I need a prospectus written, how much is it going to cost me?
From a monster 200 page all-in prospectus to a short, targeted brochure, the length of your printed marketing materials will obviously have a huge bearing on the final cost. Larger institutions may have separate prospectuses for their general entry and the different levels of study (from iGCSE or A Level for an international school to undergraduate and postgraduate study at a university).
Details of my day rate are in my FAQs. You’ll see that I charge £385.00/day for copywriting. Great! That’s around the industry average, not suspiciously cheap but not scarily expensive either. But what does this mean in terms of the final bill?
Working out a quote for a written piece of marketing, such as a prospectus, depends on many different factors. In addition to the length and purpose of the prospectus, as mentioned above, there are other considerations:
With a prospectus project I would normally research, write and edit/proofread the content and work in conjunction with a graphic designer for the images and overall creation of the prospectus. Do you have the graphic design element in-house, or do you need to outsource?
Are you going to list your programmes of study, encouraging the prospective student to go to your university website to find out more, or are you going to include a full page of course details, quotes, images, and entry criteria?
The overall cost will vary depend on whether you need the whole prospectus written from scratch, or whether you have some content already to add that needs re-structuring/editing.
Do your programme leaders need interviewing to extract that all-important programme information? Do you need fresh testimonials from students?
All of these answers will have an impact on how long I anticipate (based on previous experience) your project will take. The days I quote may also be spread over several months as I await feedback, further information, and final sign off.
A day rate isn’t really that useful to you at the early stage of deciding whether to add me to your list of potential copywriters to contact. What I thought would be useful for you, is to see how much I have quoted for a few past projects, just so you can get a rough sense of what you can get for your budget.
What can I get for my money?
My day rate for copywriting is £385.00 per day.
Just to give you some idea of what this means, I recently wrote three separate prospectuses for a performing arts specialist university based just outside London.
The postgraduate degree prospectus that was just over 9000 words, the vast majority of which was written from scratch.
Research and discovery - 1 day
Copywriting new content, including Programme Director interviews - 4 days
Re-writing, re-structuring and editing current content - 1 day
Re-writes - 1 day
Final proofreading - 1 day
Postgraduate prospectus = 8 days (£3080.00)
The (I)GCSE prospectus that I wrote for the British School Dhahran (Saudi Arabia) was shorter and the course information was already available.
Research and discovery - 0.5 days
Copywriting new content - 2 days
Re-writing, re-structuring and editing current content - 1.5 days
Final proofreading - 1 day
iGCSE prospectus = 5 days (£1925.00 – calculated with new day rate)
Are you competent?
I have plenty of in-house writing experience gained during my time as a Marketing Manager (the majority of which was at LSE Enterprise, the commercial arm of The London School of Economics and Political Science).
Freelance experience: British School Dhahran, Rose Bruford College, The Confucius Institute for Business London (CIBL).
Details of the projects and PDF links can be found on my Prospectus and Promotional Copy webpage.
Business to business
The examples given above are more from the higher education side, but if you are a business it might be useful for you to see some of the B2B work that I’ve done on my B2B Copywriting and Editing webpage.
Ready to find out more?
If this previous pricing structure falls within your budget, and you’d like to discuss your project, then please get in contact via my Contact page and we can set up a call. Take a look at my Prospectus and Promotional Copy portfolio.
