Improve Your Writing Career By Boosting Your Direct Marketing Chops

For some writers, it’s a challenge to get clients. I know. I’ve been there.

Other writers seem to have few problems getting clients… good clients… and are booked out for months in advance at top rates.

The difference?

Writers who take the time to get a fundamental understanding of how clients acquire and monetize customers have an advantage.

In fact, I believe that to really succeed as a copywriter these days, you need to understand a great deal about your client’s business. Not just their brand, their voice, or their product. You need to understand how their money moves.

Why?

Our ability to get better clients and charge higher fees is directly related to our ability to help clients get the results they want, and in most cases, the copy won’t do that work alone.

When you understand the mechanism through which your clients acquire, retain, and profit from customers, you can help them plan for success AND justify premium fees.

If at this point you’re getting concerned because you aren’t a business person, don’t worry. This isn’t rocket science…

All you have to understand are the strategic principles I’ll share with you here and some 5th-grade math. This will allow you to hold high-level business discussions with your prospects that lead to better projects, fees, and results.

I’ve experienced this first-hand in my own career, leveling up from poorly paid assignments to becoming a trusted advisor with multiple international writing groups.

And I want to share what I know with you, so that you, too, can help your clients get results and thrive in your freelance writing business.

But before getting into the nuts and bolts…

Here are the three most important advantages you get when you think strategically and become part of your client’s most trusted marketing circle.

Advantage # 1: Understanding how a business makes money helps you position your writing as a “Profit” Center.

When I attended a one-day copywriting seminar with Joshua Boswell, he said something like the “closer your writing is to the way clients make money, the better your chances of impacting their bottom line and charging higher fees.”

It makes sense. That’s why, in most cases, sales copywriters command better fees than pure content writers.

And yet, many clients don’t grasp the full value sales copy provides. They still perceive it as a “cost”, which can make them reluctant to shell out for “expensive” writers.

So, how do we alter this reality in our favor?

We build our case. We demonstrate the tangible results good copy can generate so that clients quit focusing on pure “cost” and start seeing the returns on their investment… the “profit” center dead ahead.

If the business can make $10,000, $20,000, or even $100,000 from a well-written email or sales letter, paying $500, $1000, or even $5,000 for that copy is well worth it. It all depends on the ultimate value potential out there for your client…

Now, how do you figure out that sales value potential and demonstrate it to your prospect?

Well, it’s a process. You have to go deeper into your prospect’s business to learn how it operates, how it makes money.

You do this by asking questions – questions I’ll show you, in just a moment. With these questions you can quantify the sales potential of a given project.

The more potential exists, the more value you bring to the table… and the greater your chances to charge higher fees.

Before moving on, I’m going to leave you with a quick example:

Let’s say a client offers you $1,000 to write a 5,000-word sales letter. You are blind regarding your prospect’s business potential and take the job.

But what if through research and by asking the right questions you discover the company has a very valuable and profitable product? And given their traffic sources and the size of their email list, you estimate you could help them to make $25,000 in sales per month?

I’m sure you could charge much more than $1,000 for your work, or at least negotiate some royalties, don’t you think?

Advantage # 2: Understanding marketing helps position you as a trustworthy expert.

Becoming marketing savvy helps you build your credibility with the client and increases their trust of you as a partner.

You start by asking the right questions.

You could get a good idea of how your prospect’s business operates by doing some initial research on your own, but outside the company, you’re unlikely to get the full picture…

To complete the full picture you will have to engage in a high-level business discussion with your prospect to obtain the information you lack, and that’s your chance to demonstrate your expertise and build trust.

At this point, you’re not a “writer-for-hire” taking orders anymore. You’re a high-level consultant working together with your client to create a plan that delivers the intended results (and justifies your fees).

Most of the answers you need at this point are quantitative in nature. You want numbers to assess the project’s sales potential.

For example, what are their sales? Are they a $100,000/year business, a $3,000,000/year business, or bigger?

How small or big is their email list or database of customers? Is it 10,000 or 100,000 names?

What’s their exact price, discounts, and gross profit per product before marketing spending?

What’s their overall marketing budget? How much do they spend on average to acquire a customer?

Which product do they sell first and which second, and why?

How often does a customer buy a product?

These are just some examples to get you thinking. I’ll tell you later exactly all the questions you need to ask to collect the info you need. If it feels like you’re “snooping”, remember your goal is to get a much more accurate picture of your prospect’s business, so that you can help them improve it.

Of course, you may not be in a position to do this in every situation… Not all clients will be as transparent as you’d like…

But that’s your goal. As often as you can, work only with clients willing to give you everything you need to help them be successful. (It has a nice side effect – these kinds of clients are often more than willing to pay you the premium fees you deserve!)

Advantage #3: Understanding your prospect’s business helps you make better proposals, command premium fees, and deliver results

When you have a detailed picture of your prospect’s business, both through research and a high-level business discussion with your prospect, you are in a much better position to deliver results.

Plus, now you can come up with a proposal that fits your prospect’s needs at a fee that is commensurate with the value it can deliver.

If we can “sell” the value, price resistance decreases.

For example, imagine you are an SEO expert and content strategist. A client offers you $200 to write 2,000-word blog posts ($0.10 per word).

You are not happy with the rate, but it’s all that you have… unless you make the effort to show your client why you deserve to be paid more.

With research and some high-level business conversations, you quickly realize some things that can be improved in their content marketing strategy to yield better results. With your skills, you know how to fix them.

Also, based on their products and offers, you now have an idea of the value this improvement will deliver.

With an eye on that value and the real results the client wants, you can come up with an improved proposal for $2,000 to do a content audit, fix the content marketing strategy, and produce the first 2,500 word SEO-optimized “hub” blog post for them.

Then, if your client is happy, you could turn that into a $2,000 retainer to keep them on track with their content marketing schedule, and use that experience as leverage to get another client doing the same.

Sound good?

Marketing acumen gives you the advantage to turn a $200 gig into a $2,000 project, and possibly into an ongoing engagement when you are dealing with the right client.

This requires practice, confidence, and some finesse, but I can tell you it’s possible… and as freelance writers we should be going in that direction… and the sooner the better, don’t you think?

I hope you have realized the immediate value that becoming a marketer can add to your writing business and are encouraged to start (or continue) your learning journey!

In the next article of this series, I’m going to explain in more detail the “invisible” structure that sustains most successful direct-marketing businesses.

I promise that after you understand this structure, you’ll quickly get a good idea of how a business makes money and if it is positioned to take advantage of your writing genius – even if you’ve never taken a marketing class!

See you next time!

Editorial Note: Daniel would love to know the most important thing you learned today… drop your thoughts in our LinkedIn community and let’s discuss!

Bonus:  Customer Analysis Questions from Daniel

What are your prospect’s ballpark sales? Are they just starting out with no sales, a $100K business, or making a $1M a year or more?

What type of products do they sell? Premium or commodity products? How many do they sell, one of five? Do they operate in a low or high-margin category?

How much do they charge for products/services? Are these cheaper gadgets in the $100 range, or more expensive $500 luxury products? Or maybe costly equipment or services valued at $10K or more?

How do they sell them? Directly to customers (D2C – e-commerce) or to businesses (B2B) with the help of the sales team? (This means your role is helping them to get qualified leads.)

Where do they advertise to acquire customers? Online media? Offline media? Events? How big or small is their website traffic if they sell online?

Do they have both: a front-end and a back-end offer? (This is key, I’ll explain this later.)

Does your client have an email list of customers or at least a database with addresses? How big is this database: 1,000 names, 20,000 names, or 100,000+ names?