Copywriting Agency vs Content Writing Agency – How To Make The Right Choice
But Blaze, you are charging so much! I know guys from India who can do it at half the price.
Oh.
I know a few people who are too lazy to pull their socks off before going to bed.
And I know guys from India who can do Sock Pulling-as-a-Service – at half the price.
Prospects are just acting the way prospects do.
It is you alone who has to decide who you are and what you sell.
Do you sell iPhones?
or
Do you sell Oppo-s?
If you want to grow a successful copywriting agency, or any business for that matter you have to determine who is the right client for you.
You have to pick your clients the same way clients would pick you.
Picking the wrong type of clients will prevent you from scaling, cause burnout and destroy your business before it even takes off.
Here at inkblot Media, we distinguish between 3 types of prospective clients:
The Ok-Ok type
Prospects who ask to have their content copyedited for syntax, grammar, and punctuation.
Be a bit cautious before accepting this type of client. What he basically says is – I will give you my draft, see if it looks okay, whether it is grammatically correct.
Best copywriters will tell you that it is extremely difficult to edit and work on a pre-existing draft. It is way better to start a writeup from scratch rather than working on a preexisting one.
Same is the case with programmers, give them someone else’s code repository to keep building on and watch them flee in horror.
These clients basically request you to do a secretarial type of work for them.
Which is okay as long as they don’t expect you to do it at a secretarial price.
The ideal type
A company that is releasing a large amount of text to the world, text that is not written by a native speaker, and when the writer recognizes his English is flawed.
Manufacturing companies are the most obvious prospect here because most of them have global operations.
Followed by financial organizations.
Followed by technology companies.
Followed by individuals who understand the importance of personal brand-building through opinion leadership and the opportunities it unlocks.
They give you a content piece, which can be a blog post, a social media blurb, a headline, a newsletter, you fix it and you send it back with no need for further revisions.
But you need to have a pre-agreed upon brief. Make sure that you have a readymade template for the client to share his brief.
The brief template can be something as simple as I need something written on the topic of XYZ, which will have to mention X Y and Z, at this length, by this date.
This will work in most of cases.
The most ideal client.
These are true gemstones. The sort of clients that trust your work and reputation so much that their brief contains only one sentence:
Please don’t let us embarrass ourselves.
That’s all they ask from you.
How does this look in practice?
They say, this is our product, this is our market, now please help us tell a story.
Story.
This is the keyword.
This is what makes these clients so wonderful.
They understand.
They do not seek content writing agencies. They don’t look for someone to write blog posts for them.
They seek storytellers. That’s all they know.
Whether the ideal solution to them is a white paper or a sales page or a founder interview is something they do not concern you with. You alone have to decide on the technicalities, the format, and the structure.
It is your task is to deliver a compelling story and to choose the right format.
What is the essence of a compelling story?
Your ability to look past the product and back to the level of humans.
Good story means that the product comes second and the user comes first. The user becomes the protagonist. You as a copywriter create a narrative, a natural bond between the hero and the product in his hands.
This is the difference between content writers and storytellers
Content writers write content;
Storytellers develop a narrative.
Content writers talk about products;
Storytellers talk about humans.
Content writers are dirt cheap;
Storytellers aren’t.
See? Suddenly content writing and copywriting don’t look synonymous anymore.
How much should I charge?
If you cannot establish your positioning and your pricing accordingly, use the following diagram:
You are either Fast and Cheap or Fast and Good or Good and Cheap. You cannot be all three.
You as a client should be clear which one of these you are willing to pay for.
Charge accordingly.
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