Because you don’t want to trust your business with a butter fingers.
You hand over your LEGO Death Star, 4,000 pieces of painstakingly constructed bricks that took you weeks of work to complete.
And the other person drops it.
All your hard work, smashed by clumsy hands. It’s what business owners are scared of when they let a freelancer work on their carefully constructed brand. And that’s what James Gill was scared of, too.
Going into 2022, GoSquared CEO James Gill was keen to step up his business’ inbound marketing efforts. But he was faced by a problem common to business owners who produce their content internally.
“We just didn’t have enough time in the day. So we were starting to, frankly, not achieve the growth we wanted to see as a business.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
James knew how important content could be to a business, and he knew he needed external help. But he’d been burned in the past, leaving him unwilling to bring in a freelancer.
“Every single piece of content we put out either adds to or subtracts from the brand. But previous freelancers had written for Google first and humans second, or lacked personality and opinion, or wrote in a formulaic way. So I struggled for a long time to build up enough trust to hand over the responsibility for our content.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
James needed a talented, strategic copywriter that he could trust to live up to his high standards.
Spoiler alert
Why make you wait to see the results James enjoyed from working with Your Copy Righter?
41% open rate
200% ROI
A suite of content ready for repurposing
What is GoSquared?
GoSquared offers a number of software platforms for subscription-based businesses, including Engage, a piece of email and messaging automation software. (Since then, Engage has evolved into EcoSend, which is doing some really exciting things around sustainability for your email campaigns.)
In a nutshell, EcoSend lets its customers set up automated messaging based on user behaviour. For example, you might visit a webpage and receive an email followup the next day, or you might visit a sales page and receive a text message a week later.
As co-founder of the business, James’ vision for GoSquared was always one of quality, sustainability, and decency.
“I’ve always tried to build the kind of company that I would want to work at. So we try to work with really smart, switched on people that have a real passion.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
That shines through in the products the business designs and the service it offers. And so the content the business publishes needs to reflect that same attitude, too. Because anything less than stellar risks damaging the good reputation that GoSquared was building.
“If we put out content we don’t believe in, then we’re doing ourselves an injustice. It may be cheaper or faster to produce, but we’re only scoring an own goal.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
While most of GoSquared’s content had been published on its blog, James had a new vision for 2022. He wanted to both practically demonstrate the effectiveness of email marketing and capture leads’ email addresses by offering a written email course. Such a course would take the prospect from novice to automation expert.
But James had no-one to write it, and wasn’t sure how to find a freelancer he could trust. So the first step was to reassure him.
Convincing copy
James cares about his business, he cares about its reputation, and he cares about giving his team confidence in him.
“Every decision I make matters. If I go and spend like a bunch of money and we do something that’s rubbish, I squander the trust the team’s put in me. And it doesn’t look great for the company.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
More than anything, it was important to reassure him that I cared as much as he did.
“Some freelancers are quite transactional and if it doesn’t work out, they just go on to another client. James was far beyond treating it as a mere transaction, which I found reassuring and refreshing.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
So we started the project with a few conversations. The first of these was designed to listen to James and his concerns, as well as to understand his objectives and what he wanted from the content.
The second was to demonstrate that he was in safe hands; I went away and did some research and talked through what I proposed and how I would deliver it.
“From our conversations, I built a lot of confidence that I could trust James. I felt like this is someone who’s going to do a good job. Even just the small things like being effective with following up and being clear on what he’d charge. This is someone who wants to do a good job.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
We then set up an expert interview with Russell Vaughan, GoSquared’s Sales Engineer. Interviewing Russell gave me the unique insights that only GoSquared could offer, which is key to creating content that helps your business stand out. Otherwise, you’re simply repeating information the prospect can find elsewhere.
Coupled with independent research and customer language analysis, I had everything I needed to write GoSquared’s email automation course.
“He got up to speed really quickly on the nuances of our product. And he took the time to research things and find valuable information we could bring into the piece and make it more original.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
So was James’ trust rewarded?
Reassuring results
Yes. Of course.
One of the most important jobs a copywriter does is to completely adopt the client’s tone of voice. There’s no point in writing something for a client that feels like someone else wrote it. And James needed copy that felt true to GoSquared.
Which is what he got.
“The project James delivered for us was so carefully crafted, and so “on message” that it could have been written by us.”
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
And given the technical nature of the content, everything had to be factual, engaging, and inspire the reader to see the potential in marketing automation.
The outcome was a piece of content that was unique, that had thorough, deep understanding of the market, the industry and our product. Anyone reading it who has an understanding, they’re going to very quickly decipher whether you know what you’re talking about. And it definitely passed that test. I was very proud to put out that content.
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
With five emails in the course, drop-off isn’t just expected, it’s encouraged. That’s because your content is always going to be found by people who aren’t suited to your product. Getting on a sales call with them is a waste of time, so I craft copy that puts them off and leaves behind only the ideal customer.
Open Rates
Lesson 1: 41% open rate
Lesson 2: 29%
Lesson 3: 26%
Lesson 4: 21%
Lesson 5: 19%
Conversion rate: 2%
Ultimate Return On Investment (ROI): 2x and growing
The longer we keep customers, the more revenue they bring in. And they can go on and refer other customers. So the ROI of that course over less than a year is great. And it can only get better.
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
Because James has only just begun to scratch the surface of what he can do with his content. The copy can be repurposed into blog content, podcast, video, social, and more, all of which can attract even more prospects and increase that ROI.
Trust Restored
Perhaps more importantly, working with me gave James the confidence to work with other external suppliers.
Working with James has given me confidence that there are people that genuinely care, produce great work, and are proud of that. That will take the time to do that. This gives me a lot more confidence that, if you find the right people, they can truly knock it out of the park.
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
And which of those people will James turn to in the future?
Next time we want to create something like this, Your Copy Righter is at the top of my list. The bar’s been set!
James Gill, CEO of GoSquared
If you want to work with a content strategist and copywriter who’s going to set the bar high, care about your content as much as you do, and squeeze value out of every penny of your investment, get in touch.
I promise I won’t drop your brand. Or your LEGO.
