If you own a business that, I believe, you hold dearly, then you probably choose your team carefully. As you plan to grow teams and processes, there’s a lot of damage you do when you hire copywriters with a plan to cheat. Brief-packing is one of the major ways businesses destroy their marketing.

Often, you’d have to find marketing teams online through platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. Having worked on such platforms myself, I can tell you that there are a lot of reasons, other than the poor writing skills of your hired writer, that messes with projects.

One of the most treacherous errors I’ve seen in my freelance copywriting journey is what I’ll call “brief-packing”.

Imagine you’ve bought a bag for your flight with a maximum 25kg allowance. Suddenly you remember there are ten shoes, water canons, and a bicycle you’ve just got to take along with you. So, you try all you can and create an apocalypse of bits and pieces all rammed into themselves. When you get to the weighing checks, your load will definitely still not go beyond that checkpoint. No matter how you rearrange it, your ticket says 25kg and that’s all you can take with you except you pay for more!

Brief-packing is one of the major ways businesses destroy their marketing.

DAMILOLA Jonathan Oladeji

Brief packing is that thing some folks do when taking a flight to avoid heavy luggages. They’ll carry two handbags, a backpack, give each child another backpack, stuff their office briefcase with pants and leggings and then block all the aisle on the plane while they try to maneuver.

When I get orders to write website copy, some clients wait for me to accept before starting to tell me about some email they need to send to their audience right away, or a landing page that needs to be linked to the ebook lead magnet they’ve paid for.

And sometimes you find that a job that should have taken half a day will continue for millennia. This can easily reduce the copywriter’s productivity and make them feel like offering you their service was not worth it. You might end up losing a great service provider and find that cheaper copywriting won’t endear customers to your business.

It’s always a blessing when service requests come but even a bigger blessing when your clients are forthright, and honest in their expectations.

Ever encountered a brief-packing client? How did you handle it?