Getting Copywriting Clients

A day to do my own work. That hardly ever happens.

Usually, I have blogs to write for clients, websites to update, or promotional emails to create.

I have just reduced my hours at my 9–5 pm job to concentrate on my freelancing. While I have a freelance client for a couple of days, I’ve some time that could be filled.

Since I began copywriting, I’ve rarely had to find clients. I first started on a freelancer site called People Per Hour and within a couple of months, I got regular clients and a retainer.

Freelancing Sites, Social Media, and Websites

Without continually applying for jobs on freelance sites you won’t get a lot of people asking for your services. I have eight offers posted that anyone can purchase, from a 1,000-word blog to a marketing consultation. I will get offers every so often but not regularly.

I have my portfolio on Contently but that’s new, so I don’t expect to hear about anyone seeking my services for a while.

I’ve gotten clients through LinkedIn, who either found me in searches (which is why your profile has to be complete and search engine optimised) or liked my blogs and got in contact.

I don’t have a website for clients. I used to run my own retail website and while I enjoyed it, a website is added work. You can’t sit back once it’s live and let people come to you. It needs to be updated or a regular blog. Most copywriters will tell you to get a website but two of the biggest, Alex Cattoni and Neville Medhora, disagree. Alex said she didn’t have a website until she’d already been working as a copywriter for five years and Neville said a portfolio on Google Docs is just as good.

So, I check out the job boards on LinkedIn and procopywriters.co.uk. Most of them are longer-term commitments which I don’t want.

I decide on two options I’m going to go with to get more work.

1. List my business on a few directories

2. Cold calling.

Listing my business on directories

I hadn’t really thought of this until I was searching for my competitors. I was homing in my SEO and looking at what search terms my competitors were showing for. I saw one of them was listed on a few directories which were showing up high on the results.

There are three directories I found. The most obvious being yell.com. Does anyone remember the Yellow Pages? The huge telephone directory book with the famous ad of the little boy standing on it to put mistletoe over his crush’s head.

Anyway, it’s now yell.com which is a great business directory, particularly for local businesses. Since I do want to be known in my area, (or rather country since Northern Ireland is small), as the go-to copywriter, this fits nicely.

It’s really quick to do, it’s free, and improves your SEO. I make sure to include any keywords I want to be found for in my listing where possible.

There are another three directories for local businesses which are also free, so again, I add my information in less than five minutes.

Directories are seen as old-fashioned, but they are still important for local businesses. Any time I look for a local plumber, mechanic, printer, I always end up on a directory. A great thing about them is that clients can leave reviews.

Reviews are important to Google’s algorithm. You can be ranked higher if a lot of people are saying you are awesome.

It’s also free publicity. A high percentage of people will check out reviews of businesses before purchasing with them.

Cold Calling

I don’t really need to cold call as I’ve a lot of other options, but I’m interested to see what kind of response I will get.

I make a list of website designers, graphic designers, and printers that don’t have in-house copywriters that may need my services.

I check to see if there is a specific person I can address my email to. If not, I write to the team at (insert company here), just so it is still personalised and more likely to get a response.

Turning a Benefit into a Subject Line

The subject line has to be something that grabs attention and isn’t going to go straight into their spam folder. For the subject, you want to focus on something that the reader is going to get out of reading your email. I am offering my services to a select few companies. I chose companies that I know and like their work because if I refer my clients to them, I don’t want them to come back to me complaining! I can also add this into my email by letting the companies know I am only choosing a couple of companies, therefore, creating scarcity and making them more likely to respond.

The benefits of referring people to me are that the company offers a complete service. On top of what they do they can recommend me to complete their client’s project. So, their client trusts them more because they know other people in the industry and are more likely to recommend them because they have been helpful. It saves the client time and effort trying to find a copywriter themselves or trying to write it themselves.

As I live in Northern Ireland, (which is a small place anyway), and they are local businesses, I could go with a local angle for the headline, like we’re both local businesses, let’s help each other.

Personalise and Pain

Then for the body copy, I start by saying how I like their work and talk about particular projects they have worked on and what I like about them.

This makes it more personal, and the company knows that you are aware of their work and taken the time to get to know them.

Then I work out what their pain is as a business.

When finding a pain, it is best to keep asking, ‘so what?’ Just like you would with features and benefits. This means you keep going until you get to the root of the problem.

So, for the web designers, their problem could be that they don’t offer in-house copywriting.

So what?

So, their clients have to either do it themselves which takes them time and effort, especially if they don’t know-how. Or they have to find their own copywriter which takes up their time and could leave them confused because they don’t know how to hire one.

So what?

This could mean those clients decide to go to the web designer’s competitors instead because they DO offer copywriting services.

And you might think that is the end of the pain. But it’s not.

So what?

If their clients go to their competitors, then they lose sales.

So what?

Which loses them money.

That is the crux of the matter. They will lose money. From the seemingly simple issue of not having a copywriter, which may not seem like a problem at all to them, to show them it means they are potentially losing money.

Once I’ve worked out their pain, I then emphasize with their problem and pain. So, as a small business owner myself, I can relate to them about how difficult it is to run a business as I am a Northern Ireland copywriter.

I use power words to create bigger emotions. Like saying, I understand how headache-inducing running your own business is. Or, I understand how frustrating, stressful, tough, it is. Or I understand how running your own business can sometimes make you want to lie down in a darkened room.

Appeal to people’s emotions because they will choose you first as an emotional response and then justify it to themselves logically.

My USP

Once I’ve related to them about their problem and told them what I do. I tell them how I can help, how I am better than other copywriters, and what I’m offering.

In Northern Ireland we are self-deprecating so it can be hard to boast about yourself. Even now I would rather people give me criticism than praise me. Criticism I can deal with. I get angry and that is a powerful motivator. With praise, I feel uncomfortable. But when you talk about how wonderful you are, it doesn’t have to be vomit-inducingly cringeworthy.

For example, the fact that I am local means they could actually meet with me. Also, I am not just a copywriter, but I am a qualified journalist with marketing and proofreading qualifications. I also specialize in SEO copywriting and SaaS copywriting. These aren’t boasts. They are facts about the qualifications I have and the work that I do. Don’t simply state why you are as rare as a unicorn. Tell them why it matters to them.

So, I am a copywriter with marketing and proofreading qualifications so your clients don’t have to hire a separate proofreader and I can give them advice on marketing as part of my service. This means I save them time and money, which means they are happy with the company for recommending me and the company gets recommendations or repeat business. Which again, gets them more money because recommendations mean less marketing costs and loyal customers spend more than new customers.

Now, in the email, you have to get to the point, so this is all condensed.

Three brief paragraphs should do it.

Always end with a call to action. What do I want them to do next? I want them to contact me (I put all my contact details in and a link to my portfolio).

And I’m done. It takes a while to customise each email but I’ve only around six to send out.

Tracking Prospects

I create a spreadsheet to keep track of my prospects. There are CRM’s you can use but at the moment I only need something simple so I keep track in Excel of the company, how I contacted them, the date I contacted them, and the date I will follow up with them. I also put it in my calendar to contact them on that date, otherwise, with my head like a sieve, I will forget.

Making the Call

I sent a couple of emails as testers a couple of weeks ago, so now it’s time to phone the ones I’ve already contacted.

Phoning people you don’t know to entice them to work with you isn’t the best part of being a copywriter. I like to go over it in my head first or write down some notes before I phone.

The first website designer isn’t sure he saw my email, but he was actually looking for a copywriter. He asks me to send my email again and he’ll be in touch.

Not every business is going to be coincidentally looking for a copywriter, but you might be surprised once you start touting for business how many people are happy to know about your services.

The Best Way to Get Clients — Keep ‘em

There are plenty of ways to get noticed but the best way to get clients is to keep your existing ones. By doing quality work and throwing in a bit of advice for free every now and then.

Happy hunting!