Copywriting

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Oh how much impact you can create when you demonstrate intuitive understanding of your target group and think imaginatively.

As he exited a mid morning lecture in Cambridge, a friendly face greeted my student son with this Starbucks-scale chocolate chip cookie on a card bearing the message 'You'll Find There's More To Life at KPMG'.

Now you might think the message could have been sharper. But the empathy shown with the budget-watching and peckish teenagers KPMG would like to have feeling good about them as a prospective employer could not.

And if you fancy a competition...what might have made a better copy line to accompany the cookie? Submit your suggestions below as comments and pop your email address on. Best one by the end of Feb wins  the most impressive chocolate chip cookie I can find.

Copywriting fees

Working out how much you should quote for a job never loses its intrigue, no matter how long you do it.

Quote too much, and you're likely to lose the project to a lower pitching competitor. Quote too little, and you may well secure the project but find the rate at which you earn significantly lower than your target.

Many initial enquiries are accompanied by the request to quote a 'day rate'. The problem with this lies in the assumption that you're happy to sell every day, day after day, at the same price, regardless of what you're being asked to do or for whom you're being asked to do it. While there are, of course, people who do this, it's always seemed to me to severely limit the amount of money you're likely to earn.

Other enquiries ask for quotes on a 'price per word' or 'per thousand words' basis. This is a journalism practice, the failing of which is that it doesn't allow you to reflect the work involved in any individual project properly. There are jobs which end up 3 or 4 words long, but on which very handsome fees can be earned, while other tasks running to a few thousand words command fees significantly lower than their word count.

Effective quoting is, of course, a matter of experience. As there are generally no bought-in costs for the writer to factor into his consideration, it's simply a matter of judging what the job 'feels' as though the client will be prepared to pay for it. I'm guessing that most writers start off by applying their own, notional 'day rate' to the amount of time they think the project will take, and then tailor this using gut feel, to the kind of client they're quoting for. Can a 3 day task sold to Microsoft be priced slightly higher than a 3 day task sold to a local hairdresser? You'd think so (though the answer is not always 'yes'). 

The longer we're in business, however, the better most of us get at sensing the right level at which to quote.

Over the years, I've developed a sort of algorithm for quoting with. 

I calculate by allocating values to each of 4 factors and then multiplying them together: AxBxCxD = Fee

A) Number of days I consider it'll take me to do the work

Estimate  the time required to do the task. Allow proper time to do the work, so you don't later resent working on a task you've underestimated to begin with and end up rushing things or being grumpy about revisions.

B) Who the client is

I charge a little more when working for large corporations, and a little less with entrepreneurs, small businesses and NFPs. I do this because it's my experience that the key concern of large corporations is having the job well written and professionally managed, and in return for that a fair professional fee will generally be agreeable; whereas to smaller concerns fee will generally be more critical in the decision as to where to place the project.

C) The complexity of the work

Some tasks require simply what I consider to be straightforward copywriting skills. There will be lots of writers out there who could do a creditable job on it. I charge less when quoting this kind of task than when the project calls for greater experience and more sophisticated skills which are harder to find in the marketplace. 

D) The likely value of the work to the client

If the project involves providing copy for a transient need within the client's business, I apply a lower factor than if it involves writing or developing something which by its nature will be central to their marketing or brand position for a number of years to come. Similarly, if the work is to be used for broadcast media distribution (TV commercials, for example, or national press advertising campaigns), I'll incorporate a higher factor.

If you like the model and would like to try it out, you just need to devise your own ratio in which to combine the values, and your own scale for rating them. 

(I'm keeping mine private, but you could easily work out your own.)

Once you've got the ratio right for you, you have a method of building a quote which reflects your intellectual endeavour and the true commercial situation, rather than simply treating you as if you had a meter on the side of your head.

Auld Acquaintance

New Year's Eve 2008. And cheery as we may all be between now and midnight, tomorrow morning will dawn soon enough bringing with it the Year of the Further Disintegrating Economy.

Only a fool would offer their view of what the year ahead holds in store as anything more than a musing. There are simply too many variables, and too many normally fixed lumps of the earth's crust moving in flux for anyone at all to predict with any confidence what lies ahead.

But business will go on, albeit without MFI, Woolworths, Adams and __________________ (add your own favourite defunct financial services provider here).

We all need to eat, clothe ourselves and keep roofs over heads. Consequently, people will do what they have always done in troubled times: use their imaginations, ingenuity and initiative to breathe life into new ventures, steer apparently doomed projects around the scariest of hairpin bends and show a resourcefulness otherwise often absent from UK business.

For we band of copywriting brothers (and sisters), it's a huge opportunity. Businesses need to market themselves harder in this economy than in one as bullish as a walk down Pamplona High Street.

New customers need to be enticed.

Old customers need to be updated.

Suppliers need to be encouraged and reassured.

Investors need accurate and regular information.

The media need to fill columns (both digital and printed).

Copywriting has previously proved its value through the French and Russian Revolutions, 2 World Wars, the Great Depression, the General Strike, the rise and fall of Communism and, in recent times, the bursting of the DotCom bubble.

It would be nuts to think it doesn't have a role to play now.

I wish you a happy, healthy and successful 2009.

Seeing how your copy looks

I write visually, and almost always have done.

If someone asks me to rewrite their website, I take a screenshot of the site, import it into an editorial layout program, block out the existing content, approximate the font, size, leading and measure being applied by the stylesheet, and then begin writing.

Why?

Because it helps me get the copy spot on if I can 'see' it in the actual context in which it will be used.

I do this whether I'm writing a site, a sales letter, or a print item like a brochure. (In truth, if I'm doing a site from scratch, I'll often draft the copy straight into an HTML editor in an approximation of how I think the page might end up.)

Now this works for me (and for my clients, to whom I generally provide the 'copy visual' as we call it, as a part of my deliverable, along with the .doc copysheet which is the actual deliverable as per my Terms and Conditions).

But am I alone in doing this? Does everyone else just write in Word, or similar, without needing to 'feel' the copy in situ, or are there lots of other 'visual' writers out there?

Ten common projects

No idea why anyone would want it, but here's a list of 10 really typical projects which might come a freelance copywriter's way over the course of a year. Not all writers would take on all of them, however, and I daresay the same list drawn up by a writer with an editorial background (mine is marketing) might have more 'articles' and 'papers' on it. Bet someone's interested to see it, though!

1. A small to medium sized sofware or financial services company's website.
2. A direct marketing mail pack, consisiting of a 1pp A4 sales letter, plus a 1/3 A4 6pp (or A5 4pp) leaflet.
3. A US-style 'internet marketing' 10pp direct mail sales letter.
4. A large quantity (say 200 pieces each 300-500 words log) of search optimised copy around one subject. Very often travel related.
5. A 12 or 16 page copy-light corporate brochure.
6. A very copy-light brochure for a specific property development.
7. A large quantity (often thousands) of pieces, each 300-500 words long, to describe every individual product in an e-commerce store's database.
8. A long-copy web landing page, capable of converting traffic created by an email campaign or by Adwords.
9. One, or a campaign of, HTML email/s.
10 A press release.

If you had only 10 minutes to become a copywriter...

...then you would be well advised to spend them reading George Orwell's magnificent 'Politics and the English Language', 61 years old this year, yet still with more to teach us then any amount of copywriting books.

Here's a link to it.

If you've never read it, read, print and read again every week.

If you've read it long since, then treat yourself to a reread.

Copywriting Courses

Every few weeks I receive an enquiry from someone considering taking a copywriting course with something called 'The Institute of Copywriters'. The enquiry will usually ask simply whether I can recommend this course.

Now 'The Institute of Copywriting' is worthy of some scrutiny, not least as an exercise in copywriting! The use of the word 'Institute' suggests that this is some kind of 'industry body', and the 'Institute's' website states that "The Institute is wholly financed by its members, from its courses and subscriptions, from lectures and published material."

Note the use of the word 'members', if you will.

An innocent reader is thus very likely to feel they are entrusting their training to an association of copywriting peers and elders.

Innocent reader, beware!

Knowing for a fact that there is no such assembly of copywriting yeomen (not in the UK, at least), I wrote to the Institute of Copywriting to verify that they are, in fact, actually just a distance learning company, whose business is selling distance learning courses. To claim to have members, rather than customers or students, is again, I'd suggest, calculated to imbue the 'Institute' with some unwarranted gravitas.

Well, I'm pleased to say that the Institute of Copywriting was 100% honest and straightforward in its reply. "Yes", its Customer Service Coordinator wrote, "You are quite right in your assumption."

So. Not an industry body, but actually a company in Somerset, called The Learning Institute, selling distance learning courses. (The same company also sells 'Diploma' courses on 'Garden Design', 'Personal Training' and being an 'Image Consultant').

So then I asked about the Diploma and Accreditation which the Institute of Copywriters awards to those completing its course.

"Is this ratified by any UK organisation authorised for the issue of academic qualifications", I enquired. "Or is this simply a qualification ‘of your own’?"

Again, with commendable clarity, the Institute confirmed that "The diploma is ours."

So. Now I am able to offer an informed view on the The Institute of Copywriting and its Copywriting Diploma course.

1) This isn't an industry body. It's a distance learning business. The Learning Institute (the company behind The Institute of Copywriting) is, however, properly accredited by the ODLQC, the UK body which monitors distance learning organisations.

2) The Diploma issued by the Institute has absolutely no academic or professional validity recognised by any UK authority licensed to regulate qualifications. Writing Dip C (Inst CW) after your name, as the Institute tells you you will be entitled to do, is about as meaningful as appending your starsign.

3) But...the 'Institute of Copywriting' course does offer what appears to be a reasonable introduction to copywriting, on a distance learning basis. There's no knowing how good the 'professional copywriters' reviewing your assignments will be, but that's pretty much the same in any educational situation. There appears to be a reasonable raft of course material (though some of it looks a bit like padding to me) but, in the end, the cost of the course seems quite modest.

Would I reccommend it to you? Well...if you have some commercial experience of your own, particularly marketing experience, and have done some copywriting already, then maybe not. I suspect that you probably know enough to be going on with, and what you really need is more real experience. Having said that, you may find the Institute's course's exercises of some use as practice. On balance, I'd probably buy 2 or 3 good books and save my money.

If, however, you have no experience, and no marketing background, and the few hundred pounds charged for the course isn't a big deal to you, then my guess is that you might find it a useful 'first taste' of copywriting, with at least some infrastructure to get you into the swing.

Just be aware, though, that you are buying books and distance learning tutoring. You are NOT buying a professional qualification, nor the learning of some august professional body of copywriters; which entity does not, as I have said, exist.

The best background for being a copywriter

The problem with academe is that as 3 years of undergraduate life draw to a close most people are left trying to 'match' their degree subject to something from which they might attempt to fashion a career and even, with a bit of luck, earn a living.

So the question of what subject one would need to have studied to be a copywriter comes up quite a lot.

The good news for all those of you with BAs in Nordic Studies, Agriculture or Religion with Mathematics is that just about anything could give you a fine grounding for a career as a freelance copywriter.

The bad news for those with 3 years of Lake Poets, Chaucer and Lawrence behind you is that, so far as I can see, English won't actively give you any advantage over anyone else and may, in truth, hinder you.

Copywriting isn't about a knowledge of literature, nor even a fastidious grasp of English grammar.

Copywriting is a business skill, crossed with a fundamental life skill; that of persuasion. (A law degree, with its grounding in constructing an argument, often provides an excellent start.)

There's a great test, however, that you can apply to yourself to gauge whether a career in copywriting is likely to be for you. Imagine you're at a party and someone introduces you to their brother. You ask what he does. He says he has a business importing fitness equipment and selling it to private sports shops. The question is, have you blanked over before he got to the bit about the shops, and found yourself making your excuses and moving on? Or are you curious to know how it works, which countries he imports from, whether he travels there, whether the internet and big sports 'shed' retailers are killing off the small retailers he sells to, whether he's a fitness freak himself, what the best piece of equipment to use at the gym is if you've only got 20 minutes and so on?

Freelance copywriting is a business service, and to make a living from it you need an interest in, and understanding of, the business of business.

Any subject you've studied may help you a little, and is unlikely to hinder you any. But a fascination with business is imperative.

Taking the jump

Jumping off things is hard. Twas ever thus, and if you have a job, but would love to leave it and try your luck writing copy full time, the question of how to do it is a tough one.

The first thing you have to do, in any career or lifestyle change, is look at your situation, and most particularly your overhead, and see what's immovable. We all have a monthly need to satisfy, and you should know what yours is before upsetting your current apple cart. That's not to say you shouldn't upset it, but you do need to know what's likely to fall off, and how you're going to attempt to pick it up.

If you're very young, in a first job after uni, let's say, your overhead may well be quite modest: not much more than rent, a bit of pocket money and your food and clothing. In that case, you're in quite a good position. Your cost base is low, your current income is low, so what you need to make in the first few months from copywriting isn't too daunting. Daunting, maybe, but not too daunting.

If, on the other hand, you're 35, have a hefty mortgage, a toddler, a second child on the way, and are supporting a partner who is either having the second child, or having a nervous breakdown thinking about you having the second child, you're likely to have a serious committment every month, and if you decide to walk out of whatever job you currently have that enables you to meet that committment, you'll need to locate and complete a lot of copywriting, at a good day rate, to make ends meet.

I usually figure that new plans need a year to get going. Of course it can be less, and sometimes it's more, but a year is a decent time to give yourself to make something substantial, like a career transition, happen.

So think about this. Let's say you have a £24k job now and, to keep it simple, you have a £24k overhead, but you would like to walk out the door and start a new career as a copywriter. Your best bet will be to 'phase' the transition.

Right now you earn £2k a month from the job, and nothing from copywriting. So let's say that next month, you devoted some evening and weekend time to drumming up some "Can I rewrite your website for free?" kind of work amongst your friends, relatives and other contacts.

You do this simply to begin to get together some samples of real work you've done. During the month you make no money from copywriting, but you get your £2k from your job. Let's say the same happens in month 2. Now. Month 3. Maybe this month you can aim to get one little job to do in the evening or at the weeekend, for which you can charge £200.

So, in Month 3 you make £200 from copywriting and, though you naturally still get all of your £2k from your job, you mentally consider that you needed only £1800 from the job, as you'd earned £200 from writing.

After that, you keep going.

You see whether, by month 7 or 8, you can have got to the point where you can earn £1000 a month froom copywriting. If you can, then you're now meeting half of your overhead from writing. Don't be over ambitious, though. If you don't feel that you can sustain the flow of work, you're not going to be able to earn your target, so you'd be ill advised to quit the job.

What you'll be discovering at this stage is the biggest problem facing any solo freelancer, working in any field. Doing the work is enjoyable, and fun: landing the work, month after month, is difficult, and time consuming, and calls for skills which have nothing to do with writing.

Eventually, however, you will come to the point where you feel that you are consistently generating a number of days/evenings work each month, completing it satisfactorily, and that the only thing preventing you from earning your full £2k from copywriting is the fact that your job doesn't allow you to spend any more time drumming up or completing further projects. And that's the time when you jump.

It'll still be scary, but you'll have made a smooth transition, and optimised your chances of pulling it off.

It will only be smart, of course, to have stowed away what 'buffer' you can during your transition 'year', so that if you don't consistently hit your full £2k target in the first tremulous months of your first year as a full time copywriter, you're at least able to subsidise yourself.

This model isn't the only way to transition yourself, and you may well feel your own circumstances make this notion laughable. But for a lot of wannabe copywriters, it just could work.

Being an Advertising Copywriter

Being an advertising copywriter is a different gig to other kinds of copywriting. In the main, the skillset of an advertising copywriter is a conceptual one, and it's his or her ability to solve problems in an appropriate but imaginative way, rather than to write, that secures a job.

It would be virtually impossible to become a freelance advertising copywriter straight from college. The industry is highly competitive and the skills required to fill that part of the overall advertsing job which is the copywriter's really need to be acquired while working in-house for an advertising agency. So a few years in-house is virtually obligatory.

Once you've done that..well...I'd suggest having a few more years. The reason is this.

Being an ad copywriter is enormous fun. You get to work with larger budgets, on known brands, and to make TV commercials, or see your work in national papers or on poster sites. Most clients who want work of this kind are of a sufficient size to want or need to work with an advertising agency.

Very few clients, or agencies, will put their work out to freelancers, and those that do will tend to use very experienced freelancers who first spent a long time inside an agency.

So. Be warned. It's hard to get a job as a trainee advertising copywriter because of the competition.
But the competition only exists because it's fun, and well paid.

On the job training

A fair number of people who write to me saying that they do some writing in their current job, but would really like to get out of it and go freelance, ask whether I can recommend a course to them? It occurs to me that you guys should see the situation you're in now as a course! And one that you're being paid to be on.