Hiring a copywriter is not for everybody.
With that in mind, answer these questions to find out whether you’re ready or not.
Question #1: Are you getting sales?
The role of the copywriter is to improve the response to an offer that’s already working.
If a product or service has not yet attracted customers, then there is nothing to improve. Zero multiplied by anything else is still zero.
One of the fathers of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins, says this in Scientific Advertising: “The reason for most of the non-successes in advertising is trying to sell people what they do not want.” p. 225
Before you decide to hire a copywriter (and possibly pay him a large fee), you need to know for a fact that the market wants your product or service. So put it out there at low cost and see if it sells.
If you get sales, then you may want to hire a copywriter to improve your response.
Question #2: Can you risk some money?
The reason good copywriters earn large fees is because their work pays for itself many times over.
Still, no copywriter in history has batted a thousand. There will always be an occasional “dud” among dozens of winning promotions.
Hiring a copywriter is an investment. You hope to make a good return on your money. And you may get back 10 times what you invested or more.
But like all investments, some don’t pay off. This is why you must have some money to risk. Only you can determine whether the risk of hiring a copywriter is worth the potential reward.
Question #3: Are you committed to split-testing?
There is only one way to guarantee the success of any ad, sales letter, or promotion. That is to test.
The whole purpose of testing is to determine what works best in the real world. For instance, you might test two different guarantees. One converts 2% of all prospects into customers. But the other one converts 4%, twice as much.
If you had relied on your preferences, you might have chosen the losing version, thereby sacrificing half of all the profits you could have earned.
Testing your sales copy is important for two reasons. First, it proves — scientifically — what produces the greatest number of sales. And, second, in situations where your preference is different from your copywriter’s, testing provides a way to find the correct answer.
Before you hire a copywriter, be committed to testing. It is the only scientific way to prove out what works and what doesn’t.
So how did you do? If you answered all three questions correctly, congratulations. You have an uncommon understanding of copywriting and advertising — and would probably benefit from hiring a copywriter.
Tags: Internet Marketing
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