If you’re struggling to work out your tax bill, or you’re trying to sell your home, what do you do?
That’s right, you hire an accountant or a solicitor.
If you’re unable to do something, because you don’t have that skill, you hire someone who does. The more difficult the skill, the more you have to pay.
Now, if you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that I believe the content of your website is more important than how it looks, and the words are the most important part (although good design is very important too). Let’s look at an example to illustrate my point:
Check it out before you continue to read this post.
What do you notice about this website? That’s right, it’s ugly.
It may surprise you to learn that this website is widely successful. It has a steady 12 to 14 million unique visitors a month. And, amazingly, is second only to Google for driving traffic to news websites, beating Facebook and Twitter with their hundreds of millions of users.
But, it looks like a school kid’s computer programming homework from 1989. All it has is delicious, bare-boned headlines that just asked to be clicked.
Do you see my point?
I bet you wouldn’t think twice about hiring a web designer for your website. But have you ever considered hiring a writer for the all important content? Probably not.
Yet a good writer can have a more positive affect on the success of your website than any other contributor to your online marketing strategy.
Why do people not think to hire a writer? I think the answer is quite simple – everybody can write. If you need your brake discs changed, you’re going to have a heck of a job doing it yourself, so you hire a mechanic. But you can write, so why pay someone to do it for you?
Well (as a writer), let me tell you. Writing to sell – which is what you’re doing with your website content (and your brochures, emails, proposals, flyers, adverts etc) – is a skill. It’s so much more than putting sentences together that we couldn’t possibly cover it in one blog post. You’ll just have to trust me that hiring a writer is one of the smartest business decisions you’ll make.
The best copywriters in the world are paid fortunes. Why? Because they make their clients fortunes. If I can make you £100,000 in sales from my writing, would you balk at paying me £3,000 to achieve it. Of course not.
So remember: an accountant can save you money, a solicitor can protect your money, but a good copywriter will make you money.
