How to hire a remote copywriter

Finding the perfect copywriter to articulate your brand’s voice and drive results can be a game-changer. As businesses increasingly embrace distributed teams, knowing how to hire a remote copywriter effectively becomes a crucial skill. This comprehensive guide will walk you through everything you need to know, from understanding your needs to sealing the deal with a top-tier professional. 

Why should I hire a copywriter, especially a remote one?

Before diving into the “how,” let’s address the “why.” Many businesses, particularly startups and small to medium-sized enterprises, often try to handle their copywriting in-house. While admirable, this approach can often fall short. Here are compelling reasons to hire a remote copywriter:

• Expertise in persuasion: Copywriting isn’t just writing; it’s salesmanship in print. Professional copywriters understand human psychology, persuasive language, and compelling storytelling. They know how to craft headlines that grab attention, body copy that builds desire, and calls to action that convert.
• Time-saving: Creating high-quality copy is time-consuming. Offloading this task to a specialist frees up your internal team to focus on their core competencies.
• Improved SEO performance: Skilled copywriters are adept at integrating keywords naturally and structuring content for search engine optimization, boosting your organic visibility. This is particularly crucial if you hire a remote copywriter for website content.
• Brand consistency: A dedicated copywriter can ensure a consistent brand voice across all your marketing materials, from website content to social media posts.
• Fresh perspectives: An external copywriter brings a fresh, objective perspective to your brand, often identifying angles and opportunities you might have overlooked.
• Scalability: When you hire a freelance copywriter, you gain the flexibility to scale your content production up or down based on your needs, without the overhead of a full-time employee.

The “remote” aspect adds another layer of benefits: access to a global talent pool, reduced overheads (no office space needed for them!), and the ability to work with specialists who might not be geographically close but are perfectly aligned with your project.

Defining your needs: Before you search for a remote copywriter for hire

Take a moment to clearly define what you need. This clarity will streamline your search and help you attract the right candidates.

• What type of copy do you need? Are you looking for website content, blog posts, email sequences, ad copy, video scripts, product descriptions, or a combination? If you specifically need to hire a remote copywriter for a website, be clear about the pages and their purpose.
• What are your goals? Do you want to increase sales, generate leads, improve brand awareness, or educate your audience?
• Who is your target audience? Understanding your audience’s demographics, pain points, and desires is crucial for a copywriter to craft effective messages.
• What is your budget? Understanding how much it costs to hire a copywriter will help you set realistic expectations and filter candidates. We’ll delve into this in more detail later.
• What is your timeline? Do you have urgent deadlines, or is this a long-term, ongoing project?
• Do you need a remote copyeditor as well? Sometimes, you might write the initial draft but need an expert to refine and polish it. In such cases, you might specifically want to hire a remote copyeditor. Often, skilled copywriters also offer editing services, but it’s worth clarifying.

Understanding remote copywriter salary and cost

“How much does it cost to hire a copywriter?” is a common question, and the answer varies significantly. Let us look into the factors influencing copywriter remote salary or project fees.

General cost ranges (highly variable):

• Per word: $0.10 to $1.00+ (depending on experience and complexity)
• Per hour: $50 to $250+
• Per project: Can range from a few hundred dollars for a short piece to thousands for a complete website or sales funnel.

Be upfront about your budget, but also be realistic. Investing in a quality copywriter will often yield a significant return on investment through improved conversions and brand perception. Don’t base your decision solely on price; consider the value they bring.

Vetting and interviewing potential candidates

Finding candidates is one thing; identifying the right one is another. Here’s how to effectively vet a potential remote copywriter for hire:

• Review portfolios: This is arguably the most critical step. Look for samples that align with your industry, tone, and the type of content you need. Pay attention to clarity, persuasive power, and the ability to tell a story.
• Look for testimonials and case studies: Happy clients and demonstrable results are strong indicators of a copywriter’s effectiveness.
• Conduct an interview: A video call allows you to assess their personality, ask specific questions about their process, and gauge their understanding of your brand and goals.
• Give a paid test project (optional but recommended): For critical roles, offering a small, paid test project (e.g., a single blog post or a few product descriptions) can be invaluable. This allows you to see their work firsthand in a real-world scenario and assess their ability to meet deadlines and follow instructions. This is especially useful if you need to hire a remote copywriter for website pages where accuracy and brand voice are crucial.
• Discuss their process: Ask them about their research methods, how they approach understanding a new brand, and their revision policy.

Tips for onboarding and collaboration with your remote copywriter

Once you’ve decided to hire a remote copywriter, the onboarding process is crucial for a smooth working relationship:

• Provide a detailed brief: The more information you provide upfront, the better. Include your brand guidelines, target audience, key messages, desired tone of voice, SEO keywords, and specific goals for the copy.
• Establish communication channels: Decide on your preferred method of communication (email, Slack, project management tool) and set expectations for response times.
• Set clear deadlines: Agree on realistic timelines for drafts, revisions, and final delivery.
• Offer constructive feedback: Be clear and specific in your feedback. Avoid vague statements. Use tools for annotations and track changes.
• Build a relationship: Even though it’s a remote relationship, fostering a positive connection can lead to a more collaborative and productive partnership.

Common challenges with hiring remote copywriters and how Global Squirrels can help

Global Squirrels provides an all-in-one staffing and payrolling platform that revolutionizes how you hire and manage remote copywriters. Forget the complexities of international employment – we’ve got you covered. Our platform handles all HR and compliance functions, essentially acting as an Employer of Record (EOR) solution for your global talent. This means we take on the legal responsibility of employing your remote copywriters, ensuring you can focus on their work, not the red tape.

Here’s how Global Squirrels, leveraging its EOR capabilities, gracefully tackles the remote hiring challenges:

1. Navigating legal and compliance complexities

Every country has its own intricate labor laws, tax regulations, benefits requirements, and payroll rules. Understanding and complying with these in multiple jurisdictions is incredibly complex, time-consuming, and risky. Misclassification of employees as contractors, incorrect tax withholdings, or non-compliance with local benefits can lead to hefty fines and legal battles.

Our EOR solution specializes in local employment laws. We can act as your legal employer, ensuring that all aspects of employment – from offer letter/contracts and onboarding to payroll, taxes, and termination – are fully compliant with the laws of the employee’s country of residence. This significantly reduces your legal risk and administrative burden.

2. Eliminating the need for local entities

To legally hire remote copywriters in a foreign country, companies typically need to establish a local legal entity (e.g., a subsidiary or branch office). This process is often lengthy, expensive, and involves significant paperwork, legal fees, and ongoing administrative overhead.

Global Squirrels already has established legal entities in India, the Philippines, Mexico, and few other countries. By partnering with our EOR, you can hire employees in these countries instantly, without the need to set up your own local presence. This accelerates your time to market and allows you to tap into global talent pools much more quickly and cost-effectively.

3. Streamlining payroll and tax management

Managing international payroll involves dealing with different currencies, tax systems, social security contributions, and reporting requirements. This can be a major administrative headache for internal finance and HR teams.

Our platform can handle all payroll processing, including calculating salaries, withholding appropriate taxes and social contributions, making timely payments in local currency, and filing all necessary tax forms with local authorities. This ensures accuracy and compliance, freeing up your internal teams.

4. Simplifying onboarding and offboarding

Onboarding a remote copywriter in a different country involves specific legal documentation, offer letter/contract generation, and compliance checks that differ from your home country. Similarly, offboarding requires adherence to local severance, notice period, and termination laws.

Our EOR platform streamlines the entire employee lifecycle. We handle the generation of localized, legally compliant employment contracts, manage the onboarding paperwork, and ensure all necessary documentation is in place.

5. Reducing administrative burden and cost

The cumulative administrative tasks associated with global remote hiring – legal research, entity setup, payroll processing, tax filing, benefits administration – are incredibly time-consuming and expensive.

With our staffing and payrolling platform, your company can save significant time, money, and resources. You can focus your internal teams on core business activities, strategy, and managing the employee’s day-to-day work, rather than getting bogged down in complex international HR and compliance.

To hire remote copywriters, you can leverage one of our hiring plans: Orange plan, Purple plan, and the Blue plan. The Orange plan covers end-to-end sourcing and recruitment of your remote copywriter based on your job requirement. The Blue plan works just like the Orange plan but it provides better resource oversight and management since your hired talent will work from one of our managed offices in India, the Philippines, or Mexico. The Purple plan covers the onboarding, offer letter/contract generation, payments/payroll, and termination of the freelancer/employee already sourced by you. 

Our platform operates on a unique pricing model compared with most staffing agencies. To hire a remote copywriter, you just need to pay the payroll cost and the flat license fee per hire. Thus, you can save up to 80% on your hiring costs!

Eager to learn more about how our platform works? Schedule a demo!