You could not have been more clear.
You gave your writer a detailed brief and supporting research. You had a deep discussion about your goals, corporate style, mission and vision. The writer asked questions and you gave answers. In fact, you practically (or actually) handed your scribe an outline. And the copy draft is terrible.
If you’ve gone through several drafts and it’s still nowhere near what you want, then the writer likely isn’t a good fit. But if you’re only looking at the first draft and your writer is experienced, the work can probably be fixed. And the writer’s confusion might actually give you useful information, but you have to have faith in the process.
Your writer should filter and organize, and you both need to keep the conversation going.
When you’re an expert in a topic, your info might seem easier to understand than it actually is for someone new to it. You might talk about it with shorthand that you aren’t aware of, and/or you may describe some aspects in too much detail. A good writer acts like a filter and a translator, expressing concepts in new ways so they’re accessible to differently expert people – your customers.
But the writer doesn’t have your expertise, and that’s a good thing. Like you, your customers are busy and don’t want information that is too high-level to be meaningful, or so complex that they have to work hard to understand it. So if you’re not speaking their business language or haven’t organized your messaging in an optimal way, you’ll lose their goodwill. Your writer’s mistakes may reflect confusion that your customers may also be having.
Trust the process: yes, that writer may be the wrong person for the job, but it’s also possible that the “bad” draft is a starting place to revisit the way you speak to and about your audience’s needs.
As long as the structure is solid, changing the paint is easy.
The most time-consuming parts of copywriting are the research review and the first draft. Combined, they can eat up 75% of the budgeted time while the writer works to balance tone and detail.
- Understanding and extracting the right research in the context of your communications goals.
- Drafting engaging copy organized for the audience’s priorities and optimized for search engines.
- Ensuring the above matches your corporate culture while staying on deadline and on/under budget.
Yes, your first draft has mistakes. There may also be corporate style gaps, or content that should be in different places within the deck, or – gasp – even small grammatical errors. But those are all easily correctable and your writer will fix them.
Also, that bad deck may be much better than it looks.
When you’re looking through that first draft, ask yourself if the essential messages and general style of language are correct. Maybe ask a trusted client to take a look, too. Does the basic framework make sense? If so, then all you need to do is flag the errors, send the file back and have another call with your writer. It’s that simple. An experienced copywriter will get a second draft to you in a fraction of the time of the first one, in much better shape.
The writer’s job is to create credible and intelligent, yet easy-to-digest copy to build a stronger connection between the audience and your business. That “bad” first draft is an up-front investment that can pay off if you go just a bit further to help your writer understand the gaps. Like chipping away at a rock face (of information) to get to the gem (of messaging), your biggest investment – and your writer’s – is in ensuring there’s an underlying structure to support the work. If that’s there, the details can be worked out together.
(By the way, if you’re a writer with a frustrated client, here are some tools to help you give them better work.)
Heather Finley is a marketing copywriter and copy coach who has written hundreds of first drafts and final decks.