Sara Arnold Copywriting & Creative

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Skyhook Interactive, a website development firm focused on higher-end websites, mostly WordPress. We design, build, and maintain them after the fact. We help with strategy, and we mostly support either marketing agencies or in-house marketing teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sara Arnold?

A huge part of what makes a website successful is its content. We have to say the right thing to the right people in the right way, and it needs to be creative, punchy, and match the voice of the brand. That’s bucket number one of things we use Sara Arnold for.

Bucket number two is our own corporate marketing. Sara Arnold is our go-to content writer for case studies of our work, website content, and social media content.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sara Arnold will interview the clients a case study is for, as well as our team members. She will also look at competitors as part of her process, researching what other firms are saying and how they’re positioning themselves.

She also writes social media posts for us and ghostwrites many of the articles on our site. She interviews me to write those. Finally, she writes the scripts for the movies that are on our site.

What is the team composition?

We use other writers for our client work, but we only use Sara Arnold for our own work.

How did you come to work with Sara Arnold?

I have no idea. I’ve known her for six years, and it literally looks like we just started doing business together one day. I’ve looked back through emails, and I don’t know. I like a few things about her. She’s candid, blunt; if she doesn’t like something, she’ll say it. She’s very authentic in that way. She is funny and has a very dry humor, as well as being clever and creative. She cracks us up often with the things she comes up with.

Lastly, it’s just the service. She’s very good at following up on the things she said she would: to have agendas ready for a meeting, to bug people if they have things they’re supposed to get her. Aside from the work itself, the process of working with her is very easy.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Sara Arnold in March 2014, and the relationship’s ongoing. There was a pretty good amount of work back in the day, followed by a break. We’ve been working together again pretty intensely for the past 6–8 months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It’s pretty anecdotal at this point. It surprised even me how many comments I’ve gotten from clients. Literally, within a few weeks of starting to publish stuff seriously, around the October 2019 timeframe, I started to get comments in sales meetings saying “Hey, I read your article, it was really interesting.” That’s probably happened two dozen times since we started again six months ago.

A lot of that speaks just to the tactic, which isn’t her doing, but the content itself has certainly moved people to action. It’s given them a desire to work with us. Of course, they don’t realize that she’s the one who wrote the articles, not me, but I’ve been delighted at how well it’s worked, especially because she’s doing this for us part-time.

I like that she’s worked at a full-service agency because, even though she doesn’t have video editing skills, she’s seen good video done and she knows what the process is like. More than just being a writer, she’s a strategic marketing brain that can steer us toward things we don’t know about how full-service agencies work.

How did Sara Arnold perform from a project management standpoint?

We have an in-person weekly meeting and phone calls as needed. She always comes with an agenda and is fully prepared. I don’t have anything to say beyond that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

She stands out through raw creativity and the easiness of working with her. Those are the things we’d normally hire a copywriter for, but my experience has been that a lot of competition in that space either isn’t that creative, or is hard to work with: missing deadlines, delays on things, and a lack of organization. Maybe they have the talent, but not the service. I feel that we really get both of those things with Sara Arnold.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d like to see more bandwidth. I think there’s more work I could give her, but I don’t know what she could do, other than hiring more people. Having more initiative to trying new things would be good. She has an agency background, and she knows a wide set of things that could be done: weird, off-the-wall tactics, tech talk, or whatever the new things are. I don’t think that’s really fair since she’s not really building herself as a marketing strategist. She happens to know some things about that. As a pure copywriter—which is what I think she’s trying to position herself as—I’d like to see more throughput.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’d suggest taking the time upfront to obtain a vision of what you want, make sure she’s aligned, and turn her loose. She’s very much not someone who needs micromanaging. Spend the time upfront to get aligned on your vision and then turn her loose.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of marketing for ZOE Holding Company. We’re primarily in the commercial staffing industry working across multiple business lines.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sara Arnold Copywriting & Creative?

We needed a great copywriter to go over our overall content strategy.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sara (Freelance Copywriter & creative Strategist, Sara Arnold Copywriting & Creative) writes for all of our different brands and the platforms they’re on. We might be working with a client to hire an electrician for a construction site, or a technician in a hospital setting, and need someone to write for that brand.

We usually bring her on to a project as a contractor rather than a freelancer. We provide brand standards, but then she conducts her own keyword research. She asks a lot of questions along the way, too. Then, Sara creates a content strategy for each project, following the brand’s tone and voice, and writing to the audience.

For example, we were creating a website for out travel nursing division. It’s a very specific audience, and we needed 50–60 pages of content created for the site. Sara thinks on the fly about what makes sense for that audience. Then she delivers a strategy that includes metadata, H1 and title tags, and keywords with the content she creates.

What is the team composition?

We just work with Sara.

How did you come to work with Sara Arnold Copywriting & Creative?

She was a colleague of mine at another agency, and she is lovely to work with. She’s very collaborative and offers a lot of great guidance. I always asked to work directly with Sara because I was confident about the work she would deliver.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’ve worked with her since she became a freelancer in April 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We’re extremely pleased with her work. She saves our internal team time and money because almost never have more than minor revisions to her content. Her research is really thorough, so she understands the brand from the beginning of the project. She has very thoughtful questions about business strategy and is very tactical. As a result, her initial delivery, even in draft form, is spot-on.

How did Sara Arnold Copywriting & Creative perform from a project management standpoint?

I usually send her a project with a brief description of what we want, and she sends an estimate back right away. She outlines different milestones and confirms that it will work for us. We communicate via phone or email, and even meet with her in person. She delivers the product according to the schedule and completes everything quickly. Management is amazing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

She consistently delivers a great product. When I work with her, I know that I’ll get exactly what I’m looking for.

Are there any areas they could improve?

While this isn’t something she needs to improve on exactly, she wants to start working on other projects in addition to copywriting. I’m looking forward to testing out some of her marketing strategy skills and bringing that to our team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give her access to all the data and brand intel you have. Unlike other creative agencies, Sara approaches each project from a very strategic place. By telling her what you know about the audience, you’ll get a much richer product from her.