Easiest Way To Promote My Copywriting Business?

Start by having that offer as a signature on this forum

Also possibly advertise your work on upwork.com for a very low fee until you get some exposure and customers.

Get a signature on the forums you visit.

Get a sales thread here and on other marketing forums.

You'll only get generic advice without a few more details. Here are a couple questions for you:

Are you focused on providing email copywriting only?

Do you have a particular target market in mind that you want to work with?

Did you put your reviews on your website?

Why should we use your services when we can get the same service cheaper (probably) at places like Fiverr? What additional value to you bring to the table? What makes you different?

Mark

Establish a good website full of content- handy and quality content showcasing your knowledge and skills to target clients. On top of that, create an account in freelancing sites like Freelancer or Upwork where you can find a lot of potential clients. Marketing through social media also helps. Create a good Facebook page to market your services. A LinkedIn account also helps

Easiest or most effective? I can answer to both of those but what is it you actually want to know?

The easy way that guarantees very little but requires about 5 minutes or the effective way which is time consuming, difficult but if you can write copy you will get clients.

You could write your own newsletter on how effective newsletters are at gaining new customers and retaining existing ones etc! Add it as a blog on your site, which helps SEO. Then email lots of businesses that don't have a newsletter, and offer to help them create one.

Then there is paid traffic, including AdWords etc. to advertise your services to businesses, which can be effective if done well. (I'll PM you about one cost-effective approach).

Another approach would be to find JV's (use the JV forum here), such as offering to write copy for someone's business, and sharing the profits, or something like that.

Or advertise in the Warriors for Hire, and/or Classifieds sections here.

You could create products, such as sets of PLR and sell them as WSO's. For that to work well you'd need to learn how to launch effectively and form relationships with list-owners (or get a JV broker to do that for you). There are people on the JV Forum here who offer to help do a successful launch, but the one I worked with lost me money so be careful who you choose to work with. The "big boys" typically charge 5k in advance, and take 6 months to schedule a launch, but sometimes the results are 6 figures.

Another approach is to write content and sell it on places like JVZoo. I wrote a dog-training Ebook (just under 100 pages, re-written from relevant PLR I found for free), and just put it up there, never did anything to drive traffic to it, just listed it there. In about 4 years, that's made me over $700. For about a day's work. So long-term that can be well worth doing. Other places to sell content include Amazon, both as Kindle, and as physical books (both can be done for free).

Hope that helps

Chris

zmoor, we have a Copywriting subforum here on the site. Not sure if you knew that. In there the members have been discussing for years how to get clients.

Try a search of that forum. Then, after you get some ideas, post in there.

If your target market is purely small business owners, then perhaps a marketing newsletter not made for them to send out, but for them to sign up to is the answer. That way, you can educate them about marketing while building your list and being able to share testimonials and promotions to them.

A 3 page effective marketing newsletter every month from you, including sections for promotions (you'd be shocked how many people will buy when you simply put a specific offer in front of them--they didn't know what they wanted, they didn't know their own preferences, but now that you've plopped an offer right in front of them, they suddenly realize they want that) and testimonials.

People want to be lead. And nobody wants to be first to try what they see is a new idea--when they see others have done so, they'll jump on board.

The newsletter could lead to a private forum, or a LinkedIn group, or a Facebook group, where the business owners meet and discuss marketing issues. And you run the group. That gives you authority.

You do not need samples to sell. You do not need a website to sell. I've been a copywriter for 20 years and neither of these things were necessary to sell medium and high ticket services. Most of my deals happen because of a phone conversation.

The quality of the questions you ask during your discovery phase with the prospect will give you the instant credibility you are seeking. Remember, you are a salesperson as well and you must sell to get orders: people are not going to line up to buy just because you put out your shingle.

The more you niche down, the better. OK, you work with SMB owners. What kind of SMBs? What specific marketing problems do you solve for them (Customer reactivation? New market entry? Conversion optimization for certain kinds of offers?)

The clearer this is, the easier it will be to explain and have the prospect understand. That makes sales happen more smoothly. If a potential buyer doesn't understand where you fit in, they'll struggle to buy.

Talk about the target market's problem, the painful situation they're in and how they want out of it. Not your copywriting skills or how awesome you are (that strategy works later on, when you've developed authority and people know who you are before they've met you or run into your marketing).

The better you describe their painful situation, the more instant credibility you'll have. Pre-qualify your prospects this way: no one should be talking to you unless they've gone through your marketing warm-up funnel and know exactly why they're talking to you.

If the conversation begins, "So, what can you do for me?" you have failed. Bounce them back to your marketing before going further. Every time I have violated this rule I have been punished for it.

Remember, the prospects are the ones with the problem--the uncomfortable situation they want out of. Be a doctor, not a gym membership director. It's not your job to try and impress them, or please them. They are not clients yet. If you try to please them or bowl them over with your amazing knowledge, all you'll do is give away free stuff...and then educate them so much they don't need you anymore, and go off to find what you offer at the lowest price.

You could write any unique blog article, infographic, or presentation in SlideShare and promote it on social networks. Obviously t's important to have many followers. Another idea is to add it to Google Places and submit to press releases, like PRLog and 24/7 Press Release (I don't know if they are free). Also you can share it on sites like promoteproject.com/startups or Craigslist.

Follow Bamidele Onibalusi at Writers In Charge. Looks at copywriting from many different angles and lists resources and platforms to sell your work. He might even address your question personally if you send him a messsage.

I would also advise to try Upwork. It might be great for you since there is lot of copywriting work. It is quite hard to get to some good jobs there when you are beginning but where it isn't .

Just join a group or forum that those business owners participate in and make sure it is cool to make your offer first with the group owner.

If you're going to be writing emails for businesses, why don't you market yourself exactly the same way?

Check out the "email marketing" sub-section on the Forum for great ways on how to do this.

Tom

I would suggest first building a website and then gather traffic through forum marketing. Turn that traffic into subscribers.