Bill Fryer UK Copywriter

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This copywriter:
	Increased a £12m company's sales by £2m in six months.
	Has turned £350,000 into £1,450,000 for one charity for the last five years in a row.
	Helped one plc's share price double over 18 months after he created every piece of advertising they put out.

You can use him too
And he only costs £600 a day

Hi,

My name is Bill Fryer and I am a copywriter.

If you do not know what that is, I am the person who writes advertisements, direct mail, websites, in fact, any kind of advertising material.

I have put those three achievements up there at the top of this page because they are some of my greatest. And they are not one-offs. I can show you a whole series of creative tests where I have been able to give clients, like you, better results and make you more money.

What can Bill Fryer do for you?

I specialise in writing direct response communications like direct mail, off the page advertising, emails and websites, door to door leaflets and inserts. Most of my work is for people who sell direct, people like retailers, a lot of financial services, mail order, charities and other not-for-profit organisations.

I can actually write anything. Even though most of my work is geared towards generating leads or sales, I still get asked to do brochures, general leaflets and even point of sale materials.

Sometimes people have told me at the start of a project they have never found someone who can write for their industry. In every case I have been able to write successful campaigns for them.

I also know how to write copy so that it is easy to translate, if you are selling in different language zones.

Have I worked for anyone you
have ever heard of?

Here is a selection of the better known organisations I have produced campaigns for:

AC Cars – luxury car manufacturer

Acorn Stairlifts – stairlift manufacturer/seller

Axa Sunlife - insurance/investments

Barclaycard – credit cards

Castle Cover – insurance brokerage

Dunlop – tyre manufacturer

Empire Stores – mail order cataloguer

Fisher Investments Inc – investment manager

Foreign & Colonial - investments

Greenpeace – not-for-profit campaigning organisation

Hidden Hearing – hearing aid seller

HSS Tool Hire – tool hire

Jewson/Saint-Gobain – building trade retailer/manufacturer

LaSource – Caribbean resort hotel

Longevity USA – mail order health supplements

The National Trust – heritage charity

Pinnacle Insurance - insurance

Reader's Digest – book seller

Royal Star & Garter Home – ex-Services charity

Skipton Building Society – building society

Have I worked in your sector?

I have worked in most, including: cars, properties, holidays/travel, insurances, investments, mail order, direct selling, disability and grey market, charities, books and media, education, security, building trade and other business to business.

This variety is important because the best copywriters generally have broad experience. I have always beaten industry-specialist copywriters in creative tests.

And where have I worked?

I have worked and work for clients in the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Caribbean and Australia.

What made Bill Fryer such
an amazing copywriter ?

I went to Oxford University and have an MA and BA in Human Sciences. I then formed the UK's first bungee jumping company called Vertigo, worked in a printer's, worked as a car mechanic (badly), became a charity fundraiser, then an advertising manager for a multinational manufacturer and finally started my own business in 1998.

I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing and even have an Advanced Certificate in Marketing.

Actually this last point is important because a lot of copywriters are simply wordsmiths who live in their heads. I have a marketing background as well, so I can see your creative work in the context of whatever your overall strategy is.

Something you need to know
about the way I write:

In my experience there are two types of copywriter: noisy and quiet. Noisy ones use lots of superlatives to try and crank up the product or service. Personally I find a quiet approach that states the facts and tells people what they want to know, works best. And my track record bears me out...

Eight more examples where my
work has made a difference:

For a leading charity I ran my creative work against the creative work produced by their existing agency. All three mail packs went to the same list. Their control pulled 1.7%. Mine pulled 2.5, 9.8 and 13.2%. Since then I have created three fundraising direct mail campaigns which have each pulled over 30% in response.

For the UK’s largest direct seller of hearing aids my pack pulled four times as many responses as their existing control.

For the UK’s biggest building products supplier my creative work went head-to-head against three other agencies, not only did I win, the response to my mailing jammed their switchboard.

For a US wealth management company two of my packs beat their control which “no one ever beats” - not even the best American copywriters. Recently I ran five more packs and they all beat the control, that I had established, by a good 30%.

For a national telecoms company my first creative work was three times better than what they had produced in-house. And my subsequent attempts have increased response further.

For a mobility products supplier my direct response ads were 50%, 100% and 400% better than the ads their existing agency (a grey market specialist) had created.

For one UK mail order retailer my adverts sold 6 and 8 times more product than their existing agency's work.

For an American mail order health supplements company my packs doubled their response rates. And they now use our artwork in the States.

What else can I help you with?

I have the resources of a full service direct marketing agency to hand so I can also help you with art direction and graphic design, media planning and buying, list rental, mailing, print and lettershop campaign planning and marketing strategy.

How much do I charge?

Probably not enough. Here are some sample prices:

	Copy Only	Copy + Artwork
1-2 page letter	£600	£1,200
2-8 page letter	£1,200	£2,200
Full page advert	£600	£1,400
Small advert	£400	£900
Small leaflet	£600	£1,200
8 page brochure	£1,200	£3,000
8 page website	£1,200	£3,000

Top Ten tips for Top Copy

Even though a copywriter is a small cost relative to the overall costs of a campaign a lot of people still insist on writing their own copy. If you want to do this, here are some ways you can make your copy more persuasive:

1	Review your copy. Do it over and over. Six or seven times or more.
2	Do not use long Latin words like "information" - use short Anglo-Saxon words like "facts". These words have more punch.
3	Avoid being clever and cryptic. Sometimes I see ads that take me weeks to work out what they mean. We are all too busy to be bothering with the clever stuff. If it can be understood by a half-wit with a two second attention span you may have a winner.
4	Do not be handicapped by thinking that everything has to be "grammatically correct". When you are copywriting all that stuff goes out the window. Say it in the simplest way possible.
5	Use short sentences. And only contain one idea in every paragraph. Do not spend ages constructing enormously complex sentences with millions of clauses and sub-clauses. And be specific, state real figures, avoid things like "up to 5%" or "over 1,000". Avoid percentages, state real sums of money instead.
6	State the facts and focus on the benefits the customer will get when he buys the product. Do not waffle. Every word needs to be earning its place in your copy. Do not be worried by length of copy. Testing shows that long copy sells more than short, and long headlines sell more than short. Your copy should be as long or as short as it needs to be to sell the product.
7	Speak the reader's language. Do what a salesman would do. Think about how you would sell the product to someone. The best copy often has a kind of speech type "you-and-me-talking" quality about it.
8	Visualise a person and write to them. Better still write as if you are writing to someone you already know who fits the target audience: Your Mum, a friend, whoever.
9	Use simple words that everyone understands then everyone will understand. Good copy is often criticised for having a child-like quality. This is deliberate; if a simple person can understand it, everyone can understand it.
10	And finally: read books on the subject. Study the work of the great men of advertising. And remember: good copy is like a river; you should be able to jump in at any point and be carried along by the flow.
11	Ask Bill Fryer to write your copy for you.

Hey! Why don't you send me an email – I would like to hear from you.