Writing sales copy is an often under-appreciated art. Although many companies decide to write sales and website copy in-house, here are 7 reasons why you should consider hiring an external sales copywriter.
What is sales copywriting?
Sales copywriting is essentially any text written with the aim of getting customers to buy from you.
Sales copywriting can come in many forms such as website text, product or service descriptions, image text, articles, blogs and so on.
Why can't I write my own sales copy?
As a sales copywriter, I have heard clients state many times that 'I know my product/service better than anyone. Why shouldn't I be the one to write my sales copy?'
It's true that you are at the heart of your business. You know your customers, your price points, your market and your brand. So, surely you would be the best person to write your sales copy, right?
Wrong.
Here are 7 reasons why you should consider hiring a specialised sales copywriter.
You might be too close to your business
The most common problem that I see when copywriting for clients is that they are usually too close to their business to be able to write effective sales copy.
Clients are very passionate about their businesses, products or services - and this is great! I love to work with clients who love what they do. But that passion can also create a problem - they often want to cram in as much information as possible about their products and services. They often overload the reader with information because they are so keen to present all of the features and benefits of their product/service.
And this isn't ideal. Readers are more likely to click away from their page if information isn't presented in a clear, concise and easy-to-understand way.
You might not know your customer as well as you think
Another common issue I find when working on sales copywriting for clients is that they haven't undertaken sufficient market research before preparing sales copy.
Business owners often know their product or service incredibly well and therefore assume that they can easily talk about the benefits provided to the customer. But conducting market research and actually talking to current and target customers will often highlight benefits that business owners might not have considered.
A good sales copywriter should be able to undertake and consider the results of customer research in order to inform their sales copywriting.
A sales copywriter gets the basics right every time
A good sales copywriter is able to get the basics of copywriting right every time.
Sales copywriters are inherently detail-oriented people. They're used to scanning their copy with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that there are no errors, factual or grammatical. This means you don't have to worry about grammar or spelling errors, or inconsistencies in tone of voice.
Sales copywriters are well-practiced at this, which means they might pick up on things you're likely to miss.
A sales copywriter is highly trained
My clients often tell me that they are good writers, which I would not doubt. Nevertheless, good sales copywriting is a specialist skill which is achieved from years of training and practice.
The 'rules' of sales copywriting are very different to how we learned to write at school. This is because the way that potential customers read and engage with sales copywriting is not the same as how we would, for example, read a book.
Sales copywriting favours shorter sentences, which present only one main idea. This is so that potential customers can easily read and follow information, ideas and concepts.
Sales copywriters know that they are competing with other brands for the attention of readers. With the average attention span of readers averaging at around 8 seconds, sales copywriters know that they have limited time to hook and engage the reader. They will therefore be using all of the tools and tricks at their disposal to make sure this happens.
A sales copywriter saves you time
One obvious reason to hire a sales copywriter is the time-saving benefit that they provide.
For anyone who particularly wants to develop their copywriting skills, reading up on this subject and progressively improving and mastering their technique would enable sales copy to be developed in-house. But this takes time away from running your business.
Working with a sales copywriter frees up your time to focus on day-to-day business activities. Your sales copywriter can work away behind the scenes, providing you with finished copy for review.
A sales copywriter understands the customer buying journey
A good sales copywriter understands the psychology of the customer buying journey.
Sales copywriters won't just be thinking about your product or service. They will also be thinking about the journey your customers will take before they are ready to purchase.
There are many ways that sales copywriters do this. At Cambray, we use the AIDICA psychological framework, which is proven to feed information to readers in an order which increases the likelihood of sales copy conversion.
Want to learn more about this? Read our article on how we use AIDICA in sales copywriting at Cambray.
Good sales copywriters write with SEO in mind
Good sales copywriters will always consider SEO when writing any web content.
Whilst over-optimising for SEO can penalise your website, good sales copywriters know that writing with SEO in mind will increase the amount of traffic to your site.
Sales copywriters trained in SEO will base any content they write around properly researched keywords to make sure that your content ranks well in search engines.
For more information on how we write for SEO at Cambray, check out our SEO article series.
How can we help?
Cambray are a specialist digital marketing company based in Cheltenham.
When it comes to digital marketing and copywriting, we really know our stuff! Our copywriters all work to persuasive psychological buying frameworks and undertake market and customer research before writing any copy.
Why not get in touch for more information on sales copywriting, or to hire one of our trained copywriters?
Contact us today to receive a free 20-minute consultation. Alternatively, fill out the contact form below to receive a call from one of our experts.