As a marketing manager, you know that creating and maintaining a good, effective blog for a business isn’t easy. It takes time, thought, skill and budget. You also know that the business benefits of blogging absolutely outweigh the costs – but getting your boss on board is another matter.
Here’s a refresher to help you state your case – with metrics you can track to help demonstrate the return your blog will be able to generate for the business.
TL:DR
- Driving traffic to your website
- Improving your website’s SEO
- Creating a source of content for your social media channels
- Converting traffic to leads
- Supporting your sales team
- Establishing expertise
- Attracting talent
- One final business benefit of blogging
1) Driving traffic to your website
There are many places we can create and host content these days, from social media to publishing platforms like Medium. These all have their advantages but there’s a key problem – you’re not in control of those platforms. As Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says: “Don’t build your content on rented land.”
Because your blog sits on your website, you’re in control. It also makes it a great tool for attracting visitors. This can be done in different ways (e.g. via search, social media, or direct outreach) and is useful for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the more people you attract to your site, the more people you are likely to convert in some way.
What to track: Look at which page your website visitors land on first. If the percentage arriving through your blog increases, you know it’s doing its job attracting people to your site. You can also set up Google Search Console to show you which blogs are attracting the most visits from different keywords.
2) Improving your website’s SEO
Even if your primary means of attracting people to your blog is via social media, publishing blog content on your website will improve your site’s SEO in a number of ways:
- Rich in key words: As you build up your blog content, you will naturally be building up the keywords that people use to find your website, especially long-tail keyword phrases, which have lower search volumes and competition but better conversion rates.
- More indexed pages: Simply by adding to your website regularly via your blog, you’ll be signalling to Google that your site is an active and relevant one.
- Increase dwell time: Great content will keep people reading. This increases their dwell time, something search engines look to as part of deciding how authoritative the site is.
- Opportunity for internal links: By linking your blogs internally (e.g. by creating a series), you can further increase the dwell time.
- Opportunity for backlinks: This is where other sites link to yours, increasing your Domain Authority (DA). Great content is more likely to attract backlinks than mediocre content.
What to track: There are lots of ways to judge how successful your content is for SEO, from where you rank for a given keyword to the volume of organic traffic you get.
3) Creating a source of content for your social media channels
A blog is foundational content, giving you something you can share and repurpose to engage with your audience across your social channels.
Think about this article, for example. It wouldn’t take all that much work to turn it into a series of social posts, each featuring one benefit. This could take the form of a visual carousel on Instagram, for example.
You can draw out and share a single quote or statistic, use the premise of the blog to pose a question for your audience, or link it to a sales message. And you can mix up the formatting too, recording the key message in audio or video form.
What to track: To showcase how your blog supports your social strategy, you could track how much time you spend creating social content, as well as engagement levels.
“Blogging isn’t just about generating lots of attention at the top of the funnel – it’s also about helping to close the deal once your audience is further along their buyer journey.”
4) Converting traffic to leads
According to DemandMetric, companies that blog get an average of 67% more leads than those that don’t. Wherever a particular blog post is positioned in terms of the buyer journey, it can help your audience move one step along with an appropriate call to action.
If your audience is still unclear about their problem – what the RH&Co blogging framework calls ‘in the dark’ – you would start with softer CTAs encouraging them to read another post, sign up to a newsletter or follow you on social media.
Later, you might suggest that they download a piece of even more valuable content in return for their email address. And by the time you get to the ‘almost ready’ stage, you can step your CTA up and recommend that your reader books a demo, contacts your team or buys your product.
What to track: Think about which metrics are most important to you. This could include newsletter sign ups, lead magnet downloads, demos booked and so one.
5) Supporting your sales team
Blogging isn’t just about generating lots of attention at the top of the funnel – it’s also about helping to close the deal once your audience is further along their buyer journey.
Bottom of funnel content includes objection busters and process posts. As an example, we have a post titled How can you blog for my business if you’re not an expert in my subject?. We know this has helped several marketing managers get buy-in from their boss in order to bring us in to work with them.
Bottom of the funnel content can be shared on social media but it’s particularly effective when used proactively by your sales team to help convert leads into sales.
What to track: It’s rare that a blog post will close a deal in isolation so your best bet here is to get qualitative feedback from your sales team. They’ll be able to tell you whether they’re getting good results from the content they’re sharing.
6) Establishing expertise
The best way to convince someone of a business’s expertise is to demonstrate it. A blog is a platform on which to showcase the knowledge your subject matter experts have.
Blogs that help establish expertise include educational and problem-solving ‘how to’ posts – backed by real life examples and insights from subject matter experts that add weight to your writing – and opinion-filled thought leadership. Over time, creating this kind of original blog content will establish your brand’s expert reputation, building trust with your audience.
What to track: This is a much harder one as a) it’s just not that easy to quantify expertise and b) it’s a longer term strategy. Some indicators of expertise, however, could include press coverage, invitations for speaking engagements, and backlinks (which in turn is great for SEO).
7) Attracting talent
This one might not be on your radar but it’s a super powerful benefit, especially in competitive employment markets like tech.
If you’re on a recruitment drive, your blog can be a great tool for broadcasting your company culture and values – and how they play out in real terms. This not only makes you more attractive to the right people, but can weed out the wrong ones before you get started on the CV sifting.
What to track: This is another tricky one to get definitive numbers for but, if you link culture posts to CTAs directing the reader to a careers page or job advert, you can set click throughs as a KPI. That said, don’t dismiss the qualitative data – several of our clients have had candidates referencing the blogs we’ve created for them in interviews, so listen out for that.
One final business benefit of blogging
The great thing about blogging is that it has a cumulative effect. It won’t quickly go out of date like a social post, or need to have more money ploughed into it to keep it generating results like PPC.
Once you’ve pressed publish, it’s there for good. And as you publish your 10th blog, you will still be getting traffic from your first, with no additional effort.
Of course, generating this kind of value does rest on being committed to blogging as a long term strategy. You may get some results from publishing a handful of posts and then stopping but blogging isn’t a quick fix.
Online marketing guru Neil Patel says you need to give it at least 6 to 9 months, while Joe Pulizzi – who founded the Content Marketing Institute – writes in his book, Content Inc, that it’s more like 12 to 18 months.
So when you’re presenting your marketing strategy and looking for sign off on a budget for blogging, be sure to set the right expectations. But have confidence too. Blogging is a hugely powerful tool that will generate demonstrable results in time.
Recently, we wrote a blog post on why content is still king, despite it being 25 years since Bill Gates first penned the essay that inspired the saying. Sure, marketing is a fast moving industry powered by one technological advance after another. But the fundamentals that make content such a valuable tool in any marketer’s arsenal remain the same.
What has changed, as we discussed, is the competition. According to Hubspot, 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing, with 24% planning on increasing their spend in this area. Visit the Worldometers website and check out how many blog posts have been published today alone.
So as a marketer or business owner, how can you create content that stands out today, in 2022 and beyond?
Be genuinely valuable
This is the cornerstone of content marketing and what makes it different from advertising or any other type of marketing. It’s about giving your audience something they want or need, whether that be a thought provoking insight, a way to solve a problem, or help choosing between two similar products.
Yes, content needs to ultimately deliver a return for your business but you can’t have that in your mind when you conceive it. You have to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. What do they need? What are they trying to achieve? What are they struggling with? What will reassure them?
Be unique
What is it that you can say to your audience that is different to what your competitor might say? How can you weigh into the debate and add your voice, your experience, your knowledge, your expertise?
There is a place for foundational content that covers the basics. But even this needs to bring something unique, even if it’s just the voice or personality you bring to the content that makes it distinctive to your brand.
Be strategic
Don’t just write about stuff you think is interesting. As we’ve already said, your starting point needs to be what your audience thinks is interesting. But you need to go beyond even that, first understanding where they are in their awareness or buyer journey.
Are they literally in the process of making a choice between you and a competitor, or are they still not even really sure of what their problem is? You need to understand this so you can serve their most pressing need, and also decide what you want them to do next and then give them instructions in a well crafted CTA.
Be joined up
Producing content in and of itself is not especially helpful. You need to set it within a broader content strategy that considers a) where your audience is coming from and b) where they’re going next.
Have you thought about SEO or your social sharing strategy? Will you be delivering content via an email list or as part of an outreach programme? Do you have the next piece of content ready to feed your audience once they’ve consumed the first piece? Remember, this is a journey, a trail of breadcrumbs rather than a single transaction.
Be consistent
If you think you can pop out the occasional blog post or video and then sit back and let the leads roll in, you’re going to be very disappointed. Content isn’t a quick fix, it’s a strategic channel that needs you to stick with it long enough for you to see the results.
It takes at least 6-9 months for content marketing to start delivering significant results, according to SEO and digital marketer Neil Patel, while Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says it’s more like 12 to 18 months.
If you can get all of these factors right, you will be well on your way to creating content that your audience genuinely loves. And if they love it, you will pretty much inevitably see that love translate onto your bottom line.
Every business owner and marketing manager knows that content marketing is a powerful way to build brand awareness, establish credibility, reach potential customers and clients, and ultimately increase leads and sales. What they frequently don’t know is how often they should be creating and sharing content in order to get results.
In a sense, the answer is easy: as often as possible. After all, the more times you can appear on someone’s radar, the more chances you have of convincing them that you’re worth doing business with.
Not everyone will be ready to buy your product or service the moment they first have contact with you. Even once they enquire, statistics show that 63% will still take at least 3 months to make a purchase. So creating regular, strategic content keeps them moving along the buyer journey and helps you stay front of mind so that when the time comes, it’s you they turn to.
But since “as much as possible” is not an especially helpful answer, we’ve broken down some of the elements you need to consider when setting your own particular content goals. By the end of this post you should be more confident in creating a content schedule that will work for you.
TL:DR
- What do you have capacity for?
- Don’t prioritise quantity over quality
- There’s a difference between “create” and “share”
- Rocks, gravel, sand – an analogy
- Prioritise original content that will last
What do you have capacity for?
Are you a sole business owner wearing all the hats? A lone marketing manager juggling all the channels for an SME? Or part of a team of 30 content creators? The answer will have a big impact on how much content you can realistically produce.
Quality original content takes time and effort to create. It’s likely to take you several hours to write a well researched, high value blog post, for example, not to mention the time it takes to source images, upload it to your website and so on.
If you’re using a professional to help you create that content then you will be limited by your budget. But don’t forget that your time has an associated cost too, not just in terms of what you’re paid but the value you could be adding elsewhere in the business if you weren’t creating content.
Don’t prioritise quantity over quality
Some people get so fixated on quantity that they lose their focus on quality. There’s no point doing a Facebook Live every single day if you haven’t really got anything to say. Far better to do one once a week and really add value for your audience.
Likewise, don’t spread yourself too thin when it comes to content types and channels. If you’re trying to write articles for LinkedIn, take photos for Instagram, prepare talks for Clubhouse and think of witty soundbites for Snapchat all at the same time, you’re going to burn out quickly.
Plus, does your audience really need all of that? And are they really on all of those channels? Choose one or two content types or channels to focus on, experiment to see where you get the best results and keep iterating so that you direct your attention to the most successful ones.
There’s a difference between “create” and “share”
We use the phrase “create and share” a lot but it really should be “create or share”. Because not all content that you share needs to be created by you. Think about when you read an interesting article in the news or watch a great TED talk and then share the link on your social channels. That’s you getting your brand out there without having to create anything from scratch, except for a few words to caption the post.
These low effort content wins are actually incredibly powerful because they help develop a rounded image of your brand. Rather than constantly pushing your own agenda, by sharing news and views from other businesses and people (ideally tagging them when you do), you’re both adding value and showing you’re connected with your industry or your city.
You can do this from a company page as much as from an individual one. The main thing is to think about what your audience will find valuable, and then go and source it. Does your audience enjoy humorous memes or inspirational quote cards? Would they appreciate being updated on the latest industry research? Go find it for them!
Rocks, gravel, sand – an analogy
Now let’s bring that all together. Think about your capacity as a vase. Work out how many rocks you can fit in there. The rocks are what we at RH&Co like to call foundation content. This might be your blog, for example, or a YouTube channel, or a newsletter, or a podcast. You’ll put the greatest effort into making sure whatever you choose is super high quality and packed with original thought.
Next, you want to start adding gravel. This gravel is the repurposed content that can be chipped off the rocks you created. Snippets and quotes and top tips, which can be produced without a huge amount of extra effort. One ‘10 top tips’ blog post can easily generate 10 individual social media posts, for example. Or you might draw out an interesting quote or statistic from a video and share it as a visual.
And then you can add the sand to fill the gaps. This might be low-effort original content such as a micro post on Facebook or a quick Instagram reel. Or it might be that curated content that you can share without having to input much of your own beyond a couple of introductory lines.
Prioritise original content that will last
Creating content is a great way of getting in front of your audience, adding value, developing your brand reputation and showcasing your expertise. The more you can do, the better – but be realistic about what your capacity is.
Prioritise a manageable amount of foundational content and make sure it’s exceptional quality. As a sole business owner you may only be able to do this once a fortnight – any less and you’re just not to get momentum. Once a week is better, if you can, and if you have the budget or in-house resources then you might consider more.
Then repurpose as much as you can, add low-effort original content and curated content from other sources. It shouldn’t be hard to get 3-5 posts out each week this way. Remember to keep it regular, and don’t give up too easily. It can take six to 18 months to get a content marketing strategy delivering consistent high results. But the results will come.
If you’re considering hiring a copywriter, you’ll want to assess a number of different factors. The two key ones are “Can they do the job?” and “Do I get on with them?” Inevitably though, at some point you’re going to need to find out one important fact: how much does it cost?
Of course, asking how much it costs to hire a copywriter is a lot like asking how much it costs to go out for a meal. It depends on whether you’re going to McDonalds or a Michelin starred restaurant. On whether you’re having one course or seven. On whether you’re having soup, pasta and salad, or oysters, lobster and steak.
That said, we can give you some factors to consider when it comes to costing your copywriting project, and some guidelines that should help you set your expectations realistically.
Day rate vs project rate
The first variable comes in how people charge for their work. Some freelancers and even agencies use a day rate. For a freelancer, you’re paying for their writing time, plus a small margin to contribute to their other activities, such as admin and marketing. In an agency, you’re likely to be paying what’s known as a “blended rate”, which takes into account the various people who might input into your project, from account execs to strategists.
Now for the actual numbers… New freelancers might start off charging as little £150 per day, and end up charging £700 and even beyond for specialist work or once they’re at a senior level. The top end of freelance rates and the bottom end of agency rates overlap – sometimes by a surprising amount. But not everyone uses a day rate.
At RH&Co, we don’t think they’re a particularly sensible model to work with. Yes, we factor in how long we think any given project should take. But what if one of our writers is having an off day and takes twice as long as they normally would to get a job done? We don’t think our clients should have to pay extra. Nor would we expect to charge less if, in a moment of creative genius, we whizzed through a piece of work in half the time planned.
That’s why we price projects on a, well, project basis. This balances time invested, value delivered, the complexity of the subject matter and a number of other factors. For us this feels like the fairest way to charge for our work.
The cost for retained copywriting work
You might want to engage a copywriter on a longer term basis. For example, you may want them to provide you with weekly blog posts, for which you’d most likely be invoiced on a monthly basis. Or you might decide you need someone available for a set number of hours or days each month, with the actual work being decided as you go.
With retainer work, you may want to – or need to – agree to a retainer rate. This is an ongoing (usually monthly) fee that tends to be paid over a set contract period. Agencies and more established freelancers will often get a service level agreement (SLA) in place so everyone knows what’s expected.
It’s harder to put a price on retainer work, as it very much depends on what and how much you need doing. If your retainer is based on a set number of hours or days then it will be fairly straightforward to work out. But if it’s tied to deliverables, then you’re back to the variations of project pricing.
One thing you can be sure of is that you will get more for your money if you commit to a retainer, as the copywriter or copywriting agency you employ can count on the work coming in. By removing uncertainty from their income projections, you can effectively earn yourself a discount.
Why it’s not about price per word
Newspapers and magazines tend to pay journalists per word. This is because the copy being produced is, in relative terms, fairly standard – a news article or a feature. Although we’re generalising for simplicity here, the more words involved, the more work is likely to have gone into the piece.
With copywriting, there is a much greater variety of projects. And word count is a less dominant factor when it comes to deciding on the value of the copy delivered.
Sure, a 3,000 word white paper takes more effort than an 800 word blog post. But a six word strapline can require more input than both – by a long shot. In this case, pricing is much more to do with the value that’s being added through conceptual input rather than the ‘writing’ itself.
Understanding what you’re paying for
One important factor to take into consideration when gathering pricing information from potential copywriters is what’s included in the cost quoted.
Let’s take blogging as an example. On the one extreme, you may have a strategy in place, customer research done, titles set and a series of briefs written and ready to go. In which case, all your copywriter needs to do is craft an engaging narrative to tie together the information in the brief in a way that authentically represents the brand.
With our clients though, we’re much more involved in the process. Blogging contracts begin with a strategy and onboarding session. We advise on topic and title selection. Our briefings draw out the right information from the client’s experts, and keep them from getting lost in the detail. Once a writer has produced the first draft, a separate editor quality checks and proofreads it. We can even support clients with social sharing copy to help get their blog out there.
When we send an invoice for a blogging project or retainer, we’re charging for a lot more than just a few hours of writing.
Factors that will make your copywriting project more expensive
As you’ll have seen in the last section, there’s a lot more that goes into a copywriting project than pure writing. The more elements you add, the more you should expect to pay.
Here are a few non-writing jobs that you might want included in your project:
- Brief creation: Have you got a clear brief written and ready to go or will you need support with this? The more support you need, the more a project will cost.
- Concepting: Creating straplines, campaign messaging, ad copy and so on may require less writing but they need a lot more thinking time, adding to the final invoice.
- Complexity: The more complex your subject matter, the more you’ll need to spend, either on a specialist or on the time it takes to get a generalist to understand it.
- Add ons: Do you need image research or copy uploaded into a CMS? Extra tasks will add to your bill.
- Amends: Although a reasonable number of amends will be included, if you’re anticipating the need for more e.g. because of a high number of people inputting their thoughts, this might cost more.
As you can see, coming up with a straightforward answer to the question “How much does hiring a copywriter cost?” is virtually impossible. The best way to get a sense of how much to budget for your project is to get out there and get a few quotes.
Just remember to be clear about what you really need. After all, it’s better to pay that bit extra and get results, than spend a smaller amount and find it’s been wasted because you didn’t get what you were hoping for.
Creating original content is one of the most powerful ways to establish your expertise as a brand and help build your reputation online. The challenge is that it takes time, effort and probably budget to do it well. Which is why it’s important to repurpose that content so you can share it in lots of different ways and increase the ROI you’re getting.
Repurposing content in different forms also means you’ll catch a larger audience, because everyone has a different way they like to consume information, whether that’s through visuals, the written word, audio and so one.
The first step is to decide what your foundational content is. Are you going to focus on blogging, on video, on podcasts? Perhaps you’ll invest in white papers or webinars. You may well end up using all of them, but it’s hard to do lots of things really well, especially if your budget is restricted. Better to have one as your base and build off that.
For us, blogging is the heartbeat of our content marketing strategy. Blogging is a powerful tool for both social engagement and SEO, it doesn’t need lots of equipment to produce and can easily add huge amounts of value for your audience.
If you blog for your business, here’s how we’d recommend squeezing the most value you can from each post, to ensure that you’re reaching as many people as possible.
TL:DR
- Write a valuable, strategically informed blog post
- Share it on social media – more than once
- Summarise it in your newsletter
- Turn it into a press release
- Film a video blog
- Use your post as a chapter in an ebook
- Record a podcast series
- Create an animation
- Put together a presentation
- Design an infographic
- Send it to a prospect
1) Write a valuable, strategically informed blog post
Step one is to create the original piece of content, in this case your blog post. At this stage, don’t think too hard about how it might be repurposed. You want to focus on making it the best blog possible, with a headline designed to engage your audience or perform well from an SEO perspective, formatting that makes reading it as easy as possible, and most importantly, as much value as you can possibly include. By doing this, your blog will start adding value from the moment it is published.
2) Share it on social media – more than once
Before we move onto repurposing per se, make sure you’re sharing your post as it is on social media – ideally more than once. Your first share can be a straightforward one, introducing the topic and encouraging people to click through and read it by selling the benefits of the post. You can also use questions, stats and quotes pulled from the blog itself to vary the social sharing copy and encourage more engagements and views.
3) Summarise it in your newsletter
Your email list is made up of people who are at least moderately interested in what you have to say, so don’t deny them the chance to read your post. There are several ways you can share posts via email:
- Include the whole post – this reduces the need for your reader to click through, but means you won’t get the website traffic.
- Use the first few paragraphs followed by a ‘keep reading’ CTA, which will hopefully hook people enough that they want to read more.
- Write a headline and short ‘sell’ as part of a roundup of newsletter content, encouraging people to click to read. This is the method we use in The Right Words.
4) Turn it into a press release
If your blog post has a strong news hook, original research, controversial opinion or anything else that might be of interest to a journalist, why not repurpose it as a press release? Make sure to understand the publication you’re pitching to and what you’re hoping to gain e.g. do you want to write a similar piece for them or do you want to go on their expert contact list? Many online publications have submission guidelines that will help you understand how best to approach them.
5) Film a video blog
We’ve already talked about doing one thing well rather than lots of things poorly, but there’s no reason why a well written blog post shouldn’t help you create a video blog. Unlike brand videos, which are worth getting a professional for, video blogs can be filmed with a decent laptop or smartphone.
Again, there are several ways to tackle this. You could go through all of the points from your blog post in one longer video. You could chop it up into different sections e.g. if you have 5 tips, you could film one video for each and make a series. Or you can use video as a teaser, for example sharing just one tip and encouraging people to click through to the blog for more.
6) Use your post as a chapter in an ebook
Chances are that once you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ll have a collection of posts around several key topics. This is a great opportunity to create an ebook. As an example, we had three blog posts covering different sales and marketing challenges faced by B2B businesses, which we then turned into an ebook. These can be useful tools for your sales team to use as part of any outreach campaigns.
7) Record a podcast series
Another way to repurpose a whole collection of blog posts is to record a podcast series. Once again, you can do this in different ways. The most straightforward would be to simply record audio versions of each post for people who don’t have the time to read and prefer to consume their content on the go. But you might also prefer to be a little more free flowing and conversational, using the key points in each post as a starting point rather than a script. Or why not get a guest on to discuss each blog to get a variety of views?
8) Create an animation
This isn’t a cheap or easy option so we certainly wouldn’t recommend it for every post you write. But if there’s a particular piece of pillar content that is foundational to your content strategy, animation is a powerful way of getting – and keeping – people’s attention.
9) Put together a presentation
Next time you’re asked to give a presentation at a networking group or industry event, don’t stress about what you’re going to talk about. Dive into your blog and you’ll find plenty of inspiration. Chances are that many of your posts are a talk in themselves, containing an introduction, several main points, and a conclusion. All you have to do is create the slides.
10) Design an infographic
Depending on the information included in your post, it might lend itself nicely to an infographic format. These are great for sharing on social media and also rank well in terms of image search on Google. Remember, you don’t want to include all the words from your post in the infographic – it needs to be primarily visual, so take the core concepts and use text sparingly.
11) Send it to a prospect
Some blog posts naturally fit within your sales process. For example, you might have a buyer’s guide designed to help your audience make the right choice of product or service. Do put these posts on your website, but don’t leave them there. Send them directly to prospects too. You might do this at the same time as sending a proposal, for example, or as a follow up that feels a little more valuable than “Have you had a chance to consider our proposal?”
While all of these repurposing techniques take a level of input in terms of time and effort, they should ultimately take the knowledge you put into your blog – the research, the concepting, even some of the phrasing – and give it different forms.
By doing this, you get the most business value out of the expertise you put into your post. And you reach more people, both by using different content forms that appeal to different people, and by simply showing up more times in people’s digital landscape.
As a marketing manager – especially one without a large team under you – you may well at some point need to hire an external copywriter. But how do you go about finding the right one?
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as posting a shoutout on LinkedIn and waiting for your contacts to tag their favourite copywriters. To find a good match – one that will deliver results and be worth every penny that you pay them – takes planning.
Here is a step-by-step guide for marketing managers looking to hire a copywriter.
TL:DR
- Define the scope of your copywriting project
- Have an idea of your budget
- Work out what type of copywriter you need
- Freelance copywriter vs copywriting agency
- Starting your search
- Checking the quality
- Don’t forget the details
- Making your choice
Define the scope of your copywriting project
Have you got a detailed brief ready to send to your chosen copywriter? Without a good brief, you are setting your copywriter up to fail, no matter how good they are. To write effective copy, they need to understand things like:
- Who the audience is that they’re writing for
- How the product or service benefits the reader
- What the copy is supposed to achieve
- What you want the reader to do once they’ve read the copy
- Why they might not want to or be ready to do that
If you aren’t used to writing copy briefs, it’s worth finding out if your potential copywriter has the experience to help you do this. Agencies tend to use freelancers themselves and are therefore used to creating as well as following briefs.
Have an idea of your budget
You might have a set marketing budget for the year or it might be that your company is a little less rigid and you can apply for what you need on a case by case basis. Either way, you’ll need to think about how you’re going to fund your copywriting project.
Obviously, the final cost will vary hugely depending on what you’re looking for and who you use. For example, a simple five page website selling yoga classes will cost less than a large and complex website for a financial analytics consultancy. And a freelancer who’s just getting started might be charging as little as £120 while a specialist might charge five times that amount.
Sticking with pricing models, some people charge on a day rate, others on a project basis. And agencies usually have some sort of blended rate to cover the various people who will be looking after your work, from the account manager to the writer and possibly a strategist or even the creative director.
It’s worth noting that some copywriters – particularly the more experienced freelancers and agencies – may have a minimum fee that they will accept.
Work out what type of copywriter you need
Not all copywriters are the same. Here are some of the different types of copywriter you might come across:
- Content writers, who produce long-form copy like blog posts designed to add value and build relationship.
- Advertising copywriters who are skilled at coming up with snappy campaign concepts and billboard lines.
- Technical copywriters, who specialises in areas like SaaS or finance or biomedical engineering.
- SEO copywriters, who can seamlessly weave keywords into your copy to improve search.
- Brand copywriters, who can help you create a strapline or articulate your value proposition succinctly.
- Conversion copywriters, whose specialism is creating landing pages and sales emails that will sell.
Although many copywriters will be able to work across more than one, few can do everything. If you need input into a range of copywriting projects, you might be better off looking for an agency with a bank of different writers that can be pulled in as needed.
Freelance copywriter vs copywriting agency
In fact, let’s take a moment to talk about the choice between using an individual freelance copywriter and a copywriting agency. The first thing to say is that one is not better than the other! There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
A freelance writer, being a single individual, is likely to have a degree of flexibility to the way they work. They might be able to come and work in-house with your team one day a week, for example, where an agency might not offer that service.
Because they don’t have the overheads of an agency, a freelancer is also likely to be relatively cost effective. Although make sure you get a range of quotes and that you compare like for like. In many cases our rates are lower than that of specialist senior writers!
The problem with freelancers is that the best ones get booked up fast. An agency, on the other hand, will usually have a stable of tried and tested writers they can call on, plus an in-house team to handle the strategy, brief creation, editing and so on.
This also helps when it comes to illness or holiday. With an agency you know there will always be someone available to look after your needs. And of course there’s that team we mentioned, bringing a range of experts together to help with all aspects of your project, not just the writing.
Starting your search
Once you know what you’re looking for and what you want your copywriter to achieve, it’s time to start your search properly. Having said that hiring a copywriter isn’t as simple as putting a shoutout on LinkedIn, that’s not a bad place to start.
Be as specific as you can with your post. If you need a technical copywriter, say so. If it’s an ongoing project that needs a commitment of six months, put that in your request. The more detailed you can be, the better the referrals you’ll get.
A Google search is also a good option, especially if you’re looking for an SEO copywriter. After all, if they’re good at what they do, they should rank fairly well.
But there are other places to search too, such as creative networks. Here in Bristol, for example, we’ve got Bristol Creative Industries (formerly Bristol Media) where you can search the membership directory by sector.
Checking the quality
Once you’ve got a few options on your radar, it’s time to work out whether each option is able to deliver what you need. In some cases it will be obvious – you need a website copywriter for your SaaS company, but Option A specialises in advertising copywriting for FMCG brands.
But when it comes to quality, it can be incredibly difficult to decide how good a writer actually is until you’ve worked with them. Hopefully they will have a website where you’ll be able to see examples of their work, testimonials and even case studies. If you want specific examples, get in touch to ask for them.
If someone has referred a copywriter to you, ask them about the experience they had with them. What kind of project did the copywriter work on? Did they help with the brief creation and if so, was it helpful? Did they deliver when they said they would? How many amends stages did the work need to go through?
Once you’ve narrowed your choices down to a small selection, arrange a face-to-face or video meeting with the most promising individual copywriters or copywriting agencies so you can get a sense of who they are and whether you get on. If they seem like a good fit, you can move forward to the quote stage.
Don’t forget the details
During your exploratory meeting, make sure to dive into the nitty gritty. Here are some additional details to establish:
- What exactly is included? What are the deliverables? How many rounds of amends will you get? Will they do a final proofread of your website copy once it’s designed? Can they provide social sharing copy for your blog posts?
- What are their processes? How quickly can they start work on your project? What’s their turnaround time? What tools do they work with (Slack, Google Docs etc)?
- What are their payment terms? Will they invoice before the project or after? How long will you have to pay? Do they offer payment schedules?
- What contracts need to be in place? Do they need to agree to sign an NDA? Will they want you to sign an SLA?
Making your choice
So let’s recap:
- You’ve established the scope of your project and made sure you have access to a realistic budget.
- You’ve thought about the kind of copywriter you might need, and whether a freelancer or an agency might be right for you.
- You’ve used your networks and Google to come up with a list of possibilities and checked out their online profiles.
- And you’ve met a few candidates, getting a feel for whether you get on and nailing down the details.
By the time you’ve gathered up all this information, you should be in a good position to engage a copywriter or copywriting agency that will be a good fit for you, your business and your project. It’s time to get in touch with your preferred choice and get your project started.
If you’re searching for someone to help you with a copywriting project, do have a look around our site – you can find out more about our copywriting services, read case studies, explore more blog posts or our FAQs, or get in touch if you’d like to chat.
Do you have to wait for your reputation to rise or is there a way to establish your expertise right out of the gate? Our #WriterInResidence, Sam Whitlock, looks at five businesses that impress their expertise on you from first glance.
Typically, you will trust the opinion of only two types of people: people you know personally, and people who are established as experts. Whether it’s your go-to mechanic or marketing guru, your trusted financial body or film critic, your software developer or your camera manufacturer, you’re unlikely to want anything less than an expert.
As a business, if you play your ‘expert’ card right, you can find it easier to win sales, loyalty and opportunity with those who haven’t got you on their radar yet.
I should mention, demonstrating you’re an expert in your field isn’t right for every business. You don’t need to be a thought leader to sell toilet paper, for instance. Or if you’re Coca Cola, you don’t need to be the sommelier of fizzy drinks, you only need to be ‘the thing that everyone wants’.
But if you’re reading this, you’re probably looking to do more than make your next hard sell. So let’s look at some companies that are experts at demonstrating their expertise.
Sony
What Sony gets right from the get go is that although they are primarily an electronics company, they don’t spend much time talking about microchips and wiring.
If you check out Sony’s corporate site, they use stories to catch the eyes of investors, partners and talent. There are stories about using robotics to fuel creativity in Michelin cooking, using AI to analyse the movements of professional ping pong players, or using Sony’s new cinema camera to capture the perfect getaway in a Hollywood blockbuster.
They’re not primarily trying to establish themselves as hardware people, or even design people. Sony has cut out a piece of the market that aligns with their self-stated purpose: to fill the world with emotion through the power of creativity and technology. They’ve married tech expertise with the ability to inspire emotion – and it works.
Fjallraven
Fjallraven makes backpacks, outdoor clothing and just about everything you need for your next hike. Although they probably know a little about looking good, and a fair bit more about outdoor pursuits in general, hiking is where they’ve chosen to hammer home their street cred (or maybe it’s mountain cred).
If you browse their ‘stories from the trail’ you’ll find location guides, tales told by trekkers and advice on how to camp in the tundra. There are a few pointers on the kind of outdoor wear you might want to take with you – but it’s not the be all and end all here.
Fjallraven wants to make clear: they don’t just understand materials and backpacks. They understand what it’s like to be on the trail, chasing adventure. When you read their articles, they come across as explorers who learned through experience the kind of kit hikers need. They’re not trying too hard to be Bear Grylls, nor do they sound like Mountain Warehouse simply trying to sell you another jacket. Fjallraven pitch it just right.
MoneySavingExpert
Expert is in their name but it’s also the essence of what this company does. While this one-stop-knowledge-shop is in some ways the gold standard for demonstrating expertise, it requires serious commitment to imitate. A build-the-basis-of-your-business-on-it kind of commitment.
While MoneySavingExpert is chock full of the information their audience is looking for – from how-to’s, to recommendations, to comprehensive guides – the scope of their content turns their site into a journal or magazine.
If businesses put their nose to the grindstone, they might be able to put out a blog post or two each week but unless they can hire their own inhouse editorial team, they’re not going to become a knowledge shop in the same sense as TechRadar, Which? or MoneySavingExpert.
So what should you aim for then? Well, if you’re trying to focus on a subject as broad as saving money, you’re likely to be overshadowed by giants in the field. But if you can settle on a narrower niche of expertise and share consistently on that theme, you will begin to establish your own place in customers’ minds.
FoundHea
FoundHea is a Bristol-based ethical clothing shop that established itself as an expert through research and curation.
It’s not just that they’re really picky with their inventory. On every product page they lay out exactly what each brand is achieving from an ethical standpoint – and even go out of their way to tell you how those brands could make improvements.
This transparency and unfiltered criticism goes a long way. FoundHea doesn’t come across simply as a more ethical place to shop but as an authority on ethical clothing standards.
Mr B’s Emporium
‘Opinionated bookselling’ is what Mr B’s Emporium offers and while few people want anyone’s opinion, an expert opinion is a commodity worth capitalising on. And Mr B’s do it with gusto.
For a start, they bet on their opinions enough that they sell surprise recommended reads, in which you have no idea what you’re ordering except for it’s genre. Or you can go a step further and subscribe to be sent a book each month based upon your reading tastes, which Mr B’s gets a feel for by having a short consultation with you.
Looking towards their content, you can find recommendations from every member of their team online. You can read articles and listen to podcasts that highlight books from particular genres or that tackle certain topics. Mr B’s even produce their own catalogue each year to draw attention to the 101 books they most recommend.
In everything they do, they’re selling their knowledge. And the upshot of it is: you might not judge a book by its cover but you can judge it by Mr B’s recommendation.
The idea that people don’t act in an entirely rational way is nothing new. Even the most dispassionate of us are emotional creatures at our core. Which means that our decisions are driven as much by our feelings and perceptions as they are by our cognitive deliberation.
What does this have to do with business? Well, if you want to sell – which is what most businesses ultimately exist to do – then you need to understand why people buy. And that means you have to understand the feelings and perceptions, as well as the rational choices, that drive their decisions.
In order to do this, it is helpful to take a look at the idea of emotional capital. Emotional capital exists in a number of areas, but for the purposes of this article we’re talking about external emotional capital.
TL:DR
- What is external emotional capital?
- How do you want people to feel about your brand?
- How content can build emotional capital
- Using content to serve your audience
What is external emotional capital?
In his book Emotional Capitalists, corporate psychologist Martyn Newman PhD defines external emotional capital as “the value of the feelings and perceptions held by the customer and the external stakeholder towards your business.”
He adds: “The only way to create real profit is to attract the emotional rather than the rational customer by appealing to his or her feelings and imagination.”
Notice that Newman talks about feelings and perceptions. People will have feelings about your business: “I like that brand, I can trust them”. And they will have perceptions, which are more about the stories they use to rationalise those feelings: “They care about the environment, they are experts in their field.”
From here, we can reverse engineer the idea of emotional capital in the context of content marketing. What stories can you tell about your business that will create the right perceptions in your audience? What feelings can you evoke that will create positive emotional capital, drive brand loyalty and ultimately increase sales?
How do you want people to feel about your brand?
The first step in your emotional capital strategy has to be to define what kind of capital you want to build. How do you want your audience to feel when they come into contact with your brand? What do you want them to perceive about your business?
For example, you might want people to believe that your brand is environmentally conscious, fair, good value and fun, and to feel happy and inspired whenever they interact with it. Or perhaps you want to be seen as a luxury brand that champions innovation and invites customers into an exclusive club, creating desire in those who are not yet customers and a sense of personal satisfaction in those who are.
The same works in the B2B space. You might want to be seen as pioneering and trailblazing, with clients and potential clients feeling inspired and excited by your brand. On the other hand, you may want to be seen as a quietly confident teacher or encouraging coach, evoking feelings of reassurance, encouragement and safety.
Perhaps you are in an industry where many brands are perceived negatively, such as recruitment, law or car sales. Here organisations might be seen as greedy, self-seeking or even dishonest, leaving customers and clients feeling irritated or frustrated. This can be a useful starting point for building a brand that is in direct opposition to this stereotype.
How content can build emotional capital
Emotional capital is not something that is created in a one-off event. It is built over every touchpoint that your audience has with your business. This ranges from your logo and branding to how easy it is to book an appointment, the functionality of your website to how polite your reception staff is.
Where content fits in is that it is perfectly suited to meet the “show don’t tell” requirement of building emotional capital. Rather than telling your audience how they should perceive you – your values, your expertise, your personality – you can demonstrate the relevant elements that will allow them to come to the right conclusions for themselves.
Just look at the Hubspot blog, packed full of insights written in a straightforward and encouraging tone. It’s easy to see why people feel that Hubspot as a brand knows what they’re talking about, that they’re experts, they’re helpful, they have their finger on the pulse. We can trust them.
To take a B2C example, Lego have recently started publishing a free magazine. The many activities and ideas inside underline the perception that Lego is a fun brand that cares about creating and developing young minds. It’s encouraging and exciting. They want us to have fun!
Using content to serve your audience
Content allows you to add value, to be helpful, to serve the needs of your audience and thereby create positive emotions. An example might be a swimwear company publishing a “what to pack for your beach holiday” checklist, or a leadership consultancy practice hosting a webinar about developing emotional intelligence at work.
On the flipside you can use a blog post to address your audience’s concerns about working with you, a buyer’s guide to help them avoid a poor product choice (and with it buyer’s regret), or a series of tutorials to help them navigate the challenges of getting to grips with your system. All will steer them away from negative emotions and perceptions.
This isn’t a quick fix exercise. Content marketing is a long game, as is building emotional capital. You can’t force people to feel or believe anything. But with a consistent approach that is both authentic and strategic, and by measuring and iterating continuously, it is possible to build emotional capital that will serve your brand well.
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Messaging is a tough nut to crack at the best of times, let alone when it’s difficult to explain what your business actually does. Our #WriterInResidence, Sam Whitlock, looks at five brands that waded into these muddy waters and made them clear as glass.
When it comes to clarifying your company’s message, it’s easy to misunderstand the problem. You don’t have to explain what your company or product does, necessarily. You do need to show your audience why they should care.
Some businesses are lucky. The market is known enough, their brand is simple or established enough that they can boil everything down to “Buy vintage clothes online,” and proceed to show you images of Christmas jumpers. Or they can simply say “All your admin sorted,” or “Get this and get it cheap,” and even at glance their target audience might be interested.
But if your organisation does more complex or niche work, you’re competing not only against a potential lack of interest but a lack of understanding too. Your branding can quickly fall into one of two traps: 1) Your message gets muddied by explanation. Or 2) Your message becomes generic and doesn’t truly tap into your actual brand offering.
To capture your audience, you need a crystal clear message that goes to the heart of what your audience cares about. Here’s five businesses that pull it off…
Telerick.com – “Modern UI made easy”
You and I might not know anything about JavaScript. But we can probably appreciate that developing a user interface is not generally not easy. If anyone is making it simple, that’s going to be a selling point. Telerick’s website is quick to fill in the gaps for more discerning browsers:
“Build feature-rich experiences for Web, Mobile and Desktop faster than ever.”
“Stop sweating over UI and focus on the parts of the application where you can truly make a difference.”
What jumps out at you here? Phrases like “Feature-rich,” “faster than ever,” and “stop sweating” are getting straight to the core of what developers care about: time, energy and the free rein to invent. And you don’t have to speak code languages to appreciate the value here. So if someone in a design department stumbles across Telerick, they’ll be able to recommend it to their more technical counterparts.
One of the key tricks Telerick is deploying here is to skip explanations and start making promises. They don’t waste their breath telling you how they’re going to do it (until you read on); they’re getting straight to “Here’s why you should care.”
Slack – “Slack replaces email in your company”
Okay, so this strapline is dated because everyone (basically) knows what Slack is now. They’ve become so established that they don’t have to define themselves anymore. And their new homepage introduces Slack as “your new HQ” instead.
But there was a time when Slack was a skinnier, scrappier fighter trying to get its name out there. It had to define its place in the market while simultaneously ensuring businesses saw its essentiality. If it had settled on, “Slack: Your business’s messaging service,” it would have missed its simplest and central selling point:
Nobody likes email.
If Slack focused on telling you its many functions and time-saving, ease-of-use benefits, it would sound like just another business add-on. But an alternative to email… that’s worth having, surely. For sanity’s sake alone.
The beauty of clear messaging is that it makes conceptual, technical or nuanced ideas very simple to grasp. Slack doesn’t seem like a complicated tool to explain now – but that’s only because their branding team first did their homework. And speaking of this phenomenon…
Apple iPod – “1,000 songs in your pocket”
The iPod worked magic in the mp3 market because their message was clearer than their competitors. While everyone else was trying to communicate that they had a digital walkman device thing, Apple were singing a simpler tune.
The phrase resonated with people so effectively because it spoke directly to their experience. This was a new device, potentially complicated, possibly unwieldy. For many, the idea of popping a CD into a player was much simpler than fussing around with internet downloads and limited storage. But Jobs’ team found a way to make iPod sound limitless and streamlined. Carrying around CDs suddenly seemed cumbersome compared to such a simple idea.
It’s interesting that the words you traditionally associate with tech: digital, future, software, power, innovation, were scrapped in favour of everyday language. While Google’s algorithms will require us to use the keywords associated with our industry (at least for the foreseeable future), we have to be careful we’re not letting that become an obstacle to our message.
UiPath – “We make robots so people don’t have to be robots”
Artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, machine learning algorithms…. can’t we just call them all robots and be done with it? There’s something very refreshing about the way UiPath uses language that could have been understood in 1975.
While many of the AI and automation companies use grand statements to elevate themselves as harbingers of the future, UiPath scales it back. Their message doesn’t meander through the technical hocus pocus but drives straight to the human benefit: your people will be free to use their time, energy and human intelligence more creatively.
There’s a time and a place for grand statements like: unlock the future, power your dreams, achieve the impossible. But they can sometimes be a little bit vague. As if they came out of a slogan generator. UiPath on the other hand, drives home a specific message that makes artificial intelligence seem warmer and more inviting. Almost human.
SEGA – “SEGA do what Ninendon’t” (and more offensive examples!)
A new generation of video game consoles has been released but their messaging can’t quite match the sassy, cheeky, crass tactics of early 90s SEGA.
At the time Nintendo had monopolised the video game market and even though SEGA were coming onto the scene with a more powerful console, it would be tough to get noticed in the 8-bit world that Mario had come to rule.
SEGA could have pushed their 16bit technology, which gave games greater detail and colour. Or they could have tried to imitate Nintendo’s campaigns that emphasised power. But instead of explaining the console’s capabilities, they made their message crystal clear through their outrageous tone.
Here’s just some of the copy from SEGA’s print adverts. And these are the tamer examples – (I don’t necessarily recommend trying these at home!):
- “What’s blue and pisses over everything?” (answer: Sonic the Hedgehog)
- “More balls than Linford Christie”
- “Don’t be a mean git at Xmas”
SEGA tone was a clear differentiator from cutesy, child-friendly Ninendo. Their message was razor sharp: theirs is a console for adults, for teenagers, for people too cool for Nintendo (note: these days Nintendo are pretty damn cool too!). SEGA showed they weren’t just “another” console, or a better one, they were their own beast.
If you’re looking to hone your own business messaging, check out our thoughts on how to explain what your business does so people understand quickly or learn how to tweak your copy with subtle subversions so that your brand evokes something new.
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An artisan can display the beauty of their wares, a patissier can give out samples, but in many other fields – from B2B services to technology, sustainability and healthcare – we usually need to find another way to give away a little taste of the value we know we can add.
In such domains, you need to demonstrate that your brand is an authority in its field, that you’re the experts and can be trusted. To do this, you need to be thinking about sharing your expertise through content campaigns. After all, the best way to convince someone you’re an expert is not to tell them but to show them.
Think about the expert knowledge in your business like the free cube of cheese or thimble of wine at a farmer’s market – something you can use to entice people and demonstrate your quality. Once they bite, you won’t need to work nearly so hard to sell to them. They’ll have a far better idea of the quality they’re getting and whether it’s right for them.
So how do you go about establishing yourself as an expert using a content campaign? Here are some things to think about.
TL:DR
- Build your content campaign on lived experience and research – not theory
- Locate the sweet spot for your content campaign
- An example campaign: how to use expertise to win a new audience
- How we established our own authority with content
Build your content campaign on lived experience and research – not theory
Lots of people share theory. And theory is great. But theory is cheap, especially in a day when anyone can claim anything online. People can even use AI-generated content to skip the research and writing process.
If you’re making a pure SEO-play this can bring in traffic but if you want to show your words are worth trusting you need to speak to your audience in a way that ChatGPT could never achieve. For more on this, check our ebook why expertise based content wins in a cynical age.
In 2023, we surveyed 32 executives and senior decision makers in organisations. The vast majority said they won’t look at content shared with them by direct marketing (only 3% said they did). Instead most relied on their curated network to share only the most important articles with them.
It’s a noisy world, and it’s a cynical world as a result. These days, people aren’t asking, “What can you tell me?” they’re asking, “Who are you to tell me?”
Pitched right, your content campaign can answer that question.
Locate the sweet spot for your content campaign
Before you can convince anyone you’re the authority in the room, you need to have a good understanding of what the room (ie your market) looks like, what counts as expertise within this space, and how much your team knows. Expertise is a positioning strategy and it’s not one just any brand can choose.
For instance, if you launch a healthcare app but don’t have any healthcare professionals or ex-clinicians in your team, and you haven’t completed any research in the field, your expertise is limited. In this case, frankly, you’re better off promoting your app’s design or features than your expertise.
That said, if your founder was a leading healthcare consultant, or if your team works alongside psychiatrists or GPs on a daily basis, you’ll want to bring their lived-expertise to the forefront of your content.
Their first-hand accounts, their learning, their experience, is the ticket to creating expertise-based content that’s impossible for your competitors to replicate.
Your job as a marketer is simply to tap into that expertise, and find out:
- How much overlaps with what your audience cares about
- How much overlaps with your wider goals as an organisation
What lies in the middle of that three-way Venn diagram should then form the foundation of your campaign.
An example campaign: how to use expertise to win a new audience
Let’s take a look at a theoretical expertise-audience-goals Venn diagram, and plan a campaign that just might work.
For example, imagine you’re a leadership development consultancy:
- Your expertise: Creating team momentum
- Your wider goals: Winning contracts with larger organisations
- Your audience cares about: Preparing for net-zero
Your sweet spot campaign theme might be something like, ‘How global brands can build net-zero momentum’. This clearly calls out your audience and links your expertise to their goals.
The campaign might include content such as:
- A top of funnel thought leadership article comparing team inertia with environmental inertia, which you might even want to submit to industry press.
- A top of funnel, highly researched lead magnet on “How global teams are getting to net zero”, anchoring your expertise in real life examples.
- Middle of funnel ‘how to’ articles on:
- How to integrate ESG-thinking into your executive team
- How to engage employees on sustainability
- How to handle change management on ESG issues
- A bottom of funnel article or case study about how your services can help with the above.
If you were the marketer running the campaign above, you might be concerned that, while you can draw on your internal experts for insights on team momentum, you may not know as much about reaching net zero.
However, you could interview an external net zero expert or two, whose expertise will complement yours. Chances are, this unusual blend of specialist expertise will result in content that’s not like anything else out there.
How we established our own authority with content
Back in 2022, RH&Co had established ourselves as an authority in content marketing and wanted to push harder to demonstrate our expertise as brand strategists.
In 2023 we made this a focus, releasing no less than five campaigns all reinforcing our role in brand strategy. As well as drawing together a tonne of anecdotes showcasing everything we’d learned from working with organisations in specialist sectors, we also interviewed dozens of external experts and conducted a survey of C-suite executives.
Over the course of the year, we:
- Conducted a roundtable with brand experts and startup advisers, forming a seven-part series that guides readers through the tumultuous startup to scaleup brand journey.
- Launched three campaigns tackling industry-specific brand challenges in technology, B2B services and sustainability.
- Published our flagship report, “What do CxOs read?” as part of a campaign tackling the elusive challenge of marketing to the C-suite.
We then found endless ways to repurpose all this content in videos, social posts, ads, e-books and outreach emails, ensuring we maximised the reach and impact of the content.
By the end of the year, the kind of enquiries we were getting had begun to shift. More people were taking us up on content strategy, high level messaging, positioning and campaign design.
More senior people started to engage with our content and share it. One marketing director landed on an article about value propositions and asked us to create a dozen for their organisation.
And much of what we’d written changed the way we spoke in sales conversations – enabling us to close bigger and more strategic projects.
If you’d like to create similar results for your own organisation, you can always work with us. And for more of our thoughts on how to run content campaigns, see our guide to involving experts in content creation or how to market to multiple stakeholders.