Five years ago, I wrote copy for a big, respected, and wildly successful online business.
The people were great and it was an awesome learning experience. But we had two big problems that made for a stressful work environment and cost the company ~$180,000. (Not to mention hurt their sales.)
I’ll share what they were and how to solve them. So you won’t have to spend a fortune looking for and hiring copy help.
Instead, you’ll quickly build a copy team that cranks out high-converting copy right off the bat.
A copy team that loves working with you and doesn’t cost you a fortune.
Problem #1: “We need copy ASAP!”
The company I worked with was small but growing fast. We created new products every year and did launches every month. There was a lot going on.
Despite our planning, we constantly found ourselves needing copy fast.
Either the copy we had needed to be re-written… or we changed direction and needed something fresh.
So we regularly found ourselves finishing up webinars and emails they day they went live.
I remember one day we had four writers up until midnight finishing a sales page the day before it went live. And this was for a multiple 6-figure promotion.
Now the main hidden causes for all this chaos was this:
The copy that the writers (including me) put out wasn’t as good as what the CEO could write himself.
You see, at the time, I was new to copy. So were the other writers. The CEO had been doing this for a decade. So even though we all worked our butts off to get good, it was still a step below what the CEO could do.
Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of companies face this problem.
You hire a new, less experienced writer. But you find the copy isn’t up to your standard. So you have to spend a lot of time on calls training them. Or you go back and forth with a thousand rounds of edits.
You may try to solve the problem by hiring a more experienced writer. Though there’s no guarantee they’ll be better. And even if they do a great job it may not be worth it. And if they are everything hoped for in a copywriter, who is to say they won’t leave in a month for more money or to do their own thing?
The fundamental problem here is this:
Most companies rely on the writers to create copy.
But a better way is to have a a system that ensures anyone you hire will write awesome copy. (Like this one.)
The closest thing most companies have to this is onboarding. And this can be sparse.
The onboarding at this company for me wasn’t much. It was basically, “Here’s a course with dozens of hours worth of training. Take a day to go through it and then outline a launch funnel by Tuesday.”
This was followed by me Googling “Launch funnel” because back then I had no clue what that meant.
Once I started writing, there was no system, no guidance, nothing. I just had to apply what I learned from copy books/courses.
But this is a big problem. Because different copywriters have different styles and methods. So it can be a lot of trial and error to blend what they learned with the way you and your business like to do things.
The takeaway here: You can save a ton of time and headache if you have a system for producing high-converting copy quickly.
A system you can plug any writer into and get them up-to-speed fast. So they can crank out great emails, sales pages, etc. right off the bat.
Without this system, writers were stressed and burning out. And the CEO felt like he was wasting his money.
Bad situation all around.
And it lead to a very expensive problem…
Problem #2: Massive turnover with copywriters.
When I was at this company we went through about 6 copywriters about 8 months.
The guy I was hired with was fired within a month.
The senior writer who was there before me quit the next month.
We had three other writers come and go within the next 2 months or so.
I left a little while after. And the remaining writers left a few months after me because they could make more money elsewhere.
Let’s do some quick math. Studies show the cost of hiring is generally 6-9 months’ worth of salary at that position. (Because of all the time spent looking for people, interviews, training, etc.)
If a writer makes $60k/year, that’s $30k. Multiply that by 6 writers and you’re shelling out $180,000.
And at the end of all that, they still had to look for writers…
So why was there so much turnover? It goes back to:
- Copywriters delivering subpar copy
- Copywriters getting burnt out from the constant “We need this done yesterday!” directions from the higher ups.
(Funny thing was, in the beginning, the fact we worked a ton and were up late writing felt like a badge of honor. Like we had the heart to hack it and others didn’t. But doing that for months on end gets pretty old. As a writer, you realize this ain’t the only game in town. There are other companies doing meaningful work that pay better, appreciate you, and will let you have a life.)
So to recap, the problems companies face are:
- Needing copy fast
- Getting copywriters to create great copy right out the gate
Solve those two problems, and you can avoid cycling through writers or having to write everything yourself.
How do you solve these problems? You just need one thing.
How to save time, money, and stress creating a kickass copy team
As I touched on earlier, the one thing you need here is a system any writer can use to generate great copy right out the gate.
That means a system that shows your writer:
- Who your customers are — What are their days are like? What are their hidden pains, desires, fears, etc? And what are the words they use to describe all that? (It can take your writer weeks to learn this on their own. If you have a messaging book with all this information already done and ready to go, you’ll save a lot of time, money, and headache.)
- What makes your product/service special — What parts of your product/service they should focus on and how should they talk about it so people get excited to buy it?
- A bank full of quotes/stories from your customers. So your copywriters can write compelling copy that hits the right emotions and engages the reader
- Customized templates and formulas that fit your business and copy needs. So writers can take all that info about your customers and product and quickly create great emails, FB ads, sales pages, webinars, landing pages — whatever you need.
After working for this company, I spent another 4 years as a copywriter working for dozens of great businesses.
None of them had a system like this.
In fact, a system like this didn’t exist.
So I created one.
I’ve been using it with clients. This way, they don’t have to be me several hundred dollars for something like a simple email. Instead, they can hire someone for $30/hour and get really solid copy.
The system is called the Buyer Multiplier System. Because it’s all about taking the words and stories from your best customers and creating copy that attracts people like them. It’s a system you can use yourself or hand to your copywriter to get high-converting copy fast.