One of the first things you need for a copywriting career is training. After all, to have a career in anything you have to know what you’re doing, right?

The next steps are to put together your online portfolio and begin pitching potential clients.

Why It’s Critical to Network

But there’s an important step in between: telling your network about your business.

This is an intimidating step for a lot of new copywriters. It’s where the “what if” part of the brain goes wild and where imposter syndrome kicks into hyper drive.

“What if old colleagues see it and think I’m a fraud?”

“But my website isn’t perfect!”

“I’m not an expert yet. Aren’t people going to see through this?!”

And the ultimate: “But what if I fail…and everyone sees?”

I can almost guarantee anyone in your network will be happy for you pursuing your dream (otherwise, why are the part of your network?). And they’ll be happy to help spread the word—if you ask.

That moment you consider telling your network about your copywriting career and feel resistance kick? That’s exactly when you need to tell them. The sooner you tell people, the sooner you have the opportunity to make new connections and, potentially, find projects.

How Do You Network…Exactly?

Start by sharing the news with your family and immediate friends. Just by telling them about your business, you may find one of them needs your services or wants to put you in touch with a friend or friend of a friend who needs your services. Or maybe their son or daughter is studying graphic design and they can put you in touch to create spec ads.

Share the news on your LinkedIn, personal Facebook page (you can link to your business page if you’ve created one or to your portfolio), Instagram, Twitter (or X…whatever it’s called these days!)—whatever social channels you use. You by no means need to be on every social channel or share the news on every single platform. Share where it makes most sense for you.

Remember to tell people you’ve launched your copywriting business and ask them to help spread the word. Consider using a version of your USP to infuse your announcement with a compelling reason why businesses should work with you.  

The major exception: if you’re currently employed, and are not allowed to have a side gig or haven’t talked to your employer about their stance on side hustles, you may want to limit who you tell about your business until you’ve ironed out the details with your manager and/or HR.

But, for everyone else, there are no excuses. Because here’s the thing: Until you tell your network, there’s no way for them to know. And, therefore, no way for them to help you.

And at this stage in your career, it’s smart to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to getting your business up and running. Your network is a key component to making that happen.

The worst case? Nothing happens. You continue to pitch and build your business.

The best case? someone within your network needs a copywriter. And they want to work with you, now or in the future.

The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

There are tons of statistics to back up the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report revealed that 90% of people completely or somewhat trust recommendations from people they know. And the actions people take are consistent with their level of trust.

Once you get a client referral, be sure to thank the person who referred them. And, of course, be prepared to deliver great copy!

Word-of-mouth marketing is not only important for gaining first clients, but gaining subsequent clients. You tell 10 people in your network about your business. They each tell five people in their networks. That’s 60 people that know about your business. Say one of those businesses decides to work with you, has a great experience, and tells businesses they know about it. You get the idea.

Once you land a client, that’s not the end of the relationship. You always want to find ways to add value for your existing clients.

Think about it: The more customers you retain, the fewer customers you need to find on your own. (But remember, you never want to stop pitching clients—that’s how you avoid slow periods of little or no work.)

And retaining customers means they’re thrilled with your work, and even more likely to recommend you to their network.

Word-of-mouth marketing has a snowball effect. The longer your career goes on, and the more clients you impress with your work, the larger your client base grows.

By telling your network now, you have the opportunity to start with a decent-sized snowball!   

Your Turn

How have you benefited from word-of-mouth marketing? Do you have any tips for getting word out about your business?

The post Use Copywriting Networking to Help Land More Clients appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

When it comes to finding clients, the keys are to be systematic, but also to cast your net wide. Facebook makes for a great place to cast some of that net—though not all of it. To mix metaphors, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket!

What makes Facebook so great? Well, it’s already a place that billions of people go to seek information, find recommendations, network with others, and get advice and help. And, among those billions of people are plenty of business owners and marketing managers.

Your potential clients are on Facebook, and today we’re going to talk about how to reach them. Be forewarned, though—it’s not quite as easy as you think. In fact, one tactic might even get your Facebook page shut down.

(Ominous, right?)

So, keep reading to learn three tips for finding your next clients on Facebook, along with one warning about what you definitely should not do.

1. Join the right groups.

Think about it: If a group of business owners was standing together talking at a party, you’d want to join that conversation, right? Of course, in real life, it can be a little awkward to insert yourself into a conversation. On Facebook, though, it’s incredibly easy: Join groups where potential clients will be.

This might include groups for business owners, groups for local networking, groups for business gurus’ followers (who, thus, would be business owners), groups for users of software or services that business owners use, groups associated with podcasts or websites that business owners follow…and the list goes on. Dig in and do some research!

Plus, because Facebook can be pretty darn helpful sometimes, it’ll also suggest other similar groups you might be interested in. Join away!

2. Be helpful.

Some groups will let you post promotions about you and your business and some won’t (be sure to check the rules!). But promotions aren’t necessarily the best way to get noticed, anyway.

Instead, look for posts from other people that are related to their messaging, their marketing, or (of course) the copy on their sites or in their emails. Once you start looking, you’ll find a lot of posts from people looking for help from the group. Things like, “My landing page isn’t converting. Can someone take a look and let me know what you think?”

Now, I’m not suggesting a full rundown of everything they could do to improve, but offering up a few tips can go a long way. Not only is it good karma, but there’s a decent chance that the poster will be curious and take a look at your Facebook business page (and, likely, click your portfolio link) after you give great advice.

Oh, and it doesn’t stop there—because not only will the poster see your helpful and insightful advice, everyone else who looks at the comments will, too.

Just comment with something like, “Hi, [NAME], I’m a professional copywriter, so I took a little look. I’d recommend [one or two small changes]. If you’d like to talk more or have any questions, feel free to send me a DM.” With any luck, it’ll begin a conversation. At the very least it’ll get several people checking out your Facebook page and portfolio site.

Aim to make a helpful comment in the groups you’re a part of at least once a day or every other day, and you’ll likely see some nice returns on your time.

3. Follow them and comment on posts.

Once you’ve identified potential clients, like their Facebook pages, follow them, and start commenting on their posts. (You can also do the same on Instagram.)

Don’t go overboard—commenting on every single post will make you look a little obsessive—but posting thoughtful and/or appreciative comments every once in a while will help you build a digital relationship.

Once they see notice you regularly commenting, it’s likely that they’ll take a look at your profile (which will have a link to both your Facebook page and your portfolio site, right??) and they’ll keep you in mind for when they need a copywriter—and maybe even share your info with their other business owner friends.

But be warned.

You know that I strongly recommend reaching out and pitching clients. (But pitching them the way we teach in our course—most people do it poorly. Oof.) However, that pitching should generally be done by email.

It might seem that pitching via Facebook DM is the same thing, but remember that while unsolicited (but friendly and helpful!) emails are commonplace, the same is not true for DMs. Not only can it feel more intrusive…but Facebook also makes it VERY easy for people to mark unsolicited messages as spam.

The end result of that? Facebook could end up taking down your Facebook business page. No good. If you want to DM someone, be sure that you ask for permission to do so.

Used strategically, Facebook can be a great resource for finding clients. Stay focused on being helpful, building relationships, and positioning yourself as a great resource and you’ll find yourself fielding requests for calls in no time.

Your Turn

Are you ready to make Facebook part of your client-finding toolkit? What are your plans for incorporating these tactics? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Find Copywriting Clients on Facebook: 3 Tips and 1 Big Warning appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

If you write Meta ads for clients (which you should really consider because it’s a highly sought-after service), you know that Meta likes to keep you on your toes.

Know the Rules Around Copy for Meta Ads

First of all, Meta already has some pretty strict rules about what can and can’t go into its ads.

You can’t target people by calling out personal attributes (“As a mom of a toddler, you might..”). Ads can’t make people feel bad about themselves. And you certainly can’t make sensational claims or use a sensational tone (“3 Shocking Tips to Lose All Your Belly Fat”). Here’s the full list of Meta’s rules. Breaking these rules can get ads disapproved and even, in some cases, get an entire ad account permanently shut down.

So, as a writer of Meta ads, you need to know Meta’s regulations or customs.

Incidentally, if Meta doesn’t approve your ad then it’s not the end of the world. Sometimes ads get flagged by their system when they should be. Case in my point, my ads have been disapproved for promoting a “get rich quick” mentality. When I appealed that disapproval and explained that the ads are for legitimate, professional copywriting training, the ads were always turned back on.

Know the Rules Around Design for Meta Ads

But you also have to keep abreast of changes that Meta makes to its systems—and even its designs—that may affect your ad. The most recent change is a prime example of one of those.

Meta changed the layout of page posts and ads on mobile to match the overall design they rolled out earlier this year. No big deal, right?

Well, kind of a big deal. Because in addition to changing the aspect ratio of images (essentially, the size of images), it’s also decreasing the lines of copy that will be shown before that “See More” button that expands the ad.

Let’s make that even clearer: When you’re writing an ad for Meta (and now for both desktop AND mobile), instead of getting seven lines of text to get people engaged and interested, you only get a maximum of three lines.

Here’s what that looks like:

(Here’s Meta’s best practices for aspect ratios.)

So, what does that mean? Well, it means that the first three lines of your ad have to be REALLY good. They need to catch your target audience’s attention, they need to connect with that target audience out of the entire Meta audience, and they need to entice them to either immediately either click to read more or take the primary action of the ad (click to go somewhere else, watch a video, sign up for something, etc.)

Now, that’s definitely not impossible—but it is tricky. It requires an exceptional understanding of your client’s target audiences, their desires and pain points, and exactly how they’ll benefit from what the ad wants them to do.

It requires creativity and thinking out of the box.

Don’t Forget to Test!

And it also requires testing. As a Meta ads copywriter, you’d never deliver just one Meta ad. (Or, to be clear, sign on for a project where you deliver just one ad.) There are so many factors that go into whether ads are successful that it’s essential for your clients to test their ads, and test them regularly. For each project, the minimum number of ads you should plan to deliver is three.

This new change adds another challenge to writing copy for Meta ads…but it’s also certainly not impossible to do. Skilled writers are creating amazing, interesting ads even with that “three lines” constraint and helping their clients see massive success. You can do that, too.

And, after all, isn’t that combination of challenge and creativity part of what we love about copywriting? Thanks to Meta for a fresh little reminder.

Your Turn

Did you notice the difference on Meta? How will this change how you concept your Meta ad projects? Let me know in the comments below.

The post New Meta Ad Changes Copywriters Need to Know About appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

First, let me start by saying that you DO NOT have to invest in Facebook ads to build your business. If they don’t interest you at all, you’re off the hook.

On the other hand, if they’re something that intrigue you, there are a few things you should know…

The thing is, Facebook ads are really incredible in a lot of different ways. They offer an amazing level of targeting based on not just demographic information like age, gender, location, relationship status, career, etc., but also interests, pages liked, etc. And then there are advanced features like lookalike audience based on site visitors or subscribers. You can also retarget people who have visited your website, watched one of your videos on Facebook, or any number of things.

That said, though, building, testing, and tracking Facebook ads can be pretty complicated (and, frankly, well out of the scope of what I can go into here). Suffice it to say, they shouldn’t be attempted without training.

My rule about anything you pay for in your business is that it needs to pay for itself and then some. That includes software, office supplies and, yes, advertising. Maybe it’s obvious that advertising should pay for itself, but you’d be shocked at how many people create ad campaigns, set them live, and never check to see if they’ve made any money from them.

The truth is that Facebook ads can be great opportunities to build your audience and client base, but they can also be a great way to lose a lot of money, fast.

The key to Facebook ads is the numbers. If you can make the numbers work for you, you can make Facebook ads work for you.

In a nutshell, if you could invest X and make 2X every time you did, you’d keep doing it and increase that x number every time, right? But the problem is that it’s easy to invest X and not make X back. Or make less than X. Or nothing at all.

It’s a little easier to understand with real numbers. (Please understand, though, that these are only averages. Your numbers could vary higher or lower, depending on a lot of different factors.)

So, let’s start here. Let’s say your plan is to run ads that drive people to an email sign-up page and then, through a series of automated nurturing sales emails, you try to get them to hire you for a copywriting project. Let’s say it’s an email funnel.

(Just a quick tip: It’s both expensive and very unlikely to work to send cold Facebook traffic from an ad directly to your sales page to get them to buy. It’s like meeting someone new at a bar and immediately asking them to marry you. People need to be warmed up and nurtured before they’re ready for marriage AND before they’re ready to buy from you.)

So, you’ll run an ad. And your goal for the ad is an email sign-up – that’s your “conversion.” You run it to a bunch of people, some people visit the landing page and some of THOSE people subscribe. On average, you discover that it costs you $3 in advertising to get a subscriber.

Again, that is just an estimate. Your cost could be much more or it could be less.

Then you send them down your nurturing sales email sequence. Not everyone who signs up will look at your sales message. Usually, you’ll see a 25% or 30% open rate. Which means that only 25% to 30% of the people on your list will even see your sales message.

Next, a normal purchase conversion rate is 1% or 2%. So, of 100 people who see this sales message, 1 or 2 of them will purchase.

So, let’s say you spend $600 to get 200 subscribers.

Of those 200 subscribers, maybe 30% will see your sales message.

So that’s 60 people. And of those 60 people, 2% may purchase—which is one person.

So you’ve spent $600 to get one sale.

Which means that if you’re writing an email series for a client and it’s going to take you 12 hours to write it and edit it and your usual rate is $50, that’s $600. You’d need to mark it up to $1,200 just to cover the cost of the ad and the cost of your service time.

But remember, too, that if any of those percentages in that sequence skew, it affects your profits. If your email sign up conversion rates change and it takes you $4 to get one subscriber, all of your numbers change and it’s now costing you $800 to get one sale.

Or, if it drops to $2, it becomes $400 to get that sale. Or if your purchase conversion goes up or down or your email open rates go up or down – all of those factors affect how much it costs you to make a sale.

(Just a note — the average cost for conversions is closer to $7 or $8 at the time of writing this post…)

Some people love this. I find it pretty fascinating myself. But, as you can see, Facebook ads can be especially tricky to make profitable for a service-based business.

Facebook ads tend to make more numerical sense for products like high-ticket coaching or high-ticket information products where the cost of the product makes up for the cost of the ads. Or, sometimes, they can make sense for very low-ticket items when people are more likely to make a spontaneous purchase.

But you also can’t judge by who’s running ads – some people are running ads, knowing that they’ll be at a loss but they need the ads to help grow the visibility of their business.

So the long and short of it is that you absolutely can try Facebook ads for your business. BUT you must:

• Understand what you’re doing. Take a course so you know how to place your pixels to track ad performance, test your ads, and track your metrics in Ads Manager.
• Understand your metrics and fully extrapolate how those numbers affect what you need to charge to ensure that you don’t lose money.
• Check your ads every single day. Facebook ads are not “set it and forget it” – the results can change regularly. You also should regularly be testing new ads to keep what people see fresh.

If you’re going to run ads, you also need to monitor comments to answer questions and delete any nasty comments.

Can Facebook ads work for you? Absolutely – as long as you’re willing to follow the guidelines I’ve set.

But again, you don’t have to run Facebook ads at all. Invest your time and energy into the other tactics we’ve discussed in this course and you’ll start to see a lot of success.

The post Should You Run Facebook Ads to Advertise Your Copywriting Business? appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

Facebook/Meta Ads are a great service to offer to clients. They can directly earn your client money (which makes them an easier sell), your client should always be testing (which means they always need new ones), and you can get exact metrics to share (brag about) to other potential clients.

But Meta Ads are also changing and what worked before won’t work now. Check out our post on new rules here. Or, at least, not for the moment. They’re always changing.

And that’s great because your clients would benefit from a steady stream of new copy, but it’s a challenge for you to stay on top of new trends and come up with fresh ideas.

So, my question for you is…how would you like to cheat a little? How’d you like to see what other companies are writing for their brands, how long they’ve been running them, and any split tests that they’re doing?

What’s the Meta Ad Library?

Well, the exciting news is that now you can do just that. Meta announced the launch of their “Ad Library,” their attempt at greater platform transparency and your ability to research ads from any brand that’s running ads on Meta.

Check out the Meta Ad Library here.

What Can the Ad Library Tell You?

Here are a few quick things to keep in mind. As of the time of publishing, Meta isn’t associating any metrics with these ads. It’s not telling you the click-through rates or the conversion rates or anything like that—which means that you can’t truly judge whether an ad is performing well or not.

It does tell you how long an ad has been running and that can be an indication of a well-performing ad, but you still need to take that with a grain of salt. Some advertisers are a bit more cavalier with their ad spends and, instead of regularly tracking their numbers, they flip on their ads and just let ‘em ride. (Not a great idea, by the way.)

Also, of course, this is a great resource for inspiration, but you should never directly copy anything you see another brand doing. It dilutes the effectiveness of both ads, it’s extremely lazy copywriting, and it’s also unethical—to both steal and to charge for copy you stole.

But let’s just be clear what this Ad Library represents. Never before have you had the opportunity to look up any company (that’s running ads) on a medium and see all the current ads! It’s an amazing opportunity and you could easily lose hours digging into it.

Read More: Using Meta to Find Clients

Do you know how to effectively use Meta to find clients? We tell you how here and here.

Your Turn

So, go ahead—check out the Meta Ad Library and let me know what you think in the comments below.

The post The Cool New Tool for Facebook/Meta Ads Copywriting Research appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.

But…if your clientele is teens, you’ve got a bigger problem. The truth is that Facebook is still wildly popular among adults—and one crucial group of adults in particular.

Solopreneurs and, more broadly, entrepreneurs with small companies regularly use Facebook to ask questions, learn tactics, connect with each other, and seek referrals for services.

Are you starting to see where I’m going with this?

We recently released a new course in the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy called, “How to Use Facebook to Grow Your Business,” so I’m going to give you a little sneak peek right here.

One of the first Facebook features that can be a major asset for you is Facebook groups. There is a group for every topic under the sun—in fact, there are multiple groups for topics. And while many of these groups are “private,” joining often involves just requesting access and maybe answering a few questions.

Within these groups people are sharing resources, asking questions, and looking for support. And you’d better believe that your copywriting skills can come in handy very often!

Now, a lot of these groups will have rules about promoting yourself. In those groups, you can’t go in and post an offer or a link to your site or a glorified ad. In those groups, you can get a lot of mileage out of commenting, helping, and posting helpful information. (We go into exactly how in the course.)

In the groups that you can promote yourself, you have an amazing opportunity to offer free copy strategy sessions, promotions, sweepstakes, and anything your heart desires.

Don’t forget, too, that you also have an opportunity to create your own Facebook group. While this can take some planning and maintenance, it can be a great way to keep your target audience members “warm” until they’re at a point where they’re ready to hire you.

Don’t fall for the “Facebook is dying!” hype. It’s still alive and well—and it’s an excellent place for you to find prospective customers. And if you’re looking for other ways to land work, we have five innovative ideas here >>

Read More: Tips About Copywriting Clients on Facebook

Your potential clients are on Facebook, and here we talk about how to reach them. Be forewarned, though—it’s not quite as easy as you think. In fact, one tactic might even get your Facebook page shut down. So, keep reading to learn three tips for finding your next clients on Facebook, along with one warning about what you definitely should not do.

Your Turn

Have you connected with prospects on Facebook? Which techniques will you try now? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Why Facebook Is Where You Should Find Your Next Clients appeared first on Filthy Rich Writer.