Create a flawless onboarding process for copywriting clients
Client experience is everything if you want to start charging premium rates for your freelance services. How you treat your clients through the entire workflow is important, but the onboarding process for copywriters is where you define your relationship with each new client. You have the power to influence whether or not they stick with you after the first project, how they feel while working with you, and if they tell their friends…
And we all know how powerful referrals can be!
Simple, effective systems help you grow your business
A good client experience, starting with your onboarding process, sets every project up for success. It makes you look more professional, legit, and increases the value of your services.
This is something that we cover inside my mastermind program, The Inner Circle, because not only does a flawless onboarding process for copywriters elevate your client’s experience of working with you, but it also helps you reclaim space in your calendar.
Aka better work-life balance that we’re all after… Working less and making more.
I’ll explain all of that in this post!
5 must-haves in an onboarding process for copywriters
Your onboarding process for new copywriting clients needs to be on point. But how can you ensure that? Here’s 5 tips you can implement into your onboarding process today.
- Consider your lead inquiry process part of onboarding, and treat leads with the same consideration you do paying clients. It needs to be easy to work with you! This starts from the moment they fill out your contact form (sooner, actually… but for the sake of sticking to your onboarding process, it starts here).
- Make your sales process super simple and easy for each lead. Some examples of what I mean by this: Take control of sales calls, make proposals thorough and clear, and make it easy to sign your contract or pay a deposit.
- Streamline all the setup information. There’s nothing worse than getting bombarded with 10 different emails when you sign up for a new service. Instead, pull all the next steps together into a single onboarding package that’s easy to use.
- Set expectations for the project in your onboarding process. Onboarding is the best time to clarify their responsibilities, your scope of work, boundaries, and more. I like to convey this information prior to and during the sales call, remind them in the proposal and contract, then follow through in the setup phase.
- Personalize their experience, even if it’s automated. I like Dubsado for this! I can personalize client passwords, welcome emails, etc. Even though it’s templated by default.
There’s so many extra features you can add to your onboarding process as a copywriter if you want to surprise and delight your clients about the quality of your service. But those tips should get you started.
Personally, I’ve added additional features over the years to continue to elevate the client experience. Things like client portals, bulletins that are updated for project statuses, and more. These aren’t necessary, but improve the overall perception of my brand and how we work together.
Automate your onboarding process
I don’t know about you, but I am busy! I don’t have time to personally onboard every single client that comes to the studio for copywriting services, or to me for business coaching. That’s why I’ve automated a lot of the onboarding process.
Automating my onboarding process also helped me first delay hiring a VA, then make better use of that role. Neither of us do busy work now because so much is automated. Instead of manually sending each email, clients are automatically welcomed with access to their client portal, necessary homework questionnaires, ClickUp space, Google folders, and more when they sign their new agreements.
I started with Dubsado originally, and integrated this with other platforms as the business grew. I can’t recommend Dubsado enough for other copywriters and freelancers.
Save time and make it on brand with Canned Email Templates
My secret weapon in my onboarding process… and my entire workflow… Canned Email Templates. Dubsado allows you to build a library of email templates to save and use in automated workflows as needed. I’ve refined my library over the years and now have such a robust list of email templates, that I rarely need to write a new process-related one from scratch (and when I do, I immediately add that to the library too).
These templates start with the lead inquiry, move through my onboarding process, and all the way to the end of a project. It saves me so much time!
You can steal my Canned Email Templates here to use them for yourself! These templates save people 4+ hours setting up templates on their own because you just need to plug them in and customize them. Then you’ll save so much time on a weekly basis by eliminating the repetitive and workflow related emails.
Make your onboarding process work better for you and clients.
Processes are everything in business—I’m all about these! This is how I’ve been able to shift how I work to accommodate becoming a mom. While before I worked full time… often overtime like most freelancers. Then I grew to the point where I only worked 4-day weeks (Fridays off every week!). And finally, my current situation is about 15 hours per week—the rest of the time I’m living life with my family.
You can learn more about how I make it all happen and get some calendar inspiration for yourself with the help of the 6-Figure Schedule.
