Why Can't I Find A Good Tech-Savvy Copywriter?
By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan
You may have heard about hemiglossectomy. A glossectomy is the surgical removal of the tongue and a hemiglossectomy is the removal of only part of the tongue.
Once upon a time it was used to cure stuttering and various other speech impediments.
German doctor, Johann Frederich Dieffenbach cut off many of his patients' tongues, but instead of curing them, he ended up killing many of them. Some died of infections and some others got killed by shock caused by the pain.
Fortunately, in most countries, it got swiftly banned and speech therapy slowly started developing using less harsh methods and generating fewer corpses.
When it comes to clearly and concisely expressing their uniqueness and benefits, many IT service firms suffer from stuttering. That is, they can't clearly state what makes them valuable to their clients and what makes them different from their competitors.
And no matter what the World Elephant Polo Association, The International Association for Bear Research and Management or even the Canadian Sausage Council says, this is why copywriting has become a highly sought-after skill for smart IT service firms.
Firm leaders have discovered that salespeople have put so much improvisation into their work that consistency has gone down the toilet and it was impossible to track sales effectiveness.
Then they've found out that copywriters were better at presenting their firms' uniqueness and generating high-ticket sales than field salespeople.
I reckon, they've learnt from internet entrepreneurs who sell $5,000-$10,000 training courses directly from their websites from a shopping cart without ever hiring salespeople and ever talking to those course buyers.
Internet marketers have refined their marketing so much that they simply don't need to do much selling. And whatever selling is needed, good copywriters can accomplish.
Yes, many people look down this approach, but when we compare how much internet marketers make to the IT service industry's average ARPE (annual revenue per employee) of $157,000 ARPE, we can realise that there is quite a bit catching up to do and the fact that the days of the field sales force are gone.
But this idea of migrating from sales force on foot to sales force in writing but it has become a kneejerk reaction for many marketing directors and boutique IT service firms are no exception.
They see copy, more accurately, content, as a cheap solution for every problem, so they're seeking cheap content writers from the third-world. After all, content writers are a lot cheaper than copywriters.
And then firm leaders get shocked when they realise that many of the content writers who apply for their positions are third-rate at the best and anywhere between hopeless to awful the worst.
What makes the task of finding good copywriters almost impossible is that good copywriters are already as busy as a one-legged man an arse-kicking contest and they think twice, or more, before giving up real clients with real revenues for, often empty, promises.
The other mistake is trying to hire copywriters on a full-time basis. Firm leaders fail to realise that copywriters who are really worth hiring are not interested in employment, a.k.a. the corporate yoke, of any kind.
No, you can't pay them enough to give up their freedom.
The real reason why many firm leaders want to hire full-time copywriters is because they want to (micro)manage them. They want to see them work and berate them if they come back from lunch break one minute too late.
I know this sounds silly, but only very few firm leaders have heeded the late Steve Job's wisdom of, "Hire the best, get out of their way and let them do their magic."
They hire whoever they can find at a "reasonable" salary and the hiring => firing => re-hiring => re-firing cycle starts.
So Where Are The Engagement-Worthy B2B Copywriters?
There is a war for writing talent and IT service firms keep coming up empty-handed.
They think copywriters are like tech professionals, who can originate and operate from any country and clients never notice it.
With writing, it's a bit different.
Yet, many firm leaders are obsessed to hire copywriters from Asia or Central Europe because they are dirt cheap.
Or, they hire content writers, instead of copywriters, for the same reason.
The problem is that most IT service firm leaders don't understand the difference between content writing and copywriting.
Having fallen head over heels for the raging content marketing hype, they churn out content by the truckload, but their client-generating collateral materials are barely more than self-aggrandising geek-speak which leaves readers roughly as apathetic as a chronic wife-beater on Valentine's Day.
And many of them don't even realise that if they had good collateral copy, they could slow dial back on their mindless and pointless content generation frenzy.
Slowly more and more firms have realised that they need copywriters not only content writers, but there is a rather big problem: Shortage of copywriters.
There are two main reasons for that...
Reason #1: B2B Copywriting Is Rather Complex, Thus Hard
The common notion is that B2C businesses have enticed the best copywriters and the B2B sector has ended up with the leftovers.
Well, it's a bit of an exaggeration but there is some truth in it.
In general, the B2C sector learnt a long time ago that the lion share of the sales process can be handled with zero human effort, using sales copy, and there is no need to hire, train, manage and pay army-sized sales forces who spend a lot of time visiting prospects, and very often suspects, with coffee and doughnuts.
So, unlike the B2B sector, the B2C sector recognises copywriters as salespeople and is ready and willing to pay them accordingly.
A B2C company selling $50 doodads, thingamajigs and hoojamaflips is more than happy to pay $1,500 for an informative and persuasive blog post or an email and $10,000 or more for a product sales page. They are confident in their own abilities to generate a sweet ROI on a $10K, $25K or even $100K investment.
In the B2B sector, this level of self-confidence is virtually unknown.
They rather spend their money on another iteration of logo modification and colour scheme adjustment by a prestigious ad agency.
The B2C sector invests boldly and wins boldly.
A good example is when agency owner, Albert Lasker, hired copywriter Claude C. Hopkins, and paid him an annual salary of $186,000... in 1908.
And together, they built Lord & Thomas into the world's largest advertising agency.
Most B2C business owners expect to make serious money, so they don't mind making serious investments to achieve their goals, dreams and aspirations.
They know that the money is in the words, not in the SEO, logo and other seemingly impressive but commercially useless elements.
By contrast, many B2B companies think they are cattle ranchers where the top success indicator is headcount. So, instead of hiring copywriters and letting the copy do the heavy lifting of sales processes, they hire legions of salespeople and struggle to manage them.
Why?
Because when they attend business networking events, it's feels so great to brag, "I have a sales force of 100 salespeople."
And they don't cost a penny because they are on straight commission.
So, while copywriting is a crucial element of the typical B2C business, it's merely an afterthought in most B2B firms.
After all, copy is regarded as a form of filler between stock images and paragraphs of executive aggrandisement.
It's perfectly normal that some of the best copywriters have flocked to the less complex, more appreciative and better paying B2C sector.
Also, B2C is a lot simpler.
One of the many reasons is that in B2C sales, there is only one buyer who, in most cases, is a layperson.
And selling to a layperson is a lot simpler than selling to groups of experts.
But in the typical B2B deal, there are 5.4 buyers, and every one of them is an expert in the field to which the purchasable product belongs.
Don't ask me about the 0.4. That's statistics for you. This factor alone makes B2B sales a lot harder.
Let's say a hospital wants to buy some new infant incubators for the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Who will be among the buyers?
- The hospital's CEO and/or COO - economic buyer with budget and authority
- CFO
- CIO
- Incubator specialist medical device technician
- Equipment care technician
- OBG/YN
- NICU senior nurse
In reality, there can be even more people.
As the saying goes, it's hard to ride seven horses with one arse.
But in this case, you have to in a way. Your copy has to engage every one of those seven buyers. If not, they just recommend the economic buyer not to buy it.
And while every one of the seven buyers can say no to the purchase, only the economic buyer can say yes.
So, there is a chronic overdose of moving parts in the decision-making process.
Reason #2: Why Would A Good Copywriter Be Interested In Your Offer?
The sad reality is that many copywriters whom you'd like to hire are already happily working with great clients on nipple-piercingly interesting projects at hair-raisingly high fees.
They work from home in their shorts and slippers, sipping their tea or coffee, while listening to some pleasant background music from their favourite bands.
They don't need albatrosses around their necks in the form of some over-scoped and underpaid projects from some pathetic, insecure control freaks who demand daily progress reports from them and call them several times a day demanding something idiotic.
Look at most project sites, like Upwork, and you can see the difference between clients and projects.
So, this loser wants a great (at an entry level) copywriter to write 1,800-word pages for $20. Also, he wants to instruct the copywriter how to write. I suppose, he outsources copywriting because he's so good at it, but doesn't like doing it.
This schmuck expects applicants to do free work to be considered.
Or this is the best how businesses try to attract and entice copywriters, it's not surprising they end up with semi-illiterate goons and alphabet monkeys.
Broke-arse losers with some ridiculous products/services have idiotic demands, like unpaid test projects, daily progress reports, super-low pay subject to dozens of one-sided conditions, and ridiculously tight deadlines.
Smart buyers understand that writing is only about 10-15% of a copywriting engagement and have better criteria (the message is in the intro) to evaluate copywriters.
No surprise there.
Smart buyers are smart because they've done some due diligence on the copywriting profession. So, they have a good understanding of the importance of copy, going rates, typical terms and conditions of doing business, etc.
Most of all, they understand that copywriters are salespeople, but instead of roaming the land, they put out lots of baits and let the deals come to them, so they can cherry-pick the best.
I could even compare salespeople to hunters and copywriters to trappers.
The hunter, packs his lunch, grabs his rifle and starts searching for something to shoot. Once he's found it, he chases it until he can have a good shot to kill the beast. This is the equivalent of a field salesperson.
By contrast, the trapper baits his traps according to what he wants to catch and then goes home for dinner. He is not stupid to exhaust himself by chasing animals. By the morning, a large number of his selected animal species are caught in his traps. This is the equivalent of a copywriter.
But now you may think...
If It's So Expensive To Hire A Copywriter, You "Build" One In-House
That's an option too.
But a very expensive option.
I've read somewhere that it takes about 5 years and way north of $500,000 to train a guy to become a full-blown, fully versatile Navy SEAL operator.
We can safely say the same about a copywriter. Well, the kind of copywriters who are worth their salt, well, or ink.
Knowing that it's hard to attract good copywriters and very expensive to develop one in-house, you can ponder over your options.
First, you're an IT business, NOT a marketing agency, so it would be idiotic to have a full-time copywriter on the payroll.
In your business model, copywriting is non-core work.
Core work is the type of work that is directly related to revenue-generation within the profile of the business.
In my experience, core business functions, a.k.a. revenue-generating functions that are performed regularly are important to keep in-house and be done by employees on the payroll.
By contrast, non-core business functions, a.k.a. non-revenue-generating functions that are performed irregularly are best to be handed over to specialists with superior skills and/or technology.
So, if you run a custom software dev shop, you need programmers, software engineers, project managers and account managers on the payroll, but you don't need a full-time accountant, graphics designer, dentist or copywriter.
Conclusion
I know big corporations love bragging about how big they are.
But to conceal their low productivity, they use absolute numbers: "We're a $100 million company". Yes, and employ 700 people to produce that revenue, giving you $143,000 ARPE (Annual revenue per employee).
Or "We have 15 offices all around the world." Yes, one head office in the USA and 14 mail boxes all over the world. And there are 14 minimum wage "office managers' at the 14 locations who collect the mail from the mail boxes, scan their contents and send them to the head office.
I think one of the best success indicators is net profit per employee.
Or at least some relative number: Something per something. Like profit per engagement or profit per engagement hour.
The sad reality is that while software development is brainwork, software development firms can't accept this fact about copywriters. They complain how expensive copywriters are although they just sitting all they.
But this is where the industry splits. Some firms recognise copywriters that they are really salespeople behind the keyboard and pay them accordingly.
Some others regard them as glorified typists and treat them as assembly line workers and pay them as little as possible.
And as we're going deeper into this new Covid-infested world in which field salespeople have become about as useful as a fart in a windstorm, smart firms shift their sales activities to salesmanship in print, that is, sales copy, while others are waiting for the time when they can rehire their favourite field salespeople.
But will that time ever come?
Maybe. Maybe not.
It's all well and good, but to apply it all, you need to know how your target market perceives your firm.
Is it a fungible IT vendor or a respected IT authority?
It's the market that hangs your brand around your neck based on the outside perception of your firm.
But you can also influence the outside perception by tweaking your firm's inside reality, that is, your culture, by consciously transforming your firm from vendor to authority.
In this peddler quiz, you can check whether your firm is more of a fungible IT vendor or a respected IT authority.
In the meantime, don't sell harder. Market smarter and your business will be better off for it.