Let’s face it. Not everyone is an experienced or successful marketer. But let’s say that you’ve set aside some money to hire a copywriter and/or a marketing consultant. Good move.
To help you meet your goals in this area, the information below provides the steps to follow to ensure you hire the right person.
Before we jump into these steps, one prerequisite you should have asked for is experience.
- Who have they worked with?
- How have they contributed to that person’s success?
- And/Or What are their personal success results?
- Ask for links, testimonials and references if necessary.
Use the above to pre-qualify them before getting on the phone.
Once you prequalify, follow these steps.
Notice that these steps require that YOU be prepared too.
What I’m listing below is as much written set of steps for you to be properly prepared as it is a guideline for who or who not to hire for your marketing/copywriting needs.
Let’s start…
1. Arrange the call. Set aside about 90 minutes. Ideally, bring at least one member of your team. It helps to have three people on a call when brainstorming is required.
Check point: Did they show up on time to the call? If not, deal over. Move on.
2. Tell them all about your product in a free form kind of way. Be sure to record the call using Skype and/or Callburner.
3. During the call, identify as many “pain points” as you can for which your product or service overcomes. Be specific, and the more the better.
4. Force yourself to come prepared to the call with 20 specific pain points.
If this is difficult keep prompting yourself to think of more. Spend a few days on this before your call. Ask teammates, uplines, downlines, crosslines. Do your research on this. The more pain points you can list, the better the eventual copy and/or marketing piece(s) will overcome objections, which equals more sales.
5. List the individual “features” of your product or service (i.e. what the product actually does.)
If the product is more of a service then the features are the process which the service follows (i.e. the things which have to be done, step by step in seqential order, to take the customer/client to the intended result. This should also be an exhaustive list.
6. List the benefits of your product or service.
This can work best by using “which means” statements
i.e. Our “black out” mini-blinds are the darkest in the industry which means they let in zero light which means the customer will never be woken up again by the light coming through the window in the early morning.
Start here with exercise #6
- What problem were they suffering from?
- How did the product / service help?
- What were the specific results?
Check point: See how much work you’re still required to do? Don’t EVER think that a marketing consultant or Copywriter can do it all. You’re responsible for getting the information to them. They responsible for putting the marketing and/or copywriting together for you.
7. Keep the audio file of the call for your records. You will likely send it to the person (especially if you hire them). If not, keep it for your own records. This will help you moving forward in many ways.
8. Provide the following items to potential marketing and/or copywriting contractor:
- Your existing website URL
- Any miscellaneous marketing pieces you may have (i.e. blogs, capture pages, Facebook Page, etc)
- Any URLs to competitor websites
9. Collect a minimum of 3-6 testimonials. This will be very helpful for the marketer/copywriter to use for a sales page, or a capture page, or in email follow ups, etc.
To make it easy for to gather testimonials, write 6-10 simple leading questions, questions which will likely prompt a positive response such as “What were the 3 things you like best about the product and why?”
10. Follow up. If you think you like the potential marketing/copywriting contractor, ask them to follow up with you in 24 hours about… something, whatever it is doesn’t matter. You’re testing them on how well, and prompt they’ll be with follow up.
If you follow the above steps you will be properly prepared to hire the best marketing consultant and/or copywriter to meet your goals. Use this, it really helps.
Add anything you think I missed below in the comments. Share this with someone you think could use it.
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I have decided that I will promote The Renegade team. Is there a resource within the team to help me with copy writing . Or I can hire. I am a nurse by profession and can readily admit I will need help in this arena.
Thanks