One of the greatest things about being a copywriter is that I get to work with a variety of professional teams. The experience helps keep me up-to-date and build relationships across a variety of industries. That’s why I’m always so pleased when clients ask me to work with their teams.
As an outsider, however, this opportunity also comes with a few obstacles.
Here’s how I make sure I can work with your team to create successful results, even if I’ve never met them before.
Making the most of your team’s time
- I put a high priority on your team’s time.
I’m not a rock star or a hired gun. I’m someone who’s here to listen, then simply translate what I hear and see into a single, compelling reason to buy. Yes, this means I have to figure out what makes your company tick, and that requires your employee time. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to schedule a formal meeting! Instead, I schedule small chunks of ‘in-between time’ when I can catch your employees on the phone. If I say five minutes, it’s five minutes. If I ask for 10, then it’s ten – but no more. By showing your employees that I respect their time, we actually end up getting more work in, and in less time overall, because they can give me their full attention.
- I lay out all of the team involvement I’ll need early on so everyone can see how the copywriting process fits in with their schedules.
The key to working successfully with any team is pro-active communication. As an outsider, I emphasize that approach even more so your team never gets pushed up against my deadline.
- I create buy in at every opportunity. This includes the outline, headline, lead, pre-approved technical sentences, main benefits.
Especially with technical subjects, buy in is essential. It helps your team understand where I’m going with your promotion, so they can chip in ideas and make sure it fits with the tone of your other advertising… and it helps me. Because I can make the changes you need early on. By carefully managing the stages of buy in, I help re-assure that the final product will meet with approval – and beat your deadline.
- I support my decisions with research.
There are a lot of gurus out there. I don’t claim to be one of them. Instead, just like John Caples, I try to show you the best approach through scientifically proven marketing methods. Everyone has an opinion. And many of them are very good. But unless we take the extra steps to quantify our results, figure out what created the results and apply what we’ve learned to future projects, then we’re just shooting in the dark. By adding this element of research to all my projects, I can help you avoid other people’s mistakes – for your own profits.
- I hit every deadline.
After living in Tokyo for 8 years, I know that nothing is more important in business than time. If we miss this one little deadline, the results might not be immediately noticed. But just like missing a train. Even if you are able to catch the next one five minutes later… that small error can cause you to miss your connection. And that can add hours to your trip. That’s why, whether it’s an appointment with friends, family or business, keeping appointments and other promises is one of the most important things to me. Because I understand how important it is to your overall success.
- I actively seek criticism.
To me, there’s nothing worse than going to a meeting where very little criticism is offered, only to be caught, later on over a cup of coffee, with a list of concerns. This is one of the reasons that I feel one-on-one phone meetings are best. And this is also why I actively encourage criticism of my work from every angle. In fact, even when clients are fine with what I’ve done, I go elsewhere. Every week, I submit my work to a group of 3 professional copywriters and ask them to ‘do their worst’. This, and only this high level of critique, allows me to do my best. That’s why I make sure everyone knows that criticism, to me, is much more important than compliments.
- I keep your team appraised of the next steps.
There should never be any mystery or surprise about what’s coming next. You team should never wonder what I’m doing or what needs to be done to make your project turn out well. Again, this goes back to pro-active communication. But it also talks about the idea of leveraging our efforts. Let me give you an example. Say we’ve nearly finished putting a white paper together to highlight your latest product. The next obvious step is to put it on your website. But there are other, more productive ways you can use this persuasive piece of content. It can be a reason to call up all your past contacts. It can be the subject of a personalized letter to your current customers. It can also be a way to generate inquiries from a warm email campaign. These are the next steps that will help you improve your business. By talking with your team about this near the completion of the project, we can work together to create ideas to compliment your current sales process… and maybe even open up some marketing channels you’ve never thought of before.
Working with people you’ve never met can be challenging. But, by taking advantage of an outsider’s point of view, it can also help create breakthrough results. The key is to work with a professional who understands the team dynamic and knows how to plan things out ahead of time. This means that when you use someone outside your in-house team you are actually taking work off your plate, not adding to in.