It takes a lot of work to get copywriting clients and keep them happy.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll kill yourself trying to reel in more clients and get burned out pretty fast.
However, there is a way you can keep clients and get them to help you find even more clients.
It does take some work, but it is well worth the effort if you do it right.
Once you integrate this idea into your business, it will become second nature to you, and you’ll attract far more clients than you can believe.
In this post, I’m going to tell you how to get copywriting clients and keep them happy so that you’ll be able to stay busy and profitable.
OK?
Let’s get started…
Get Copywriting Clients by Selecting Them First
I know this idea may be contrary to what you already believe about client attraction, but you must do this.
You want to weed out all of the low-balling, broke, or clueless prospects.
That may sound harsh, but once you work yourself dead for peanuts or beat your head against the door trying to convince them their marketing sucks, you won’t feel bad at all.
Whenever you have a meeting with a potential client, and you ask them what kind of marketing budget or plan they have, watch their reaction. If they look shocked or clueless, be polite and quickly move on. You don’t want to waste your precious time with them.
Look, if they aren’t marketing their business, they probably aren’t making enough money to pay you well.
Do This to Weed Out Bad Clients
So how do you find out if you have a good or a bad client at the onset?
The best way to get copywriting clients worthy of your time and efforts is to interview them. You will want to have a rehearsed, well-thought-out interview process at the onset.
In this new day and age of Covid threats, more interviews are on Zoom or Skype than ever. So, you probably won’t have the advantage of actually seeing what your client’s business looks like or even how he or she dresses. If you do a face-to-face live interview and they don’t look like they have two cents to rub together you will know who you are dealing with.
Not only that, but if you meet your client at their office and they don’t have any shelves with marketing books or something that would indicate that they are focused on marketing, you need to leave the area. Place your marketing materials on their desk and leave.
They will do nothing more than waste your time.
True Story About a Clueless Client
Years ago, I had a prospective client who needed all kinds of advertising, and he wanted me to write for him. He had a catering business that was doing well, and he wanted me to help him move his spare rib catering business to the”next level.”
So, I met him at his office and interviewed him.
When I asked him what kind of marketing he was doing to get his customers, he said, “By word of mouth.”
I then asked him if he had any marketing materials at all or what books he had read, and he said, “None.”
He had no plans or ideas on how he was going to build his business. He had a great product that everyone liked, but he didn’t have a clue or even a slight interest in marketing.
Working with him was a horrible uphill battle. When I asked him what kind of marketing materials he wanted to implement, he had no clue. I had to explain everything to him.
You can’t write for someone like that.
It is impossible.
Since he didn’t know anything about marketing, he didn’t understand the value I brought to the table as a copywriter. He wanted to pay me peanuts for coming up with a marketing plan for him while I did all the writing.
And since he never advertised anything, he didn’t know how much these kinds of services cost.
If you get a prospect like this, run. Don’t waste your time. Get the heck out of Dodge.
There are reasons why some people have unsuccessful businesses.
As a copywriter, you won’t have time to educate or fix that problem.
The Over-Delivery Method – The Best Way to Get Copywriting Clients and Keep Them Banging on Your Door for More
Once you get copywriting clients, you want to make sure you blow their minds.
How do you do that?
By over-delivering and giving them services and value the others haven’t considered.
Don’t Focus on Just the Writing Part
There are usually three parts to marketing a business: market, media, and message. Don’t just write the copy; you will want to focus on the media and market, too.
If you work with clients on all three of those elements, you’ll impress them because most copywriters focus on just writing the copy. So, keep your mind and services on all 3 of them.
A Good Example of Changing the Media
For example, if a company hires you to write a blog post for their company’s website, you could easily beat their previous writers. All you’d have to do is change the formatting and focus on better SEO tactics.
I’ve seen excellent companies who have good content, but their formatting is all wrong. People won’t read large blocks of information, so sentences must be spaced differently for easier reading.
Also, insert links early in the piece you are writing so that readers will stay on the blog longer, thus reducing the site’s bounce rate.
See how that works?
An Example of Focusing on Market
If you had to write a direct mail piece for a business that gave retirement advice to people in the medical field, you could easily beat the last copywriter. You can do that by simply segmenting the letters into different niche groups.
Not everyone is the same in the medical community. Some people are nurses, others are doctors, some dentists, etc.
You could easily personalize the letters and content by specifically addressing those different professionals. You could also change the envelope, lift notes, salutations, and copy in the letter to fit those individuals.
If you change the letter from nurses to dentists, you are using a whole different kind of language. Dentists have their hands in people’s mouths all day, so you will want to change your copy to focus on their businesses and problems.
If You’ve Followed My Advice So Far…
Remember earlier how I told you not to waste your time on clients who don’t understand marketing? Well, here’s another perfect example of why you’ll want to work with people who use and understand marketing.
Let’s say that you get a client who sells quilting machines. (My wife has one of these, and they start at about $15,000 and go up from there.)
If you are unfamiliar with this niche and get an opportunity to write for it, here’s how you get up to speed fast.
Step 1: Interview the owner. Tell them you need to have a series of interviews about their company, product, and customers. Interview the crap out of them. Interview their employees too and if their spouses are involved in the business, talk to them as well.
Step 2: Ask them for all of the marketing materials they have used in the past. Also, ask them for all of the advertisements sent to them from companies in their niche.
If they have been in the business of selling these machines, they will have loads of direct mail pieces sent to them that you could draw out all kinds of information. Ask them for any direct mail sales letters that they still have, too.
Step 3: Go to all of their local competitors and check them out. In the quilting machine business, you can go to different local vendors and try out their machines. They will also give you their marketing materials if you ask for them.
These steps will establish you as someone of high value. You will be far more knowledgeable and professional than someone who only writes.
Quite honestly, it’s hard to beat another copywriter’s control especially if they write good copy. Besides that, there are other factors that may have led to a higher response. Possibly, the company had a much more aggressive direct mail campaign, or they did it during a high buying season, like Christmas.
3 Ways to Increase Your Clients Bottom Line and Make Them Love You
If you really want to get copywriting clients and keep them, you must constantly bring more value to them.
Here are 3 ways you can do that again and again.
#1 Know and Use Their Market
You want to know what your client knows about the people who do most of the buying from them. The other thing you will want to know is what they don’t know about their client or customer base.
Here are some things the client may have overlooked about the people that do the most business with them:
- What geographical area are they from?
- Age range?
- What is their ethnicity?
- Sexual orientation (male, female, etc.)
- Are there characteristics or interests like mustaches, tattoos, sports addicts, etc?
You need to remind your client, that the closer you can get to these specifics in your copy, the more it will resonate with their prospects and readers.
Once you know who you are writing to, you can change the voice of your writing. The voice and language you’ll use to address skateboarders are far different than the words you’ll use on accountants.
#2 Gathering Intelligence on the Emotions of Your Market
Usually, when you ask a client about why people buy from them they hand you a packet of B.S. They’ll tell you that people buy from them because their product is the best or cheapest and that they love the features.
So, the way you handle this problem is you do more research on your clients’ prospects. What you’re looking for is what the client hates because you can make your client a crusader against that.
You don’t want to solve the problem of what they hate, because that isn’t good enough. You want to have your client be a leader against the problem.
For example, the Dyson vacuum guy invented a fan that sells for around $300. A fan, for gosh sakes! His crusade was that the device circulated the air so that it was a lot more comfortable.
The words in his TV ads were, “Traditional fans beat the air, but our bladeless fans are quieter and circulate the air better.”
I laughed at that ad so hard, I almost peed my pants.
So, you want to find some angle about the emotional state your client is experiencing and run with it. Some people hate being overweight because they can’t fit into their clothes. Some might just feel uncomfortable, others it might be an attraction thing. Whatever the reason, you need to find the main reason and run with it.
You may have to interview the client’s past customers to find this out.
#3 Check out the Competition
You will want to who your client’s competitors are and what they are doing or not doing. If your client is selling website design services and your competitors have lousy customer service, it’s a no-brainer to help your clients be their competition.
Also, you’ll want to look at the indirect competition in the marketplace as well. If your client has a fish and chips restaurant the competition won’t only be the other fish and chips restaurants.
The pizza and hamburger joints are also competitors, and it would be great to know what kind of marketing tactics they are using. (Especially if they’ve got a full parking lot every night.)
Conclusion
The way to get copywriting clients and keep them happy takes a lot of work, but you’ll have a lot more success if you follow these ideas and steps.
No matter what you do, learn to over-deliver all the time, because about 95% of the copywriters only write. If you have the time, take some courses on search engine optimization (SEO), or setting up WordPress pages. I have learned to do extra tasks like that and having that extra knowledge helped me get more clients.
Please leave a comment below if you have any ideas or ways copywriters can get clients. It would really make my day.