Size Really Does Matter, When It Comes to Your Marketing Materials
by Heather Melcer
If you’re looking to save money on your copywriting services, read on. Knowing the size of your output before you start is the key to savings.
Here’s a scenario – You’re a business owner, you’ve got ideas. Lots and lots of ideas on spreading the word about your biz. A great promotional opportunity just revealed itself and you need some marketing collateral pieces, like, yesterday. Maybe it’s a brochure, a postcard, or perhaps a newsletter, but you need to create something quick to hand out at this seemingly magical opportunity that just landed in your lap. So the question I ask you is this: who is the first person you should call? Your graphic designer? Nope, that’s not it. Your copywriter? Nah, not me either (as much as I relish shameless plugs). Actually the first person you should call when you are going to create any type of printed marketing piece is without a doubt — your printer. It will actually save you money, not only on the printing, but along every step of the creation process.
As a copywriter I simply write the copy. I have many clients that are business owners that hire writers to help them jazz up their own thoughts and words. They’re great at what they do, they just need that extra bit of help making their ideas sparkle in text format. Then they take what I write for them and farm it out to the appropriate designer and printer who pull it all together.
My solid advice I almost always stand firm on is that you should always write your copy first and then go forward with the design process. Which for a website, a virtual piece, is pretty cut and dry. You can pick up the phone or shoot over an e-mail, the writing process begins, you ok it along the way, and then when it’s done off to the designer it goes merrily rolling along. However, when it comes to a printed piece, that’s a whole different ballgame and you need to find out how much that ball is going to cost you to print first.
How a writer comes up with copy is partly based on the size of the material being created. For example, a tri-fold brochure with 6 panels of space to fill is going to be different than a small two-sided rack card; and the instructions you need to give your copywriter for what you want to focus on would be different for each.
The main thing to understand is that at least half of what a copywriter actually does is organize information. There is what I call the copy design process in deciding what information should go where. It’s a creative process to get the copy and the messages to flow just right. Deciding what kind of headlines and taglines are needed at which page breaks, what offers go where, and how to blend it all in, so it’s not just a big page of screaming bold headlines saying “call us today”.
Naturally for most business owners money is always a factor, so making a decision about size and cost early on helps you save along the way. It’s all about efficiency, unless you don’t mind your copywriter spending extra hours reworking any given piece (hey, I’m happy to rewrite anything a thousand times if a client wants to pay me for it!). This came up in a recent job, with a good client I might add, and fortunately for them it was only about an extra hour or two, but still, us good writers also like to be mindful about the bills to our clients and not do unnecessary work if possible.
So the goal is to simply nail down the size of what you want your finished piece to be that keeps your budget in tact, accomplishes the task at hand, and will withstand more than just this one event, so be sure to call the printer and make your printing arrangements your first priority. Then and only then immediately call your copywriter, then your graphic designer and put them on alert that info is on the way…time is money and planning out how you want to roll with your marketing materials will keep more of your money rolled up in your own pocket.
