpler tune.

The phrase resonated with people so effectively because it spoke directly to their experience. This was a new device, potentially complicated, possibly unwieldy. For many, the idea of popping a CD into a player was much simpler than fussing around with internet downloads and limited storage. But Jobs’ team found a way to make iPod sound limitless and streamlined. Carrying around CDs suddenly seemed cumbersome compared to such a simple idea.

It’s interesting that the words you traditionally associate with tech: digital, future, software, power, innovation, were scrapped in favour of everyday language. While Google’s algorithms will require us to use the keywords associated with our industry (at least for the foreseeable future), we have to be careful we’re not letting that become an obstacle to our message.

UiPath – “We make robots so people don’t have to be robots”

Artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, machine learning algorithms…. can’t we just call them all robots and be done with it? There’s something very refreshing about the way UiPath uses language that could have been understood in 1975.

While many of the AI and automation companies use grand statements to elevate themselves as harbingers of the future, UiPath scales it back. Their message doesn’t meander through the technical hocus pocus but drives straight to the human benefit: your people will be free to use their time, energy and human intelligence more creatively.

There’s a time and a place for grand statements like: unlock the future, power your dreams, achieve the impossible. But they can sometimes be a little bit vague. As if they came out of a slogan generator. UiPath on the other hand, drives home a specific message that makes artificial intelligence seem warmer and more inviting. Almost human. 

SEGA – “SEGA do what Ninendon’t” (and more offensive examples!)

A new generation of video game consoles has been released but their messaging can’t quite match the sassy, cheeky, crass tactics of early 90s SEGA.

At the time Nintendo had monopolised the video game market and even though SEGA were coming onto the scene with a more powerful console, it would be tough to get noticed in the 8-bit world that Mario had come to rule.

SEGA could have pushed their 16bit technology, which gave games greater detail and colour. Or they could have tried to imitate Nintendo’s campaigns that emphasised power. But instead of explaining the console’s capabilities, they made their message crystal clear through their outrageous tone.

Here’s just some of the copy from SEGA’s print adverts. And these are the tamer examples – (I don’t necessarily recommend trying these at home!):

SEGA tone was a clear differentiator from cutesy, child-friendly Ninendo. Their message was razor sharp: theirs is a console for adults, for teenagers, for people too cool for Nintendo (note: these days Nintendo are pretty damn cool too!). SEGA showed they weren’t just “another” console, or a better one, they were their own beast.


If you’re looking to hone your own business messaging, check out our thoughts on how to explain what your business does so people understand quickly or learn how to tweak your copy with subtle subversions so that your brand evokes something new.

***

An artisan can display the beauty of their wares, a patissier can give out samples, but in many other fields – from B2B services to technology, sustainability and healthcare – we usually need to find another way to give away a little taste of the value we know we can add.

In such domains, you need to demonstrate that your brand is an authority in its field, that you’re the experts and can be trusted. To do this, you need to be thinking about sharing your expertise through content campaigns. After all, the best way to convince someone you’re an expert is not to tell them but to show them. 

Think about the expert knowledge in your business like the free cube of cheese or thimble of wine at a farmer’s market – something you can use to entice people and demonstrate your quality. Once they bite, you won’t need to work nearly so hard to sell to them. They’ll have a far better idea of the quality they’re getting and whether it’s right for them.

So how do you go about establishing yourself as an expert using a content campaign? Here are some things to think about.

TL:DR

Build your content campaign on lived experience and research – not theory

Lots of people share theory. And theory is great. But theory is cheap, especially in a day when anyone can claim anything online. People can even use AI-generated content to skip the research and writing process. 

If you’re making a pure SEO-play this can bring in traffic but if you want to show your words are worth trusting you need to speak to your audience in a way that ChatGPT could never achieve. For more on this, check our ebook why expertise based content wins in a cynical age.

In 2023, we surveyed 32 executives and senior decision makers in organisations. The vast majority said they won’t look at content shared with them by direct marketing (only 3% said they did). Instead most relied on their curated network to share only the most important articles with them. 

It’s a noisy world, and it’s a cynical world as a result. These days, people aren’t asking, “What  can you tell me?” they’re asking, “Who are you to tell me?” 

Pitched right, your content campaign can answer that question.

Locate the sweet spot for your content campaign

Before you can convince anyone you’re the authority in the room, you need to have a good understanding of what the room (ie your market) looks like, what counts as expertise within this space, and how much your team knows. Expertise is a positioning strategy and it’s not one just any brand can choose.

For instance, if you launch a healthcare app but don’t have any healthcare professionals or ex-clinicians in your team, and you haven’t completed any research in the field, your expertise is limited. In this case, frankly, you’re better off promoting your app’s design or features than your expertise.

That said, if your founder was a leading healthcare consultant, or if your team works alongside psychiatrists or GPs on a daily basis, you’ll want to bring their lived-expertise to the forefront of your content. 

Their first-hand accounts, their learning, their experience, is the ticket to creating expertise-based content that’s impossible for your competitors to replicate. 

Your job as a marketer is simply to tap into that expertise, and find out:

  1. How much overlaps with what your audience cares about
  2. How much overlaps with your wider goals as an organisation

What lies in the middle of that three-way Venn diagram should then form the foundation of your campaign.

An example campaign: how to use expertise to win a new audience

Let’s take a look at a theoretical expertise-audience-goals Venn diagram, and plan a campaign that just might work.

For example, imagine you’re a leadership development consultancy:

Your sweet spot campaign theme might be something like, ‘How global brands can build net-zero momentum’. This clearly calls out your audience and links your expertise to their goals.

The campaign might include content such as:

If you were the marketer running the campaign above, you might be concerned that, while you can draw on your internal experts for insights on team momentum, you may not know as much about reaching net zero.

However, you could interview an external net zero expert or two, whose expertise will complement yours. Chances are, this unusual blend of specialist expertise will result in content that’s not like anything else out there. 

How we established our own authority with content 

Back in 2022, RH&Co had established ourselves as an authority in content marketing and wanted to push harder to demonstrate our expertise as brand strategists. 

In 2023 we made this a focus, releasing no less than five campaigns all reinforcing our role in brand strategy. As well as drawing together a tonne of anecdotes showcasing everything we’d learned from working with organisations in specialist sectors, we also interviewed dozens of external experts and conducted a survey of C-suite executives.

Over the course of the year, we:

  1. Conducted a roundtable with brand experts and startup advisers, forming a seven-part series that guides readers through the tumultuous startup to scaleup brand journey. 
  1. Launched three campaigns tackling industry-specific brand challenges in technology, B2B services and sustainability.
  1. Published our flagship report, “What do CxOs read?” as part of a campaign tackling the elusive challenge of marketing to the C-suite. 

We then found endless ways to repurpose all this content in videos, social posts, ads, e-books and outreach emails, ensuring we maximised the reach and impact of the content.

By the end of the year, the kind of enquiries we were getting had begun to shift. More people were taking us up on content strategy, high level messaging, positioning and campaign design.

More senior people started to engage with our content and share it. One marketing director landed on an article about value propositions and asked us to create a dozen for their organisation.

And much of what we’d written changed the way we spoke in sales conversations – enabling us to close bigger and more strategic projects.

If you’d like to create similar results for your own organisation, you can always work with us. And for more of our thoughts on how to run content campaigns, see our guide to involving experts in content creation or how to market to multiple stakeholders. 

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Explain what you do and why your audience should care.

You have 12 seconds.

Here’s one we did earlier:

We find the right words for expert-led businesses. We clarify their brand message and create strategic content to make them stand out as authorities in their field.

That’s the RH&Co value proposition in a nutshell. It took quite a bit of work and a fair few conversations before we were able to communicate this so clearly. And what we do is – in the grand scheme of things – relatively simple to explain. We’re copywriters, content strategists, marketers.

Many of our clients, however, are experts in complex subjects that don’t lend themselves to a one or two word description. We’ve worked with a number of them to create foundational copy, messaging and brand voice guidelines to help them clearly communicate what they do.

Here’s a few questions that we’ve found helpful to ask along the journey:

Clarify and communicate your message - follow link to learn more

Does every stakeholder in your audience speak your language?

The first and most important step in any communication is to know – really know – who you’re talking to. If you’re a B2B tech brand with a no code/low code product and your target persona is a CTO or CIO who already knows the API calls they need, then talking at an expert level and using appropriate jargon is perfectly acceptable.

If, on the other hand, you first need to win over a stakeholder with less technical knowledge, you’ll need to think about what they might need to understand, what might confuse them, where they might draw the wrong conclusions or be put off by technical language.

The beauty industry is a great example of where brands do value proposition well. Sure, they might mention retinol or keratin or silica to give a gloss of scientific weight to their advertising. But they know that their audience aren’t scientists – they just want younger looking skin, glossier hair, and sparkling white teeth. 

The same often applies to tech products and users. When we worked with The Land App to create messaging for their brand, we needed to find language that would position their product as an expert-level mapping tool. 

We also needed the messaging to resonate with a diverse audience made up of everyone from farmers and estate managers to ecologists and surveyors.

To avoid patronising the technical experts, we needed to talk about ‘data layers’ and ‘delivering biodiversity net gain’ but we also needed to summarise the essence of this multifaceted product in language every potential user could understand.

We settled on messages such as:

So even if you’re not an ecologist looking to deliver biodiversity net gain, you can quickly see how The Land App’s product might help you achieve your vision. 

Are your features clear in your value proposition? And are your benefits believable?

When it comes to encapsulating benefits vs features in your value proposition, the best description of the concept is the truth universally acknowledged by marketers: no one wants a quarter inch drill bit; they want a quarter inch hole.

The trouble is, these days, lots of brands are claiming to offer the same hole a million different ways.

And, of course, the classic:

In the end it all sounds a bit like vapourware. Marketers mustn’t forget features in their rush to sell the benefits. Your SaaS product, ESG consultancy offering or L&D programme might be difficult to summarise, but don’t settle for broad, vague promises in an attempt to make it simple.

Rather than toning down the richness of the expertise involved to make your brand understood, it’s more about finding the right blend of features, benefits and language.

Futureground are a team of subject matter experts in the truest sense. Their partners have even described them as polymaths (think Leonardo Da Vinci) of the built environment. However, describing what they do is a much tougher challenge. Not least because it looks different for every single client they work with.

Some of their competitors have floundered here, describing themselves as ‘delivering sustainable solutions’, which is about as vague as you can get.

We went for something more concrete for Futureground:

Who is walking with you through complexity?

We’re sustainable place strategists with decades of experience working across the property lifecycle, and we can step alongside you as a critical friend in this complex world.

Sometimes this means forming an action plan. Often it means working closely with stakeholders. It always means asking good questions.
Then we grounded all of that in social proof through case studies. You can find out more about the rebranding journey on the Futureground website.

Does your audience know they need you?

What made the Futureground case even more challenging was that their audience is often not problem-aware.

If your audience is problem-aware, they know they have an issue. But when they are pretty low problem-aware, they need some help defining the real issue. So perhaps they think they need more leads but what they actually need is better quality leads or better CRM tracking.

This is where you really need to drill down and understand your audience – so you can figure out how to position your solution in a way that makes them want to solve a problem they don’t know they have.

This is toughest when you’re looking to disrupt the market in some way. A product or service that sits in a category of its own, or across more than one category, so that people either have no idea what it is or confuse it with things it isn’t.

Let’s take Nespresso as an example. When they first brought out their pod-based coffee model, people may well have laughed. Why would you want to spend 40p on a cup of coffee you had to make yourself, when you can have any other instant for a fraction of the price? 

But Nespresso knew that their audience wasn’t looking for a better tasting instant coffee. They were looking for a cost effective alternative to high quality take away coffee, which they could make in the comfort of their own home. And so that’s how they communicated their offering.

Slack played a similar trick in their initial marketing campaigns. They didn’t try to sell themselves as a messaging service or a digital workplace. Instead they simply said: ‘Slack replaces email in your company’. The people came, because while few companies knew they had a comms problem, once pitched against email, Slack made sense instantly.

Use this value proposition pitch format to help explain what you do

Whether you’re selling a complex technology product or you’re delivering your service via a disruptive new business model, it’s important that you can communicate your business offering in a way that is clear and easy for your audience to understand.

Use this pitch format to start honing your key messaging: For [your ideal customers or clients] who are [trying to do X or facing X challenge], [your product or service] is a [product category] that provides [key value proposition]. Unlike [closest alternatives] [your product or service] offers [key features].

If you’re struggling to put it succinctly, you have more work to do.

If you run it by a potential user and they don’t instantly grasp the value, you have more work to do.

You don’t have time to explain everything.

You can’t afford to be misunderstood.

You need a complex value proposition in a nutshell.


To find out more about how we can help you define and communicate your business offering, get in touch to learn about our brand voice, messaging and other consultancy services.

Every business needs written content. Website copy, blog posts, white papers, case studies – the list goes on. In a startup or micro business, this copy is often written by a founder or another member of the team. But eventually the need for either quality or quantity – or both – means it’s time to hire in a freelance copywriter or copywriting agency.

The question is, which one is right for your business?

In this article, we’re going to look at the advantages and disadvantages of freelance copywriters and copywriting agencies. This won’t help you select an individual writer or agency – you can read more about that in this post on how to hire a copywriter. Instead, we’ll go through some of the factors you should be considering in order to decide what will suit you best.

TL:DR

Why use a freelance copywriter?

A good freelance copywriter is worth their weight in gold. As well as our in-house writers and editors, we have a small but brilliant team of freelancers who are an integral part of the agency.

So we’re not here to suggest that copywriting agencies are in any way better than freelancers. In fact, there are many situations in which we would advise that you go down the freelance route.

Here are some factors that make freelancers appealing.

Cost

In most cases, a freelancer is likely to be less expensive than an agency simply because they don’t have the same overheads. They’re also unlikely to be earning over the VAT threshold, saving you a chunk of money if you yourself aren’t VAT registered.

Freelance rates vary widely depending on experience and even location (London prices tend to be higher than Bristol prices, for example). A junior might start out charging as little as £150 a day, whereas someone more specialist or experienced might charge four or more times that.

There is likely to be some crossover between the highest freelance rates and the rates charged by the smaller agencies though, so don’t be afraid to get a range of quotes. Just make sure you’re comparing like-for-like in terms of what’s being delivered.

Our copywriting and consulting services - follow link to learn more

Flexibility

Where agencies will have their processes in place, a freelancer may well have more flexibility. For example, they might be happy to come and work in-house at your offices for a period of time. They are also unlikely to have minimum fee or retainer terms.

Retainer relationships do make sense on a number of levels. First, there is a degree of work to be done upfront in getting to know a client and understanding their industry, establishing tone of voice, messaging and more. Also, in the case of content marketing, it takes time to see results.

But you might not want a long-term relationship. Perhaps you only need someone to do a small, one-off piece of work, or perhaps your budget is too uncertain to commit to a monthly outgoing. Or you might just be testing the water. In which case, a freelancer may be a good bet.

Control

When you work with a freelance copywriter, they essentially become an extension of your team. You’ll manage them directly rather than going through an account manager, which may give you a greater sense of having eyes on all stages of the content creation process.

This is great for founders who are naturally close to their business and feel protective of anything that gets written on their behalf, or marketing managers who are used to managing a team, setting strategy, giving feedback and generally running projects.

If your business is growing and your copy requirements are likely to grow with it, then you need to be sure that your provision will be able to expand to meet that.

Why use a copywriting agency?

This is not where we do a big old sales pitch. As we’ve demonstrated above, there are many reasons why you might need a freelance copywriter. And if you find a good one, hold onto them!

But there will be times when getting an agency on board is going to suit your needs better.

A variety of experts

With a freelancer, you’re relying on one person to have a number of different skillsets. With an agency, you’ll get a team that brings together a variety of specialists.

For example, you might have a brand consultant to help you with your brand voice and messaging, a content strategist to help you create your editorial calendar, an account manager to interview your experts, a writer to create the draft content and an editor or proofreading to ensure it’s polished before it reaches you.

Consistent capacity

One key issue with freelancers is capacity. An agency will have greater internal resources, as well as access to a pool of tried and tested freelancers. What’s more, they’ll have processes in place for resource planning and managing consistency of quality. As a result, you shouldn’t have to wait weeks before they can fit you in and you’ll never have to worry about what happens if your writer gets sick or wants to take a holiday.

Likewise, if your business is growing and your copy requirements are likely to grow with it, then you need to be sure that your provision will be able to expand to meet that. One person can only do so much work, whereas a team has potentially infinite capacity.

Project management

As well as accessing a variety of strategic and creative experts, using a copywriting agency means you’ll have to do less on the project management side of things too.

An agency will provide a fully managed service, handling everything from brief creation through copy drafting, editing and proofing, managing the writers and even liaising with other professionals like designers or developers. That’s a lot less mental load for you to deal with.

Quality

We’re not suggesting that agencies produce better work than freelancers. But the reality is that there are plenty of bad copywriters out there. Choosing an agency should give you at least a minimum standard of quality.

A not-so-great freelancer might be able to get by on good luck but a substandard copywriting agency won’t last long. It’s just too competitive out there and running a business – with employees to pay, office space to rent, insurance, accountancy fees and a million other expenses besides – means there’s no room for slackers.

Is RH&Co right for your business?

Everything we’ve written so far has been designed to give you a broad brush and unbiased view of the copywriting market. Of course, not every freelance copywriter or copywriting agency is the same. So what about us?

Cost

Because no two projects are alike, we create proposals on a bespoke basis, taking into account factors like the type of work involved, the complexity of the subject matter, how quickly it needs to be turned around and the value it will deliver.

Our minimum project fee is £2,500+VAT, while retainers start at £1,250+VAT, with most of our regular clients tending to have annual budgets of between £15,000 and £50,000 for content.

We put our prices up every January as standard, to reflect the increased cost of living, our commitment to pay our team and freelancers fairly, and the increasing value we aim to deliver year on year. For the last two years this increase has been around 10%.

Specialism

Our specialism as an agency is in working with expert-led businesses to help them clarify and communicate their message and establish their expertise through content.

Our services include:

Our writing team pulls together experience across a wide range of industries, primarily in tech, healthcare, sustainability and B2B services, and we are particularly experienced in working with complex subject matter to draw out the elements that readers will find engaging.

Flexibility

As a relatively small copywriting agency, we like to think of ourselves as being pretty agile in the way we work with our clients. However, we aren’t able to provide writers to work in-house on your premises.

We do work on both a project and a retainer basis, with retainer SLAs being set for a minimum of six months to ensure that we can provide the most value. In reality, most of our clients stay with us for much longer!

Team and capacity

With both in-house copywriting resources and a team of handpicked freelancers on our books, we almost always have capacity to work with new clients. We also have processes in place to cover sickness and holiday absence.

We can usually book in a kickoff session within a fortnight of you making the decision to work with us, during which we’ll agree on timeframes for your project. As a general rule, first time content projects tend to take a minimum of six weeks, although in some circustances we can work to tighter deadlines.

Every project, whether one-off or ongoing, has – at the very least – a dedicated project manager, a writer and a separate editor to ensure that the quality of the copy we produce meets RH&Co standards. You can find out more about the in-house team on our About page here.

Conclusion

Hopefully by now you’re feeling a lot more confident about whether or not you should be aiming to work with a freelance copywriter or a copywriting agency – and whether we might be a good fit. Let’s sum up the main points.

You should choose a freelance copywriter if:

You should choose a copywriting agency if:

Whether or not you should work with us is something you won’t fully be able to decide until you’ve had a chat with us. After all, you want to know that whoever you choose, you’re actually going to get on with them, right?

If you want to get to know us a bit better, drop us a line to arrange a call. In the meantime, feel free to have a look around the site, and why not connect with us on LinkedIn?

Have you ever had a project that involved some sort of writing, but had to ask yourself, “What kind of writer do I need?” Or have you thought you were asking the right person, only to find that’s not actually what they do?

Every now and then, someone will ask me if I can write them a press release or whether I’d be able to write the content for their social media feed. While technically the answer is yes, in reality I’m generally not the person they’re looking for. Key differences separate a copywriter from other types of writers.

If you have a writing project and you’re not sure who it is you need to hire in to do it, this guide will give you a nudge in the right direction.

TL:DR

I need someone to write a press release

A press release is literally that: information released to the press i.e. the media. It might be an announcement about a new product launch or an award nomination or a merger or an exciting new hire. Whatever the case, the idea is to get coverage in whatever media outlet you’re targeting. While a copywriter should be perfectly capable of writing a decent press release – especially if they have a journalistic background – the writing of the press release itself is only a small part of the PR process. Good PR professionals not only understand how the media works (and it’s a funny old world, very different from most business), they are also super star networkers and have the kind of industry connections that can get your story seen by the right people.

You need: a PR professional

I need someone to write posts for social media

Like in the PR example above, writing posts for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on is just a small part of effectively using social media for your business. After all, it shouldn’t be about just pushing out content – much more important is engagement. That means it’s not simply a case of crafting a few snappy one liners and leaving it at that. A good social media manager will know not just what to write but how and when and to whom, and they’ll combine great copy with images, video and other media.

You need: a social media manager

Our copywriting and consulting services - follow link to learn more

I need someone to check my writing

If you’ve written a piece of content yourself – perhaps a white paper or an e-book – it’s a good idea to have a second pair of eyes glance over your work. And though it might be tempting to run it past a colleague, it’s definitely better if those eyes belong to a professional. But you don’t necessarily need a writer for this job. While a writer or even an editor could be useful you want help shaping and developing that piece of work, if what you’re actually looking for is someone to check spelling and grammar, key facts and overall sense and flow, then a proofreader is the best person for you.

You need: a proofreader

I need someone to write my marketing plan

Writing a marketing plan is less about great writing and much more about strategy. It’s an internal document, after all. Because your marketing plan should contain everything from your client personas to your pricing strategy, it’s not something someone can really do for you. However, if you don’t have a marketing manager or team you can work with internally, then a marketing strategist will be able to help you clarify the key points – after which they can certainly write up the marketing plan document itself if you wish.

You need: a marketing strategist

I need someone to write my newsletter

This could be something a copywriter would handle for you. It’s not all that different to website content. Certainly if all you’re looking for is the written text for your newsletter, then that’s fine – and we do look after newsletters for a few clients. But if you want the whole thing designed up too, it may be beyond the scope of a writer, depending on their skill set. And if you’re getting into full service email marketing – including strategy, delivery and analytics – then a specialist email marketing agency is almost certainly your best bet.

You need: an email marketing specialist

For most other things that you might need written for your business, you’ll find a copywriter should be able to help. Our core service offering covers website copy, blogging and video / animation scripts. But we also help our clients with everything from leaflets and brochures to email templates to LinkedIn profiles.

If you still aren’t sure who you need to help you with your project, let us know. If we can’t do it ourselves, we’ll almost certainly be able to refer you on to someone who can.