The Two Smartest Ways to Pay for Marketing Content

At some point or other, many of us see the value in offloading a difficult or time-consuming task to a professional who specializes in that task. I could do my taxes (for better or for worse), but I don't -- I let a CPA do it so I can enjoy an optimal outcome with no sweat. I could learn how to fix my car, but I'd rather let a skilled technician do it so I can feel confident about taking that car on the road. 

My copywriting clients come to me for similar reasons. They don't feel good about their own writing skills, or they can't spare the time to write their own content, or they simply can't stand writing at all. You might have the same struggles, leading you to ponder the prospect of hiring a professional to handle your written marketing content creation. But if you want to make sure you get what you're paying for, you need to understand which payment processes will give you the best bang for your buck. Allow me to suggest the following two smart options.

Per-Project Rates

You've probably seen freelance creative types who charge by the hour for their services. On the surface, this method seems sensible enough. The freelancer gets paid for the amount of time they put in, no more and no less. The problem is: How do you know what the final price tag will be? Your freelancer might toss out a vague estimate, only to break the bad news that they spent more time on the project than anticipated so would you mind forking over some more dough? Additionally, if you've never worked with a particular writer before, you have no idea how quickly or slowly that writer works -- in which case, you could receive some nasty sticker shock at the end of the day.

A writer who charges flat per-project rates can give you exactly what you want at exactly the price originally quoted, with no monkey business. A sales letter will cost you a flat $X, while writing for a five-page website will cost you $Y and a set of blog articles will cost you $Z. This approach offers three major benefits. First, you can actually budget for what you need. Second, your payment amount has nothing to do with how fast or efficient your writer happens to be that week. Third, if you're a marketing agency, you can simply roll that number into a larger bid, marking it up to suit your preferences, and know that your copywriter will deliver the goods at that set price.

Monthly Retainers

Flat per-project rates may make infinite sense when you know exactly what kind of marketing content you need. But what if your needs vary unpredictably from month to month? What if you suddenly decide you need some kind of writing that wasn't listed on the per-project "menu?" What if you'd rather just drop X amount of money each month to keep a writer on call instead of processing a fresh invoice for each and every job that comes up?

That's where a monthly retainer can come to your rescue. In a typical monthly retainer agreement, you might pony up one lump sum at the beginning of the month to lock in your copywriter's availability for any combination of marketing content jobs, including items that don't quite fit the standard list of fare. Yes, you'll be paying your writer by the hour, but the number of hours is capped right from the beginning, with only one invoice to mess with. If you need more work than that retainer covers, you can then purchase more.

Anyway, those are the two marketing content payment methods that make the most sense to me. Not coincidentally, they're also the two payment methods I offer as a professional freelance copywriter. Contact me today to learn more about how you can get top-quality content without paying top dollar!

3 Reasons to Create as Much Marketing Content as Possible

You may have breathed a huge sigh of relief once you'd created the core content for your website, blog, print marketing, and social media channels -- and rightly so. Without those pillars in place, you can't establish and build a visible brand. However, some business owners make the critical mistake of resting on their laurels after that initial effort -- and then they wonder why their marketing isn't making the right impact on their audience.

The inconvenient truth is that you can't just create a big marketing push and call it a day. If you want to keep up with the competition and generate more revenue for your business, you must pump out a steady stream of fresh, meaningful content. That means regular blogging, frequent social media updates, periodic print marketing and email touches, and ongoing tweaks to your website as needed to keep the information accurate and compelling. Consider the following three reasons to keep creating that marketing content.

Reason 1: To Reinforce Your Message

You make quite a stir when you put out that big announcement or unveil your new online presence -- or you might not. Even if your efforts capture eyeballs, how long can you expect that initial splash to spread ripples? Consider a real-world analogy: When you tell a child to do something, how likely are those instructions to land if you only issue them once? Well, busy adults can rival children for a short attention span and vulnerabilities to distractions. That's why messages need constant reinforcement. Regular blog articles, email messages, direct mail pieces, and other bits of marketing content repeat your message until it truly sinks in and your audience finally responds. You might worry that you're repeating yourself, but if your audience wasn't paying sufficient attention the first time around, it'll be new to them, right?

Reason 2: To Boost Your Search Rankings

While nobody can really predict where Google's capricious algorithm will go next, you can bank on the search engine rewarding what it perceives as authority and relevance. How do you establish those qualities online? You keep producing more and more high-quality content to build a critical mass of evidence to that effect. You want your online footprint to grow until the search engines see you as the 400-pound gorilla of your industry or profession, at which point you can expect to rise in the search rankings. At the same time, you'll be creating more informational resources that your target market can put to good use, reinforcing that message even as you make that message more easily visible.

Reason 3: To Help Manage Your Brand's Reputation

Here's an odd anecdote, but an illuminating one. I recently got a request to create a huge amount of content for a legal professional who was incensed over some negative publicity that had gone viral over the web. This negative publicity should've made little or no impact, but it stood out like a sore thumb because anytime anyone Googled this professional, that negative publicity would leap to the top of the search results. Why? Because the legal professional had no other online presence to compete against that one unhappy article. So the guy's marketing agency engaged me to write, not just a rebuttal article, but a whole mass of favorable content. We created a website for his practice, a professional bio website, a personal website, you name it -- all with the primary goal of diverting attention from the negative publicity. Content creation also helps with reputation management by rebutting complaints from dissatisfied customers, but only if you stay on top of those comments and respond to them promptly.

As you can see, you can never have too much of a good thing where marketing content creation is concerned. Of course, all that content takes time, skill, and effort to produce. But all you have to do is contact a professional freelance copywriter and offload that work while you continue working on other aspects of your business. So contact me today, and let's get started!