There is no small degree of truth to the old adage, “You get what you pay for.” This is no truer anywhere in the marketing world than in content creation. These days, there are loads of freelancing sites that will help you create and deliver all kinds of content. From copywriting to graphic design to producing your podcast, there are avenues to outsource everything.
It is also very easy to tell the difference between copy you bought on certain freelancing sites that promise high quality at unbelievably low rates and copy purchased from and delivered by real professional writers. The thing about professional writers, though, is that they typically cost more – a lot more.
That $5 article you bought from a discount freelancing site isn’t as cheap as it seems either. Think about it: Most of the time, you wind up with very subpar copy that needs some very heavy editing, so you hire an editor. That person also wants $5. The price tag for your $5 article has just gone up to $10.
Even though you’re still not all that happy with the copy, you decide to put it out there and see how it performs. You buy $50 worth of ads on a relevant network and monetize with Google AdSense. At the end of the day, you might make $10 (and I’m being very generous with the numbers here). So you’re out $40 in ad spend and $10 in content creation. You just spent $50 and have nothing to show for it.
What went wrong is simple: People quickly saw through the facade of a strong headline and compelling visuals when they got to your site and realized that your copy was not in line with what you promised. If you are going to spend the time, money, and effort on advertising an article, shouldn’t it be a good article? Shouldn’t it engage, captivate, and build a good reputation for your brand?
Guess what: Being able to deliver that costs more than $5.
Why We Settle for Lower Quality
Many marketers underestimate the power of modern SEO. There are an alarming number of people out there attempting to make money online who still think that if your content is seeded with the right keywords, the search engines will rank it. Some marketers flat out don’t expect anyone to actually read their blogs, so they treat them as a means to an end.
I won’t take the time here to cover old ground about SEO and why quality matters because I think the effect of delivering subpar content is self-evident. Some companies keep a blog simply because they’ve been told they need to. The same holds true for their social media efforts. They take a half-hearted approach to it, and, predictably, there is very little interest in or engagement with those pages at all. I am constantly amazed at how little money and time even some of the biggest brands on earth put into delivering good copy for their websites and/or social media, but many still refuse to spend what they need to make any of it better. Why? Because if the brand is making money, it must be doing something right, right?
Let’s go back to my $5 article example, though.
Let’s say that instead of spending $50 on everything around the copy, you started out by spending $50 on the article itself. At that rate, you have every right and reason to expect better quality and at least some proofreading and editing, and it is reasonable to expect a product that is optimized for peak performance on the search engines. That includes using relevant, recently researched keywords, scanning for obvious formatting and grammatical issues, and delivering an article that is cut-and-paste ready for applications like WordPress.
Now, you get to bypass the editor since the custom writing service you’ve hired has included that as part of the service. You also have a well-written piece broken up into compelling headlines and segment titles that can be easily formatted for paginated articles. Most importantly, you have something that represents your brand well. There has been plenty of communication with your writer or agent, and you can be confident that the writer understands your objectives.
Sure, you can drive a freelancer crazy with dozens of revision requests, but there’s another old adage that rings true here: “You can’t draw blood from a stone.” Once a writer delivers his or her best, it won’t get any better no matter how many revisions you request (I have a whole list of tips regarding how to handle the revision issue coming up in a later article). In short, you can’t torture a writer into delivering $50 caliber copy if his or her skills cap at $5.
Advantages to Working with an Agency
I want to end things off today by offering you another short bullet list of reasons why you want to work with a copywriting company (and pay agency rates) over and above blindly hiring discount freelancers. There are many more reasons than this, but I think these are some of the most important:
Flexibility – You have the opportunity to assess the skills of multiple writers and choose the one you think will do the best job. Your agent should also be able to make sound recommendations based on what he or she knows about the writers on staff.
Better Returns – Stop putting more stock in how you advertise your copy than you do in the copy itself. Be prepared to spend more initially on copy that has a better chance of performing well and spend conservatively on ads to start.
Better Communication – Agencies often have their own creative briefing process that helps them and their writers understand your project before the first keystroke. This is something that the vast majority of discount freelancers doesn’t offer or even think to develop.