How to Build a Winning Copywriter Portfolio from Scratch

If you build it, they will come.

This little mantra worked out pretty well for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. He simply built a baseball diamond (a ball field, to most) and sure enough, Shoeless Joe Jackson turned up with his baseball posse to play in Kevin’s field and the day was saved.

The good news is that if it’s copywriting work you’re trying to conjure up and not dead baseball players, this adage still applies.

You have to give potential clients a reason to be attracted to you. You need to showcase your skills. You need to build a copywriting portfolio and show them what you’re made of.

But here comes the the tricky part…what do you do if you’re just starting out and are lacking in evidence? You have enough raw talent, passion, and determination to make your vision a reality, but you barely have any work to show to entice big-time clients.

It’s the Field of Dreams equivalent of Kevin Costner building his baseball diamond in his backyard…uninspiring.

Luckily, there are some ways around this obstacle. I’m about to reveal 5 simple ways to build a winning copywriter portfolio from scratch…

1. Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends

Your first port of call should be to dig deep into your little black book of contacts…it’s likely that you know at least one person (if not several) that runs their own business

It could be anything from a high-turnover commercial company to a simple market stall on a Sunday. It could be your best friend, or it could be a tenuous link of a friend of a friend of a friend.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You need to find your own starting point to kick-start your portfolio and the most important thing is you find someone to give you a chance.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. At this point, you’re going to need to offer to help them out with your services for FREE. Look at their business and its marketing setup and consider what copy they regularly need…then put the proverbial pen to paper.

Write a brochure for them, some website copy, a press release, or whatever you feel would best showcase your talent and impress potential clients.

Look at it this way – you’ll be doing them a favour while simultaneously building that all-important archive of copywriting samples for potential clients to check out.

And who knows? Best-case scenario – if they love it, they may end up paying you anyway. But at the very least you’ll have written your first piece of copy for a fully fledged company.

2. Bring out your inner sherlock

The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once said:

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

Granted, he was talking about crime clues. But this little tip can come in handy for you too…you need to search high and low for companies who have an obvious benefit to market but who nobody is observing because their copy is lacklustre.

Let’s be honest, how many times have you stumbled across a website and thought, “Wow that copy is pretty shocking…and not in a good way.”?

So why not show them that you can do a better job?

Take that piece of copy that’s making you cringe. Rewrite it and make it awesome, attention-grabbing, and hypnotic. But don’t ask beforehand – just do it!

You can then approach the company yourself and tell them they’re losing customers through badly written content. You can even throw in a few facts about conversion rates to strengthen the impact.

Lastly, it’s time to reveal your brand-new powerful version that will knock their socks off, and that they can have as a freebie.

(That’s right, free again. But bear with me, there’s method to the freeness.)

Now you’ve wowed them with your copy and they’ve seen how their unobserved company can now become observed, with any luck they’ll be blown away and will want to pay you to rewrite the rest of the content (at the low rate that you’re offering).

TIP: It’s important at this stage to be honest about your experience. For one, people appreciate honesty, but also they can see from the high quality of your sample that you have raw talent and they’ll be enticed by the low rate that they’ll benefit from. It’s a win-win situation.

3. Show how you think

As a copywriter, the process you go through to create powerful copy is pretty much hidden from the world. The end result is visible, but those late nights tapping away at a keyboard on your fifth cup of coffee remain your secret.

That’s how it should be. However, what you should reveal to clients is why you approached a project in a certain way.

They need to understand how you think. It’s an insight into your analytical mind and the journey you go on to create concepts.

Contrary to popular belief, the words don’t always just simply appear in our minds and tumble out through our fingertips (unless you’re having one of those “nothing can touch me” days).

Back up each sample of work in your portfolio with a rationale which includes:

The job: Company X needed a conceptual ad campaign that would be rolled out across their global brand.

The challenge: The copy needed to be dynamic and powerful, yet able to be translated into seven other languages. I was tasked to create ad copy that would work across multiple platforms and capture the attention of customers from various backgrounds and cultures.

The strategy: I created concise but powerful conceptual ad copy that steered clear of individualised cultural references and terminology. I focused on weaving a storyline for customers to follow that drew them into the concept and “emotionally connected them with the product.

The results: Since the roll-out of the campaign, the company’s sales leads have increased by 12% with a 35% rise in online engagement.

4. Visual appeal

Imagine you own a company. You get an email from an unknown writer on a mission, sending you a portfolio of manuscripts.

Ouch. Your head is already hurting. Not a great start.

Now step out of this scenario and back into your writer’s shoes. Your potential client needs to see your work in action to see its true impact. After all, you can’t expect a client to comprehend the power of your web copy with a humble Word doc. They need to witness the final version in all its glory.”

The obvious answer here is to showcase it on your copywriting website. However, if that’s still a fair way off into the future then it makes sense to get it beautifully designed by a pro.

If your design skills are lacking, then you might need to pair up with a designer on a platform like Fiverr or PeoplePerHour, as they will be willing to do a good job for a reasonable price.

Check out this article by Copify before you start creating. They’ve have put together a collection of winning copywriting portfolio examples to inspire you.

5: the power of knowledge