CASE STUDY / BUILDING AN AGENCY COPY OFFERING
From “we don’t do copy” to a core service that grows the agency
ViDesigns × Amélie Pollak
“Amelie is a STAR! What I like most about working with her is how much she cares about getting things right, no matter what it takes. That is a quality that really sets her apart from everyone else I have worked with in the copywriting space.”
I haven’t yet met an agency founder who’s never been asked for copywriting services as part of the package.
When Vimalan Vijayasekaran (the awesome founder of ViDesigns) and I first met, he had already been toying with the idea of adding copy to ViDesigns’ service lines.
But when you’re coming from a design & dev point of view, where do you even start with getting a brand strategy & copywriting service up and running? There’s so much to think about, so much to word, to set up. Yet clients are expecting this kind of expertise and support from agencies more and more.
So together, we shaped everything into a full-blown copy offering, and worked on some incredible projects as an integrated copy + strategy partnership.
Here’s how it all unfolded.
0 → 1
Copy offering built from scratch
8
Successful websites launched together
Ongoing
Strategic partnership
About ViDesigns
ViDesigns is a design agency run by Vimalan Vijayasekaran, and honestly one of the most fun teams I get to work with. They’re an ambitious, friendly, and deeply kind bunch. When client work throws up a curveball, they pull together as one close-knit team, so things always stay smooth.
Their project managers deserve a special mention too. They’re wizards at keeping clients happy, timelines sensible, and making sure nothing slips through the cracks. Which, as we’ll get to, is a lot easier when the words aren’t a moving target.
Before
- No copy service to offer
- Writing copy left to the client (or to AI)
- Weaker designs with no messaging strategy, held up by sub-par copy pieced together or bolted on
- Time lost and revisions wasted to copy changes in later stages
- No copywriter or brand strategist on the team
After
- Copywriting as one of their key services
- Strategy and messaging set before design
- Stronger projects, built on clear messaging strategy and expert copy
- Messaging and copy decisions made early on, when they don’t impact design
- A full-time copywriter, with a strategic senior partner on call
Clients don’t just want the website anymore
AI has made writing copy fast and cheap. Which sounds like great news for agencies, until you see what it’s done to the copy that lands in your inbox.
The thing is, AI-written copy doesn’t tick the messaging and positioning notes a strong website project needs. It doesn’t convey the brand’s soul, or help the design shine.
Clients who need direction
With such a massive influx of AI slop gravitating around clients, they need guidance as to which direction to go in, more than ever.
Direction decides the result
That direction is what determines how strong the whole project will be. The flow of messages on the page, what the buyer needs to know in order to convert.
Essentially, what the website needs to say to be successful. Yep, clients now expect agencies to bring that to the table.ViDesigns had the design side nailed, with incredible designers on the team, ready to bring sites to life. But they kept on getting half-finished or weak copy to slot into designs. There was clear demand for copywriting, just no service yet to meet it.
Why a copy offering is harder to set up than it looks
Adding copy sounds simple: find a writer, add a line to the proposal. But in practice, there’s a lot to factor in.
Pricing it
Per page or per project? And how do you price the strategy? Bake it into every project? Sell the messaging workshop separately? Make it optional, and risk some clients skipping it, even though the project will be weaker without it? Every option has a trade-off, and they need to be weighed.
Wording it
Plenty of clients aren’t marketing-savvy, and they shouldn’t have to be. They don’t necessarily know whether they need positioning, messaging, copy or all three. They don’t know how much copy support they need, if it should just be a few key pages or the whole shebang. So a lot of education needs to be done within sales materials.
Fitting it into the process
Bolt copy on top of an existing design process and clients end up answering the same questions twice: once in the design discovery, again in a copy questionnaire. Client time and attention are precious, so copy needs to be carefully integrated.
How I partnered with ViDesigns to build up their copy service
Defining the offering
I started working together with the team on client projects, and the difference a copy partner made was striking: clearer direction, smoother sign-offs, stronger end results. Once Vimalan saw that impact, we started talking about building copy into ViDesigns.
Step one was working out what the copy service was going to be: what’s included, where it sits alongside design and dev, and which projects it fits.
Client-facing wording that sells it
Then we worked together to define the language ViDesigns uses to explain the service to clients. A menu of deliverables as well as a clear case for what they’ll get, why it matters for their results, and how it slots into the project.
The copy service, explained to clients
- 01 What
What you get, and how much of it
No guessing at scope - 02 Why
Why the words shape the results
Worth the budget - 03 How
How it slots into the project
No extra effort
One discovery
The biggest shift was merging the design discovery workshop process with copy.
Instead of two parallel tracks, clients go through a single joined-up discovery. The same insights feed the design direction and the messaging, and nobody gets asked the same question twice.
Two tracksDesign discovery + copy questionnaire
One trackOne joined-up discovery
Two tracksDesign workshop + messaging workshop
One trackOne workshop, one shared brief
Making project managers’ lives easier
ViDesigns’ project managers are brilliant at keeping clients happy and work in check. A copy partner makes that job easier, and here’s why.
When messaging is settled before design starts, there’s one less moving part. Nobody’s waiting on a ✨ final version ✨ of the copy that keeps changing. Nobody’s redesigning a section in QA because a stakeholder suddenly wants to say more about X.
And when a client has a question about the words, there’s an expert to answer it. The PM doesn’t have to referee, and the designers don’t have to guess. Timelines hold because the direction holds.
Project checklist
Messaging signed off Copy questions answered No surprises in QACopy questions, answered
“The biggest impact she has had on us is how she has shaped the way our business operates. We had never really thought about copywriting as a core service before, but working with her has completely changed the way we look at copy. It has now become one of the key features we offer, and that is all thanks to Amelie.”
— Vimalan Vijayasekaran, Founder and CEO, ViDesigns
05
From partner to in-house: growing it durably
Once the service was defined, priced into proposals and proving itself on client work, ViDesigns hired a full-time copywriter to keep it running.
A copy partner is a low-commitment way to shape, test and prove a new service before you commit to a hire, so that when you do, they’re stepping into something that already works.
I’m still part of the team for the strategic projects: positioning, messaging workshops and the work where the team can use a hand.
She is so easy to work with, and I would highly recommend her to any agencies or companies looking for the BEST copywriter.
— Vimalan Vijayasekaran, Founder and CEO, ViDesigns
Thinking about adding copy to your agency’s offering?
Whether you want a copy partner on call or help setting up the service yourself, let’s talk it through.
Let’s have a chat