Less Hassle, More Results: Subscribe to That’s Nice Copy
For the TL;DR crowd:
For anyone that’s looking to kill time…
Every now and then the phrase ‘Content is King’ is thrown around in the world of DTC. Over on everyone’s favourite corporate echo chamber (ehem, LinkedIn), various thought leaders and e-commerce experts will go on a frenzy of copy fandom, reminding their followers that ‘your messaging is what matters!’ and ‘finding your unique voice might be the difference between you getting the sale over your competitor!’
They aren’t wrong, (they’re rarely wrong, just a bit annoying), and personally, we love it when some really nice copywriting examples do the rounds as sources of inspiration.
What is Nice Copy?
For the sake of being on brand I’m going to talk about copy that does its job well as ‘nice copy’. It’s hard to define ‘nice copy’, but when you read it, you know. Usually, it’s a string of words that put a smile on your face. It could be a whole paragraph that brings tears to your eyes. Long or short, ‘nice copy’ taps into your emotions, and nowadays, it’s pretty rare.
Rare but highly sought after. Brand’s that use inventive subject lines, headlines that catch you off guard, or product descriptions that get you giggling are usually the brands that become household names. They’ve got something about them.
Back to School: Copywriting 101
Think of the e-commerce landscape as school and all the various industry categories as different cliques. Just like school, a popularity contest takes place and popular brands, like popular people, rise to the top by expressing themselves in ways that others admire or relate to.
The work of a copywriter is to make your brand memorable by giving it character. There’s a lot of brands out there and only a few succeed in this. Think of your school year, I bet you can visualise your funniest, coolest, and most controversial peers, but can you picture the rest of the class?
Invest in Copywriting Services
So, if you want your brand to stand out, it should be obvious now what you need to do — invest in quality copywriting. The sweet spot is finding copywriting services that can inject relatable personality into your brand, whilst also nailing marketing best practices.
In digital marketing, you’re looking for a copywriter that understands when the brief is to engage, when the brief is to sell, and when the moment calls for words that encourage a lasting bond between your brand and your customers.
Where do you find these copywriters that specialise in e-commerce? You’ve got four options.
Hire an in-house copywriter: Train them up on your TOV, pay them a decent salary.
Work with a freelance copywriter: Pay expensive rates and juggle with unreliability.
Ask an agency partner: Most marketing agencies will throw copywriting into scope. Expect an inflated price with no promise of expertise in the area.
That’s Nice Copy: Our flexible, monthly subscription that delivers effective copy, written by e-commerce experts, with the option to pause or cancel anytime.
Let’s flesh them out a bit…
In-House Hiring: Committed, But at a Cost
There are many wonderful copywriters out there with expansive portfolios full of impressive brands. Some will have developed the TOV for businesses you’re already familiar with, others may have jumped around agencies, working with multiple household names at a time.
So what’s the downside? There isn’t one if you are approaching this as an established brand with a budget of $50k-$70k a year plus benefits (which can be an additional 30%).
If you’re not batting an eye at this amount then I’d guess your brand already has its voice and you just need someone to pick up the briefs and get click clacking.
Of course, hiring doesn’t offer you a great deal of flexibility. Once you’ve employed your copywriter, you are stuck with a full-time overhead and probably a 2 month onboarding process whilst they get used to your daily ops.
Freelance Copywriters: Flexible, But Flaky
As someone that worked many years as a freelancer, I shouldn’t be the person to throw shade, but I’m going to. Whilst often very talented, hourly rates, day rates, and project rates can come as quite a shock to start-ups and scale-ups that are trying to stay lean. We’re talking up to $150 an hour for a senior copywriter, with many pricing projects at $500+.
Although the lack of commitment can make freelancers an appealing option, it’s important to consider that most of the talented ones are juggling multiple clients, which makes them a little flaky.
If you opt for a more junior freelancer, you won’t necessarily get bad copy, but you can expect them to take longer to learn your TOV — an onboarding period of probably a few months.
Ask an Agency: Receive an Afterthought
If you’re a start-up or scale-up, you’re probably working with an agency, or a few, to get your brand off the ground. Perhaps you have a performance marketing partner or a design agency maintaining your site. Often, it doesn’t matter what the agency says they specialise in, they’ll throw copy into the scope if they see an opportunity to.
Don’t be tricked into this. The majority of the time you end up paying a premium rate for copywriting that is outsourced or minimally managed. Nowadays, we’d guess you’re paying your agency to stick your brief through an AI writer.
That’s Nice Copy: That’s Us.
As you might have guessed, the author of this blog now writes for That’s Nice Copy, but has previously done the rounds working for agencies and as a freelancer. I’m actually the founder of TNC and I built this very flexible subscription service for e-commerce start-ups and scale-ups.
Here’s what we offer:
Three different subscription plans, meaning there’s an affordable option no matter what stage of growth you’re at.
You can subscribe in seconds and be onboarded within 24 hours.
Quick delivery times.
Pause or cancel whenever.
We work on one brief at a time, and this is all managed from your Brief Board which your team has total control over. Your brief board is also where we chat — no meetings, because we know you have better things to do.
The best part? You can pause or cancel your subscription whenever you don’t need the service. What do we mean by pause? Pump the brakes mid month and you can bank the remaining days in your 31 day billing cycle for when you’re ready to resume. Billing pauses too, so you’re never wasting cash.
And before you say, “Okay yeah, that all sounds really great but we have a marketing manager that can use an AI writer like copy.ai or ChatGPT and then we don’t have to pay anything”, I’m going to redirect you to this blog, because don’t be ridiculous, that’ll get you nowhere.
Here’s that table again…
That’s Nice Copy offers ridiculous value for brands that need to churn out marketing content in order to grow, but don’t have the resources to commit to freelancers, agencies, or hiring. I think it’s a no-brainer, but I guess I would.
If you’re ready to go, subscribe over here, if you’re semi convinced but have a few questions — book a call and I’ll do my best to convince you.
