How to brief your freelance writer
When you’re about to work with a freelance writer, you might feel a lot of pressure. You want the writer to understand your business. You want the end result to help you achieve your goals. You want to get value for your investment. The good news is that a thorough brief will make sure you end up with fantastic results.
If you’ve never briefed a writer before, this can feel a little daunting. What do they want to know? How much information shall I share? Is the backstory about how my line of soaps started in my grandmother’s kitchen relevant? (Spoiler: yes, it is!)
Here, I’ll explain a bit more about the briefing process and what you can do to give your copywriting project the best chance of success.
Before the project
Before we get started, we’ll grab around 20 minutes on the phone together to talk about your business, your goals and how copy fits into the equation. This is a free service I offer if you’re considering hiring a copywriter and think I might be the woman for the job. Afterwards, I’ll quote you for the project and you can let me know when you’re ready to start.
Book your call here.
The briefing
When we’ve decided to work together, the first thing I’ll do is send over a briefing questionnaire that asks you questions about your business, your target audience, your competitors and your brand personality. If you don’t want to fill out the questionnaire in writing or you’d like to discuss or brainstorm your answers together, we can do this over a briefing consultation call, usually lasting around two hours.
At this stage, you can share any supporting documents you have that will help me understand your brand, your market, your customers and your tone of voice. This might include:
Market research
Competitor analysis
Your brand story
Brand strategy/guide
Customer profiles/personas
Customer feedback, testimonials
Product information: ingredients, instructions, features, benefits
Descriptions of your services, how they work, what they include
‘Nuts and bolts’ information like pricing, lead times, Ts and Cs
Tone of voice guide
If you’re not sure what to send me, I always say it’s better to send too much than too little. The more information you have the more full an idea I will have of your brand and the better copy I’ll be able to write. I can quickly filter out what’s useful and relevant to the copy. I like to imagine that the finished copy is the tip of the iceberg but there’s a whole lot of ice under the surface that keeps it floating.
I love the details because they’re what makes your copy authentic, relatable and uniquely yours. So tell me about how your brand was founded over one too many bottles of white wine. Or how you happened upon your winning formula by happy accident. Or how you and your brother package every order individually from your mum’s basement. I live for that stuff!
The research
If you don’t have these documents, but you’d like to dive deeper on your brand, I can help. I offer customer research, competitor research and company insight packages that drill down into these key stakeholders to sift for information we can use to make your copy as brilliant as possible.
Customer research
I’ll interview a handful of your biggest fans, or prepare an online survey to find out why your customers love your brand. You’ll receive a report highlighting your brand’s key strengths and opportunities as well as some of the standout stories your customers told me.
Competitor research
I’ll compare and contrast your brand with a few of your closets competitors to identify where you stand out and where there’s room for growth to keep you top of market. You’ll receive a report with a list of recommended actions and follow-ups.
Company insights
I’ll interview key members of your team or send out an online survey to your wider staff to build a picture of your company’s strengths and values. You’ll receive a report on what it’s like to work for your business and how this might affect the way we talk about your brand.
Finding your voice
One of the most important parts of any copy project is finding the right tone of voice. If you’re a one-person business or you’re the face of your brand, it can be really helpful to have a tone of voice workshop. This will allow me to write like you speak, closing the gap between your online and in-person personas.
If you’re starting from scratch, we can have a development workshop where we talk about your brand, your customers and your competitors before we start making decisions about your brand personality. Get in touch to find out more.
How to write a brilliant brief
Now you know a bit more about the briefing process, here are my top tips to put together a brief that will lead to brilliant copy
1. Be honest
It’s no good telling me your target audience is young suburban mums when in reality the people buying your products are inner city Gen Z woman. If you’re trying to reframe your target audience, we can totally talk about that but be clear about where your brand currently stands and where you’d like to go next.
2. Be specific
Telling me you want your brand to sound friendly isn’t going to achieve much. What brand doesn’t want to sound friendly? Let’s understand what makes your brand unique and why your customers care about it. This kind of thinking won’t only make your copy better it’ll make your business stronger.
3. Be clear
One person’s professional could be another person’s informal. So the best way to express yourself is with examples. “I like how this brand speaks on social media. I don’t like how this brand expresses itself on its website. I like these words. I don’t like these words.” If you don’t know how your competitors look and sound and what you think about it, get out there and take a look!
4. Be thorough
Until they invent telepathy, know that if you don’t tell me, I won’t know. It’s no good coming to me at the end of the copywriting project asking why we haven’t talked about battery life when you’ve never mentioned it to me. If you want a detail to end up in the finished copy, you gotta let me know!
5. Be realistic
Wanting to rank page one on Google by tomorrow. Wanting to appeal to both 90-year-old grandpas and teenage metal fans in the same email. Accept that some things are beyond the realms of possibility. I’ll always let you know if I think we’re aiming too wide or too fast and either offer amendments to the scope to achieve your goals or be very clear about where I think we will be able to land.
6. Be sure
Of course, nothing stays the same forever, and an element of fluidity in your brand is natural and healthy. But if you suddenly decide to switch target audience, tone of voice or goal halfway through the project, you can expect a change in price and deadline. So make sure you’re sure.
If you have any questions about the briefing process or would like to discuss a copywriting or tone of voice project, send me a message. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.