copy… what now?
What does a copyeditor do?
Strategic direction: little to none – they are usually coming in at the tail end of a project to make sure everything is buttoned up, the messaging is on point, and there are no glaring errors that have been glossed over by tired eyes (happens to us all, no matter how experienced we are – we eventually get tired of looking at the copy and wind up skipping over stuff, which is why it pays to know good copyeditors).
Coaching involvement: little to none – they usually leave feedback in the form of comments, make “suggested edits” for you to review (God I love that feature in Gdocs), or they straight up make changes to the documents. Some may film video walkthroughs of why they made the changes they did, but many don’t. Their main function is to catch the errors, not teach you how to avoid them in the future.
Time investment: depends on the amount of copy you need reviewed, how fast your editor works, and what projects they’re working on in conjunction with yours. It’s reasonable to expect a turnaround time of a few days to a week (so long as you’re not throwing a full launch package with 200+ emails at them, or a 100K word novel). Work you submit to a copyeditor should be reasonably close to final, ready to go live as soon as it’s been edited and approved.
Monetary investment: this is usually a per page/per hour/per word arrangement and depends on the editor. Some may ask for a flat fee if you’ve got a large project with a lot of different deliverables. You don’t typically expect to pay a royalty or percentage of sales with a copyeditor.
When you hire a copyeditor, think of it like hiring a second set of eyes to go over your work. This is much more involved than hiring a proofreader, whose main function is to catch typos and grammatical errors. A good copyeditor is going to look at your flow, your logic, your transitions, your proof… as well as catch the nitpicky typo stuff.
What does a copy coach do?
Strategic involvement: medium – depending on their involvement in your project. Odds are when you bring in a copy coach (vs a marketing strategist), you’ve already got some sort of marketing strategy in place and need help with nailing the voice, messaging, and calls to action. They’ll give you perspective on what types of copy work in different places in your sales process, and show you how the messaging progresses as your customer moves along the sales path.
Coaching involvement: medium to heavy – the coach is not going through your copy line by line and catching all the errors in the same way a copyeditor would, but they will give you feedback on what to change and why (and usually you or someone on your team will do the edits – this is to help you/your team consistently produce high converting copy by learning the thinking behind it). A copy coach is looking at big picture stuff, like story arc, continuity, sales message, and customer journey. They’re looking for places where you slip out of the character of the company voice, or phrases that make the customer make this face:
Time investment: could be for one project (however long that lasts), or could be ongoing as a retainer-type arrangement. Depends on your needs, how often you need copy feedback, and how quickly you/your team pick up what the copy coach puts down. Some people need to hear something once to get it, and some people need it repeated a bit before it sinks in – there’s no one right way to learn copy.
Monetary investment: usually a flat fee or retainer. A REALLY good copy coach can ask for a fee/retainer + royalties, especially if you’re bringing them in to help with hooks, sales angles, message to market match, and calls to action. If you’ve already got copy out in the world and bring in a coach to help update it/see if you can “beat the control”, you’re probably looking at some sort of percentage of sales.
(In copywriter parlance, “beat the control” means test out a piece of copy in hopes of making more sales than the current top performing ad – sometimes you do that by tweaking the top performing ad, and sometimes you write a brand new one and see if that does better.)
I interpret coaching as an instructional/teaching relationship that exists primarily between a copy expert and a non-writer or non-marketer (usually a non-writer or non-marketer who wants to get better at copy). Often it encompasses more broad, high-level copy 101 stuff like messaging and strategy and voice.
What does a copy chief do?
Strategic involvement: high. A lot of the time a chief will be setting the strategy or co-creating the strategy with key stakeholders in the campaign. Every once in awhile you might encounter a freelance chief (hello, hey there, that’s me!) whose main job is a combination of copy coaching and developing a newer copywriter’s skillset so they have the confidence to create with less oversight/feedback.
Coaching involvement: high (to a point). If copyediting is a second set of eyes and copy coaching is a little more hands-on, back-and-forth, copy chiefing is rolling up your sleeves, digging in, and getting dirty. Sometimes it even involves a little bit of rewriting – and here’s why: a chief’s job is primarily to develop junior- and intermediate-level writers and teach them the skills and thinking that will allow them to produce independently at a high level.
Time investment: high. A chief is typically involved at every stage of copy development, from the initial strategic plan to establishing the timeline and deliverables to working with the writer on hooks and concepts and outlines, to providing feedback on drafts, and approving final copy.
Monetary investment: typically… high. This is a person who has a very specialized skillset that can drastically increase sales (and therefore profitability). They don’t usually need much oversight and can run a team on behalf of a business owner, thereby exponentially increasing output from the marketing arm of the business, while reducing the business owner’s day-to-day involvement.
For the teams I’ve run, I was/am a chief. I am there to develop the writers and oversee/approve all the copy that goes out. I’m highly involved in the process from start to finish – but I don’t write the copy, I only guide the copy team as they write. It’s a hard gig, and that’s why there aren’t a TON of good copy chiefs out there (in comparison with the flood of people aspiring to be copywriters).
It’s better if your chief pushes the writers to figure it out vs. fixing it for them. The chief has to trust the team, be able to step back and let them do the work/let them find their own voice… even if their approach is different. The reason for that is simple: there are hundreds of potential solutions for every problem, and one solution the writer comes up with may work even better than the idea the chief had.
ANGIE COLEE
If you’re an aspiring freelancer who’s working up the courage to leave the day job… good news! I’m sharing all the things I WISH I’d known before making the leap so that hopefully your journey goes a little more smoothly than mine.