In previous posts I’ve talked about how the apparent advantages of taking on an in-house copywriter may be outweighed by the disadvantages. This final part of the in-house copywriter vs copywriting agency series continues the discussion.

The bottom line is always the bottom line.

I’ve done quite a bit of maths around this and I think that in most cases we’re a more cost effective option than taking on an in-house copywriter and we continue to win business because of this.

It’s often difficult to give a like-for-like comparison as companies frequently make a direct cost comparison between our quote and the rate they are going to pay an in-house copywriter, forgetting not only the financial costs of National Insurance and holiday pay but the costs involved in recruitment, training, management, editorial, shortfalls in efficiency due to tea breaks, equipment malfunction, illness and other human factors.

With a copywriting agency, you only pay for the content you’ve asked for – not our lunch breaks or broadband crises.

It’s also important for companies to understand what is humanly possible for their potential copywriters. In my experience a freelance copywriter can handle around 10 to 15 250-word pieces of content in a day and that’s pushing it. Any more than that and quality can suffer.

Copywriting does not suit production line dynamics and if you try and push copywriters to insanely high volumes the work will suffer, either in the short term through repetition, lack of depth/research and typos or in the longer term through total burnout.

OK, you’re biased – is in-house ever a better option?

The only time that we can’t be competitive is when we’re quoting against companies who use unpaid or low paid interns or choose to use overseas writers and you have to ask yourself what kind of content you can expect for that.

Where access to physical product is a requirement for writing product descriptions then having someone actually in the office might be a help but we do actually receive physical product from one of our clients in order to write their product descriptions, so even that’s doable. And in the case of Sock Shop, even factoring in the postal costs associated with sending out and collecting product, it’s still a more cost effective option than handling in-house.

While cost is important, a copywriter can be a valuable part of your marketing team. That’s not to say we can’t do the job just as well and integrate into your working practices but it may be that your company culture likes new faces and that an in-house team is important to your ethos.

Our bias is very much in favour of web content for Internet marketing – articles, blogs, product descriptions, web pages, emails etc – and, while we work closely with the brand creatives of many of our clients, generally we are not involved in the creative strategy for our larger clients. That’s certainly one area where an in-house copywriter could have an advantage over our services but essentially the traditional “copy and concept” copywriter is a very different role to what we offer and comes with a price tag.

Otherwise we’re usually able to quote competitively against the in-house option – just think: all of the service with none of the hassle. Is there a downside? I’m obviously biased but at the very least try it out before you commit time and money to recruiting permanent staff – it’s inexpensive to try a sample of our work before committing to a larger batch and often we can return samples within 48 hours to allow you to make a decision quickly.