Top Copywriters for Hire

Freelance Copywriter: For Communicating an emotion to your intended audience

Most people need to learn the difference between a copywriter and a content writer.

While content writers excel in long-form content, copywriters have expertise in expressing your brand's narrative in the least words possible. So, for example, creating a tagline for your new marketing campaign would be a job of a copywriter, while writing blogs (just like this one) explaining a particular thing to your readers would be a job of a content writer.

Do you remember seeing that hoarding with a fancy one-liner that made you look up the product? Haven't we all been there? Copywriting is one of the most critical aspects of advertising. There are so many historical moments owing to great copywriters. They have changed the whole perspective of a product for the audience.

Almost everyone has heard the term "Diamonds are forever" and "Just do it"!

And it's not just about wooing the audience with these phrases. It's a business acquisition.

With the diamond campaign in America - before this campaign, only 10% of first-time brides used to get a diamond engagement ring, and after this campaign, in just a few years, that number jumped to 80%! This is the power of copywriting!

In a nutshell - what does a copywriting job look like?

• Writing content to educate, inform & inspire their target audience.
• Coming up with witty punches that can stick around.
• Researching to find information, statistics, keywords, topics, and brand information.
• Editing & proofreading to refine grammar, style, readability, accuracy, voice, tone, and punctuation.
• Finding your brand’s voice as it can either make or break the business’s success.
• Brainstorming and creating concepts for advertisements and marketing campaigns.

Note - It is important to remember that just because copywriters write short sentences doesn't mean they will charge less. Make no mistake; copywriting is a demanding role that requires a high skill set.

Where do you see the work of a freelance copywriter?

• Print ads (newspapers and magazines)
• Social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc.)
• Scripts for radio and podcast ads, or any spoken advertising—typically with voice-overs by announcers, show hosts, or actors
• TV and streaming service ads in the form of scripts, on-screen words, and taglines
• Websites (homepages, category pages, landing pages, product descriptions, ‘About’ pages, etc.)
• Billboards and posters alongside the highway and in public transportation hubs
• In-store signs that drive awareness about specific products and sales in the store

Where to find Freelance Copywriters?

• Catch them in the act

  The best way to find a copywriter is to catch them in the act. Whenever you come across a catchy tagline, a radio jingle, or an ad, search for the copywriter of that particular copy on the internet.

  The Internet is a place where you will get almost all the answers. Search for the writer of your favorite copies, and you will get the copywriter of your choice. Contrary to the belief, these will not come cheap.

• Job Portals

  Online job portals are the easiest and fastest way of finding any personnel with a specific skill.

  Searching for a copywriter on trusted platforms like Refrens can help you find many right candidates for the job because all of these platforms have all the details needed to evaluate them.

• Social Media

  Linkedin is crowded with professionals and people who are looking for work. Finding copywriters on Linkedin is easy; you have to search for them and everything from their education to their previous work; everything will be available for you to judge, and then you can content them on the platform.

Even Twitter is an excellent platform to look out for copywriters because Twitter has a character limit. So if they are witty in their tweets, they can be thoughtful in your copy.

How to evaluate a freelance copywriter?

Once you find some potential candidates, choosing the right one for you is crucial, and you need to know how to evaluate them. Before going into ways to evaluate them, we have to understand that a copywriter is more than just a writer; they have to do and know much more than just a regular writer.

For example, one might presume that writing short copies is more manageable than writing long form, but it is quite the opposite. It requires a lot more hard work to communicate things in fewer words.

Let’s look at the criteria to evaluate a freelance copywriter

• Researching and Interviewing Ability

  The main job of a copywriter is to do something other than just write but to do research. Therefore, a copywriter writing on any subject should be an expert in that matter.

  When we say research, it doesn't mean just a few google searches to know about the subject. Although it is one of the many things, it also includes interviewing people, reading about the issue, meeting people associated with that subject, and much more.

  When you are evaluating a copywriter, look at their educational background and then look at the work they have produced. If you can see a great deal of knowledge in some subjects which has nothing to do with the topics of their education, then it means that they are outstanding researchers.

• Knowledge of Psychology

  It seems strange for a writer to know about psychology, but it is essential for any copywriter. A copywriter's job is to sell things through their work. They are not marketers, but they have the power to trade without meeting or talking to anyone. This requires knowledge of psychology.

  They should know what makes people buy things. They should know how to comfort several strangers just through their writing. Thus, writers who have some knowledge of psychology have a significant advantage compared to the ones that don't.

• Familiarity with the Intended Audience

  The audience you are targeting should be familiar to the copywriter you are thinking of hiring. The copywriter should know the audience's language, the language in which they believe; they talk, and the language they use daily.

  You don't want a copywriter who uses fancy language that sounds rich but doesn't resonate with the audience. The copywriter should be aware of the ideologies of the audience, the social structure, and buying psychology of that audience.

If the copywriter has worked with the same kind of audience in the past and performed reasonably, that means they know what they are doing.

• Authority to be Quirky

  The copywriter you intend to hire cannot be biased, but you do need them to be quirky. Now we have all heard of these substantial copy disasters that brands make. Unfortunately, in trying to be quirky, they become offensive.

  So for a copywriter to perform better, they have to be rational and think from the perspective of an audience and the company. They cannot judge from their personal standpoint. They have to drop that. They have to cater to different audiences without humiliating them.

• Team worker

  Many copywriters think that this is a job for one person and that working alone is how they will produce results, but it is not at all true. Sure, they have to write independently, but planning, outlining, feedback phase, and many other things require collaborative work.

  When trying to sell something to the masses, you must involve different viewpoints to ensure that you are not blindsided

  You cannot afford to miss something important. Having a team constantly review the work will make sure that every point is covered and every question is asked before the work goes public.

• Updated with the Trends

  A good copywriter will constantly try to learn new things. They will read as much as possible, from the long forms of writing to other people's work; the more they read, the more their horizons will open up.

  They have to be up-to-date with trends. Any good writer needs to be curious. They should be okay with researching things they don't know anything about. These are things that are extremely important to have in a copywriter.

• Experience and Education

  Even though no two works are the same in this field and no past success can guarantee success in the next project, they still have to have a few years of experience because experience makes them understand that this is a difficult job and requires a lot of hard work.

Furthermore, it is not easy to be constantly unique, new, and relevant without researching and being up-to-date with trends and topics.

Although it does help if they have done work in a similar industry as yours before, that will make the job easier as they will have a lot of prior knowledge about your field.

The next step is to clear out the expected deliverables and timelines.

Deliverables

After evaluating the copywriter, the next step is to get clarity on their deliverables and the timeline; most of the process is common in a lot of other fields too -

• Letter of agreement: There should be a simple, easy-to-read document that states all the terms of the arrangement. The written document helps prevent misunderstandings, and in worse situations, it can protect your legal rights.

• Scope of work (SOW): A significant range of work must be cleared from the beginning. What will be the deliverables from the writer’s end? What will indicate that the project is complete? What will be the measurable outcome? How many drafts and revisions will be offered by the writer? Everything clear before starting the project makes the work much smoother and easier to execute.

• Expiration Dates: This includes the time you can take to give feedback. This saves the writer from clients who don't reply after some work, and they never get paid.

Expected Timeline

The time required to complete the project can vary from writer to writer and work to work. Still, on average, the time taken by a copywriter depends on the job. If it is a small job, it can be completed in 20 minutes, and if it is significant, it can take days.

So, it all depends on the work given to the writer. Because of time uncertainty, most copywriters prefer to avoid getting paid per word. Especially if the project is big and time-consuming, they are paid hourly or on a project basis.

Once the timeline and deliverables are aligned, the last step is understanding what not to do. Here is a not-to-do list to follow:

Common Pitfalls When Hiring a Freelance Copywriter

• Hiring a content writer instead of a copywriter: It is tempting to hire a content writer instead of a copywriter as they provide much more work and a much lower price. But there is a reason behind the charges of a copywriter; they are costlier than content writers because their job requires that amount of time and hard work. If you go with a content writer, you will immensely compromise on the quality of your work.

• Expecting miracles: If you wish a miracle to happen just because you hired a costly writer, let us tell you, it will not happen. One copy is not suddenly going to start selling your product/service. Marketing has to be done by you, and so is the product and the service has to be good; it is a package deal. Selling is not a work of writing, it is a work of a business, and writing copy is one of the many parts of that business.

• Being rash: Don't make hasty decisions. When you are finalizing a writer or a necessary copy, no matter how much you love the one presented to you, you must take a couple of days to let the emotions settle and then make a rational decision. Sometimes the way things are presented influences the actual quality of those things.