Build a Copywriting Portfolio with No Experience

1. About this Class: Hi, I'm Alan sharp and welcome to my course on how to build a copywriting portfolio with no experience. In this course, you discover what potential employers need to see in your portfolio. You discover six ways to create copywriting samples from scratch. You learn the difference between business to consumer portfolios and business to business portfolios, and how to capitalize on that vital difference, the land work. In this Skillshare class, I take you step-by-step through the process of creating copywriting samples from scratch. I'll show you how to choose an audience, how to pick an industry, how to select a product or service to write about, and how to decide on the best tactic to use. You look over my shoulder as I write the copywriting samples that you must include in your portfolio, we start with a blank computer screen, and I show you step-by-step how to create a copywriting sample from start to finish, even though you are brand new to copywriting. I created this Skillshare class for any writer who wants to break into copywriting. This class doesn't teach you how to write copy. It teaches you how to create a copywriting portfolio with no experience. At the end of this class is a valuable project. You will create a before and after sample for your copywriting portfolio. You will review this ad, find all of the mistakes in it, and then rewrite the add in your own words to improve it. At the end of the project, you will have a copywriting sample to include in your portfolio. If you want to stand out from all of the other candidates, you need a great copywriting portfolio. You can create that great portfolio even though you have no experience. So go ahead, enroll now. 2. Introduction to Copywriting Portfolios: When it comes to creating a copywriting portfolio, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that the only thing you need to land a job as a copywriter is a portfolio. The bad news. Is that the only thing you need to land a job as a copywriter is a portfolio. The good news is that you don't need a university degree to become a copywriter. You don't need experience. You don't need a diploma in creative writing or a certificate from Udemy or anything else. All that you need to get hired as a copywriter is a portfolio that demonstrates, right, effective copy. That's it. That's the good news because there are few barriers in your way to getting started as a copywriter. If you can write copy, if you have a portfolio that proves that you write copy, you will get hired. But the bad news is that you simply can't get hired as a copywriter without a portfolio. That means your portfolio and your portfolio of alone must persuade a hiring manager that you write effective copy. In most cases, your portfolio is your only kick at the can. If a potential employer looks at your portfolio and thinks that your copywriting ability is inadequate. Nothing else you show them or tell them will persuade them to hire you. Your resume won't help you. Your university degree in English literature won't help you. That's the bad news. If I may put it in those terms, you can get hired as a copywriter with nothing more than an awesome portfolio, but you will get hired only if your portfolio demonstrates that you have what your potential employer is looking for. That's what you're going to discover in this course. How to create a copywriting portfolio that shows employers what they are looking for, even if you have no paid copywriting experience. So let's start at the very beginning and talk about copywriting portfolios, what they are, what they're for, how they work, and so on. We'll start with a definition. A copywriting portfolio is a collection of samples of your copywriting. In other words, a copywriting portfolio is a sampling of sales and marketing materials that you have written to sell a product or a service, or a brand, and they're all collected in one place. Now in the old days, which is to say in the days before the Internet, a copywriting portfolio was literally a portfolio. It looked like this enlarge black artists portfolio that you loved around town. It featured a zipper on three sides that you opened to have your portfolio of follow-up. And like a large book inside, we're clear plastic sleeves. Inside the sleeves or samples of copyrighting projects you had completed. Here, e.g. is a two-page newspaper ad that I wrote when I had more hair. Here is a direct mail package. Here is a product brochure. When I got started as a copywriter in 1989, I did what every other copywriter did. I shut this portfolio of mine around to the advertising agencies in my city. I had this large portfolio for my large samples, such as newspaper ads. I had a smaller portfolio to show off my trade publication ads. And I had an even smaller portfolio to showcase product names and slogans that I created. This is how I and every other copywriter and graphic artists and art director got work. Back in the day, we met face-to-face with hiring managers at ad agencies and businesses, and we showed them our portfolios live and in person. Now, in the ad business, your copywriting portfolio is called your book. I would pick up the phone and I'd call an ad agency. I'd asked to speak to the creative director. I'd say something like this. Hi, I'm Alan sharp. I'm a freelance copywriter. Would you like to see my book? If the creative director was looking to hire or even if they weren't looking to hire at that moment, but might be down the road. They would say, Sure, come on in, we pick a day, we pick a time, and I would show up at their office. You'd make the usual Small talk about the weather and the latest sports results. And they would say, Let's take a look at your book. Then they'd started the front and they would pay their way through my copywriting samples. Some of the samples they'd read all the way through other samples. They would simply skim. Occasionally, they'd ask a question. They point to an ad e.g. and they'd asked me, How did you come up with this idea? Or they flipped through a brochure and they'd asked me. Did you come up with this theme for the brochure? But other than that, other than asking a few questions, the room was silent. I sat on one side of the hiring managers desk and the hiring manager sat on the other side. My portfolio did all the talking. My portfolio proved if I could write effective copy or not. And more importantly, it proved if I could write the kind of copy and the kind of assignments that that individual creative director was looking for. This is a vital thing to understand. Your portfolio doesn't just demonstrate that you write headlines and body copy and calls to action. It demonstrates that you understand particular tactics, such as social media ads or landing pages or email. It also demonstrates that you understand a particular industry or a particular type of buyer or a particular marketing challenge. E.g. a hiring manager might look at your portfolio and want to see evidence that you have experienced writing copy for the oil and gas sector. Or they might look for evidence that you write compelling copy for expectant mothers. Or they might need to seek that you craft copied that generates leads. This is what I mean when I say that your portfolio does more than simply showcase your copywriting ability, it also demonstrates that you understand your potential employers, industry, their buyers. Marketing challenges. Now today, of course, we are in the Internet age, have been for some time. And you aren't expected to lug a portfolio around with you. Your copywriting portfolio is now digital today. When you want to demonstrate that you write effective copy, you upload your writing samples to your website. Or you post them on a freelance job board like Upwork. Or you upload them to a freelance site like Fiverr, or you send them by email as a PDF attachment. But what was true more than 30 years ago is still true today. The industry has not changed. Your portfolio is your silent salesperson. If you write effective copy, all you need to get hired is proof. That proof is your copywriting portfolio. It's all you need to get hired. And remember whether it's a physical portfolio or a digital portfolio, it speaks for itself. Hiring managers in most cases will make their decision to hire you based on the strength of your copywriting portfolio alone. They don't care about your background or your education. They have just one question on their mind. Can you write effective copy? You answer their question with your portfolio, not your resume. So how do you create a strong copywriting portfolio? By filling it with samples that you know your potential employer needs to see. And that is the topic of a future lesson. 3. Understand B2C Versus B2B: If you are a brand new copywriter with zero experience, your portfolio should be either a business to consumer portfolio or a business to business portfolio. You should go after one type of business or the other. But what exactly is the difference? That's what you and I are going to look at in this lesson. First of all, with business to consumer, your audience is consumers. With business-to-business, your audience is businesses. With business to consumer or B2C. Your audience is typically an individual. With B to be, your audience is a buying committee or a business owner. With business to consumer, the buying journey is short. A consumer sees an ad for a product, they visit the store, they buy the product. This happens within hours with B2B, the business sees an ad for a product. They request a meeting, then they asked for a demo, then they ask for a quote or a proposal than they request another meeting. Then they negotiate prices and terms, and finally they make a purchase. This happens over weeks, months, even years. Now, let's talk about level of complexity with B2C products and services are generally easy enough to understand. Just think of the products you find in a typical department store or big box store. You don't need someone to explain most of them to you. But B2B is different. The products and services that businesses buy are often complex. Just think of the software that large businesses use to manage their supply chains. Everything from inventory control to billing, from requests for proposals to shipping, from accounts payable to vendor management. This is complex software. You don't just walk into a store and buy it off the shelf. Let's talk about volume. With B2C, products are typically sold in large volumes. Think roles of tissue paper, laptops, soft drinks, fast-food, sofas. They are sold in large volumes, but with B2B products and services are sold in smaller volumes. Think of mines, e.g. offshore wind farms, the artificial intelligence used to power online ticketing systems for airlines. These are products and services that are sold in small volumes. Then there's the matter of price. With B2C. Purchase prices are lower. With B2B, purchase prices are higher. A consumer e.g. buys a house for, let's say, $300,000, but a business buys an office building for 300 million toddlers. With B2C, sales messages often appeal to emotions. With B2B, sales messages typically appeal to logic and rationality. With B2C, purchasing decisions are often on impulse. With B2B, purchasing decisions are typically well-thought-out and rarely made on impulse. With B2C, brands aim to drive consumer behavior with brand awareness across a wide market. In B2B, brands aim to drive behavior by building relationships and by establishing trust with a smaller target market. Finally, let's look at pricing. In B2C. Brands use discounts, sales, special promotions, and other pricing tactics to motivate consumers to buy. And B2B brands rarely use discounts or promotions to influence buying behavior. In some industries they do. But generally speaking, you won't see strong B2B brands offering discounts. You won't see caterpillar, e.g. saying by one grader, get another one for half price. Let me illustrate what I'm saying with a practical example. Let's say for the sake of argument that you as a new copywriter, are interested in personal fitness. You're passionate about exercise, staying in shape, losing weight through exercise, working out at the gym, and so on. If you want to write copy for the fitness industry, you need to decide if you're going to be a business to consumer copywriter or a business to business copywriter. Here's Why? If you decide to specialize as a business to consumer copywriter, your customer is going to be primarily fitness clubs and manufacturers of fitness equipment for use in the home. The audience you write four, will be individuals who wants to improve their fitness. The products you write about will be fitness equipment that individuals buy to use in their homes. And the services you write about will be memberships in fitness clubs. And Jim's. The tactics you use. We'll be print ads in consumer magazines, Facebook ads, instagram ads, pay-per-click ads, digital display ads, landing pages, membership renewal, emails, email newsletters, service, sale sheets, website copy and so on. A lot of your copy will feature limited time offers and discounts. If, on the other hand, you decide to specialize as a business to business copywriter, same industry. Your customer is going to be primarily manufacturers of commercial fitness equipment. Your audience is going to be owners of fitness clubs. And Jim's, the products you write about will be fitness equipment that businesses buy to use in their fitness clubs. And Jim's, the services you write about will be business planning, marketing, customer acquisition and retention, and other things that business owners need to operate a profitable fitness club or gym. The tactics that you use will be print ads in trade publications, LinkedIn ads, pay-per-click ads, digital display ads, cold emails, follow up emails, product brochures, product sales sheets, bind guides, lead magnets, landing pages, website copy, and so on. You will spend a lot of time writing copy that helps business owners make smart purchasing decisions about products and services that help them deliver outstanding fitness programs and experience to their customers. Here's what this looks like in real life. If you are a copywriter and your niche is business to consumer, personal fitness, then you are going to write ads like this. That feature of the consumer that show the consumer using the product and that stress consumer benefits. But if you are a business to business copywriter in the same niche, your ads are going to be different. They are going to be aimed at fitness studios who buy multiple pieces of fitness equipment. Your copy will be aimed at business buyers who need to understand the features and benefits of each piece of equipment and how that equipment fits into their overall Jim layout, how it delivers what their customers are looking for, and so on. Your promotions will look different too. As a business to consumer copywriter, you will write flyers that looked like this, that promote end of year sales and zero down payment plans. As a business to business copywriter, on the other hand, you will write copy like this in which the offer is to request a commercial quotes. As a business to consumer copywriter. In the fitness industry, you will write to consumers, that is individuals. And your call to action will be to do things like join a gym. This ad for good Life Fitness is designed to generate gym memberships. See the offer. It's a five-day pass. But if you are a business to business copywriter, same niche. And if good Life Fitness is your client, then you will write ads like this. Your audience is business owners and entrepreneurs who may want to buy a good Life Fitness franchise. Your ad will pitch the benefits of owning the fitness club, not being a member of the club. Finally, the kind of lead magnets that you write will vary depending on your audience. As a business to consumer copywriter, you will write lead magnets like this. It's a Buying Guide aimed at individuals who want to buy a stationary exercise bike for their own use in their home. As a business to business copywriter, you will write guides like this. Here's a guide aimed at gym owners telling them how to market their businesses. Now, I think you get the idea. At long last. You appreciate why you need to decide what kind of copywriter you are. B2c or B2B. Your decision makes all the difference when it comes to creating samples for your copywriting portfolio. And those samples make all the difference concerning who will hire you. 4. What Employers Want to See in Your Copywriter Portfolio: The single thing you must strive for when creating your copywriting portfolio is relevance. Potential employers don't just need to see that you write effective copy. They need to see that you write effective copy for their type of business. They don't just want to see that you are a copywriter in general, but that you are the right copywriter for their business or their brand. In particular. This means the most important thing about your portfolio is relevance. You must demonstrate with your copywriting samples that you are the right copywriter for this business. For this assignment. This brings us naturally to what employers look for in a copywriting portfolio. You must understand this before you approach any employer, which means you must understand this before you create your copywriting portfolio. So let's look at the things that employers look for in a copywriter portfolio. Number one is copywriting chumps. This sounds obvious. Of course. You are a copywriter and you are looking to land copyrighting assignments. So your portfolio must demonstrate that you write effective copy. This means your portfolio must contain copy, not essays, not news releases, not magazine articles, not short stories. You may be an excellent writer and you may have all sorts of writing samples that prove you right well, but your potential employer only cares about your ability to write marketing, copy. Let me show you what I mean. Here's the website of a freelance copywriter. The site is called epi copyrighting. The owner calls himself a copywriter. At the top of the homepage, you'll see a link for his portfolio. You've clicked the link. This is what you see. Four kinds of writing. Press releases, articles, blogs, web copy. These four types of writing, only one is copywriting. Press releases, articles and blogs are not copywriting. This portfolio doesn't showcase this copywriters ability to write copy three-quarters of the writing samples or for writing that is not copyrighted. Your portfolio must contain samples that demonstrate that you write headlines, body copy, and calls to action. It must prove that you know the difference between a feature and a benefit, that you know how to grab attention, that you know how to sell with the written word. That's what copywriting is all about. Here's an example of what I mean. Here is another website. For another copywriter. The owner calls herself a copywriter. At the top of the homepage, you see a link for her portfolio. You click the link. This is what you see. Each of these thumbnail images is for a copywriting sample. Notice how these samples are arranged on the page. The copywriter has arranged for portfolio by type of copyrighting deliverable. You see websites, brochures, direct mail, landing pages, case studies, sale sheets, product descriptions, e-mail campaigns. In other words, you see copywriting samples. This is what a copywriting portfolio should look like. So make sure your portfolio contains only samples of copyrighting and no other kinds of writing that are irrelevant to employers. The second thing that employers look for in a copywriting portfolio is breadth. Very few businesses want to hire you to write just one kind of tactic, e.g. almost no business wants to hire you to write just emails and nothing else, or just landing pages and nothing else. The majority of businesses have a wide variety of copyrighting needs. And they want to see in your portfolio that you write a wide variety of types of copy. In other words, they want to see breadth. When they review your portfolio. They want to see that your rights, social ads, as well as emails, landing pages, as well as product descriptions, brochures, as well as web pages. They want to see that you are a versatile copywriter. They want to have confidence that they can hand you a wide variety of copyrighting assignments and not have to hold your hand during the process. They gain this confidence by seeing in your portfolio that you write a wide variety of copyrighting tactics. Here, e.g. is the website of Bob Bly, who builds himself as a copywriter and Internet Marketing Strategist. Here on the left is the link to his portfolio. Click on the link and you see that Bob is a versatile copywriter. He arranges his portfolio alphabetically by media. Look down the list and you see that Bob writes, adds booklets, brochures, catalogs, case studies, data sheets, direct mail package is your only at the d's. Bob has pages and pages of samples all demonstrating that he is a versatile copywriter who writes just about every kind of project you give him. Now this brings us naturally to business focus. The samples you include in your portfolio depend on the type of businesses you want to write. For. Some businesses use a lot of a particular set of copyrighting tactics and rarely use others. E.g. if you want to write for ad agencies, your portfolio needs to reflect the kind of assignments that they hire you to write. A typical creative director at a typical business to consumer ad agency wants to see that you write billboards, radio commercials, slogans, print ads, online ads, and other B2C deliverables. E.g. here is the portfolio of a New York-based ad copywriter. Notice the categories for their portfolio. Integrated campaigns, print, digital, TV, radio. This is what creative directors at ad agencies are looking for in a copywriter portfolio. But a typical marketing manager at a typical B2B business doesn't want to see most of these things in your portfolio. Most business-to-business businesses don't use billboards to advertise. You don't see their commercials on TV or hear them on the radio. Most B2B businesses want to see samples of LinkedIn ads, sales collateral, cold emails, trade show handouts, and website copy that copy. Here's an example of what I mean. It's the portfolio of a freelance B-to-B technology copywriter. Notice that the portfolio contains samples of the most popular kinds of B2B copywriting, namely brochures, webpages, Ads, SEO, web copy, and more. This means your first job when creating your portfolio is deciding on the type of business you want to write for. You have two main types of employers. The first is agencies. You can write for ad agencies and marketing agencies. The second is businesses. You can write copy for businesses directly. Then you have to decide between business to consumer and business to business. If you want to write B2C, copy, your portfolio needs to be filled with B2C copy samples. If you want to write for B2B audiences, naturally, then your portfolio needs to contain B2B samples. This brings us to Industry Focus. Employers need to see in your portfolio that you can write copy for their industry. E.g. if you are approaching software firms that specialize in cybersecurity, they are going to want to see samples in your portfolio that demonstrate that you can write for their industry. They need to see proof that you understand their sector, their challenges, their customers, their products and services, their terms and jargon, trends in their industry and so on. The more focused the industry, the more focused your portfolio has to be. Here, for instance, is the portfolio of a copywriter who builds himself as a technical industrial copywriter. All of the samples are for technical and industrial products and even organizes his portfolio by industry. Any business looking for an industrial copywriter is going to quickly discovered that this copywriter specializes in their industry. Now let's look at a few other things that some employers look for. Some businesses need to see creativity in your portfolio. Ad agencies in particular need to see clever headlines, witty copy, creative ideas, award-winning creative, and other things that prove you are an original, clever, witty copywriter. Some businesses need to see that you write long-form copies such as web pages, brochures, and catalogs. Other businesses such as e-commerce, businesses need to see that you write short form copy such as Amazon product listings. Some businesses want to see proof that you write entire campaigns. They want proof that you write for the entire buyer journey from adds to cold emails to landing pages, to welcome emails, to follow up e-mail sequences to sales collateral two case studies. Some businesses need to see proof that you write copied that is optimized. For search engines. They want to have confidence that your copy ranks high in search results and generates website traffic. This brings us to results. Some employers want to see proof that your copy generates measurable results. They need to see that your direct mail package beat a control, or that your landing page copy increased conversions, or that you're cold email boosted open rates, and click-throughs. Let me conclude by telling you about a few things that employers don't want to see in your copywriting portfolio. They don't want to see spelling mistakes. They don't want to see ungrammatical sentences or punctuation errors or capitalisation blunders. Your copy has to be impeccable. You can't afford to have a single typo anywhere in your portfolio. Don't ask me how I know what all of this means in the real-world is that your copywriting portfolio must demonstrate relevance. It must show employers that you write the kinds of assignments they need for the types of customers that they have for the industry that they are in and that you're copying also meets their other requirements such as the ability to rank in search or the ability to generate results. So your first task when creating your copywriting portfolio from scratch, with no experience, is deciding who your ideal employer is once you know who you are writing for and what they need to see in your portfolio, you are ready to craft your first copywriting sample. That is the topic of our next lesson. 5. Method 1: Create Spec Creative: There are three ways to create samples for your copywriting portfolio when you have no experience, spec creative, free, creative, and low-priced, creative. Let's look at spec, creative. In the advertising business. When ad agencies want to land new accounts, they often create spec. Creative. Spec is simply a shorthand for speculation. Spec, creative is creative that ad agencies create on speculation with the hope that it will impress a potential client and land the ad agency, new business. Some custom home builders do this very same thing. They built a home without first having a buyer. They find a decent building law, a piece of land. They get an architect to draw up some house plants, and then they build a spec house on that lot. They build a house on their dime for no pay. And they use the finished house as a way to attract a buyer. You can land work as a copywriter by doing this exact same thing. You fill your portfolio with speck creative. That is, you write ads, brochures, landing pages, and other copy without a client and without receiving any pay for your efforts, you create this copy on your own, on your own initiative, on spec, you speculate that you're free. Spec creative will land you paying copywriting work. Of all the ways to create samples for your copywriting portfolio, spec creative is the fastest. Sometimes the easiest. Spec creative doesn't involve anyone else, but use your imagination and your copywriting ability. You don't need a customer, you don't need a creative brief. You don't have to be paid for your efforts. Instead, you simply create copywriting samples from scratch on your own and you put them into your portfolio. Your challenge, of course, I think I know what you're thinking is deciding what to write. You have to pick a product or a service to write about. And you have to choose a type of deliverables such as a webpage or a Facebook ad or a brochure. But this is hard because no one is handing you a Creative Brief, right? No one is telling you about your target audience or the features and benefits of the product or service, or what the call to action should be. You are working in a vacuum. One of the quickest ways to create samples for your copywriting portfolio is to write spec ads. Spec ads are advertisements that you create on spec. That is on speculation. No one hires you. You don't have a client, you simply write these ads yourself from scratch. You then put them into your portfolio to prove that you write engaging, compelling, effective ads. Now when I say spec ads, I really mean any kind of copy. You can write a spec brochure or a landing page, or a spec slogan. The key is that you will write this copy on your own with no direction from anybody. Let me show you exactly how you do this step-by-step. The first thing you do is decide if your sample is going to be business to consumer or business to business, then you pick an industry. Ideally, you pick an industry that both interests you. And that is an industry that you want to write copy for. Once you get hired. Don't pick an industry that you're not interested in, then pick a product or a service that is offered in that industry. Finally, the side on the deliverable you want to write. It can be a webpage, it can be an ad, it can be a sales flyer, it can be an email. The key is to pick a deliverable that you want to write for pay in the future. So make sure this deliverable is also the kind of assignment that businesses in your target industry hire copywriters to write. For our example, we're going to assume that our channel is business to consumer. Our industry is residential real estate. Our product is a townhouse condo development called The River grand estates. And our deliverable is a series of Facebook ads that we're going to write on spec. In other words, imagine that we are a copywriter who wants to write copy for residential real estate agents. We have no copywriting experience. We want to persuade businesses in this industry that we understand their industry, we understand their buyers, we understand their products, and we understand their challenges. We also want to prove to these potential clients that we know how to write compelling copy for the types of marketing tactics that they use in residential real estate. So given our industry, residential real estate, and given our product, townhouse condos, we decide to craft a series of Facebook ads. Facebook ads, after all, are one of the most common copyrighting assignments that you will get as a copywriter in the residential real estate space. This is a key point to remember. The only reason we are writing spec ads for a condo development is that we want to work with real estate agents and brokerages in the future. The only reason we are writing a series of Facebook ads, in particular, for a condo development in particular, is that this is the type of copy we want to write, and this is the industry we want to write for. And this is the kind of deliverable they hire copywriters to write. I realize that I'm being a little bit repetitive. Remember this, as you assemble your portfolio, it's absolutely vital that you only put samples into it that you want to write in the future for industries that you want to write for and about products and services that you want to write about. Back to our sample. Our first job is to discover what to say in our spec ads. So we visit the website for River grand estates and examine it in depth. We pretend that this is our client. We look for their unique marketplace differentiators, the things that set this condo development apart from every other condo development in the city. We look for features of the condo units. We look for benefits that consumers enjoy. We will review the location and the amenities in the townhouse complex. We pay attention to the words and phrases that the company uses to describe. They're complex to showcase their brand. Then we create a simple table and populate it with what we have just discovered with our research. We create a column for the location, another column for what's unique about this product, and another column for proof points. This is what we end up with. River grand States is located in the heart of downtown Calgary in the province of Alberta. In Canada. It's right next to the river. There are walking paths and ducks. The development is geared towards families. Units overlook courtyards, Ghazi, bows, and reflection ponds. The developer brags about paying attention to every detail. They're very customer focused. This development is the fastest selling community of its kind in Calgary. It has been awarded best design of the year and best project of the year. There are lots of other things to note about this condo development. I've kept this table limited to nine points. Just to keep things simple. When you write your spec creative, you should list every feature, every benefit, every customer pain point, and every selling feature of what you are writing about. To write our first ad, we look over our table, we review our findings. We noticed that the developer brags about paying attention to detail. We also notice that the units overlook courtyards, Ghazi, bows, and reflection ponds. We realize that there's an opportunity for a clever play on words here. So we write our first ad. At River grand estates. The only thing we overlook our courtyards because he bows and reflection ponds book you're viewing now, while you still can over 70% salt. We go back to our table. We notice that he's selling feature of the community is its proximity to the river. So we write our next ad. You don't have to own a kayak to enjoy your new home at River grand estates, but it helps book you're reviewing. Now, back to our table. We notice that another selling feature of this new townhouse community is its proximity to the funky area of downtown Calgary. We write our next Facebook ad, ducts, double espresso. It's all within walking distance of your new home book you're viewing. Now. This is how you create samples for your copywriting portfolio. When you have no experience, you pick an industry and a product or service that you want to write about in the future. For pay. You study the product or service to discover the features, benefits, and what makes it unique. And then you write a deliverable of the kind that your future employer will ask you to write. As you can see, your copy looks best when it's designed, when it has a powerful image to complement it. When I design these ads, I was broke and I designed them myself using Microsoft Publisher. I looked at Facebook ads. I paid attention to where the text and design elements were. And then I recreated that look in Microsoft Publisher. I didn't have money to hire a designer. I wrote my copy, searched online for suitable images, placed the copy and images into my layout. And voila, I had five samples of my Facebook copywriting abilities, even though I had never written a Facebook ad for any business, for pay. This is how I reinvented myself as a digital copywriter in 2018. Back then, I had been out of the copywriting business for ten years, working in the non-profit sector as a fundraising consultant. My portfolio was entirely print ads. To get hired. I knew that I needed samples of digital advertising, copywriting. I didn't have any. So I created these Facebook ads for River grand estates from scratch with no experience. I showed these add samples to potential employers on Upwork and some of them hired me. You can do the same. 6. Method 2: Write Spec Creative with a Before-and-After Sample Part 1: There are three ways to create samples for your copywriting portfolio when you have no experience, spec creative, free, creative, and low-priced, creative. Let's look at spec creative. Again. What I recommend you do to create spec creative is to produce a before and after sample. Decide on the industry you want to write for the side on the type of product or service you want to promote and decide on the kind of deliverable you want to craft. Then go online and find a really bad example of that kind of deliverable and then improve it. E.g. let's say you decide that you want to write promotional copy for real estate agents and real estate brokerages. That's your industry. You decide you want to write a one-page flyer. The kind that realtors drop in the mailbox of homeowners that they want to get as clients. So that's your deliverable. You go online and you search for real estate flyer or real estate agent flyer, or example of poor real estate flyer. Here's what you find, a handmade flyer produced by a real estate agent that specializes in condominiums, but has no clue how to write effective copy. As you can see, his flyer as a proper dog's breakfast. Let's examine it closely to discover all of the things that are wrong with it. First of all, it has no logical flow. Just looking at it. You can't tell what you are supposed to look at first and what you are supposed to look at second, you don't know what is important, what is less important, and so on. While we're on the topic of design, this flyer breaks every rule of layout and design. Just look at the header. It contains a whopping seven items. Star bursts, a headline, a phone number, an image of an award of photo, another star burst, and an icon. This header is way too busy. And the rest of the design is just one big unmitigated disaster. Then there's the tone. I can only describe it as shrill. Nobody sells condos here faster or for more money. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, asterisk. What's in it for me? Question mark, question mark. Question mark. Look at the redundancy at the top. Matthew Kennedy, 4382222. At the bottom, Matthew Kennedy, 4382222, bottom-right, Matthew Kennedy, 4382222. Notice the confusion. Matthew shows you his phone number three times in three places, but then he tells you call anytime direct line and gives you a different phone number? Yes. For numbers on the page, but only wants you to dial one of them. There's no logical flow and the copy is awful. So what do you do? You take the facts from this flyer and you rewrite them your way? You write a better headline, you write better body copy, you reorder the flow of the sales pitch. You write using features and benefits, and you write a better call to action. Before you do that though, you start by cataloging all of the facts and figures and features and benefits that already exist in this flyer. You need to inventory all that you have to work with. E.g. this flyer is for a real estate agent called Matthew Kennedy. He posts, nobody sells condos faster or for more money than he does. He says he has a unique selling plan. Take all this information and render it in a table so that you can make sense of what you have to work with. Your table is going to look something like this. Across the top. We label our columns. We have a column for the audience, for this flyer. In other words, the potential customer. We have a column where we describe the customer's pain or challenge that makes them need a service of this kind. The kind that the realtor provides. We named the company. We describe the services that this realtor delivers. Then we describe the features and the benefits. We document any proof that Matthew Kennedy offers for his claims than we describe the offer, if any. And the call to action. Essentially, what we do is we reverse engineer the bad flyer so that we know what to say in the butterfly or the one that we are going to write. So here's what we have to work with. This flyer is aimed at condo owners who live in London, Ontario who want to sell their condos in the shortest amount of time and for the highest possible price. The advertiser is a condo realtor called Matthew Kennedy, who works for a brokerage called Sutton group. Matthew offers a standard service as a realtor. He lists a conifer sale and he negotiates with buyers. Matthew offers a number of features, namely, he sells a condo for more money. He sells it sooner. He follows a Unique Selling plan and he focuses on the needs of his sellers. The benefit that Matthew offers is that his clients have more money for their next down payment. They buy a better house and they move sooner. For proof of these claims, the ones about selling condos for more money and faster. Matthew cites statistics from his local multiple listing service for the average selling price of a two-bedroom condo sold by other realtors versus the ones he has sold. Matthews offer is of a free estimate by which he really means a free home evaluation and is called the action is to phone him on his direct line. Now when you come to write a before and after sample like this, make sure you capture everything that is relevant from your bad sample. Pay particular attention to buried benefits. That is, benefits about a product or a service that the writer has buried in the body copy so that they are hard to find or has simply stated them without elaborating on them. E.g. this flyer has a starburst in the upper-right corner that says Matthew Kennedy has 20 years of championship selling. But what does that mean? The benefit is buried. Matthew Kennedy has been London's leading condo real that are for 20 years, that's a marketplace differentiator, but he buries that implied benefit in his flyer. Once you have catalog the bad sample, you are ready to write the new and improved version. And that's what we discuss in the next lesson. 7. Method 2 Write Spec Creative with a Before-and-After Sample Part 2: One great way to create spec creative is to produce a before and after sample. Decide on the industry you want to write for. You decide on the type of product or service you want to promote, and you decide on the kind of deliverable you want to craft. Then you go online and you find a poor example of that kind of deliverable, and then you write a better burst. This is what we're going to do in this lesson. In the last lesson, we looked at a terrible sample. Now we are going to rewrite it. Now in the last lesson, I was pretty hard on this guy criticizing his flyer because it was all over the place at lactate logical flow, it was redundant and confusing and more. But let's be realistic. Matthew Kennedy is an awesome realtor, not an awesome copywriter. You and I exist to help people like Matthew Kennedy. We are going to help him by rewriting his flyer professionally. Our first step, we've already completed. In our last lesson, we went through this flyer and we documented everything it says about who Matthew Canada is, what he sells, why you should hire him, and so on. This is the table that we created. Notice those headers across the top of each column. This is the information you need to gather to write. Good copy. You need to know who you are writing for. That's your audience. You need to know their pain or challenge the thing that makes them seek a solution of the kind that you are promoting. You need to know the name of the company, the advertiser. You need to understand the product or the service you are writing about. Then you need to understand what the product does. That's the features and what it does for the customer. That's the benefits. You also need proof of your claims. You need wherever possible, and offer some incentive that motivates buyers to act. And finally, you need a call to action. You need to tell the reader what to do next. Now that we have documented these things, we are ready to start writing our new and improved flyer. Just about all good copy follows a proven formula. That formula starts with attention, grabbed the attention of a potential buyer with an amazing image or with an equally amazing headline. Next, name, their pain or bring up a challenge that the buyer has an wants to solve. After that, describe what happens if the buyer fails to act to address their pain. Next, offer a solution, usually by introducing the advertiser and its product or service. Next come features and benefits. Features describe what a product is, what it does, how it works, how many doors it has, how much it weighs, and so on. Benefits describe what those features do for the buyer, such as give them a restful night sleep or remove dental plaque or save them money on their taxes or keep ransomware out of their enterprise networks. Those are benefits. Next comes proof. Whenever possible, site industry firsts or market share or awards anything that proves to the buyer that the product you are promoting is the best choice. Next comes the offer. Ideally, you give your reader a reason to act by one pizza, get one free. That's an offer. Save 40% on your next hotel booking isn't offer. Finally, you end with a call to action. In business to consumer copy. This call-to-action is typically too Bye. Bye. Now is a call-to-action. In business to business copy, the call to action is rarely to buy. It is usually to take the next step in the buying process such as request a quote, download our white paper, or talk to a salesperson. This is the proven order you should follow when writing your spec creative for your copywriting portfolio, right, copy that follows this logical flow and you'll write effective copy. So back to our rewrite. Let's start with the headline. This is the headline in the original flyer. It's buried in there among all of the other things that are going on with this crowded flyer. But here it is. Nobody sells condos here faster or for more money. $2,500 more. Now this headline makes four classic blunders. First of all, it starts off by talking about the seller, Matthew Kennedy. It should start off with the potential customer. Second, it is stated in the negative. When Matthew Kennedy says, nobody sells condos here faster or for more money, he's talking about his competitors in the negative. He is trying to make a positive point by saying something in the negative. What he really means is, I am the only one who sells condos here faster or for more money. Now, there is a place for negative headlines, but this flyer isn't one of them. Third, it is vague. It says nobody sells condos here faster or for more money, whereas here, you don't know. And forth. It puts one of the main benefits, more money in your pocket on a different line from the rest of the headline and separates it from the headline with four exclamation marks and an asterisk. Now we can do better, right? We write our headline to put the buyer in the headline and make them a promise. Sell your condo for the highest price in the shortest time. Then we add a subhead higher. Matthew Kennedy, London's leading realtor for 20 years. Now notice all that we accomplish with our two simple declarative sentences. We addressed the condo owner, personally sell your condo. We promised to solve the buyers to main pain points, namely getting the highest price and selling quickly. We introduce ourselves, Matthew Kennedy. We offer a proof point. Matthew is London's leading realtor for 20 years. And our two sentences, each feature a call-to-action, sell your condo. Higher, Matthew Kennedy. In these two opening sentences, we take Matthew's entire sales pitch and condense it to just 21 words. Now, we move on to the body copy. We go back to our table to see what we have to work with. We decide what is most important. And we say that first, we decide what is next most important. And we say that second, and so on. We render these items as proof points. In this example, you don't have to do your copy this way, but here we've decided to. So here's proof number one, Matthew Kennedy cells condos for more money. We say how much more money? $2,500. We say how we arrived at that number through a review of the stats on the Multiple Listing Service. That's the proof. So we make a claim and then we offer the proof for our claim. Next up is proof. Number two. Matthew cells condos faster. How much faster? You ask. The original flyer didn't say. So. We did some homework and discovered that Matthew cells a condo every 9.1 days. Again, that's our proof. Finally, we offer proof number three, Matthew has more potential condo buyers know Matthew didn't mention this in his flyer either. But after digging around a little bit, we discovered that Matthew always has roughly 12 qualified buyers standing by, ready to purchase a condo in London. That's a specific number. That's proof. We've finished our rewrite with our offer and call to action. The offer is for a free no obligation market analysis. In real estate agents speak this means Matthew will tell you what your condo was worth. So we include this offer and a call to action at the bottom. And we spell it out in the form of a direct message from Matthew in quotes. Here it is on the right-hand side of our revised flyer, above the head shot of Matthew. Notice how our new layout compares with the old layout. It is cleaner, simpler, and better organized visually. It has a more pleasing color palette. It features a more flattering photo of Matthew Kennedy. The sales pitch is easier to see, read, and follow. There are seven calls to action cellular conduct higher. Matthew Kennedy called London's only condo specialist, called London's award-winning condo realtor. Call the leading condo realtor. Find out what your condo was worth. Call me now on my direct line. But more than anything else, are rewrite takes the two primary benefits that Matthew Kennedy offers condo owners and makes them the star of the flyer. When you hire Matthew Kennedy, you, the condo owner, sell for the highest price and in the shortest time. And here's the proof that you need proof one, proof to prove three. This is how you create your first sample for your copywriting portfolio. You can do this quickly and inexpensively. The only thing that will cost you money is the hiring of a designer to take your copy and make it look beautiful like this. Now one way around the cost of this is to exchange services. Find a designer who needs better copy for their website and offer that service in exchange for some free design work. When you are starting out. As a copywriter with no experience, your entire portfolio can be nothing but spec, creative like this. If your copy is well-written and compelling and if your samples look as though they have been published, you will land Peng work from your spec creative. 8. Method 3: Write Free Creative for a Client: There are three ways to create samples for your copywriting portfolio when you have no experience, spec, creative, free, creative, and low-priced, creative. Let's look at free, creative. Free creative, as the name states is copied that you write free of charge. It's like speck creative and that no one pays you to write it. But the big difference between free creative and spec creative is that someone actually uses your free creative. With speck creative, you write it for free and put it in your portfolio. But with free creative, you write it for free. And a business goes ahead and publishes your copy they use. And you put that published copywriting sample in your portfolio. The big advantage of free creative, as you can imagine, is that it proves that businesses use your copy or to put it the other way around. The advantage of free creative is that it proves that you write, copy that businesses need and want and actually use, even though they haven't paid for it. The key thing to remember about creating a copywriting sample for no pay, The NO pay part. This is the only thing about this assignment that differs from a paid assignment. You do all the same things you do as a paid copywriter. You just don't get paid this time. In this sense, creating free copywriting samples is a good idea because it gives you practice working on real-world copyrighting assignments with real-world customers or clients. So you are likely wondering, how exactly do you write free, creative to be included in your portfolio? Well, let's see. You find a business that needs copy. You contact the owner and offered a write some copy for them for free. You're only condition is that if they like what you write, they publish it, and they let you put your sample in your portfolio. Here's what this looks like in real life. Let's say you want to write copy for commercial window cleaning firms. I'm talking about those small businesses with the vans and the ladders on top, and the crews who go about with brushes and squeegee, cleaning the windows on restaurants, retail store fronts, an office buildings. So you boot up Google Maps and you search for commercial window cleaning companies. In your area. You click on the search results and visit the web pages of the top companies. On each website. You look for copywriting opportunities. You look for obvious things like copy that is poorly written or ungrammatical or confusing. But you primarily look for opportunities to write copy that will help the window cleaning company attract visitors, generate leads, increased sales, grow their business and differentiate themselves from the other window cleaning companies in town. E.g. in your search, you find cousins window cleaning. You read the copy on their front page, on their homepage. As you can see, it's not great. Just listen to this. To be successful in business. It takes a winning combination of services, competitive pricing, and dedication by all employees to excel at customer service excellence. Our continued growth is testament to our pledge to provide you with products. The highest quality and unmatched customer service semicolon. We have built our reputation on this belief. We encourage you to look around our site and see what we have to offer. If you don't see what you are looking for, call us and there's the phone number. And we will be happy to discuss your needs. Want to get a hold of us. Click Live Help button to connect with our online receptionist. Unquote. If you count the words, That's more than 100 words and not a single mention of window cleaning. They say, we provide you with products with the highest quality, but they don't provide products. They provide a service, window cleaning. But they don't mention it at the top of the webpage. And notice the week call-to-action. Want to get a hold of us. Click Live Help button to connect with our online receptionist. This is a good example of bad copy. So you pick up the phone and you call cousins, window cleaning. You ask to speak to the owner. When the owner comes on the phone, you say something like this. Hey Bob, this is Alan sharp. I'm a local marketing writer. I visited your homepage just now, noticed that you are likely losing some customers because of how it is written. I'd like to rewrite your homepage for you free of charge. And there's no catch. Is this free service something you'd like to discuss? If Bob doesn't want to take you up on your offer, you say thanks, goodbye, and you hang up. You move on to the next window cleaning company in the search results. But if Bob is intrigued by your offer and wants to learn more, explain that you will rewrite his homepage for free, improving it so that it works harder to attract visitors and generate leads and that you have just one simple condition. Bob will use your copy on his homepage if he likes it, and he'll let you put it in your portfolio. So that's actually too small conditions. Yeah, he uses it. You can put it in your portfolio. You do this same exercise for the other kinds of copyrighting assignments. Window cleaning firms are likely to hire you to write. These firms use a lot of flyers, e.g. they write them, they design them, they print them, and they drop them off at businesses and homes to generate business. So visit each company website and search for their printed flyer or visit their office and asked for their printed flyer. Look over the flyer, searching for ways that you can improve. It. Doesn't have a weak headline. Does the copy take too long? Getting to the point is the call-to-action week, does the flyer lack compelling testimonials from satisfied customers? You get the idea. Look for ways that you can improve the copy in the flyer, then contact the company owner an offer to write a better flyer for free. Do this with Facebook, to visit the company's Facebook page, review their posts, and their ads, look for copywriting blunders, mistakes they make with their messaging. Think of how you can improve their coffee. Pick up the phone, or send them an email, and offered to write a few of their upcoming Facebook promotions for free, no charge. Now, let's review a few advantages and disadvantages of this method of creating samples for your copywriting portfolio. One advantage is that you create a real world copywriting sample that accompany asked you to write that looks better in your portfolio than a sample that you wrote on spec. Another advantage is that the process of writing the copy gives you valuable experience in working with clients, asking the questions that you have to do to uncover their needs and generally, writing about a real product or service for a real client. A final advantage of writing an assignment for free is that it sometimes leads to paid work. Business owners who liked your copy, sometimes hire you to write copy for other areas of their business, or they refer you to other business owners that they know, especially in a small town. One disadvantage of writing copy for free is that it might take you a while to find a company that wants you to write for them when your services are for free. They might be skeptical of your offer, where they might just think they don't need better copy. So finding a willing client might take time. Another disadvantage of this approach is that some businesses will not be in a hurry to use your copy. You approach them after all, they likely didn't think they had a need. This means that once you deliver your copy, even if your client likes it, they may sit on your copy for weeks or even months, which means you can't include it in your portfolio as quickly as you'd like, especially if it's an online sample. But other than that, writing free creative is a smart way to build your portfolio. 9. Method 4: Write Free Creative for an Ad Agency Based on an Old brief: When I got started as a freelance copywriter way back in 1989, I had no experience as a copywriter, but I did have experience as a writer. I didn't have a copywriting portfolio, but I wanted to write copy for advertising agencies. I was ambitious. I wanted to be the next David Ogilvy. So I phoned the top ad agency in my city and I booked an appointment with the creative director. Couple of days later we met for coffee and I explained that I want it to be a copywriter, but I had no experience. He told me I needed a portfolio. I said I didn't have a portfolio. He said to create one with speck creative. I asked them how to do that, and he told me how. Then he came up with a creative suggestion. His ad agency had just completed a direct mail campaign for Canada Post, that's Canada's National Postal Service. He offered to give me the creative brief for that campaign and have me write some direct mail pieces based on that brief. He wanted to see if I could write creative copy from a brief to a deadline. So I took him up on his offer. I created a series of direct mail pieces, all based on that creative brief. And I showed them to him. Based on this exercise alone, he hired me as a freelance copywriter to work on a few campaigns for his ad agency. If you want to fill your copywriting portfolio with relevant samples, you can't get more relevant than a sample that you wrote based on a real-world actual creative brief, a customer. I have one caveat, though. Creative directors at ad agencies these days receive a lot of unsolicited e-mails and phone pitches from aspiring copywriters. The better the agency, the more requests the creative directors receive. The only pitches they're likely to pay attention to are the ones coming from copywriters who already have a portfolio, however small. So if you want to follow the approach that worked for me, Don't start with it. Create a few copywriting samples on spec, create a few more for free. Then approach ad agencies and marketing companies and requests to write a project based on one of their briefs. The secrets of success here is to make this a winning proposition for the agency. They aren't going to give you an old creative brief to work from just so you can build your portfolio. But they will give you one, or rather they might give you one. If you agree that they can use any copy that you write. All that you require is that you can put that sample in your portfolio. Your goal here is to make this offer risk free for the ad agency or marketing company. They have to see that they are going to get something out of this test and that there is zero downside for them. If they don't. If you write a great piece of copy, they use it. If you don't, they don't. And they haven't suffered any embarrassment in front of their clients. This approach works best when you bring some credentials to the table. You can't bring many copywriting credentials, of course, since you are just starting out, you don't have a lot of experience and you are still building your portfolio. But if you have expertise that the agency values, they may let you write an assignment for them based upon an old brief or even a current brief as a way to test you out. Here's what I mean. Imagine an automotive journalists who wants to break into copywriting. This journalist has lots of experience writing trade articles for automotive trade publications. They understand the sector, they understand the brands, they understand the suppliers. They attend all the auto shows with a press pass. They understand the industry players. Well. They can approach a creative director at an ad agency or a marketing company and offered to write some copy for the agencies automotive client based on an old or current campaign brief. They have writing credentials, they have auto industry experience. All they need is an opportunity to prove that they can write automotive copy. An agency that has an automotive account is likely to take this journalist up on this offer because there is no risk involved for the agency. Or Imagine a writer who writes scripts for television sitcoms and jokes for stand-up comics. This writer also wants to be a copywriter, but has few samples. But this writer has experienced making people smile, writing sentences that get a laugh. They have experienced writing about everyday situations in original ways. They can approach an agency that has consumer brand accounts and offered to write some billboards or bus boards or Subway ads, or even print ads based on an old creative brief for a consumer product or service. A creative director might just take a chance on a writer like this because they have demonstrated experience writing sentences that are creative or original or cheeky, or even way out there. You get the idea. If you have expertise in a particular industry, or if you are a subject matter expert, or if you have experience writing a particular type of content than some agencies will take notice and we'll take a chance on you by letting you write a test for them based on one of their recent creative briefs or campaign briefs. Let me show you what this looks like in the real world. We'll use our automotive journalists as an example. This lady wants to write ad copy for major car brands. All of these brands have a dedicated ad agency. So our writer finds out who the agency is on the Ford account and phones the creative director. Her pitch goes something like this. Hi, This is Sally Carruthers. I'm an automotive journalists who has been writing about Ford for the last six years. I am transitioning from journalism into copywriting. And I would like to prove that I have the chops to write copy for automotive brands like you're Ford account. I have a no-risk proposition for you. Would you like to hear it? If the creative director says no, then Sally says thanks, then goodbye, and then hangs up the phone, calls the next agency on her list, obviously not for the Ford account. But if the creator says, sure, let's hear your proposition than Sally gives her pitch. And it goes something like this. I'd like to prove to you and to myself that I can write engaging copy for automotive accounts. I propose that you give me an old creative brief for your for the client. I'll write the copy that's required in that brief, free of charge and with no obligation. And show it to you. If you agree that I can write effective copy for your Ford account, you have just found yourself a freelance copywriter. And you've also given me a sample to include in my portfolio. And if you think my copy is not up to par, you've lost nothing. What do you say? If you are hungry for business as a new copywriter and if you have a drive to become an advertising copywriter working at an agency, this approach will work for you. It also works if you want to land a junior copywriter job, Orlando, freelance copywriting gigs with small ad agencies and small marketing companies. In fact, the smaller the agency, the more likely it is that they will take you up on your offer. And using this unique approach. The big advantage of this approach, of course, is that it puts you face to face with potential employers and gives you firsthand experience writing copy based on an actual real-world creative brief or Campaign Brief. This isn't the easiest approach to take when creating samples for your copywriting portfolio. But it is the approach that gives you the biggest bang for your buck. Just as long as you bring credentials to the table. If you have industry expertise that an agency wants, or if you have deep knowledge about a product or service that an agency promotes. And of course, if you can write copy, then this approach will work for you. The key, the secret is to get yourself out there. You need to knock on doors and pick up the phone and e-mail and pitch your proposal. If you have the credentials and if you get yourself out there, someone will take a chance on you and agree to let you write a test project for them based on an old brief. You'll get your sample and you'll eventually get hired. 10. Method 5: Write Low-Priced Creative: There are three ways to create samples for your copywriting portfolio when you have no experience, spec, creative, free, creative, and low priced creative. We've looked at speck, you've looked at free. Now let's take a look at low priced, creative. Your potential employers or clients generally want to know two things. They want to know that you can write effective copy, and they want to know that other businesses have hired you and been satisfied with the experience. Actually, this sounds a chicken and egg problem for you, which comes first. After all, how can you land your first copywriting gig with a paying client? If you first need experience with a paying client, the answer is, you get your first gig by offering your services for a discounted fee. Your goal is to land a few copyrighting assignments that pay. I mean, that pay you anything. The amount you get paid is not as important as that. You got paid. What you need is proof that businesses hire you to write copy for money and that they're satisfied with your copy. That's the key. Landing. Your first paying client is tough if you don't have any experience. So this is why you discount your fee. At first. You offer professional copywriting services for a discounted rate in order to add paid assignments to your portfolio. This way, when you offer yourself as a copywriter and potential employers ask you who you have written for. You can rattle off a list of names of businesses. Do this in all honesty, because you wrote for pay, they hired you to write. The easiest way to build your portfolio. This way is to create a profile on Upwork and to start bidding on jobs. To establish yourself with any kind of credibility, you're going to need at least six decent samples of your copywriting abilities. You've already picked a niche to write for. And if you already know the kinds of copyrighting assignments businesses in your niche need, then you know the kinds of samples you need to upload to your online portfolio on Upwork. I'm harping back to one of our earlier lessons, one of the ones right at the very beginning of this course, where I discussed the things that potential employers look for in a copywriter portfolio. You'll remember that the first thing they want to see is relevance. They want to see that you have copywriting samples that are relevant to their industry, relevant to their products and services, relevant to the channels they operate in, an irrelevant to the tactics or deliverables that they use. This is the easiest way to get hired on Upwork relevant copywriting samples. When you upload a few copywriting samples that are highly relevant to your potential employers. They will hire you. But getting hired is tough. When you face dozens of other copywriters all bidding on the same job. One way to stand out is with a low fee or a lower fee. Charge, a fee that is lower than what experienced copywriters are charging. And some businesses will accept your proposal and hired you. Remember, the only reason you are discounting your fee is to build your portfolio with samples of copyrighting projects that businesses hired you to write. You are looking not just for samples, but for samples from paying clients. I say this because I never discount my fees and I don't think you ever showed except this one example. Getting paid to write copy is a lot easier when you prove that you get paid to write copy. Showing your portfolio to potential employers is a lot more persuasive when it is filled with paid copyrighting assignments. Spec creative has its place in your portfolio, and free creative has its place in your portfolio. But the most persuasive copywriting samples in your portfolio are going to be the ones that businesses paid you to write. And the more well-known the business, the better. What this means in practical terms is that you start your portfolio by creating spec, ads, brochures, landing pages, and other assignments. You show the spec creative to potential employers to offer to write assignments for free. This gives you experience following creative briefs, working with clients, meeting deadlines, and so on. Then you take those spec samples and free samples and you upload them to a freelance platform like Upwork or fiber, or freelancer or guru. In order to land paying assignments. And you get your first paying assignments by competing on price. You offer lower prices to land your first jobs. You put those paid jobs in your portfolio and you gradually remove the spec creative and the free creative. Eventually, this will happen sooner than you think. If you are a good copywriter, you will have a powerful portfolio filled from start to finish, from front to back with samples of copyrighting assignments that businesses actually paid you money to right? Now I know this works because this is what I did in 2018 when I left the non-profit sector as a fundraiser and I reinvented myself as a B2B inbound copywriter. I had no digital samples, so I created them from scratch. I created an account on Upwork. I uploaded my samples, and then I started bidding on copywriting jobs for ridiculously low rates. I landed lots of work. I then took those paid assignments and uploaded them to my website and I featured them as assignments I had written for pay for real businesses. Businesses found me online. They reviewed my portfolio and they hired me and I eventually got off up work and just worked primarily off my website. This method works whether you want to be a freelance copywriter or whether you want to work in-house as an employee. Future freelance clients and future employers both want to see samples of coffee you have written for pay. They don't want to take any chances on a rookie with zero experience. So leave the ranks of the rookies and join the ranks of paid copywriters by offering your services at the start. For discounted rates. When you write for low pay, you get a lot back. For one thing, you get paid something instead of nothing. You gain experience working with marketing directors and business owners. You gain experience writing today's copyrighting assignments. You learn your craft. The best advantage of all, you collect samples of the only copywriting samples that really count in your portfolio. And that's the ones that people paid you to write. 11. Method 6: Write a Spec Campaign: One of your goals as a copywriter is to prove to potential employers that you think strategically. You want them to see that you understand buyer personas, buyer journeys, positioning, marketplace differentiation, unique selling propositions, brand voice, and all the steps and actions that are typically required to move a buyer through a sales funnel or a pipeline towards a sale. You don't want to prove that you simply write copy, but that you write strategic copy. Showing potential employers a bunch of disjointed samples in your portfolio doesn't help you demonstrate this strategic thinking. If your samples are for multiple companies and multiple assignments, and if they consist of multiple types of deliverables such as emails and websites and landing pages and adds than hiring managers won't see from your portfolio that you are a strategic thinker and copywriter. The best way to persuade them is by creating an integrated campaign. You write all of the assets or most of the assets that are used in a typical campaign. You hire a designer to make them look amazing. And presto, you have concrete. Here's what I mean. Integrated marketing campaigns consist of multiple channels, such as online, print, broadcast, and outdoor. They feature a bunch of assets that first attract, then acquire, than cultivate, and then close buyers, e.g. a, typical integrated campaign consists of assets that attract buyers. These assets are most often social ads, pay-per-click ads, banner ads, and cold emails. These assets offer something of value called a lead magnet to motivate the buyer to take action. When buyers click on an ad or click a link in a cold email, they arrive at a landing page that offers the lead magnet. In exchange for the buyers contact details such as their name, e-mail address, and phone number. Once the buyer fills in the forum and hit submit, they are taken to a thank-you page that, well, thanks them and supplies a link for downloading the lead magnet. It also invites them to check their email inbox. In their email inbox, the buyer finds an e-mail from the company thanking them for requesting the download. Giving the link again for the download, and maybe having a couple of sentences that describe the company and their offerings. Over the next few days and months, the buyer receives a series of emails that are designed to answer questions, educate the buyer, and move them to the next step in the buying process, such as scheduling and demo, taking a free trial, or talking to a sales rep. As you can see, this is a lot of content. And if you are employed as a copywriter, you will be expected to write parts of these campaigns or the entire campaign, which brings us back to your copywriting portfolio. One of the quickest ways to persuade potential employers and clients that you understand their industry, understand their buyers, understand their products and services. And most importantly, understand how to move buyers along their buyer journey towards a purchase is to create a spec campaign. Think back to our earlier lesson about speck creative. You pick an industry, you pick a company, or you make one up. You pick a product or a service. And then you write each of the deliverables that this company would need in a typical campaign. Here they are again, social ads, pay-per-click ads, banner ads, cold emails, landing pages, lead magnets. Thank you webpages, thank you. E-mails and follow up email nurture sequences, that's nine deliverables. You can write all of them, but that might be a wee bit of overkill. E.g. you don't really have to include the thank you webpage in your portfolio and you don't have to include samples of all three ways of attracting traffic, namely social ads, binarize, and cold emails. You could include just one tactic or a two. Sorry, at most two. So your campaign could look like this. A social ad that drives traffic to the landing page. The landing page that offers the lead magnet, the lead magnet, and the e-mail follow-up sequence. When you write an entire campaign like this. Prove to potential employers that you write for the entire buyer journey. You prove that you write copy that drives traffic, generates leads, nurtures, leads, and moves, moves, leads down a sales pipeline towards a process you prove that you're a strategic, sales focused copywriter of all the types of content that you can put in your portfolio. This is the one that requires the most effort. It takes the longest to create and likely cost you some money upfront, as you will likely have to hire a designer to make your copy look published. But this sample or the samples are also the ones that are sure to generate the most interest and persuade the most hiring managers. Let me show you what this looks like in the real world. Let's say you want to write copy for companies in the e-commerce space, not the seller's, not the retailers, but the companies that supply all of the technology that online retailers need to operate their online stores. You searched the web and discover a company called fortuitous. They are an e-commerce agency with a team of experts that build fully integrated omni-channel e-commerce solutions for mid-market and enterprise businesses. Boot up Google. You do some searches and you discover that one of the greatest challenges facing online merchants is switching from one shopping cart platform to another. So you decide to create a campaign that addresses this buyer pain point. You start by writing a lead magnet. Ten reasons why you need a new e-commerce platform. Then you write a landing page to offer that lead magnets. You write the social ad that drives traffic to that landing page. Then you write the series of follow-up emails that nurture leads and invite them to take the next step in the sales process. Then you go into Fiverr or Upwork, and you'll hire a designer to take your copy and make it look awesome. Then upload your sample campaign to your website or to Upwork or to a third party site that hosts portfolios. And then you start reaching out to potential employers and clients in the e-commerce tech space, offering your services. As a copywriter. When someone shows interests, you show them your copywriting portfolio. You show them this campaign. In particular. You freely admit that your campaign is spec, if they ask, that is, as you get hired and work on paying projects, you remove this spec sample and you replace it with one that you wrote for pay an entire campaign that you wrote? This is what I did when I reinvented myself as a digital copywriter, I took old print deliverables. I've built fictional campaigns around them. I took sales letters and I translated them into emails. I took print ads and turn them into social ads. I showed these campaigns to potential clients and some of them hired me. You, my friend can do the same. The secret to creating a spec campaign is to pick an industry that you know something about. Pick a product or service that interests you and pick the deliverables that you know the companies and your target industry use to drive traffic, generate leads, nurture leads, and make sales. 12. Rules for Showcasing Your Portfolio: Once you have written all of the sample projects that you want to include in your copywriting portfolio. You prepare your portfolio for publication. You're going to be showcasing your copywriting talent to potential clients and potential employers. You want your portfolio to be as compelling as professional looking as possible. Here are some rules to follow so that you present your copywriting samples in the best possible way. Rule number one, never, ever, ever, ever put Word Docs or Google Docs in your portfolio. Visit, Upwork, search for freelance copywriter. And you'll be shocked at the vast number of candidates that you discover who send prospects to their Google Drive to review samples of their copywriting talent. This is a massive mistake because you need potential employers to know that you write copy that meets today's standards. The problem with Word files, google Docs, is that they make your copy look on published. They make you look like a wanna be copywriter who has never been hired, who has never written copy for pay. Now, this might be the case, of course, but you don't want your portfolio to communicate that. Never showcase your copy as raw copy in a Word file or a Google document. This brings us to rule number two. Always, always, always present your copy as finished client approved, designed and published copy. Whether you are showcasing a landing page or a brochure, or a Facebook ad or a cold e-mail. Always, always, always present that copied the way it looks in the real-world. Copy today is always typeset designed and laid out by a professional graphic artist. If you want your copy to look professional, if you want your portfolio to position you as a professional, always show your copy in its final form, which means designed professionally and published. Even your spec creative, the copy that you write on your own without a client needs to be laid out and designed to look professional. This is what I mean. On the left is the copy for a brochure. On the right, is that same copy designed and laid out by a graphic artist. You see the difference. Of course you do. And so do your potential employers. Here again, on the left is raw copy for a landing page on the right is that same copy designed and published on a website? The difference is night and day, as they say, that's a cliche. As you can now see, how you present your copy in your portfolio makes a huge difference. It separates you from the amateurs. So before you show anyone your portfolio, take your copy and design it as a final piece. Either design it yourself or hire a designer on Fiverr or Upwork to design it for you, or exchange your free copywriting service with a designer for their free design services. Rule number three, tell a story. A picture is almost never worth 1,000 words. Your copy samples needs some text next to them to explain who the copy was for the challenge the company faced, what you did, and so on. E.g. let's say you have written a series of emails, included them in your portfolio. You need to give potential clients or employers some contexts. Next to the series of emails you write something like this. This software company needed a way to nurture leads and move them along their sales pipeline. This series of emails, nurtures leads over the space of a few weeks by addressing the top pains that potential customers face. Each email in this series addresses a unique pain, describes the solution, and offers a unique asset and call to action. Your goal is to explain who each piece in your portfolio was for, what you did, who you worked with, the process, you went through. Any strategic insights you've gained while interviewing the business owner and then incorporated into your copy, and so on. Another way to describe your portfolio of samples is to show results. If you write copy that generates leads, increases, conversions, drives website traffic, or generate sales. And if you know the results that you're copied, generated, include this proof in your portfolio. Next to the sample. Describe who the copy was for, what the goal was, and how you achieved or surpassed that goal with your awesome copy. Here, e.g. is the portfolio of Donna Doyle. She is a direct response copywriter. She describes the results that she achieved writing various campaigns for various clients. If your copy generates results, you should do the same in your portfolio. You should describe the results that you achieved for your clients with your copier. Rule number four, arrange your samples in a logical order. You don't want your portfolio to be a mishmash of random pieces of copy. It needs some structure, some logic, some natural flow. My online portfolio, e.g. is arranged in the same order as the buyer journey. I position myself as a B-to-B copywriter who writes copy that moves buyers along a sales pipeline or down a funnel. So my portfolio reflects a typical buyer journey. At the top, I have the copy assignments I write to attract leads. Then I display the copyright to nurture leads. And at the bottom of my portfolio I include samples of deliverables that businesses use at the bottom, the funnel, or at the end of the sales pipeline. Following the buyer journey gives my portfolio a logical order. You do the same thing by arranging all of the deliverables you wrote for a campaign in the order that they went out, or you arrange your portfolio by industry vertical as this B-to-B copywriter does. Or you arrange your portfolio by the type of deliverable with all of your brochures grouped together and all of your ads grouped together. The way this copyright or does. I think you see what I mean? Think of the order or arrangement that makes the most sense to your potential employers, and then arrange your copywriting samples in the same way. If you follow these four, what I would call mandatory rules, you will create a great copywriting portfolio. Now all you have to do is get it in front of people who will hire you. 13. Build Your Portfolio with Your Ideal Employer in Mind: One thing to remember when building your copywriting portfolio is that you can't boil the ocean. You can't put every conceivable sample for every conceivable industry and every conceivable product and service into your portfolio. You don't have the time and you don't have the space plus your potential employers don't have the patience to wade through lengthy portfolios. If you want to land work as a copywriter, you must keep your portfolio both relevant and concise. Now you'll remember from an earlier lesson that by relevance, I mean that your copywriting samples must be relevant for your employer's industry, for their customers, for their products and services, their marketing channels, and their tactics and their marketing challenges. When I say that your portfolio has to be concise, I mean, that it should have just enough samples in it to persuade a potential employer to hire him. I recommend that you have around ten samples in your portfolio. This may change, it might be a few more, maybe a few less, but That's enough samples to demonstrate your copywriting chops. Prove that you write multiple types of deliverables, and demonstrate that you understand the type of buyer that your potential employer wants you to write for. Now I realize when starting out as a new copywriter, you have little or no experience. You will likely be happy to write any copy for any company in any industry I was. But like I said, you can't boil the ocean. You have to make some tough decisions about what to include in your portfolio. This is why you must build your portfolio with your ideal customer in mind. The first thing you must decide is whether you want to write business to consumer copy or business to business copy. There are really only two types of businesses in the world. Those who sell to consumers and those who sell to businesses. Starbucks, e.g. is a business to consumer brand. Their customers are individuals. They need copy that is written for individuals. Bowing, on the other hand, is a business to business brand. Their customers are businesses. They need copy that is written for business buyers, typically, buying committees, 5678 people. Your portfolio should reflect one of these two audiences. It should either be a business to consumer portfolio or a business to business portfolio. This is your most important decision. Business to consumer brands want to see business to consumer samples in your portfolio. Business-to-business brands. Surprise. Want to see business to business, samples. A business to consumer brands like Starbucks, e.g. wants to see samples that are aimed at consumers. The samples don't have to be about coffee or restaurants. You could have samples in your portfolio for skincare products, for clothing stores or amusement parks. What's important to a business to consumer brand is that you write copy aimed at consumers. A business to business brand like Boeing. The aircraft manufacturer, doesn't have to see samples in your portfolio that are all about aerospace. Those kinds of samples would be ideal of course. But what's more important is that they see samples of Business to Business copy. You could have samples of brochures that you've written for technology firms or case studies for engineering firms or ads for renewable energy firms. The samples prove that you write copy for business audiences, not consumers. Like I said, this is the major divide in copywriting. You are primarily either a business to consumer copywriter or a business to business copywriter. I say primarily because copywriting positions at ad agencies and marketing agencies typically require you to write for both audiences. Ad agencies and marketing agencies in your city, for instance, especially if your city is small, require copy that's aimed at consumers and businesses. But these agencies are the exception. Most companies that hire you want to see a strong business to consumer portfolio or a strong business to business portfolio. Starbucks, e.g. doesn't want to see aerospace brochures in your portfolio, and Boeing doesn't want to see ads for coffee. So this is your first task, deciding whether you are a B2C copywriter or a B-to-B copywriter. Your next decision is to pick an industry or niche. Now, I'm not going to be dogmatic here and say that this is essential because it's not. And it certainly can't be an essential step when you're, when you're starting out. After all. How can you pick an industry or niche market when you have no copywriting experience, it's pretty hard to do. But bear with me here. When I landed my first job as an in-house copywriter, I got hired by a B2B agency that worked primarily with technology brands. I wrote B2B copy protect firms. My portfolio soon reflected that. When I left that agency and headed out on my own as a freelance copywriter. My portfolio was full of samples of B2B copy for technology brands. Lending freelance gigs with technology companies was a lot easier with a portfolio like that. If you are starting out, you will find it a lot easier to get hired as a copywriter if your portfolio has an industry focus, companies are much more likely to hire you when your portfolio is filled with samples of coffee, you have written about products and services in their industry. Now, I realize that this tactic only works under certain conditions. E.g. if you choose an industry to focus on, There must be enough potential employers in your market to make that focus worth your while. For instance, if you live in San Francisco, you can create a copywriting portfolio featuring nothing but copy about hardware and software. San Francisco, after all, is the technology capital of the United States. So you can afford to have a portfolio that focuses on that one industry alone. But if you live in Podunk, Alabama, that nice portfolio won't work. There aren't enough technology firms in that town to support a copywriter who specializes in tech. Choosing an industry niche only works when the market is large enough to support you. I'm speaking particularly of you landing work as an in-house copywriter. The other thing you must consider is your level of interest in or passion for, or expertise in a particular industry. The best type of industry to focus on is one that interests you that you have experience in and that can support you as a copywriter, e.g. if you live in Detroit and if you have been employed in the automotive sector for the last 20 years, if you are passionate about anything that has four wheels and a motor, then building a portfolio that focuses on the automotive industry makes perfect sense for you as a copywriter. Starting out. As you can see, specializing in a particular industry niche makes sense when you live in a region of the country that can support a specialist. In San Francisco, it's technology in Detroit, it's automotive manufacturing in Dallas, its oil and gas in New York State and the mid-Atlantic states, it's steel production and manufacturing. These are really the two most important decisions you must make when building your portfolio. Are you a business to consumer copywriter or are you a business to business copywriter. And do you have expertise or passion about a particular industry or niche market? These two decisions deal with who you write for and what you write about. Your samples will be either business to consumer or business to business. And your samples will either be focused on an industry or not. 14. Mistakes to Avoid When Creating a Copywriting Portfolio: Creating a standout copywriting portfolio is essential, especially when you're starting with no experience. Your portfolio is your visual resume, your sales pitch, and quite often, your first impression. Let's dive into the common pitfalls to avoid when putting together your portfolio. Then let's look at what you should do instead to ensure that your portfolio makes the best impact. First of all, avoid the mistake of creating a portfolio that sings only one note. Some new copywriters fill their portfolios with similar types of content like only website copy or only ad copy. This limits how potential clients perceive your versatility. Instead, showcase a mix of writing styles and formats. Think email campaigns, product descriptions, landing pages, ads, brochures, video scripts. You get the idea. For instance, if you've written a catchy set of Instagram captions for a M brand campaign, include those alongside a well researched blog post on a trending topic and an ad and a brochure. This diversity demonstrates your ability to craft content that resonates across multiple platforms. Second, remember who you're writing for. Tailoring your portfolio to your intended audience is crucial. If you're aiming to work with tech startups, for example, your samples should reflect the tech industry tone and needs, which means your portfolio must include pitch deck, PowerPoint sales deck, landing pages, product pages, use cases and case studies. Imagine you're speaking directly to the CEO of a startup looking for fresh copy. Your portfolio should speak that language. Third, more isn't always better. You may be tempted to throw everything you have, all of your writing into your portfolio to kind of bulk it up, but resist this urge a cluttered portfolio overwhelms viewers and dilutes your best work. Curate carefully. Select only those pieces that you're really proud of and the showcase your skills effectively. For example, choose a persuasive e mail that led to a high open rate or a blog post that ranked well for targeted SEO keywords. Highlighting those successes shows your content doesn't just look good, it also performs well. Next up, let's talk about the importance of a polished presentation. Your portfolios design should be clean and professional. A cluttered or outdated website detracts from your content. Use a modern easy to navigate layout that lets your work shine. Tools like square space and wordpress offer great templates tailored for portfolios. Ensure your copy is easy to read and that images complement the content without distracting. Okay. And this brings us to point number four, which I hinted at a minute ago, and that is results. Copywriting is all about results, right? So include projects where your words have created measurable results. Perhaps you wrote a series of blog posts that increase traffic to your client's website by 40%. Perhaps you wrote a landing page that boosted leads by 11%. Menion this. Showing results proves that your words translate into measurable outcomes. That's a huge selling point. Okay. Fifth, keep your samples up to date. Industries evolve, and so should your portfolio. If your samples reflect trends or technologies that are no longer relevant, your portfolio will seem outdated, and so will you. Regularly refresh your content to stay current. If you're just starting, create hypothetical projects for imaginary brands or rewrite existing copy to demonstrate how you improved it. Just be sure to pick current brands and current products. Don't rewrite an old old ad. Sixth, clarity about your role in each project is essential, especially if you collaborated with others such as art directors or graphic artists. Specify your part in group projects to highlight your specific contribution. If a successful campaign was a team effort, note what exactly you were responsible for as the copywriter, whether that's the headline, the core message, the call to action or something else. Lastly, don't forget to make contact in you easy and obvious. Include your professional contact information prominently. You want potential clients to reach out to you effortlessly after viewing your portfolio. That's it. Building a copywriting portfolio without experience doesn't have to be daunting. By avoiding these common pitfalls and focusing on presenting your best, most relevant work clearly and attractively, you create a powerful tool that opens doors to new opportunities. Remember, every piece in your portfolio is a step towards your next big break in the world of copywriting. Keep refining, keep updating and most importantly, keep writing.