How to Start a Career in Copywriting
Copywriting is an explosive field of marketing to get into. The good thing is, copywriters are in high demand. And anyone can become a copywriter at any point of their life — whether they have years of experience or none.
Start Acting Like a Writer.
If you want to achieve something, you must first become it. Embody the energy of what you want. This goes for anything, big or small. In this case, you want to become a copywriter. So it’s time to start acting like a writer.
Develop habits a writer may share. My recommendation is to write for 20 minutes every morning. Don’t limit yourself or place rules around what you must write — the practice transforms the more you do it.
Put yourself in the environment of a writer. Go to a cafe with your headphones and order a strong cup of coffee. Go to a local park and people watch. Or take a stroll through a bustling city and soak up the buzz.
Pick a writing niche.
Now, it’s time to determine what you’d like to focus on as a writer. There are many different types of copywriters. Here are just a few to get you started:
Technical copywriter
Brand copywriter
B2B copywriter
Direct Response copywriter
Email copywriter
Public Relations copywriter
Social Media copywriter
User Experience copywriter
Create your portfolio and update it consistently.
This blog assumes you have no prior copywriting experience, so we have to go ahead and create experience for you with minimal investment. My recommendation is to open a free blog using a website like Wix. Use this as your space to write as much as possible. I would recommend a regular cadence, such as new articles every Monday and Saturday.
This will be essential once you begin pitching yourself to companies.
Add hypothetical case studies to your portfolio.
The next thing future employers will look for is proof of your value. This can be delivered within a resume or a portfolio. If you have no prior experience, you’ll need to go the portfolio route. Here’s what you can do:
Pick 3 brands. One should a B2C brand (i.e. Sephora), one a B2B brand (Adobe) and finally, choose a small business.
Create a marketing strategy and marketing plan for each. (See this article: What’s the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan?)
Develop a select few assets for each. You might write social posts, mock up graphics, mock up emails or webpages, etc. Whatever you think will be the most visually appealing and memorable.
Package this into a portfolio piece and add it to your website. Remember to disclaim this is a hypothetical marketing plan/strategy.
Look up the contact info of the small business you selected and send your marketing strategy to them (do not send the marketing plan). Offer to jump on a call and share the tactical plan and how you might help support from a copywriting perspective. This could open up the door to your first gig.
Now you have three portfolio pieces to lean on while applying. Check out one of my hypothetical case studies for Mizuno Running Shoes.
Join freelance writing agencies.
Now that you’re armed with a website and case studies, it’s time to join some freelance writing agencies. My personal favorite is Upwork. I recommend looking into available Upwork Courses to help you understand how to be successful on the platform. There’s different categories of courses such as Setting Up Your Account, Finding Work, Working on Upwork, Growing on Upwork.
Other good freelance websites (I don’t personally use, but I’ve heard good things) include: Fiverr, Contently, Skyword.
Use job boards to find a full-time copywriting gig.
Once you have some writing gigs under your belt (don’t forget adding them to your portfolio + resume), ask yourself if you want to continue freelancing or try for a full-time gig. The two best job boards (by far) are LinkedIn Jobs and Indeed. Another route you can go is searching brands you want to work for, scroll to the footer — they should have a “Careers” link.
One thing with full time gigs these days is…it truly is all about who you know. I recommend using EventBrite to discover and attend local networking events, leveraging LinkedIn to set up virtual coffee chats (consider sending them a $5 coffee gift card in exchange for their time), or joining online community forums on Discord, Twitter, Threads, etc.
