Digital Copywriters: What They Do and How To Find Them

Ed Pronley

June 27, 2022 (Updated: May 4, 2023)

Whether you’re just starting your content campaign or you’re looking to continue it, hiring a digital copywriter can make your life a lot easier. Copywriters have the skills and expertise to improve your marketing strategy and help you develop content at a much faster rate. The only downside is that finding the right one for the job can take a good chunk of time, money, and other resources from the company. But the benefits of having a content writer definitely outweigh the work involved. In this article, we discuss:

What Is a Digital Copywriter?
What Does a Digital Copywriter Do?
Copywriting vs. Content Writing
How Can Digital Copywriters Benefit Your Business
How To Find a Digital Copywriter

What Is a Digital Copywriter?

Image via Pexels by Vlada Karpovich

A digital copywriter is someone who writes copy for an online or digital audience. They use their skills to develop webpages, email campaigns, online advertisements, and more. Each piece of content or copy that they create helps to advertise a company’s products and services, develop quality leads with its audience, and convert leads into paying customers. The fundamental skill of a digital copywriter is to use language to elicit an emotional response from their reader and attract them to a business or brand.

What Does a Digital Copywriter Do?

A digital copywriter performs a lot of actions for a business’s marketing needs. Here are just a few of those actions and why they’re important:

Writing Website Copy: Website copy might include a few landing pages, or the entire website itself. These are the main pages that attract your target audience and convert them into customers, so the writing has to be precise and engaging.
Developing Social Media Posts: Social media posts can sweep past a reader’s eyes in a split second. That’s why they need effective copy to quickly snag the reader’s attention and keep them engaged.
Creating Online Advertisements: Online advertisements, like the ones you see on search engines and other websites, need to elicit emotion from the reader and entice them to click. The copywriter uses their skills to accomplish these tasks and attract a business’s audience.
Writing Ad Scripts: Ad scripts might include video ads you see on YouTube or audio ads on podcasts and radio. These need to capture the viewer’s attention right away so they don’t choose to skip it.
Proofreading Materials: Simple spelling and grammar mistakes can quickly turn away readers or audience members. That’s why copywriting needs to be exact, to help demonstrate the brand’s authority and expertise.
Collaborating with Marketing Officials: Copywriters need to have an understanding of how their work fits into the company’s overall marketing strategy. That helps them create the most effective marketing materials possible for the campaign.

Copywriting vs. Content Writing

Here are some of the main ways that content writing and copywriting differ:

Overall Goal

The main difference between content writing and copywriting is what they hope to achieve. Content writing is an effective inbound marketing strategy. It focuses on providing a company’s audience with informative content that develops a relationship with them and attracts them to its brand. It doesn’t focus so much on advertising a company’s products or services, or at the very least, does so a little more discreetly.

Copywriting, on the other hand, focuses almost exclusively on advertising. Its job is to take the audience that the content writers collected and convert them into leads or customers. Copywriters quickly highlight the benefits of the business’s goods and the problems they solve for its consumers or clients.

Length of Content

Because copywriters get right to the point, the length of their content is often a lot shorter. For content writers, informative articles, blogs, and eBooks can range from a few hundred to thousands of words. That’s because content writers focus on the value their writing can bring to readers. Whereas copywriters are just trying to snag their audience as quickly as possible to get them to stay.

SEO

Though both copywriters and content writers need to focus a bit on search engine optimization (SEO), it’s often more important, or more practiced, with content writers. That’s because content writers need to use any strategy they can find to get their work seen by an audience. Most often, that means generating organic traffic through the search engine results page (SERP).

Copywriters generally know readers will see their content because they develop things, like paid advertisements and social media posts, that are sent directly to their reader’s eyes. But copywriters do incorporate SEO into some of their practices, such as when they’re writing product descriptions or developing new website copy.

Results

You might be wondering, “Which one’s better?” If there’s a definitive distinction between content writers and copywriters, surely one must be better for your business, right? Not necessarily. Really, both copywriters and content writers provide different benefits and assist with different areas of a business’s marketing efforts. In fact, you really need both if you want your marketing campaign to function effectively.

That’s because, as mentioned, content writers work by generating an audience, building trust with them, and attracting them to your company’s website. Copywriters then use effective landing pages and website copy to convert your audience into customers or clients. Though a marketing strategy is more than just those two steps, they’re still a crucial part of a successful campaign.

How Can Digital Copywriters Benefit Your Business?

There’s really only one major way that digital copywriters benefit a business, and that’s helping them improve their conversion rate. Because copywriters focus more on advertising the company, they don’t have to worry so much about casually mentioning its products or services, like content writers do. Instead, copywriters need to quickly grab their reader’s attention, relate to their problems, and immediately offer a solution. When done well, copywriters provide excellent results to businesses and help them develop quality leads.

But if you hire a copywriter that doesn’t have a strong understanding of your brand, they might do more harm than good. And that’s not an easy feat. When looking for skillful digital copywriters, you often have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince, and even then, the prince might work better with a different kingdom. So why do that all yourself?

CopyPress has over 2,000 vetted writers, editors, and quality assurance specialists who know how to create content and copy for any industry, no matter the niche. With our writers’ expertise, and the dedicated style guide we develop for your brand, we can deliver compelling, quality content, every time, satisfaction guaranteed. Schedule a free strategy call with us today to start boosting your marketing efforts with excellent product descriptions, and see how we can help you with your content marketing needs as well.

Related: What Is a Style Guide?

How To Find a Digital Copywriter

Here is a list of steps to help you find a digital copywriter:

1. Understand What Type You Need

The first thing you need to figure out before looking for a digital copywriter is if you need a full-time copywriter or a freelancer? Freelancers are great because you can hire them as you need them and not have to worry about extra money or resources that go into hiring a full-time worker. However, freelancers do come with a few downsides. For instance, if you find one you like, which is already a task, they might not be available whenever you need them.

That’s why it’s sometimes more beneficial to hire a full-time copywriter. But that can also have its drawbacks. For starters, full-time copywriters require a lot more money and resources from your company. Not to mention, you might not have enough copywriting tasks that require a full-time worker. So, each has its own pros and cons. Deciding on which one is right for you depends on your company’s needs and goals.

2. Search Job Boards and Other Websites

Though you might think job boards are only for businesses, a lot of writers and potential employees also use job boards to create profiles and resumes for job applications. Some examples of these sites include:

You can peruse these websites to find potential copywriters for your marketing campaign. On certain websites, like Upwork and Freelancer, some writers even upload a portfolio or examples of their work. It’s very helpful to look at these examples to find the best candidates for the role. Whether you’re hiring a freelance or full-time writer, you want someone who has experience writing for your industry and can easily write in your brand’s tone and style.

3. Narrow Down Your List

Though you might want to reach out to a lot of different candidates for the role, it’s helpful to narrow down your list. Not only will this save you time, but additional money and resources as well. That’s because it’s important to send out test pieces to your candidates before choosing one for your business. The more test pieces you hire these writers for, the more money your company will have to spend. It can also help you save time by giving you only a few test pieces to read through and choose from.

4. Send Out Test Pieces

Test pieces allow you to see if your writers truly have an understanding of your brand’s tone and style. It also helps you see how well they can follow the instructions of your content creation and how well they communicate during its production. It’s very possible that some or all of these test pieces might not be useable for your content marketing campaign, but they might be salvageable for another writer to edit and change once you find the best one for your business.

Once you receive your test pieces back, see which writers have the best understanding of your brand’s tone and style. If there’s one or a few writers who are close, but not perfect, see if they’d be willing to do a rewrite. Give them direct feedback on how they can improve their writing and how they can elevate their tone to match your business. If they still don’t get it after a rewrite, it might be best to start your search from the top.

5. Talk With Experts

This process can sound like a chore. But having a cohesive brand voice helps you build lasting relationships with your audience. When an audience comes to expect a certain tone or type of information, they can immediately recognize your brand when they start reading your blogs or articles. If you’re worried about the process of finding the best writer for your business, you’re not alone. Luckily, there are other options out there that can help.

CopyPress already has a team of vetted writers you can use for your marketing campaign. Using our team, you can find writers to help you create copy or content in any industry. We know how to create compelling product descriptions, blogs, and articles that match your brand’s tone and style because we work with you to develop a style guide. Your dedicated group of writers then reference that style guide to ensure they’re delivering a consistent voice for your company every time. Schedule a call with us today to see how we can boost your content marketing efforts.