How To Know If Your Conversion Copywriter Is Actually Good

Should a good copywriter make you rich?

If you've ever wondered whether your copywriter is actually good, this episode gives you permission to stop measuring by the wrong metrics.

I had such an interesting conversation in a Voxer chat that I knew I had to bring it to the podcast:
"Should I evaluate how good a conversion copywriter is by how much revenue they generate?"

This got me thinking about everything I've learned and experienced over the last seven years as a DFY conversion copywriter. The truth is, most founders don't know how to evaluate whether a copywriter is actually good. So they reach for the easiest metric: revenue. 

In this episode, we're breaking down what actually determines whether a conversion copywriter is doing good work, why revenue isn't always the right measure, and how you can know if you're getting real value from your investment in copywriting. Whether you're considering hiring a copywriter or you're already working with one and wondering if it's actually working, this is a practical, honest conversation you need to hear.

This is for you if you’ve wondered:

• Is my copywriter actually good, or is the problem somewhere else in my funnel?
• Should I be evaluating a copywriter based on the revenue they generate?
• If a copywriter is so talented, why aren't they rich themselves?
• How do I know if the copy did its job?
• What am I actually supposed to measure when hiring or evaluating a copywriter?
• Is it possible that great copy exists inside a broken marketing system?
• Who is responsible for marketing results?

➡️ SHOW NOTES: Grab all the links and resources mentioned in this episode on the blog here! https://www.megankachigan.com/hire-conversion-copywriter-metrics

FREE RESOURCE: Copy not converting? Increase your conversion rate in 5-minutes a day when you join my free 5-day challenge “Why Isn’t This Converting?”

CONNECT WITH MEGAN:
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Join the Why Isn't This Converting?" Free 5-Day challenge to get more clients from your copy by clicking here!

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Transcript

Welcome to the Values First Marketing Podcast. I'm Megan Kachigan and I help business owners like you stay in your zone of genius without making marketing feel like a full-time job on top of serving your clients. I'm sharing what's working now with simple content systems, copy that elevates your thought leadership, and messaging that makes your audience feel seen, not sold to. 

I'm your trusted expert in turning your voice, values, and vision into a sustainable marketing system that attracts aligned clients and grows your business in a way that's sustainable, unmistakable, and irresistible, all without sacrificing your time, your voice, or your peace. You're in the right place. Let's do this. 

Okay. I just had such an interesting conversation that I knew I needed to bring out of the Voxer chat and onto the podcast. The question that was asked is this, should I evaluate how good a conversion copywriter is by how much revenue they generate? And this question was asked with so much respect and like genuine curiosity. 

And I think it is such a great question that honestly isn't talked about enough. And I get it because it can feel awkward maybe to ask that to a copywriter. But this question brought up so much that I've learned and experienced over the last seven years as a done-for-you conversion copywriter. 

And I want to talk about it with you today because I think it's going to help your hiring choices and maybe what could have gone wrong in the past if you have hired a copywriter or marketer. So today I'm walking you through what actually determines whether a conversion copywriter is doing good work, what you should actually be measuring, because most people are measuring the wrong thing, and how to know if you're getting real value from your investment in copywriting. So this is a super practical, honest, and essential conversation if you are considering hiring a conversion copywriter or if you're already working with one and wondering if it's working. 

So let's start with the foundation. Copywriting does many different jobs and not all of these jobs are measured by sales. So when you hire a copywriter to build your brand voice or to clarify your positioning or write podcast show notes, those projects are hugely important. 

They matter a lot. But they're not measured by how much money they generate. They're not necessarily directly revenue generating activities, though they obviously do contribute to that. 

So a conversion copywriter who nails your brand voice, you know, is going to be the difference between sounding like everyone else and sounding like you. That's not a direct sale, even though it is the foundation that every sale stands on. So let me get into it here, because I think this is where so many founders get confused. 

They assume all copywriting is about driving sales right now. And wouldn't that be nice? But the best conversion copywriter understands that some of their most important work happens before anyone is ready to buy. So like look at positioning. 

If copywriter helps you articulate what makes you different, your unique perspective, your values, your approach, that clarity ripples through everything else. It makes your messaging become stronger. Your ideal clients recognize themselves.

But you can't draw a direct line from positioning clarity to $10,000 in revenue or whatever it is, because that positioning still needs to be executed through a marketing strategy. So let's get into a tangible example here. I remember when I followed up back at the beginning of my career, I followed up with a client months after they launched their campaigns.

And I had only written the ads for the launch. And they said the ads I wrote for them got clicks, but they used a sales page that wasn't updated. And the email sequence was written by someone else in-house, and none of it worked together. 

So the sales were not where they wanted them to be. But it was interesting because I was like, well, my ad copy did exactly what it's supposed to do. It compelled people to click to get to the next step. 

My ads did their job. Their job is to get the clicks. The ads brought the traffic. 

But the emails that came next weren't cohesive. The sales page was by someone else didn't fit. The funnel had gaps. 

So my copywriting did its job, even though the rest of the funnel didn't make the sales that they were hoping for. So copywriting can do its job, but the rest of the marketing funnel needs to hold up too. So even though the copy did its job, the business didn't see the revenue. 

So copy can drive people to the door, but it can't make them walk through a broken funnel, right? You can lead a horse to water, you can't make them drink. So it's not always about copywriting quality. Sometimes it absolutely can be. 

But I think more often than not, what I'm seeing is that it's really about your customer journey through your marketing funnel. And when that is off, you're not going to get results no matter how good your words are. So if you, for example, have like the most compelling ad in the world or the best SEO blogs in the world, however you're bringing in traffic, organic, paid or otherwise, if it's driving traffic to a landing page with confusing messaging and to emails that don't build trust or are aren't or emails that just aren't enough to be able to build the trust or an offer that's priced way off market, the copy doesn't get to do its job because the marketing system isn't there to support it. 

And I want to be clear, I am not shirking responsibility here as a copywriter. I'm saying that we as copywriters need to take more responsibility or because I know not all copywriters are created equal. We all have different things that we emphasize, different things that we specialize in and different levels of experience and expertise. 

So you as the person who is hiring the copywriter, it would protect you to be clear on what results you want your copywriter to be responsible for. And this is important. And this brings me to my next section of like, well, how do you know what is reasonable to make them be responsible for? How can you measure the success of a conversion copywriter? So first thing we need to realize is that different stages of your funnel need different metrics and most people are measuring the wrong thing.

So if I write ad copy like we talked about, you measure the success of ads by the clicks that they get. If you are writing a landing page, you need to measure the conversion rate on that page. Not the conversion rate of the sales necessarily, but the conversion rate of that specific landing page to get their email address. 

And that's also dependent on does it have sufficient qualified traffic hitting it? That's usually not the copywriter, you know, driving, you know, managing the ads, driving the traffic or managing the SEO, driving the traffic that. So all of these pieces have to be working in place together. If I write emails, for example, you can measure that by open rates and click through rates, but it depends on the deliverability and the list health. 

Those need to be solid too. So your copywriter isn't just writing words. You need to make sure if they're writing your emails, they also understand some of these technical back end things as well. 

And I think so often what I see is like that people are measuring revenue as the success metric for every stage of the funnel and the customer journey. Oh, you're a copywriter. Oh, you're like your success should be measured by revenue. 

And the answer is yes and no. As you can see, we need to measure the metric that corresponds to the job that the copy is actually doing. So if I'm writing a sales page and we already talked through the strategy of the marketing funnel, then yeah, the sales page is, you know, a lot more directly tied to the revenue that you are making. 

Like, are they clicking and buying or are they not based on the sales page? But that also, whether or not they buy isn't strictly only dependent on the quality of the copy on the sales page. How well were they nurtured beforehand? How long have they been in your world? How were the nurture emails before they arrived to the sales page? How did they even get on your list? Is that relevant to what the sales page is selling? So there are so many other things that we need to think about that I think are often, I think they're just not often not thought about because either the copywriter doesn't have a marketing brain to think about and you only hire them to hire them to just write the copy. And then you as the founder or the business owner or the entrepreneur, you're juggling so many other things and you're not necessarily trained to be the CMO even though you're wearing the CMO hat, but and you're also holding the greater vision, trying to operate in your expertise and doing all of these other things. 

I cannot understate how helpful it is to have someone who is not you see the entire marketing strategy and the customer journey. Someone who is not you who because then we have an objective perspective and we're not, you know, overwhelmed, wearing all the hats, putting out all the fires, doing all of the things. Someone who is trained in marketing, trained in copywriting to be able to see it with a clear vision and a clear mind. 

So it is so important that we measure the metric that corresponds to the job that the copy is actually doing. So let me give you a couple examples and maybe you can help that might help you see yourself clearly in this or give yourself a pat on the back and be like, hey, I'm actually doing a great job at this. So I believe it was last week, recently on the podcast, I talked about a physical therapist I worked with who kind of panicked when his email drop open rates dropped by like 50% and his first instinct was to politely wonder about the copywriter and the subject lines.

But when we dug into the data together, we realized, oh, this is actually not a copy problem at all. He had recently rebranded and changed his business name. And we determined from looking at the data that the copy was actually fine. 

What was happening is that his subscribers didn't recognize him as the sender anymore because he had changed his business name and like what the sender email was coming from. So the solution was so simple. It was literally just a reintroduction email sequence and boom, we're off to the races and the problem is solved. 

And I share more about this in the three questions I asked before fixing your email marketing strategy. It kind of goes along with the same lines as this, but this today is a bigger conversation. So another example, more from the beginning of my career is a client who paid me to write a sales page. 

Okay, great. Hire a copywriter, write a sales page. Perfect. 

I interviewed him to get all the information I needed. I captured his voice. I studied his voice based both based on our conversations and reading all his previous content and binging his podcast. 

I captured the specific, there was a very specific nuance that he wanted for this sales page. And we both felt once I gave him the draft, we both felt really good about how it turned out. So I was like, okay, awesome. 

Like this feels like a success. And then I checked back in with him later after the launch and his reaction was lackluster at best. And I was so confused because I thought I absolutely crushed it with writing this sales page. 

And I mean, he felt that way too. So I was like, what happened? So I asked a couple of questions, started troubleshooting with him, trying to figure out what happened. And it turns out he only had like 50 people hit his sales page, but he wanted over a hundred sales. 

It doesn't make sense, right? The number, the math is not mathing. As they say, the numbers just are not working out. So you can have the best copy in the world, but if only 50 people see your sales page, the problem isn't your conversion rate. 

That's a traffic problem. It's not a copy problem. It is a bigger marketing strategy problem.

And this is my point here. Again, I want to take full responsibility for this, but this is where strategy and copywriting have to align. Because if you're measuring the wrong metric, you're never going to know what's actually working, what you need to shift or pivot, or who you actually need to hire as a result of what the metrics are telling you. 

So here's what I've learned after seven years of being inside these marketing systems, what actually moves the revenue needle. And what goes without saying is conversion copywriting. It's about so much more than just words and the psychology behind them. 

It has to be aligned with the marketing strategy. And in no particular order, I identified that there are really five levers that have to work together in order for the copywriting to work. So first is pricing. 

If your offer is priced way below market value or above what people perceive as valuable, no copy is going to fix that. No matter how much you value stack and price anchor, great copy reveals value. Absolutely. 

But it can't create value that isn't there. I have seen founders with brilliant copy and strong traffic who still can't convert because the price just doesn't match what people believe that they will get. And when the pricing is misaligned, the copy has to work twice as hard. 

But you're still not going to make as many sales, get as many conversions as you could if the pricing is correct, or at least in the ballpark. Because I think if you're underpriced, people will doubt the amount of value that is really in there because then why would they price it so low? Or they want a luxury experience and they know that you as a service provider can't provide that if the rates are so cheap. Some people, we know that you get what you pay for.

And so lowering your prices is not always the right answer. I remember again, back in my early days of copywriting, I remember struggling to get clients and I kept lowering my price until I was like, I'm just going to keep lowering my price until someone says yes. And I know you're all like, no, don't do that. 

But again, it was like in my first year of business. And I actually had a potential client who was like, I am not going to hire you because your prices are too low. And I want to be able to pay you good money. 

And I want you to be excited to work for me. And I want you to enjoy writing for me. And that was such a transformative experience for me and why there's a minimum standard after that. 

I was like, I am never lowering my prices again. This is the minimum standard. This is where it needs to be. 

And yeah, it affected me attracting my most ideal client. I want a client who knows the value of what I offer and wants to pay me that, wants me to enable me to do good work for them. So pricing alignment is huge. 

Like across the board, no matter what your business is, I think especially for service providers as well, it affects who you attract. Okay. The next lever is your offer, your offer architecture. 

Is it clear what you're actually selling? Can someone understand your offer in five seconds or less, 10 seconds or less? Do people have to read three pages to figure out what they are paying for? Clarity comes first. If your offer is fuzzy in any way, even the most compelling copy will struggle because it's not written for, for that most ideal person. So this is about positioning and structure before we ever touch the messaging. 

We need to know very clearly what the offer is. What are we selling? If we don't know, again, the copy can only do so much. Next, we already talked about in the examples a little bit, but it's really traffic, not just volume, but also the quality of the traffic. 

A common way I see this come up is like, oh my gosh, I have so many people on my email list, so many subscribers, but I'm not making any money from it. Why am I continuing to send emails? Why does everyone say the money is in your email list? And oftentimes, again, I would have to look at it to diagnose it personally, but oftentimes what I'm seeing is that they have a lot of subscribers, but A, they've never cleaned their list. B, a lot of their list was built from a freebie or low ticket offer that is no longer aligned with their current evolution of their business, their brand, or their current offer. 

So the people on their list got on it for something other than what they are selling now. So a lot of those subscribers just aren't, it's just not relevant. So you can get amazing copy on a page visited by 50 people a month, and you might get a 10% conversion rate, but still make zero sales. 

The system needs enough qualified traffic to be able to work. Traffic strategy and copywriting both have to align. You really need both. 

And then this goes along the lines of my next one, which is email list health and nurturing. So the best landing page copy in the world falls flat if the emails leading up to it don't build trust or establish context. Each piece of copy has to set up the next one. 

It has to work together. And your email list health, it consists of this technical backend things like deliverability. And it also includes like, well, how are you nurturing before you sell or launch? If you've ghosted your list and then go into a launch, it's just not going to work as well as if you are regularly nurturing your people via email before you sell to them via email. 

It sounds stupidly silly and obvious when I say it like that. But again, the amount of people where this is, the situation is staggering. And I get it like absolutely no judgment, no blame, because it's a lot to write all these emails on top of doing all of the other things that you are doing in your business. 

So I'm like, hire help is something that makes sense. I understand that I'm biased, but it also, it's so much more than just writing the copy. Again, a lot of my clients don't come to me because they're bad at writing copy. 

Most of my clients, the good majority, I would say 80% or more are actually very good at writing copy. That's not the issue. The issue is that they've just reached this critical capacity where writing copy, writing emails is not the best use of their time. 

They need to be visible on their YouTube channel or on their podcast or at in-person events and speaking on stages. And it's hard to be present and to develop your thought leadership and to do all of those visibility things you need to do to grow your business at that level when you're like stuck behind your screen writing emails. It comes to a point where it's just not the best use of your time anymore. 

And it's not your job to also become an expert in things like backend deliverability and become a copywriter on top of all the other things. So there's so much more to it. And then the fifth lever I identified that we need for your copywriting to work is, of course, your messaging hierarchy. 

Is your core positioning clear? Do people understand what problem you solve? For whom? Why should they care? If the messaging is fuzzy, the copywriting will feel like an uphill battle. And conversely, if your messaging is super dialed in, oh my gosh, copywriting just flows out of you so easily. So strategic positioning has to come before this tactical copywriting. 

Otherwise, copywriting is just trying to fill gaps like a round pig in a square hole and you feel like it's never going to fit. It's never going to work. So messaging is so foundational first before we do the copy. 

And so for all of my done-for-you clients, I build out a very thorough, very robust messaging, brand messaging guide. It is like minimum of 50 to 60 pages on a Google Doc. I've gotten up to, I think, like 80 to 90 pages.

I would say on average, maybe around 60 to 70 pages would be a good average. It just depends on your brand, your offer, how much content you've already created, but just going super in-depth into who is your ideal client, writing pages and pages on that. And again, this is not something like, obviously you're going to tell me a little bit, but you're not filling out this 10-page questionnaire. 

I am going in and doing the research for you because I know part of, a big part of hiring a copywriter, the benefit is like saving you time. Like I don't want you to have to do all the work for me. Obviously you need to train me a little bit to get me started, but I'm going to take that and run. 

And I am going to look at all of your past, binge all of your past emails, podcasts, blogs, website, all of the things. So you're never repeating something for me. If it's already out there, like I have binged it, girl, I have stalked you, you know, in a good way to learn your voice, all of those things before we ever have a conversation. 

So I'm coming in to our meeting full of context. So, okay. All of that is to say, good copy rides on the shoulders of all of these other marketing components. 

So if you know that you are good on all of those other components that I listed, offer structure, pricing, messaging, email-less health, traffic, all of those things, then maybe you can get away with hiring a copywriter that's just good at writing copy. Maybe someone who's a little bit newer, save money there. Nothing wrong with that. 

We all got to start somewhere, but if you're not sure, or if it's just not working and you, you know, you thought it's good, but it's not working, that could be a sign that it could be something deeper. And you need an experienced someone to take a look at that. Or if you're just done being the CMO of your business and you want to just, you know, wear one less hat, you're going to need a copywriter who can do both. 

And what I've learned from seven years of working behind the scenes of multi-six and seven-figure service businesses is that copy is just one lever in this multi-lever system. When the other levers are not aligned, pricing, offer clarity, traffic volume, emailing, messaging hierarchy, deliverability, all of those things are not in place, every single one, even exceptional copy cannot generate the revenue that your business deserves. You need the marketing system around it set up properly to let good copy succeed. 

And this is why I have shifted into a fractional CMO plus copywriter model, because I know there's a lot of great marketing strategists out there, but then those come to me and say, I can't X, I need help executing this strategy, or this strategy just doesn't feel good for me to execute. And this is why I mean, never say never, but I really can't see myself leaving the done for you model, even though so many people have told me, become a consultant, you have so much experience and expertise in this. I really don't think it's wise to separate strategy and implementation and execution, because I don't want to write copy into a broken system. 

I audit the whole thing first, identify which levers are actually working for you and which are the bottlenecks, and then I build from there. Because when one person, one umbrella owns both the strategy and the execution, then there's no gap. There's no handoff when something gets lost, the strategic vision and the words work together, and that's when you get both conversions and retention. 

Because let's be real, conversion copywriting isn't enough anymore. And honestly, conversion for copywriting, it seems so silly to be like, I'm a conversion copywriter. Conversion is the bare minimum for copywriting. 

I want retention. I want them not only to convert, but to stay with you for years and years and years. And I actually have a whole other episode and blog post on that, which I'll link in the show notes, because that goes so well with what we're talking about here today. 

So what do you actually need to know about what do you need to shift so that your copywriting converts? So first, before you hire anyone, whether that's copywriter, strategist, designer, whoever, you need to diagnose the system, the marketing system. You might be able to see symptoms and you have a hypothesis, but you don't know what's actually happening until you test it. So here's a couple of diagnostic questions I ask before I ever touch the copy to make sure that, again, we need to pull the right levers. 

So is there enough traffic hitting this page, funnel, email? If the answer is no, we need a traffic strategy first. Copy won't matter if no one sees it or if not enough people see it. Then is your offer priced in alignment with the value that you are delivering? If you're underpriced, copy can bring people in, but they will negotiate or ghost and likely not be your best clients. 

And if you're overpriced, copy will struggle because the perceived value just isn't there yet. Again, we can value stack and we can price anchor and all the things, but if the pricing is off, again, the copy can't be optimized or it could be optimized, but it's just the amount of conversions won't be optimized. And then I'll take a look at your core messaging and positioning. 

Does your audience understand what you do for whom, why it matters? If this is fuzzy, then copy has to fill that gap and it really shouldn't have to. Like the foundation that makes copy so much easier to write is having clear messaging and positioning. I'm also looking at your emails. 

Are they actually landing in the inbox? What are your open rates like? Can those be improved? Is open rates even the problem? I'm checking deliverability. Is it a technical issue or a copy issue? Does your messaging make sense across all touch points? Has your messaging been updated to the current evolution of your business and your brand? It all needs to be coherent across the entire customer journey. So if you're like, oh yeah, oh, I need to check that. 

Oh, okay. That might be something for me. Like before you change the copy, diagnose the marketing system. 

Sometimes the copy is actually pretty good. I've like definitely told clients before that, like, actually your copy is pretty good and it's just the marketing funnel that needs some adjustment and alignment. So once you have the honest answers to these questions, then that is going to tell you where you actually need to focus your time or resources or whatever it is. 

And more importantly, that also tells you what outcomes you actually need to measure so you can build the marketing system that is actually going to work for you. And this matters so much both for your business, bottom line, and your peace of mind. Because yeah, as a copywriter, I want you to stop blaming copy for strategy gaps.

I want you to stop second guessing your messaging when the real problem is pricing or traffic. And I want you to finally hire the right expert for the actual problem more than anything else. Because I know so many people have been burned by a copywriter or a marketing strategist before.

And I think, yeah, that's just part of

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