Professional Copywriting or Do It Yourself?

Copy is the written content that appears on your website, blog, brochures, newsletters, case studies, articles and other marketing collateral. Copywriters are professionals at writing that content. They may specialize by industry or by type of marketing collateral (for example, social media, websites or articles).

Do it yourself (DIY) copywriting is always an option when you're starting a business; but as your business grows, you need a professional marketing person on your team--right after the accountant and often before the professional sales person. Your marketing copy helps create potential customers for the sales person to visit and gives the sales person material to leave behind.

As a professional copywriter, I find that almost all DIY copy suffers from one or more of the following problems:

• Lack of organization. Few customers seeking for item X are willing to hunt through an entire page of unrelated products, services and company history first. They want to get to X fast.
• Neglect of the customer. If the words "I" or "we" appear in your copy more often than the word "you," you're probably neglecting your customer.
• Lots of features, no benefits. What does the customer gain from your product or service? That's the benefit and that's what customers are interested in first.
• Awkward wording. You have to be crystal clear about what you offer--customers won't guess or, if they do, they'll guess wrong.
• Incomplete material. When you run a business, you run out of time to tweak the website, write the next blog post, transform a customer comment into a success story, respond to a tweet or release a newsletter on schedule.
• Too much of a reliance on words. A professional copywriter has a high respect for graphic design and knows that more words don't necessarily equal more sales. But the right words make all the difference.

Have you tried DIY copywriting? Have you hired a professional? What did you find were the benefits and drawbacks of each approach?