Your guide to choosing, briefing and retaining the freelance marketing copywriter that's right for you, your business and your bottom line.

For many businesses, outsourcing - of non core skills such as copywriting - makes sound commercial sense, enabling you to extend your talent pool without increasing your payroll. There is, however, a downside…

The lack of any longer term contractual obligation can result in firms’ choosing a writer based on less than stringent short-term criteria – usually something along the lines of: ‘they’re available, and they’re cheap’.

Such ‘commoditised’ thinking makes for promiscuous clients, opportunistic service providers and fleeting - low-value - business relationships.

Choose the right adviser, however – one who has the tactical skills you need now and a reserve of strategic expertise for the future – and you’ll have at your disposal a real commercial asset: a source of advice and support who’ll help you to maximise the return on your marketing investment.

Networking made easy Thanks largely to the Internet, creating a shortlist of qualified writers has never been easier. In particular, business networking sites - such as Linked-in and ecademy - allow you to review the profiles of a raft of specialist writers, and to browse detailed client reviews, at your leisure. Which means you can establish your prospective scribes’ bona fides - their experience of your industry, your market(s) and your preferred media - before you even meet.

Of course, notwithstanding the global reach of the web, you’ll be fortunate to find a writer who specialises in – say – petrochemical trade press copy for North American o-ring manufacturers. But you’ll have little difficulty sourcing any number of ‘generalist’ writers with an engineering and/or technical background. And this should be sufficient.

Whilst it helps to have a writer who already speaks your language – who understands the lexicon of your business - the broader influences and ideas a generalist writer picks up along the way can enable them to bring a fresh perspective to your project. And to translate your most complex product features into differentiated, benefit-laden marketing communications.

Similarly, although you may be looking for a writer for your email campaign or website, do not feel you have to seek out one of the many self-styled ‘online copywriters’ that you’ll find plying their cyber-trade.

In reality, the principles of effective marketing communications - espoused by traditional advertising and direct mail specialists such as Drayton Bird, Rosser Reeves and Herschell Gordon Lewis - apply equally in the online world: in search engine optimisation, banner and Pay Per Click advertising, email marketing, website creation and so on.

Portfolio To gain a better idea – of their experience and capabilities – you should ask to see the writer’s ‘book’; that is: their portfolio of copy samples.

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