The first draft of your new marketing copy lands in your inbox—and you immediately dive in. At first glance, you like what you see—but you get hung up by the second paragraph on a word that’s not quite right. You hop on a Zoom call with the writer to conduct some “quick” copywriting revisions, but before you know it, you’re deep in the weeds, picking apart words and sentences and making suggestions on how to re-phrase.
Meanwhile, your copywriter is editing the document on the fly and trying to keep up with your inputs as the draft is rapidly changing shape.
Forward motion can feel like progress, but when you revisit the revised piece later the next day, something feels off. Like, way off. Where did the original draft go?
Those little edits have added up and suddenly the piece is not hanging together like it once did: somehow, the copy is now missing the forest for the trees. And you realize that you just spent two hours of your scope chopping off healthy branches.
When deadlines are hot hot hot, live editing might be the best (and only) option. But if there’s time, revisions are best handled with care. Here’s why:
Live editing introduces challenges for both clients and copywriters.
Although it might seem like editing live on a call can save time, we’ve learned that, in reality, it’s usually the opposite. That’s because someone’s first thoughts aren’t usually their final ones, but rather gut instincts that are reactive vs. strategic. Jumping right into editing doesn’t allow time for reflection or digestion, two critical elements of the feedback process.
Many copy reviewers can have a tendency to zoom right past the piece’s big picture and down to the micro level of deleting, rewriting, rearranging, and thesaurus-ing. And while those details are absolutely important, focusing on the right synonym for one word in one paragraph turns both the client and the writer into producers instead of strategists. And boy does it kill time.
From the writer’s perspective, live editing can bring the pressure, especially in the face of questions like “How else can we say this?” and expecting an immediate answer. For many writers, those lightbulb moments come much later, when they’ve had the chance to digest the feedback and try several options before finding the one that works. When they’re editing live, however, even the best copywriters may be off their game when someone is expecting the perfect revision rightnow.
Here’s a copywriting feedback process that works.
Over the past decade, our copywriting teams have refined and perfected a system for revisions and feedback that saves time, cost, and headaches. Here’s what we ask of our clients:
- Assess the big picture. Once the copy is delivered, each client stakeholder takes time to review the draft from a big-picture perspective: aspects like audience, overall goal, tone, and accuracy.
- Add written feedback. As they’re reviewing, they insert comments or make suggestions in the doc. If there are multiple reviewers, one person compiles all the comments into a summary that gets sent back to the writers. This allows internal debates or conflicts to be reconciled before looping the writer back in.
- Allow time for revisions. As revisions progress, reviewers refrain from jumping back into the doc until their writer notifies them that it’s ready. This can be a challenge in situations like sharing Google docs, where notifications are sent when changes are made, but nothing throws a writer off focus like seeing their client live in an in-progress document.
Does this process require time, concentration, and commitment? Absolutely. Is it what you’re used to when it comes to giving copy feedback? Probably not. Here’s why it’s worth the effort, and a better idea than going through the copy live:
- It keeps your copywriting team focused on what it does best: crafting the ideal audience journey by translating your brand insights into how your most desired readers can best receive and digest it.
- It prioritizes the story arc and overall voice/tone first, while treating accuracy as an important yet much more easily “fixable” secondary component.
- Perhaps most importantly, it empowers your copywriting team to generate freely, creatively, and intelligently, instead of second-guessing themselves over the copy’s literal correctness. (Again, correctness is crucial. But it also needs to capture the right tone, drive the most efficient journey, and move people to action.)
Want to work with writers who follow a process that gets results? We’re here to assist.
