Transitioning from Journalism to Copywriting for Marketing Firms: A Basic, How-To Guide

"Competition is so tough in journalism that I'm being squeezed out," you realize as you haven't gotten a decent-paying job in months. You're not alone. Ad nauseam, we've read about newspapers tightening their belt meanwhile squeezing journalists out of the field they love. To go into another line of work is a decision made begrudgingly, usually out of necessity. The good news is journalists are finding that their skills match marketing firms' needs. Depending on your vantage point, copywriting for a marketing could be an appealing proposition because there are plenty of relatively decent paying, stable jobs out there for copywriters yet few know how to write copy well for marketing purposes. Therefore, if you can master the basics, you've hit upon some decent career prospects.

Learn how to change the focus of your writing and a few very specific skills you'll need to "fit in" to a marketing firm. Also, I'll let you know if -and when- it's worth it to freelance as a copywriter.

Recently I was put in charge of hiring our newest, fabulous copywriter onto the 2-person team. Before Tom and I found Jennifer, I went through many writing samples where I really had to force myself to read past the first paragraph because I was so, let's say ... under-impressed. So be encouraged because as a journalist, your research, lede-writing and creativity is scarce out there - and marketing firms need you.

I'll get straight to what a journalist needs to learn to succeed as a copywriter for a marketing firm and then, if you're interested you can read specifically about my path into full-time copywriting for a marketing firm.

What Journalists Must Learn About Copywriting For a Marketing Firm

Generally I found that transitioning from copywriting for a marketing firm from journalism, although not without it's bumps, was not exactly traumatic, either. Here are some important pointers on where the two fields diverge:

1 - Marketing firms' business model shapes your day-to-day

This may be an obvious point, but in case it needs to be said, the fact that marketing firms have an entirely different business model than any media outlet will impact absolutely every aspect of your day-to-day as a copywriter and your focus as you are writing. Most likely you will be writing on behalf of the marketing firms' clients as well as your company. While these are private enterprises, they are usually medium-sized businesses that monitor their costs quite carefully. This means the timing of everything you do will be closely monitored. Time = Money.

As a copywriter your job is usually to write clients' blogs because everyone has suddenly in the past few years woken up to the fact that their website won't get found if they do not post relevant, fresh content on a regular basis. You might also be asked to write press releases, ad copy, email newsletter articles, subject lines, social media postings and more.

2 - The key to refocusing your writing for marketing

Your clients will be 99% commercially-oriented. You will no longer be reporting on the latest government upheaval. Selling is the name of the game but you don't want your copy to turn off their potential clients by sounding too sales-y. You must provide value - which means that you give your reader an answer to their question or satisfies a need. You can offer value by relating this to things that are going on in the world, much like you do as a journalist, but keep in mind first and foremost to answer the question: what is the reader looking for?

Examples: I need a gift idea for my husband. What do I need to do to get certified as a paralegal? How can I get cheaper car insurance? What's there to do in Miami? What plants have a calming effect? At the same you have to ensure to give the reader plenty of cues to purchase your clients' product or service.

Write in a way that both offers a solution to a potential client's need and also has "buy" terms that cues the client to purchase a product or service.

There is something called "evergreen content" that many websites aspire to. This is content on a page that is so darn informative, easy to digest and shareable that it becomes a reference page. In turn, this becomes an entry point from which a user might then start browsing other parts of your site! The page is usually in the neighborhood of 3,000 words, oftentimes has many useful, up-to-date infographics, videos and/or images. This "ups" your website's authority overall. You will be competing with many companies out there who are also casting for the same big fish. And while traffic is great, gaining authority is great, what your client really wants to see is that you are making them money. Can a conversion be tracked directly to your efforts in writing this evergreen content?

My boss says: "Where is the 'buy' term?" whenever a marketer comes up with a topic for the copywriter to write a post on. Again: even if your marketing firm gets your clients a 1,000% increase in traffic to their website, if that traffic does not convert (i.e. make a sale), your client will not be convinced that you are worth what they are paying you. So find the balance between value and ensuring to use buy terms and convincing Calls-To-Action (CTA), etc.

3 - Learn Marketing-ese. Seriously.

On that note: Learn the lingo. Marketers are notorious for speaking in tongues. Marketing-ese. Get a marketing glossary and become very familiar with the terms. You will be so glad you did. These terms will make up 50% of the conversation every time a marketer opens their mouth. Don't get mad. They can't help it. It is now in their DNA. Their dizzying language includes terms like: conversions, KPIs, CTA, SEO, SERP, drip campaigns, A/B testing, funnels, CTRs, etc. etc. etc.

4 - Learn how to write for a particular reading level

Marketers suggest to aim your writing for a 5th to 7th-grade reading level. It's tempting to lament this, but it's pointless, so this section is intentionally kept short.

Check your text via a Flesch Kincaid calculator (that's just one popular calculator, there are others) that will assess anything you've written and assign it a reading level or "difficulty."

5 - Dream, eat, breathe SEO

Sure, if you worked in digital media and you think you know enough about it, you may still have to beef up your knowledge. The media has it easier here because you already have a willing audience and they come to you. Contrarily, in a marketing firm, because you are trying to attract the attention of an audience on behalf of your client, who is likely a very small (unknown) fish in a big pond, you must crank up your use of SEO to whole other level because the average person does not know your client, and your SEO is how they are going to find them. If your SEO tactics aren't superhero strong, your posts just won't get read and your client won't get found. SEO isn't just on the copywriters, shoulders, however. Search Engine Optimization is a holistic approach that includes user experience (UX) on a website and more, but doing your part well as a copywriter within that holistic approach is important.

Hint: Install Keywords Everywhere on your browser. It's free and when you run a search on a search engine, Keywords Everywhere will help you see what synonyms people are using to search for the same topics you are writing on so you can sprinkle your text with them. In Marketing-ese this is called "semantics." There are many programs that will help you out. Another favorite used by our marketers is FatRank.

6 - Write Shorter & Sweeter

Accept the fact that people will not read most of your article. You have 2.5 seconds to grab their attention, so do it in your first sentence. If you've been well-drilled on how to write a good lede, you've got it in the bag. But do not "date" your lead the way you would in a breaking news article "In Thursday's meeting at the Arab League's discussion on Syria..." No. You are most likely writing a blog post, and this will sit on a server and need to be relevant for longer than a breaking news story. The closest you can and be safe is writing about next year's upcoming trend.

Your audience is apathetically quick. Under no circumstance will they read your entire, slow "build up" to where you finally get to your point at the end of your third paragraph! They want their answer now! In the first sentence! If not, they move on to a website, social media page or email who will give them the answer immediately.

Ciao. You lost a potential customer for your client.

When I review someone else's work, I ask them: "What is the strongest action-oriented sentence that also encapsulates the idea of the article? Move that strong sentence to the top and build the rest of the article around it."

6 - Formatting really is "a thing" in SEO

Blocks of text intimidate people. They feel like they're suffering reading heavy-duty research papers for college all over again!

I've seen one of my client's most popular pages on Google have a 100% bounce rate! That's alarming!

Q: How can an article have the highest traffic of an entire site... and yet as soon as the user opens the page, they click back out of it!?

A: The title was SEO-perfect, but the article was dated from two years ago. It had zero pictures. Zero formatting.

Don't scare off your audience. Format your text in a way that is easy on the eyes.

• Keep the topic relevant
• Bullet points
• Pictures
• Icons
• Summarize information in infographics
• Tables
• H1 and H2 tags

This is something that Jennifer did extremely well in her writing samples when we hired her.

Rest your reader's mind by organizing your text visually on a page so that it is super easy to skim. That's right. People don't read on the net. They skim.

7 - I hope you like Excel because you'll spend an insane amount of time logging and creating reports in marketing firms

Without a doubt, there is more administrative work in a marketing firm than you would ever have to do in the media. As a journalist, an editor assigns you a piece and you immediately go into action to get the interview and story first, gather the photos, video etc, come up with a great angle, tell the story, write a fascinating title and publish it. Phew. Rinse and repeat. Either it's published and well-done or it's not. Your value as a journalist is assessed on whether you got the story first, and if your production is more attractive than other news outlets' and overall contributes to the strength of your media outlet, which will, in turn, make it the best in its area and garner more adverti$ing.

In a marketing firm, they are extremely budget-sensitive and the amount of data entry, tracking and administrative work can drive you nuts.

This has been the most exasperating part of my transition and, I hope this doesn't come off as understated, the part I despise the most.

Contrast a journalism assignment as described above to when you are assigned a topic in a marketing firm: First you must log that you were given this assignment. Usually manually. Iew. If you are a people-person, communication with clients can be a very pleasant if they are pleasant people. However, it can be time-consuming and you are on the clock. You log how long your communications take. You must log how long your research, writing, editing take.

Then there's the reporting that never seems to satisfactorily answer the questions on how efficient your department has been. Often the reports that your logging systems rely on are summarily insufficient. There is always a calculation that the supervisors want to see that you cannot get from the canned reports, so you must export and clean up months of data in Excel in a tedious reporting process. You will be expected to write quickly and log how long it took you. Storytelling skills, while you'd think are important, are not the emphasis. It's about how quickly you can get it out, with SEO in mind and match the voice, meet basic criteria and formatting and - again - log and report on everything!

Hint: Ask other copywriters in your firm how they deal with the admin so that it doesn't become overwhelming. Their insights into their best practices or best habits will help you shorten the learning curve, and take their advice based on what you know about personality. I am implementing time-saving and focusing suggestions from a client and a colleague.

7 - How much does a freelance copywriter make?

While freelance work is very, um, "freeing," if you live in a city with a high cost of living, it will be difficult to find and keep a client that can pay you well enough to make a decent living.

In concrete numbers, for a very simple 500-word piece, I've seen freelancers get paid as little as $13. I also know that there are some freelance copywriters who are paid from $100-$200 for more difficult, 500-word pieces.

There is a demand for good content creators, so if you can find those golden clients, it may be to your favor for now.

8 - Is freelancing a good way to enter copywriting for marketing firms?

I've hired outsourcers and supervised interns and with some pointers I have truly seen them push the limits of their writing style and vocabulary, hone their research skills, figure out skimming-friendly formatting, learn to use semantics in their writing and overall increase greatly their potential as a copywriter.

This indeed, is a good way for you to test the waters. Textbroker, Fiverr, Proz, these are all viable websites to register and add your writing samples on. List yourself properly, checking all of the areas where you are an expert in and post a few of your writing samples.

If you're interested in an in-house position, drop the hint to the companies that have contracted you that you're open to the idea.

9 - What is the best outsourcing platform?

Textbroker is the best of the above listed websites I've seen for freelancers because if your client doesn't pay for a confirmed order that you've turned in within four or five days, Textbroker will automatically pay you from the client's budget.

Last thoughts.

If you're still breaking in to copywriting, you may find a good client with a professional on-staff copywriter that can give you constructive criticism. Check their advice against what you find on Google and make some adjustments to how you approach writing, text and content. The more you fine tune your writing for marketing and learn about tools and metrics, the wider you can cast your net and start increasing your fees and salary potential.

Good luck! Truly, I'd like to hear how the transition goes for you and anything you would like to know before embarking on a career change into copywriting for marketing.

______

About Moi:

A Very Brief Brief on How I Went from Journalism to Copywriting for a Marketing Firm

There are so many people who want to work in this attractive media field. Hardcore news sites have had to cut their budgets drastically due to competition from nimble websites, flashier, semi-newsy media outlets to outright loss of interest in real news in favor of "common denominator" entertainment.

In sum: you have to have an "in" to get hired by a media outlet these days.

In my case, I'd worked in local media for 8 years abroad so without an "in" I could not find a position in the U.S. media. Much less in Florida.

Let's rewind for a second. I went to Egypt in 2007 and was recruited almost immediately to work in a magazine, later at AUC and later at Ahram Online newspaper. Graphic design and communications made up the bulk of my resumé up until I got to Cairo, so journalism was a natural next step. After 6.5 years in Egypt I moved to Panama and was the Lifestyle Editor of a major Spanish-language newspaper. When I decided I would return to the U.S. a couple of years ago, I applied to dozens upon dozens of media-related positions in Florida and, unfortunately got zero formal interviews.

As I was browsing for journalism positions, "content management" and "copywriting" positions kept on popping up. In all honesty, I'd had some marketing experience. And between my strong writing skills and the fact that I happened to have worked in a Communications & Marketing office for AUC, in PR offices for universities as an intern, in graphic design & marketing for the YMCA, I had enough of a background to skate me into an interview and writing test. And my writing test is where I shone!