45: The ROI of copywriting: how to decide what you need
Should you invest in copywriting support?
It doesn’t really matter where you are on your business journey, you will likely invest in some type of copywriting support at some point because there is a crap-ton of copywriting you’ll need done for your business!
From sales emails to website copy to blog posts to sales pages, it is no surprise that so many of us get overwhelmed and even exhausted by the volume of words we write for our businesses.
And I'll let you in on a little secret. It's even hard for professional copywriters like me!
In this episode of ill communication, I’m exploring the pros, cons, costs, and benefits of investing in copywriting support for your business.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
The three types of copywriting support you can get for your business
When it makes sense to invest in copywriting services and when you should hold off
The ongoing ROI on copywriting services
The most accessible way to get copywriting support
How I support the members of the Joy of Copy Club
I hope this episode helped you decide which type of copywriting support is right for your business. Well-written and compelling copy can have a huge ongoing ROI so it is something to seriously consider if you need it!
If you need my help with any of the three options I shared today, I’ve got you! Just send me an email at hello@kimkiel.com or a DM on social to start a conversation.
Interested in learning more about how I can support you in the Joy of Copy Club? Check it out here! If you are interested in a no-BS audit, you can sign up here.
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[00:00:03] Welcome to Ill Communication, Copywriting, Tips and sales strategies for small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started.
[00:00:52] Hey there, my friend.
[00:00:53] Today we're going to explore the pros and cons and the costs and benefits of investing in [00:01:00] copywriting support. Now, it doesn't really matter where you are on your business journey. You will undoubtedly invest in some kind of copywriting support at some point because there's a crap ton of copy to write for your business. You will need words for your websites, bios for all your social platforms, lead magnets, speaker bios and won sheets, sales, emails, sales pages, webinar opt ins, show up emails, social posts, Facebook and Instagram ads, blogs, podcast scripts, and your weekly or daily email newsletter. And once you've welcomed someone to work with you, you need copy to support your client journey. Things like course and coaching materials, customer surveys, transactional copy like contracts, invoices or receipts or copy to guide people through your membership portal. So it is no surprise that so many of us get overwhelmed and even exhausted [00:02:00] by the volume of words we write for our businesses. And I'll let you in on a little secret. It's even hard for professional copywriters like me. I often struggle to write about myself and sell my services and find time to do all the writing. So when you're ready to get help with your copywriting, you have three different options DIY do it yourself Dfee done for you or DIY done with you. Now most of us start out by diying our copy. We probably take some free training or low cost courses to teach ourselves how to write copy and content for our businesses.
[00:02:43] In fact, it's important to learn how to do this for yourself because it helps you discover and create your own brand voice, personality, and verbal identity. The more you write, the more you understand how to talk about your business to your best clients. [00:03:00] And in those early days, it doesn't make a lot of financial sense to outsource to a copywriter, because when we're first starting out, we haven't fully figured out our offers. We aren't 100% clear on our niche or our ideal clients, and things evolve pretty consistently in that first year or two. So the financial ROI of outsourcing your copy isn't that great. But I mean, if you've got money burning a hole in your pocket, totally go for it. But for most of us at this stage, we rely on free trainings, workshops, low cost, DIY courses, free content like this podcast or copywriting templates. And this free content can be very effective at a free welcome sequence workshop I hosted many moons ago. One of the participants named Becky completely rewrote her welcome sequence following my dinner party framework. She followed up with me several weeks later and shared this [00:04:00] and I quote before your workshop. My cwi's welcome sequence never converted. Never. After the workshop, I rewrote the emails based on your framework. Get this, Kim. Someone bought my event ticket today. When I looked into it, I saw she joined my email list ten days ago. I've never had someone buy something so soon after she joined my list.
[00:04:25] I know it was because of your template. It's effing gold. So please know you can get results. Great results DIY ING your own copy using free or low cost trainings and templates. And on the other end of the spectrum, after you've been in business for a few years and you know your audience and you've dialed in your offers, then it makes more sense to outsource more of your copywriting to a pro. When you feel like you're becoming a bottleneck in your business because you can't update or write the copy you [00:05:00] need at the pace required by your team or your business. If things are getting delayed or, you know, you're probably leaving money on the table because your copy isn't converting, then it makes sense to hire a copywriter. You can expect to pay anywhere from $2000 to $10,000 for a copywriting project, like an email sequence, a sales page or a full website. If you're in the launch space where you're using complicated challenge or webinar funnels to sell your high ticket offers, you can expect to pay between 10,000 and $25,000 or more for a launch copy package written by an experienced copywriter. And this is where it totally makes sense to outsource to a pro if your course or programs cost around $1,000 and up, it makes a lot of sense to invest. And if you're a consultant who sells 20, K, 50, K or even 100 K packages, it's a no brainer because [00:06:00] when you invest, for example, $5,000 in a new sales page and you're selling a service that costs $5,000, if you make just one sale, it's paid for itself.
[00:06:13] And the beauty is that well-written strategic conversion copy will be used over several promotions and launches and generate ongoing ROI. One of my launch copy clients hired me to write sales emails and a sales page for a group coaching program they were selling for $5,000. The investment to work with me on this project was around 11 grand. In the end, she actually doubled the price of her coaching program from 5000 to 10,000 and still sold out, generating in the range of $350,000. Now I am 100% not saying it was only the copy that led to those results. In fact, she had a lot of other business costs and investments and strategy that went into [00:07:00] that launch. But I think you could argue the copywriting had a pretty great ROI, especially since she's gone on to launch that offer again with similar results. So we've talked about the two main options for copywriting support, DIY courses and trainings and done for you outsourcing. And there's a third type of support done with you. Many copywriters, including me, offer audits where we review your website sales page or email sequence and provide a report or a video of recommended changes. Then you can go through your copy and make the changes or do additional work to optimize your copy. This is usually a very accessible service ranging from $500 to 1500, and you can get a great ROI if you're able to implement some of the changes.
[00:07:54] Another model for Done With You is in a group, community or membership where you write your own copy [00:08:00] and then get it reviewed, optimized and edited with the help of a copywriter or copy coach. In fact, it's becoming increasingly common to join business coaching programs that provide a copy coach to help review and optimize the member's copy. Because business coaches know how much copywriting can affect the success their students have inside their programs. And this is the model I've created for the joy of copy Club members get access to proven templates, timeless frameworks, handy writing prompts so they can write their own copy. Then during our drop in coaching calls, they share their writing and I review it and optimize it. And together we create higher converting copy and it's an incredibly effective model. One copy club member named Erika brought an email to one of our live copy coaching sessions. I could see it was a little confusing and had way too much in the email. She was promoting too many offers, so [00:09:00] during her hot seat we pared it down, simplified it, and optimized the call to action. She sent that email and immediately someone booked a call and became a client. That was the first time someone had booked a call from an email. Other members have worked on weekly emails, launch emails, or completely rewritten their websites without having to pay five figures for a private copywriter to do it for them.
[00:09:27] And what I hear time and time again from the copy club members is just how valuable it is to watch each other's copy being critiqued. They learn so much from each other and gain new ideas they can use for their own businesses. They appreciate seeing how to transform a complicated, convoluted message into a streamlined and delightful message. Done with you support that combines access to training and templates with a live coaching or co-writing experience can be a great option for every stage of business and entrepreneur, [00:10:00] especially if you want to and are willing to write your own copy. I've seen done with you. Copy communities range from $9 a month for an email only community with one live call per month to over $2,500 per month if it's part of a premium marketing program. When you're considering a done with you copy community, you should look at what kinds of copy you will focus on. Will it be email only? Website only? Are you focusing on content writing or will you find out how to write a variety of sales, copy and content? You want to ask how many live calls you get to attend per month and find out if you'll have access to additional trainings and templates? And do you get any one on one time with the copy coach and then weigh the costs of investing in that community with the financial, mental and energetic costs for you to completely DIY your copy or outsource it entirely? So, my [00:11:00] friend, if you need help with writing copy, there are three ways available to you.
[00:11:05] Do it yourself with self-led courses or free trainings like this podcast done for you where you completely outsource the copy project to a professional copywriter or done with you, where you collaborate with a copywriter or copy coach who reviews your writing and helps you optimize it before you publish it. And of course, if you need my help with any of those three options, I've totally got you covered. Just send me an email or DM me on social to start a conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today. I will see you next week. Hey, thanks for tuning in to today's episode. But before you go, tell me if this sounds familiar. You've just written or had someone else write your website or course or mastermind sales page, or maybe you've had the copy up and running for a while, but it's just not performing as well as you'd hoped. Wouldn't you love to have an expert sales and [00:12:00] brand voice copywriter review your copy to flag any concerns that might be creating friction for your ideal client? Wouldn't you love to get a custom list of changes and recommended copy upgrades to immediately increase your signups and sales without having to pay thousands of dollars or wait weeks to get your copy optimized? If that sounds like you, you might be interested in my copy audit. When you book a no BS copy audit, you'll get a deep dive review of your copy, a video review, a detailed checklist report and some copy punch ups you can use immediately, all delivered within ten business days.
[00:12:37] Jennifer and Minda recently booked an audit for their conference sales page. They'd hired different people to write and design the page, but it never matched what they envisioned, and the conference sales were practically non-existent. Within a few days of booking their audit, they had a detailed report of what was working, what needed to be optimized and suggested copy. They went from barely selling any tickets [00:13:00] to selling out 300 seats at their event. They said, We are so grateful for how you went above and beyond in your work for us. You somehow crawled into our brains and were able to put into words exactly what we were thinking and imagining. We've been looking for you for a long time. You over delivered and we can't thank you enough. No audits are delivered within ten business days and are a fraction of what it normally costs to work with a professional copywriter. If you want to book this quick and very effective service, visit Kim Kilcommons audit to download a PDF info sheet that gives you all the deets and a link to book your audit. Within ten days you can have some refreshed conversion focused copy and a roadmap to make other improvements and changes to get more leads, more clicks and more sales. With your copy to book yours, visit Kim Kilcommons Audit.
Resources Mentioned
Check out the Joy of Copy Club
Reach out to chat about what kind of copy support you need today: hello@kimkiel.com
Additional Resources
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