How to Brief a Copywriter (So You Actually Get What You Want)

Most creative projects don't go wrong in the writing. They go wrong before the writing starts.

The brief. Or more accurately, the lack of one.

I've worked with brands that handed me a logo, a vague directive, and a deadline. I've had clients who sent me a 40-slide deck that answered every question except the ones that actually mattered. And I've worked with a handful of people who knew exactly how to brief a copywriter — and got back exactly what they wanted.

The difference was always the brief.

What a bad brief actually costs you

Here's what happens without one. You get a first draft. It's not quite right. You ask for revisions. The revisions miss the mark in a new direction. Two more rounds later, you've spent three weeks and you're not sure why it still doesn't feel like you.

It's not the copywriter's fault. And it's not yours. It's the brief's fault.

A good copywriter is only as good as the information they have to work with. Give them nothing, and they'll fill in the gaps with assumptions. Some of those assumptions will be right. Most won't be. And you'll spend your revision budget correcting for guesswork that a 20-minute conversation could have prevented. That's how I work — conversation first, copy second.

What actually belongs in a copywriter brief

Not everything. That's the first thing to know. A copywriter brief is not a brain dump. It's a filter.

Who are you talking to? Not a demographic. A person. "Women 35 to 50" is not a person. "A woman in her early 40s who built her own business and is tired of marketing that talks down to her" is a person. The more specific you can get, the more specific the copy can be. And specific copy is the only copy that works.

What do you want them to do? One thing. Not three things. Not "learn about us and consider our services and maybe follow us on Instagram." Pick one action. The copy will be built around it. If you can't name a single desired action, the project isn't ready to be written yet.

What's the one thing they need to believe to take that action? This is the question most briefs skip entirely. It's also the most important one. Every piece of copy is making an argument. You need to know what argument you're making before you can make it well.

What's off the table? Tell me what you hate. Tell me the phrases that make you wince. Tell me the competitor you never want to sound like. This information is gold — especially when we're doing brand voice development. It takes half the guesswork out of a first draft.

The brief is a conversation starter, not a contract

Here's what I tell every client before we begin: the brief exists so we can have the right argument early, not the wrong one late.

You will put something in a copywriter brief and I will push back on it. That's not me being difficult. That's me doing my job. If your brief says "keep it professional" and your audience is 24-year-olds who follow meme accounts, we need to talk about that tension before I write a single word.

The brief is where we align. And alignment at the start is what makes revision feel like refinement instead of starting over. That's true whether we're writing email campaigns, social content, or a full campaign concept.

How to write a creative brief that actually works

I built a one-page brief template specifically for this. Three questions. That's it. Because the problem isn't that brands don't want to brief a copywriter well. It's that they've never had a framework that made it easy.

The template asks what most briefs forget to ask. Not just "who's the audience" but "what do they already believe, and what do you need to change?" Not just "what's the goal" but "what does success look like six months from now?"

If you've ever handed a copywriter a project and been disappointed by the result, there's a good chance the brief is where things went sideways. Download the template and find out what you actually need to say before you say it.

It won't guarantee a perfect first draft. But it'll get you a lot closer. And if you're ready to skip straight to the work, let's talk.

What to Look for When Hiring a Freelance Copywriter

You've decided to hire a freelance copywriter. Good. That decision alone puts you ahead of every brand still recycling the same stale messaging because no one has time to fix it.

But hiring the wrong one is worse than hiring no one. Getting locked into a long-term contract with a writer whose work isn't delivering is a nightmare scenario. It's expensive, it's slow to unwind and by the time you realize it isn't working, you've already lost months.

So before you send that first email, here's what to actually look for.

Ask for work samples. Then trust your gut.

This is the most important step. And it's the one most clients rush through.

Ask to see work samples. Not a general portfolio page, specific examples that are relevant to what you need. If you need email campaigns, ask for email campaigns. If you need social media copy, ask for social media copy.

Then read them. Not to audit them technically. Read them the way a real person would. Do they hold your attention? Does the copy feel effortless, or like you're pushing through it? Does it sound like a human being wrote it?

If the work doesn't resonate with you, move on. You don't need to articulate why. The feeling is enough data.

Know the difference between a copywriter and a content writer.

These are not the same job. And hiring the wrong one for your project will cost you time, money and a lot of frustrating revision rounds.

A copywriter writes to drive action. Every sentence is working toward a conversion, a click, a decision. Think ads, landing pages, email campaigns, brand voice development, sales pages.

A content writer writes to inform or educate. Blog posts, articles, thought leadership pieces, SEO content. The goal is visibility and trust built over time, not an immediate response.

The overlap is real. Plenty of strong writers do both well. But if you need a landing page that converts, you want a copywriter. If you need a steady stream of keyword-optimized articles, that's a different hire. Knowing which one you need before you start looking will save everyone a lot of time.

Industry experience matters less than you think. With one exception.

Here's something most hiring guides won't tell you: a great copywriter doesn't need to have written for your specific industry before.

The craft travels. A writer who can find the story in a subject, write in a voice that isn't their own and make a reader care about something they didn't care about five minutes ago — that writer can do that for almost any brand, in almost any category.

The exception is regulated industries.

If you're in financial services, insurance or pharmaceuticals, compliance isn't a footnote. It's baked into every single piece of copy. A writer who has never worked inside that environment won't know what they don't know. And finding out mid-project is an expensive lesson.

Look for someone who understands the nuances of regulated copy. Not just someone who's written about money, but someone who has written within the constraints that come with it. That's a different skill set entirely.

The homework test.

Before a good freelance copywriter can do their best work, they need to understand your brand. That means you have to be willing to put in a little work up front.

Past work samples. A brief, even a messy one. A voice profile or brand guidelines, if they exist. Some sense of who your audience is and what you're trying to get them to do.

If a potential client isn't willing to turn in that homework before the engagement starts, things are going to be bumpy. And if a writer isn't asking for any of it? That's its own red flag.

The best freelance copywriting relationships are collaborative from day one. The writer brings the craft. The client brings the context. Neither one can do the other's job.

What you're actually paying for.

When you hire a freelance copywriter, you are not paying for words. Words are cheap.

You're paying for judgment. The ability to look at a problem, identify the right angle and execute it in a way that makes reading feel effortless. That judgment is built over years of writing across industries, audiences and formats. It's the difference between copy that's technically correct and copy that actually does its job.

The right freelance copywriter shouldn't need six months to get up to speed. By the end of draft one, they should feel like they've been on your team for years.

That's the standard. Hold every candidate to it.

Ready to find out if we're a fit? Let's talk.

How to Write a Brand Voice Guide That People Actually Use

Most brands don't have a brand voice guide. The ones that do usually have a PDF that lives in a shared drive nobody opens. Both situations produce the same result: copy that sounds different every time someone new writes it, and a brand that feels vaguely inconsistent without anyone being able to say exactly why.

A good brand voice guide fixes that. But only if it's built right. Here's how to do it.

Start with what you already sound like at your best

The raw material for a real brand voice guide is almost always already out there. Don't start with a blank page. Start with a collection.

Pull the emails your team sends when they're not overthinking it. Find the social post that performed better than anything else this year. Read the customer reviews where people describe you in their own words. Look for the founder's LinkedIn post that got shared far more than usual.

You're looking for patterns. The phrases that keep showing up. The tone that feels most natural. The moments where the writing clicked and nobody had to argue about it. That's your voice, unguarded. That's what you're trying to document.

Adjectives are not a voice

Here's where most brand voice guides go wrong immediately. Someone runs a workshop, fills a whiteboard with personality descriptors, and calls it done. Approachable. Confident. Human. Warm but professional.

Those aren't a voice. They're a starting point at best. Every brand in your category has a list that looks almost identical. Adjectives describe a direction. They don't show anyone how to write a single sentence.

The fix is examples. For every trait you claim, you need to show what it looks like on the page. Not just "we're approachable" but here's an approachable subject line next to one that isn't. Here's how we'd write this product description if we were being true to our voice, and here's how it sounds when we're not. The contrast does more teaching than any descriptor ever could.

The "never" list is often more useful than the "always" list. The words and phrases your brand would never use tell a writer more about your voice than a page of adjectives.

The four things every brand voice guide needs

Voice traits with examples. Three to five characteristics, each illustrated with real before-and-after copy. Not "we're direct" but here's a direct sentence and here's the same thought written passively. Show the difference. (Not sure what your voice traits actually are yet? Start here.)

The never list. Words, phrases and tones that are off-brand. This is non-negotiable. Without guardrails, someone will always drift toward corporate-speak, hollow enthusiasm or whatever they were writing in their last job. Name the things you don't do.

Tone guidance by context. Voice is consistent. Tone shifts. Your brand should sound like itself whether it's writing a product launch or a service outage notice, but those two pieces should not feel identical. Show writers how tone adapts without the voice changing underneath it.

A "sounds like us / doesn't sound like us" section. Real examples, side by side. This is the part people actually use when they're staring at a blank page. Make it specific enough to be genuinely useful.

The test that tells you if it's working

Give the finished guide to someone who has never written for your brand before. Ask them to write three pieces using only the guide as a reference. No briefings, no examples beyond what's in the document.

If the output sounds like your brand, the guide is doing its job. If it doesn't, the guide is missing something. Usually examples. Almost always examples.

A brand voice guide that requires a human interpreter to use is not a guide. It's a philosophy document. Useful for inspiration, useless at 4pm on a Tuesday when someone needs to write a caption.

Brand voice is a practice, not a deliverable

The guide is not the finish line. It's the foundation. The brands that actually maintain a consistent voice are the ones that treat the guide as a living document. They update it when the brand evolves. They add examples when they write something that nails it. They revisit the never list when new bad habits creep in.

One document, maintained well, is worth more than a brand refresh every three years. And it's a lot cheaper.

Build it once. Keep it current. Use it every time someone new sits down to write for your brand. That's the whole system.

If your brand is still working off an adjective list and hoping for the best, let's talk. Building brand voice guides is some of my favorite work, and the difference it makes shows up in every piece of content that comes after it.