Key Takeaways
- Your time has a real hourly value, and spending it on marketing you’re not good at (yet) is an expensive choice
- The cost of not having great copy is lost clients and revenue, not just a to-do list item
- Hiring a copywriter isn’t a luxury. For a six-figure service business, it’s a strategic investment
- Good copy keeps working long after it’s written; inconsistent DIY doesn’t compound
- AI can assist; it can’t replace the strategy, voice, and nuance of a human who knows your business
- The real ROI question isn’t what copywriting costs, it’s what one new client is worth to your business
- Consistency is the biggest differentiator between marketing that works and marketing that doesn’t
Let’s do a quick exercise.
Think about the last time you sat down to write a piece of marketing content. A LinkedIn post, a blog, a sales email, doesn’t matter what. Now think about how long it took. The blank-staring, the tab-switching, the writing something and deleting it, the rewriting, the “is this any good?” spiral, the eventual posting of something you’re only 60% happy with.
Now put a number on that time.
If your hourly rate is £150, £200, £300 or more (and it should be), at six figures, you’ve just paid yourself a small fortune to produce something that might not even be working.
That’s the maths nobody talks about when they argue that hiring a copywriter is “too expensive.”
The Real Cost of DIY Marketing
Here’s the thing about time-poor business owners doing their own marketing: the cost is never just the hours.
There’s the obvious bit, the actual time it takes you to sit down and write the thing. But there’s also the mental load of having it on the to-do list, the context-switching tax when you drag yourself away from client work, the inconsistency that comes with marketing always being the last priority, and the cost of getting it wrong.
Because here’s what happens when your marketing sounds a bit meh, a bit generic, a bit like everyone else in your industry. Potential clients read it and feel… nothing. They don’t pick up the phone. They don’t book the call. They quietly scroll past and find someone whose copy actually made them feel something.
That’s not a follower count problem. That’s revenue walking out the door.
The Opportunity Cost Nobody’s Calculating
Most business owners are thinking about hiring a copywriter purely in terms of what it costs. They’re not calculating what it costs NOT to have one.
Consider this: if your marketing is generating a trickle of enquiries, or none at all, what’s the revenue impact? One client you don’t convert because your website copy is doing nothing for you? That’s potentially your entire content investment for the year, gone.
One of my clients recently generated £50k from a small email list of barely 1,000 after we started working together properly. Another saw her email open rates consistently hitting over 50%. Another campaign delivered an ROI of 816%.
These weren’t businesses with enormous budgets or massive audiences. They were service businesses like yours that stopped treating marketing as an afterthought and started treating it as an investment.
What You’re Actually Paying For When You Hire a Copywriter
This is where people get confused. They look at a copywriter’s day rate or monthly retainer and compare it to… what, exactly? The cost of writing it themselves for free?
Nothing is free. Especially not your time.
When you’re hiring a good copywriter, you’re not just paying for words on a page. You’re paying for:
Speed. A copywriter who does this every day will produce in two hours what it takes you two days to produce. That’s not an exaggeration. Writing is a skill, and skills get faster with practice.
Strategy. Good copy isn’t just nice sentences. It’s structured to move a specific reader toward a specific action. That’s a completely different skill set from being a decent writer.
Consistency. The biggest killer of DIY marketing isn’t bad copy — it’s inconsistency. When it’s on your plate, it gets dropped the second you get busy. A copywriter keeps the engine running whether you’re knee-deep in client work or on holiday.
Your actual voice. The best copywriters don’t write content that sounds like them. They write content that sounds like you, but more you than you manage when you’re tired on a Thursday afternoon trying to squeeze out a LinkedIn post.
The “I Can Just Use AI” Argument
Right. Let’s address this one head-on, because it comes up constantly when we talk about hiring a copywriter.
Yes, you can use AI to write your marketing. Lots of businesses are doing exactly that. And if you’ve ever read a LinkedIn post that made you think “this sounds a bit… off,” congratulations, you’ve spotted an AI-written one.
AI is a tool. Used well, by someone who knows what they’re doing, it can speed up the writing process. But it doesn’t know your voice, your clients, your industry nuances, or what your specific audience needs to hear to trust you enough to buy from you.
It also tends to produce content that passes the technically-correct test but fails my Pub Test. Which is, arguably, the only test that matters.
Quick detour for the newbies… The Pub Test is simply this. If you wouldn’t say something to your mate down the pub, why are you writing it in your content? For example, how many times have you arrived at the pub, walked up to your mate and said “June Newsletter!” I’m hoping the answer is never, yet we send it directly to potential buyers’ inboxes. So keep the Pub Test in mind whenever you’re writing your content.
The Generic Content Problem
There’s a specific kind of marketing death that happens slowly, over months of AI-generated or template-driven content. Your audience starts to feel like they’re reading everyone else’s stuff. The distinctiveness that made people choose you, your perspective, your humour, your way of explaining things, gets flattened into beige.
Beige doesn’t convert. It just takes up space.
So What Does Hiring a Copywriter Actually Cost?
Done-for-you content marketing for a service-based business typically starts from around £1,000–£2,000 per month for proper, strategic, consistent content across multiple channels.
I know. Read that number and breathe.
Now compare it to:
- The 8–12 hours a month you’re currently spending on marketing, that’s getting inconsistent results
- The clients you’re not converting because your copy isn’t landing
- The revenue you’re leaving on the table because your email list is sitting there doing nothing
- The mental load of knowing your marketing is always two weeks behind where it should be
The question isn’t “can I afford to hire a copywriter?” It’s “can I afford not to?”
5 Things to Look For When Hiring a Copywriter
Right, so you’re sold on the idea. But now you need to actually find a good one. And because the internet is absolutely rammed with people calling themselves copywriters who’ve watched three YouTube videos and downloaded a Canva template, here’s what to look for.
1. They ask questions before they write a single word
A copywriter worth their rate will want to know your business inside out before they touch a keyboard. Your clients, your voice, what you hate saying, what makes you different, and why your best customers chose you over everyone else. If they don’t ask or worse, if they just crack on from a brief that took ten minutes, the content will show it. Generic in, generic out. All of my clients have a 45-minute Kick-Off Call so I can ask a million questions all about you and your business.
2. Their own content passes the pub test
This one’s simple. Read their stuff. Does it sound like a real person who knows what they’re talking about? Or does it sound like a very confident LinkedIn bot? If a copywriter can’t make their own marketing interesting, they’re not going to do it for yours either.
3. They talk about results, not just deliverables
“I’ll write you four emails a month” is a deliverable. “I’ll write you four emails a month designed to move your subscribers toward booking a call with you” is a result. The best copywriters think in outcomes, not word counts. Ask them what success looks like. Their answer will tell you everything. And please avoid anyone charging by word count. This is a clear sign of an inexperienced copywriter.
4. They push back occasionally
Counterintuitive, but important. You want someone who’ll tell you when an idea isn’t going to land, not just nod along and produce whatever you ask for. A copywriter who agrees with everything you say isn’t a strategic partner; they’re a very expensive transcription service. I recently had to tell my client I was reducing their email list from almost 5,000 to just under 3,000. They really weren’t happy until they saw the results we got by doing it.
5. There’s a proper onboarding process
Good copywriters don’t just start writing. They extract your voice first — your phrases, your pet hates, your tone, the words you’d never say in a million years. If there’s no process for capturing who you actually are before they start writing as you, the content will sound like a slightly better version of someone else. Which is not the goal.
What Good Content Marketing Actually Looks Like for a Six-Figure Business
If you’re at six figures, you’ve already proven you can deliver. The gap between where you are and where you want to be is almost always visibility and consistency, not capability.
You don’t need to go viral. You don’t need to be on every platform. You need to show up consistently, in your own voice, in front of the right people, saying the things that make them think “yes, that’s exactly what I need.”
That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.
When marketing is handled properly — with strategy, with a consistent voice, with copy that’s actually written to convert — it compounds. A blog post written today is still pulling traffic in 18 months. An email sequence written once is still nurturing leads while you sleep. A LinkedIn presence built consistently is still generating enquiries when you’re on your third client call of the day.
DIY marketing, done inconsistently in stolen gaps between actual work, doesn’t compound. It starts and stops, then starts again, and never quite gets traction.
Hey, I’m Em…
If you’re a six-figure service-based business owner who knows your marketing could be doing more work, but it always falls to the bottom of your to-do list, or you just don’t know how, a Marketing Clarity Call is the place to start. You’ll leave with a clear plan for what your content should be doing and how to make it actually sound like you. Whether we work together or not.