In this blog post, I’m going to talk you through how to sell your copywriting services to a customer that already has a website. If you’re looking to sell your copywriting services, or if you’re looking to increase the number of clients that you can work with, I’m going to share with you my tactics on attracting clients who have already got websites and already got content and copy and how you can position your copywriting services to them, even if they’ve already got copy and content on their website.
The problem that we’re talking about today is basically finding and attracting customers for your copywriting services. It’s a funny one copywriting because I think a lot of people immediately believe that it’s only sold to people who don’t have copy but in this particular blog post, I want to talk to you about how to sell your copywriting services to businesses that already have a website.
A lot of funnel builders make the mistake of feeling that if someone already has a marketing website and a funnel and a system and copywriting that they don’t need more copywriting and that they don’t need better copywriting. This is a huge misconception.
In my opinion, if someone has a website and if a business has a website, this is actually one of the things you should be looking for to go after, because I’ll guarantee you, just because they’ve got a site doesn’t mean that they’ve got everything dialed in and that they know what they’re doing with everything.
What it does show you is that they’ve got a commitment. They’ve got a bit of a track record. If anything, having a current website and having current copy and content is a bit of a qualifier that you should be looking for.
If you’re looking for a marketing funnel proposal template, remember I’ve actually got a template that you can download for free. You can head to www.sellyourservice.co.uk/proposal and download the marketing funnel proposal template that I use.
It’s won something like $93 million worth of business for different funnel builders across the world, which is just insane to me. If you want a funnel template to write proposals, go ahead and access that. It’s just a Google doc. In the meantime, let’s talk about how to sell copywriting services to your customers. Even if they already have a website.
The first thing to understand is you need to target people who could use your help. Selling services from scratch is about putting in the groundwork. If you want more clients, you have to be willing to know what clients you want to go after. If you come across websites that you think could use your help, that’s a really easy way to start the process.
I’m going to tell you a story later about how I won a huge sales letter and copywriting contract when I was running my agency and it basically follows this process and I knew I wanted to help people sell digital products. That’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I was good at. That’s what I was comfortable with. I knew that I was going to target people who could really use my help.
I made a list of all the different businesses that I wanted to work with. I just spent a few days on Google and YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and looked at all the different types of businesses and entrepreneurs and business owners that I thought, “Yeah, this guy could use my help.” “This woman could use my help.” “I’d really love to work with this type of person.” I physically had a hit list basically of the type of people that I wanted to work with.
When I understood the literal people that I wanted to work with, that kind of steered me towards a bit of an industry and a bit more of a niche. Don’t make the mistake that thinking sales is about being good at talking because it’s not. The greatest salespeople in the world are stalkers, not talkers.
When I reached out to these initial customers who had no idea who I was, that’s because I had done my research. Because I had, in some cases even bought their products. I understood the copywriting mistakes and problems that they were struggling with.
Just because they had a sales letter or a sales page or a squeeze page, or, Facebook advertising, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t think I can help this person. I want to go after this person. In some cases, I was going after digital products. In this case, who had no sales letter, no sales process and I thought I could really add value to these guys. Because I had gone through their process and done the research, it was much easier for me to start pitching and presenting to them.
This brings me to my second point. Make sure that you have a niche. What is this specific problem that you are addressing? Copywriting can be very broad, but you need to be specific. If you just approach businesses and say, “Hey, I’d love to do some copywriting for you. I’d love to do some content creation for you.”
I’ll tell you what happens because I get this a lot now. I basically think, “So , you want me to do the hard work for you and tell you what you should be doing.” You want me to think of work for you? It’s just exhausting to do that. My team doesn’t do that. The people who I actually employ don’t do that.
You think that offering them variety and choice is a good idea, but it’s not. You are better off reaching out to a hundred people and saying, “I want to change the headline on your squeeze pages that come through from Facebook ads because I think that I can increase conversions from 1% to 2%, or I want to change your subject lines, or I want to write an entire sales letter for your initial products, or I want to start selling your smaller products or huge core offers for you using this sales letter.”
You need to approach it from a very specific standpoint and have a niche that you are working within. If you approach the market with too broad an offer, they’re going to get confused. They’re going to feel like they’re having to do the hard work for you.
The funny thing about having a niche as well as the more specific you get to start with. You will broaden your opportunities afterward. There’s a saying in weightlifting, which is “You’ve got to get small before you get tall.” With certain gym movements, if you want to lift the bar up and put it over your head, sometimes you’ve got to shrink yourself real small first to be able to get under the bar and then push it up.
I want you to think about your niche in the same way. Sometimes you’re going to have to approach your customers and prospects and cold leads with a really specific vision and problem that you’re solving in mind. Then after they see those results after they’ve started to work with you, begin to offer them not just more copyrighting services, but more services in general. But you have to approach them from the standpoint of a niche first.
Following on from that, have a process that you are selling. Don’t just offer copywriting as a broad platform. If you’re developing headlines and squeeze pages, develop headlines and squeeze pages.
Customers will often try and move you around. That’s fine if they want to do that. I’ll talk about that in another blog post, but what I want you to think about is what is the specific process that you’re offering? For example, I’ve got the Six A Framework from the book Five figure funnels, where I talk funnel builders through the Six A framework for landing your first $25,000 client. There’s also the PPM sales letter method. There’s promise, problem, and myth. That’s a sales letter process. You want to have a specific process that you’re offering to your clients and customers in order to separate yourself out from just another copywriter.
When you begin to move towards standardization and productization, it shows that you’re a professional. It shows that you know what you’re doing. It shows that you’ve done this before and it gives the customer confidence. Rather than just saying, “Hey, I’d love to do some copywriting work with you.” What you want to do is approach them and say, “Look, I’ve identified that your calls to action could be stronger. I think you’ve done a fantastic job on the sales letter, but what I want to do is test some calls to action. I’ve actually created some for you and this is what I think we should test.” Or if you’re able to continue that research, like I said, I bought customers’ products, which is a fantastic way of identifying where the problems are within their funnels and their processes.
And say, look after you have someone opt-in, you don’t do anything with them. I’ve written a video sales letter script. It’s a piece of copywriting and it will say a small, low ticket item to them immediately after opting in which could basically pay for your costs of advertising or traffic acquisition.
Point number four, cold outreach with value and offer something for free. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is when I open up LinkedIn or my email or Facebook and I have an offer from someone saying, “Hey, I just saw your post or I saw your website. I saw this. I’d love to get on a call and have a quick chat with you.”
As if I’ve just got loads of time hanging around and I just love to get on calls with random people to try and get them to sell me something. The initial cold outreach, you are the underdog. I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. I’ve got no proof that you are who you say you are. To get on a call with you is me taking a hundred percent of the risk.
Instead, if you were to offer something so amazing that people would almost feel obliged to get back to you and actually offer them something of value. They are way more likely to get in touch. Yes. It’s more effort to create it upfront. It requires you to have a niche and a process and a specific problem. All of the things we’ve talked about previously, but instead of, let’s say that you have a list of customers that you want to work with. You reach out to them, five of them, you say, “I’d love to offer some copywriting services for you. We do headlines specifically. Can we get a quick call for five minutes?” Then to five of them, you say, “I’ve rewritten all of your headlines for your blog posts. I think you should test these and I’d love to see it.” Or something along those lines and you offer them something. Or you say, “Look, I want to show you how to write a sales letter that sells 24 hours a day.” That’s right. Showing them how you do something, some completely free training, enter an email address, that classic webinar lead magnet giveaway. “Head over here. We’ll show you how to do it.” Then at the end of that, say to them, “Look, if that’s a lot of information, we can get on a quick call, 15 minutes and we can identify what your sales letter should look like.”
What you want to do is offer them something so incredibly valuable that they’ll want to take it up. My advice is to pick something that they can use immediately. Headlines templates, sales, letter templates, s, workflows, processes, maps, something that they could basically put into action straight away is way more powerful than trying to get on a call.
Your job or the cold call point is to qualify them and make sure that you’re talking to the right person. You’re not going to make a sale straight away so stop trying to rush that. If you want to reach out to these people, then go ahead and do that.
This is how I landed one of the biggest copyrighting contracts of my agency. I basically came across this guy on YouTube. I absolutely loved him and I loved all his content. I liked all his copies. I loved everything you did. I reached out. I said, “Look, I’ve bought your courses. I’ve bought your content.” For a while, I was like one of his number one affiliates and I said, ”I’ve rewritten the sales letter for you that I’m using and like to you to have it for free. This started a bit of dialogue and we went back and forth, worked on a few projects together.
This is the advice that I would give to you. Write their squeeze page for them, write their content for them, write their sales page for them, and offer it to them completely no strings attached for free. Maybe in exchange for an email address, say, “Hey, look I’ve written this for you. I’ve written this and I’d love for you to test it. You can have it. It’s completely for free.” Go ahead and do that.
I’ve got colleagues of mine who build entire funnels for people so that three-step kind of classic lead magnet sales letter upsell. That type of funnel they build that for the customer for free and then just give it to them and say, “Look, I’ll even upload this and install it for you.” Because that’s the inroad.
The value doesn’t come from those initial small sales, it comes from the long term relationship that you build with someone. If you’re a copywriter of genuine skill, then what you need to do is offer them something that’s so crazy valuable that they feel obliged to get back to you. Offer them that content and that copy, build that relationship, and show that you’re willing to put the work in the upfront. If you’ve done everything previously, such as target people who could use your help, make sure that you have a niche, follow a process, don’t try and sell on the cold outreach and give value. Then, what you’re going to find is that you’re going to find clients for your copywriting business who already have websites and you are testing those websites for them.
Remember, if you are looking for a free proposal template when you finally close that customer and you need to write that up, you can go ahead to www.sellyourservice.co.uk/proposal and you can download your proposal template for free.
