Copywriter in Lagos: How to Tell a Good One From a Bad One

A client once forwarded me an email a copywriter had sent as a "sample" — three paragraphs about how their brand was "committed to excellence and innovation," with no mention of what the business actually sold. She'd paid ₦40,000 for it. That email could have been written about a bank, a bakery, or a barbershop, and nobody would have noticed the difference. That's the clearest sign of a bad copywriter: the words could belong to anyone.

If you're looking for a copywriter in Lagos, you're going to run into a lot of that — generic, adjective-heavy writing dressed up as strategy. The good ones exist, but the market makes them harder to spot than it should, because "copywriter" gets used loosely for anyone who can string grammatically correct sentences together.

Copywriting is writing meant to get a specific action — a click, a purchase, a reply, a booking. It's different from general content writing, which informs or entertains without necessarily driving a single action, and different from journalism or blogging. A good copywriter for your business website, ads, or email campaigns should be thinking constantly about what happens after someone reads the words, not just whether the sentences sound nice.

This distinction matters because a lot of what gets sold as copywriting in Lagos is actually just competent grammar with no persuasion strategy behind it — pleasant to read, structurally sound, and completely inert when it comes to actually moving someone toward a decision.

The work that happens before the first word gets typed is where you can tell the difference fastest.

A competent copywriter asks about your customer's specific objections and hesitations — not generic questions about "your brand," but pointed ones: why do people who visit your site not buy? What do they say when they hesitate on a sales call? What convinces the ones who do convert? If a copywriter skips straight to writing without asking anything like this, they're guessing at persuasion instead of building it from real information.

They ask about your actual competitors and what makes you different, in specific terms, not the vague "we offer quality service" answer every business gives when it hasn't actually worked out its differentiation. Getting to a real, defensible answer here often requires having a clear, specific value proposition to begin with — a good copywriter will push you toward one instead of writing around the absence of one.

They ask what action the piece needs to drive — a WhatsApp message, a call, a form submission, a purchase — and write toward that single goal rather than trying to cram every possible message into one page.

Most portfolios are a list of writing samples. That tells you someone can write. It doesn't tell you whether the writing worked.

Ask for specifics behind at least one sample — what was the situation, what was the piece trying to achieve, and if they have any indication of whether it worked (an increase in replies, a client's own report of results), ask for that too. A copywriter who's genuinely results-focused usually has at least one story like this ready, because they've been paying attention to outcomes, not just delivering a document and moving on.

Read a sample out loud. Copy that's written to persuade tends to sound like an actual person talking, with rhythm and directness. Copy stuffed with words like "synergy," "cutting-edge," "world-class," and "unparalleled" almost always reads flat out loud, because those words are filler dressed up as confidence — they say nothing a reader can picture or believe.

Check whether the portfolio is Nigeria-relevant or entirely generic. Copywriting that's been adapted for a Nigerian audience understands things a copy-paste global template misses — how Nigerians actually talk about price and value, the trust signals that matter here (testimonials from people who feel real, not stock-photo-style reviews), and platforms like WhatsApp that carry more weight in a sales conversation here than a generic contact form.

Good copywriting sounds like it was written by someone who has actually talked to your customers. Bad copywriting sounds like it was written by someone who read about your industry once.

They quote a flat, one-size price for "website copy" without asking how many pages, what the site sells, or who it's for. Copy for a homepage, a pricing page, and an about page each require different approaches — a single blanket quote usually means a template response is coming, not tailored writing.

They lean entirely on buzzwords in their own pitch to you. If a copywriter's message to you is full of "unlock your brand's potential" and "elevate your digital presence," notice that this is the exact kind of empty language you don't want in your own copy. It's a preview of what they'll deliver.

They can't explain why they made a specific choice in a past piece. Ask why they used a particular headline, or why they structured an email a certain way. A real copywriter can defend their choices with reasoning about the reader's psychology or the goal of the piece. A weak one will say something like "it just sounded good."

They don't ask about your offer or pricing at all. Persuasive copy has to account for price sensitivity and how your offer compares to alternatives. A copywriter who never asks what you charge or how you're positioned against competitors is writing blind.

Copywriting pricing in Lagos varies a lot depending on scope — a single landing page is a different job from an ongoing content and email program. Rather than quoting one number that doesn't map to your actual need, it's worth knowing that a full site build with proper sales copywriting for every page is included from the Growth plan at ₦300,000/month, which also covers four blog posts a month and email marketing — useful context if you're trying to figure out whether a standalone copywriting quote is reasonable relative to a fuller package. Extra blog content beyond that is priced per post rather than bundled, which is a more honest structure than a vague "content package" with no defined deliverables.

If email specifically is your priority — sequences that follow up on leads or nurture existing customers — the mechanics of what makes email copy convert in a Nigerian context, from subject lines to mobile formatting, matter enough that they're worth understanding even if you outsource the writing, so you can tell whether what you're being handed is actually built for conversion.

A freelance copywriter can be exactly right for a single, well-defined project — one sales page, one email sequence. Where freelancers tend to fall short is consistency over time: if your business needs an ongoing stream of blog content, product descriptions, and email campaigns, coordinating multiple freelancers or hoping one stays available becomes its own management job. An agency-based copywriting service, bundled with the design and SEO context needed to actually publish the work, tends to hold up better for that ongoing need — which is part of why we build it into the Growth and Dominate retainer tiers rather than selling it purely as one-off documents.

It's also worth separating copywriting from branding. A copywriter shapes the words; a brand identity project shapes the visual and strategic foundation those words sit inside. If you're building both from scratch, what a real branding project in Lagos actually includes is worth reading alongside this, since strong copy on a weak brand foundation tends to underperform either piece done in isolation.

If you're still unsure after a portfolio review and a call, a small paid test piece is a reasonable way to de-risk a bigger commitment — one email, one landing page section, something narrow enough to be a fair, affordable test but real enough to show their actual process. Be wary of anyone who refuses any form of paid trial work outright while also refusing to show verifiable past results; that combination leaves you with nothing to judge except how confidently they talk about themselves.

When you get the test piece back, check it against the objections and differentiation points you gave them at the start. Good copy visibly answers the specific hesitations you described. Generic copy could have been written without ever having that conversation, and if it feels that way, it probably was.

It's also worth clarifying how revisions work before you start. A reasonable process includes at least one or two rounds of revision within the agreed scope; if every change request is billed as new work, that's a pricing structure designed to extract more money after you're already invested, not a collaborative editing process.

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It depends heavily on scope — a single page is priced very differently from an ongoing content program. Rather than accepting a flat, undefined quote, ask what's included per page or per piece, and compare that against bundled retainer options that include copywriting alongside design and SEO.

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A copywriter writes specifically to drive an action — a sale, a click, a booking — while a content writer typically focuses on informing or engaging a reader without a single conversion goal attached to every piece. Both matter, but they solve different problems.

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Not automatically, but ask directly how they'd adapt their approach for a Nigerian audience — pricing psychology, trust signals, and channels like WhatsApp. A thoughtful answer matters more than a portfolio that happens to include Nigerian logos.

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Read it out loud and check whether it sounds like an actual person talking about a specific business, or whether the sentences could be swapped into any industry unnoticed. Genuinely persuasive copy is specific, not generic.

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Either can work, but bundling avoids a common failure mode: a developer building a beautiful site with placeholder text that never gets properly rewritten, or a copywriter writing strong copy that the site's design and layout don't showcase well.

If you want copy written by someone who'll actually ask these questions before typing a word, our copywriting service page explains how we scope a project, or you can book a free consultation and bring a page of your current copy — we'll tell you honestly whether it's working.