Category: B2B Marketing

Star power: Can nuclear fusion fuel the earth?

Posted on by Claire Goodfellow

We spend a lot of time writing about the impact of global warming, from mitigating the risks of climate change to accelerating decarbonisation and renewable energy adoption. And if I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that if the world doesn’t speed up its decarbonisation efforts, humanity could be facing a desolate future.

Solar and wind power are both brilliant steps in the right direction, but when there’s no wind and the sun isn’t shining, we can’t use them to produce electricity. So, what are the alternatives?

Imagine if there was a way to power the world that was clean, carbon free, and possible whatever the weather.

The answer could be written in the stars.

These giant balls of plasma generate an abundance of energy through a process known as nuclear fusion. But is it a process we could ever recreate on earth?

We already have nuclear energy. So what is fusion?

Today, nuclear power plants use a process called nuclear fission to produce energy.

Nuclear fission uses unstable atomic isotopes (like uranium 235) and harnesses the energy they create as they decay. It’s highly efficient and doesn’t generate carbon dioxide. However, fission does create some pretty nasty waste products that can stay radioactive for millions of years.

Typically, power plants use geological disposal to handle this waste – burying radioactive material deep underground so thick layers of rock can stop radiation reaching the earth’s surface.

But if that doesn’t happen because of disaster or meltdown, it can be utterly devastating.

Instead of using elemental decay, nuclear fusion combines two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium (which are abundant in water and lithium). This creates an atom of helium, a lone neutron, and a lot of energy.

In fact, fusion can generate nearly 4 million times more energy per kilogram of fuel than oil or coal, with no carbon emissions at all. There’s also no long-term radioactivity; only the beta-emitting ingredient tritium, which has a short half-life of just over 12 years. And there’s no risk of meltdowns, as fusion reactions can’t sustain themselves outside of a reactor.

It’s a lot safer than fission. But it’s also far more difficult to achieve.

Major developments are paving the way for fusion on earth

To make fusion reactions happen, scientists need to overcome deuterium and tritium’s natural electromagnetic repulsion. For that, they need to create a huge amount of heat and pressure.

Currently scientists are looking at two key methods to achieve this: magnets and lasers. And recently there have been major breakthroughs in both.

South Korea’s electromagnetic tokamak

South Korea’s “Artificial Sun” is a type of fusion reactor called a tokamak. It’s a donut shaped device that uses magnetic coils to create the intense conditions needed for nuclear fusion. These magnets produce a twisted magnetic field, causing deuterium and tritium atoms to collide and creating energy that heats the walls of the reactor. This heat can then convert water to steam which powers turbines and generates usable electricity.

In 2022, the Artificial Sun sustained a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for 30 seconds, and the team are aiming for 5 minutes by the end of 2026. It’s an unimaginable temperature. To put it into context, the centre of the Sun is only a puny 15 million degrees Celsius.

The lasers of America’s National Ignition Facility

In the US, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has used lasers to achieve the first ever net energy gain from nuclear fusion. Physicists fired 192 lasers at a target chamber containing deuterium and tritium, causing a huge implosion of energy that forced the atoms to fuse and release energy.

To be useful to humanity, the energy produced needs to be greater than the energy put in. And the US team has now achieved this not just once, but four times.

Nuclear fusion could be the future of clean energy

Nuclear energy is gaining traction worldwide. It was formally specified as one of the solutions to climate change in the COP28 agreement, and many governments are now pledging more funding for nuclear research.

Current fusion science is a far cry from the cold fusion controversies of the 20th century, and every new development gets us closer to achieving a clean, carbon-free, and near-infinite energy source.

I’m fortunate enough to get to write about electrification and renewable energy in my work at Radix, and it’s so exciting to think that one day – albeit in a few decades – I might be writing about fusion energy in the same way.

If you’re a bit of a physics geek like me, and curious to learn more about nuclear fusion, the International Atomic Energy Agency is a great place to start.

What is synthetic data? And why should B2B marketers care?

Posted on by George Reith

Like so many next-big-things, the generative AI wave is towing a host of cottage industries in its wake. One of the most fascinating is the synthetic data industry.

I think it’s worth the attention of any B2B tech marketer because it reveals the complex challenges, opportunities, and risks of generative AI in microcosm – and because the best content about AI acknowledges and navigates that complexity.

Synthetic data: a solution to AI’s biggest obstacles

All AI models must be trained on extensive data. And the more general the task, the greater the variety and volume of data the model needs before it can respond with accuracy and confidence.

But collecting data volumes from the real world poses several issues:

  • Sourcing huge amounts of data is time-consuming and really expensive.
  • It can be hard to find data on uncommon or edge-case scenarios (think MRI scans of rare medical conditions or images of a machine experiencing a one-in-a-million fault).
  • There are privacy and copyright issues with using certain online datasets (such as data gleaned from social media platforms).
  • Data produced by humans can carry human biases.

Synthetic data promises a solution to many of these problems. Unlike conventional data used to train AI models, synthetic data is artificially generated, so it isn’t bound by the confines of reality.

For example, if you were training an AI to assess fuel efficiency across different commercial aircraft, you could use synthetic data generated by flight simulators instead of collecting real-world aircraft telemetry data from hundreds of flights.

By creating artificial data at scale, you can get more data at a lower cost without the copyright complications or biases of human-generated data. And you can also design datasets covering phenomena seldom seen in real life.

Synthetic data’s ability to remove all these roadblocks is so great that last summer, Gartner predicted 60% of data for AI will be synthetic by 2024.

The use cases unlocked by synthetic data

Computer vision models, which need training on large volumes of high-quality images, have been one of the first forms of AI to benefit from synthetic data. But there are many other use cases for synthetic data in its many forms, including:

  • Genomic data to train AI healthcare solutions on rare diseases – without breaching patient confidentiality.
  • Images of different (and potentially unreleased) products to train automatic defect recognition on manufacturing lines.
  • Financial records to develop fraud detection systems without using personal financial information.

Whatever task you want to train an AI model for, it’s likely that synthetic data can help make that process faster, more consistent, and cheaper.

The risk of AI eating itself

With so many use cases for synthetic data, there’s naturally a lot of demand. And one way to meet that demand is… with the help of generative AI. We’re already seeing some vendors working to build a closed loop for AI – where generative AI creates synthetic data that’s then fed into other AI models.

But this Ouroboros model of AI has its critics. When researcher Jathan Sadowski looked into the phenomenon, he found models that were “so heavily trained on the outputs of other generative AIs that [they] become an inbred mutant”.

A consumer-facing model spouting nonsense might, at worst, damage a brand’s reputation. But such degradation in a model designed to detect security risks for IT systems or cancerous cells in medical imaging could have catastrophic effects.

The implications for B2B tech companies and marketers

We’re still in the early days of this new generation of AI and the synthetic data that will support it. And with the major NASDAQ staples investing heavily in the space, any problems will have serious resources and talent thrown at them until they’re resolved.

So perhaps in the future, we will have something approaching a synthetic data utopia that leads to unfathomably powerful AI. But for now, we have a fork in the road that everyone in the B2B technology sector must navigate carefully.

Any story about synthetic data must be embraced with positivity and the hope that it will crack the code of training society-enhancing AI models. But we must also be ready to ask the most pressing questions about how synthetic data production can scale. And the level of scrutiny must be dialled up as generative AI and synthetic data training increasingly come into contact with critical, high-risk sectors like healthcare, education, and government.

More importantly, B2B tech marketers must be ready to openly discuss these challenges in any content that speaks about synthetic data and generative AI. Our audience is clever, connected, and very comfortable managing risk. They won’t be put off by an acknowledgment of the potential pitfalls and challenges in the field. In fact, they may find the honesty refreshing and ultimately trust the message and the brand behind it all the more.

Recommended further reading

If you want to learn more about synthetic data and AI, there are plenty of articles exploring this fast-growing field.

While it was written just before the recent AI renaissance, Forbes ran an article covering some of the major use cases for synthetic data and the earliest players in the industry. It’s a great place to start if you want a broad overview of the topic.

And for a clearer look at the potential risks associated with synthetic data, this interview with machine learning researchers Sina Alemohammad and Josue Casco-Rodriguez offers an expert outlook on what happens when AI consumes data created by other AI models.

Nature-based solutions: Technology that thinks outside the casing

Posted on by Claire Goodfellow

As a technology copywriter, I get to see how cutting-edge innovations transform and improve the world. But some of the most exciting solutions I come across don’t rely on breakthroughs in smart fabrics or generative AI. Instead they rely on materials and processes that have been around for millennia.

Nature-based solutions use natural mechanisms to solve human challenges – in a way that reduces our destructive impact on the planet.

Here are just a few of my favourite use cases.

#1 Data centre cooling

As humanity generates, stores and analyses more and more data, we need more capable data centres. And keeping those data centres switched on, and cooled down, takes a huge amount of energy. In fact, data centres account for 1–1.5% of global electricity use.

The battle to stop our servers over-heating has sparked some especially neat technological innovations, most notably, liquid cooling. Running liquid past your circuit boards, and then letting it cool off at a safe distance uses less energy than air conditioning, reducing a data centre’s operational costs and emissions. But the technology still lacks standardisation, and requires large initial investment to implement.

So, what solution does nature offer?

About as far away from high-tech as you can get, free cooling solutions simply use the external atmosphere to keep servers at an acceptable temperature. They deliver far lower cooling costs and energy usage than any other option, but are only possible in the right environments.

One place that could be perfect for free cooling a data centre: under the sea.

Using the sea to cool data centres even provides an opportunity to power the servers with offshore wind and solar energy. And, much like wrecks, such data centres could provide valuable habitats for marine life – boosting biodiversity in the surrounding area.

Offshore, underwater data centres do, however, have drawbacks. In some cases, solar and wind energy may be the only viable source of power, as connecting to the onshore grid is very difficult. And a completely weather-dependent data centre isn’t ideal. And then there’s the challenge of performing maintenance…

#2 Urban pollution reduction

The global population is expected to pass nine billion by 2037. As populations increase, so does pollution – especially in urban areas.

One way to protect the health and wellbeing of city-dwellers is to stop pollution at its source (for example, through the transition from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles). Another is to actively remove pollutants from the atmosphere.

Electrostatic precipitators use static electricity to pull pollution particles from the air – and advances in nanotechnology are making the process more efficient. Electrochemical conversion, meanwhile, can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, allowing the carbon to be repurposed as materials and fuels.

But nature has its own, tried-and-tested solution for capturing and converting CO2. And as well as processing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, some plants even consume other urban pollutants.

Moss is a great example. Certain varieties naturally feed on common pollutants, removing them from the surrounding atmosphere – and providing a handy way to monitor pollution levels. Combining this natural process with choice technologies can yield even better results. Driving more air through the moss, for example, can increase the quantity of air purified, while solar-powered, IoT-connected irrigation systems can help to keep the moss healthy.

#3 Protecting coastal communities from climate change

The global average sea level is rising, and at the same time, climate hazards – like large storm surges – are becoming more frequent. This combination poses a huge threat to coastal communities. What’s more, creating appropriate hard structures to provide long-term protection is a complicated task because the rate of change is as unpredictable as it is unprecedented.

Again, nature offers some adaptable, sustainable answers. One that’s currently gaining popularity is planting mangroves.

Mangroves have a naturally tight root system that provides protection from large waves during storms while protecting the land from coastal erosion. They need enough space to grow, and the right environment to thrive, but where they’re a viable solution, mangroves also create a valuable new habitat for wildlife. This habitat can increase biodiversity, and even provide sustainable fishing opportunities for local communities.

Humans and nature are better together

As astonishing as humanity’s recent technological advances are, sometimes it can be incredibly beneficial to look away from our screens and machines, and out the window.

Nature may not have all the answers, but the ones it does offer have been stress-tested over timescales even the best-funded R&D team can only dream about. Combining natural mechanisms with our most exciting innovations could yet be the secret to shaping a sustainable future for us and our planet.

 

 

Thoughts from B2B Ignite 2025: Let’s think about the marketer’s experience

Posted on by Katy Eddy

Gaps were a common theme at this year’s B2B Ignite. Gaps between marketing efforts and revenue. Gaps between what the c-suite expects of its marketers and what they can reasonably deliver. And a yawning chasm between what marketers hoped their role would entail and how it actually ended up.

If there ever was a time when it was easy to be a marketer, now certainly isn’t it. We didn’t need a conference to tell us that – but B2B Ignite did give us one of those coveted spaces to sit down and talk it out. To unpick some of the shared challenges that bind B2B marketers together in all sorts of different sectors and organisational setups. Now it’s about taking those conversations and converting them into actions. The tricky bit.

The messy truth of marketing complexity

The tricky thing for marketers is that the shape of each challenge is always shifting. So ‘overcoming’ really becomes ‘constantly navigating’. There’s no way to lock down a perfect combination of tools, because requirements and capabilities aren’t static (and there are more than 14,000 to choose from). Other stakeholders are always asking for different slices and comparisons of data. And so on for every different responsibility that marketing has found itself with over the years.

And that’s a lot of responsibilities. The marketing function has come a long way from being the ‘colouring-in department’, as Karla Wentworth from Intermedia Global affectionately called it. “[It’s] now the single most complex department inside any modern organisation, because we connect to so many things and so many people,” she said during her afternoon keynote.

That session, Unstacking Marketing: Behind the curtain: The messy truth we’re all pretending doesn’t exist, introduced a concept that, in hindsight, is so incredibly, obviously important – the marketer experience.

Marketer experience – or MX, for those who prefer a neat initialism – is a lot like the more-familiar customer experience (CX). Organisations are constantly investigating how they can keep customers satisfied and make their interactions as easy as possible. Teams should be doing the same for their marketers, looking for ways to get rid of friction and cut complexity in workflows, so marketers can actually be productive and enjoy their work. Because more interesting and effective ideas come from people who have the space to really think.

Simplicity isn’t always simple to achieve – but it’s so important

So what does better MX look like? On reflection, some of the other sessions I attended at Ignite 2025 touched on similar ideas.

Jade Tambini, of B2B Jade, had a rallying cry for simplicity in her session, Why marketers aren’t getting results: The B2B marketing gap. She talked about how the chaos – ‘carnage’, even, to quote one of her beleaguered in-house friends – of managing everything in marketing leads to worse performance. The more channels, campaigns, and metrics you have on the go, the harder it becomes to do any one thing well.

“I really want us to reflect on how much of the carnage and chaos could actually be controlled if we were able to learn the mindset to step up and change things, because complexity kills creativity,” she said. “The more things you’re doing, the more new tools we bring in, the harder it’s going to be to make them work.”

Karla noted this too, previewing an upcoming study into MX from Intermedia Global. It includes a few hair-raising figures, like the fact 71% of the marketers surveyed said they didn’t have time to do anything creative, because they were too busy troubleshooting technology. And no wonder, when 60% of their time is spent managing their tools and processes.

From an MX perspective, simplifying your marketing plan is a no-brainer. A straightforward strategy that’s grounded in a few reliable content types, useful metrics, and helpful tools leaves room for creativity. It means you can build a clearer picture of what works, without having to unpick all the intricacies of how your prospects navigate through nine different channels to reach you.

And it means you can create practical processes that make content production, prospect nurturing, and measurement easier to manage. So you can shrink that 60% to something that doesn’t make you feel like you’re turning up at work everyday to do 16 different jobs.

Especially in the age of AI for absolutely everything, the first question in a planning meeting is often “what can we add?” But it might be more useful to ask “what can we remove from the equation?”

Sometimes the simplest fix is letting someone else take it off your plate

Of course, a simpler strategy might be hard to achieve in a large organisation, where huge numbers of moving parts come with the territory. But even small changes to the way you operate – like, say, outsourcing your content writing to expert copywriters – can ease the pressure.

Though we’ve never called it MX, improving marketers’ experience has always been one of the cornerstones of the way we work at Radix. We have our own tried, tested, and efficient processes that turn goals and ideas into great content. And it’s all curated to take the pressure off our clients.

The most productive partnerships we have with marketers are the most honest ones, where they feel like they can tell us exactly what gets in the way of their plans. The more we know, the more we can help. A bit of content ideation here, a few hours revitalising an old run of blogs there – whatever helps make the engine run.

The most sobering stat from Karla’s research is that 92% of the CMOs in the study said they’d have considered a different career if they knew being a marketer would end up so complicated. If that’s not a crystal-clear motivator for stronger MX, I don’t know what is.

 

 

Why don’t I want to write this blog right now?

Posted on by Steve George

For as long as most of us can remember, marketers have struggled to get subject matter experts (SMEs) and other stakeholders excited about engaging with content creation. And there are a few very good reasons for that:

  • It’s a one-way value exchange: If people aren’t interested in building their personal brand and getting their name out there, there’s usually little to no value for them in contributing to content.
  • It’s not their circus, and those aren’t their monkeys: Everyone has their own responsibilities to worry about during the work day. Any new expectation that doesn’t fall within their remit tends to really irritate them.
  • People outside of marketing (allegedly) don’t get why it’s important: Historically, we’ve been told that many non-marketing folks simply don’t understand what marketers are trying to achieve, or why they need expert input to do it. I’m not convinced that’s the case for a lot of people, but it certainly can happen.
  • It isn’t easy: Contributing to content and marketing projects puts huge pressure on people to articulate their expertise in a really clear way, which is something most of us don’t have to do very often.

The trouble is, I don’t really want to contribute to Radix’s marketing content right now, and it isn’t for any of those reasons. I know the value marketing delivers. I understand why it’s important. It is a defined responsibility for me. And I even fall into the very small group of people in the world for whom articulating complex concepts comes relatively easy.

So, what is my problem? And is there anything I can glean from it that could help marketers make some real steps forward in how they engage SMEs and other content contributors?

Our first mistake is making sweeping assumptions about human motivations and needs

Around ten years ago, I received an adult diagnosis for obsessive compulsive disorder. Very recently, I’ve also come to understand that I fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. The two are tightly linked, and while they have a minimal impact on my daily life, they do shape a lot of my attitudes and behaviours.

For me, structure is incredibly important. Predictability is king, and the thing I find difficult about contributing to marketing is its ad hoc nature. For those responsible for managing marketing, it’s a continuous strategic task that’s always front of mind. For me, it’s typically appeared as intermittent requests that can come at any time, and must be tessellated around my client projects.

That shouldn’t be an issue, but it is. If these requests catch me at the wrong time, while I’m focused on something else, that completely shapes how I feel about them. A process I understand and want to help with becomes frustrating, without anybody doing anything wrong.

The answer to the titular question, “Why don’t I want to write this blog right now?” is simple. When I logged on to start work today, I didn’t know I would be writing it. Even though the idea was mine, and it’s an idea I believe in, the organic nature of how this blog originated doesn’t align with my own need for structure and predictability.

I’d never really reflected on that until writing this. I have no desire to build a personal brand or become a leading voice in my field. My motivation for engaging with marketing is simply that I recognise its critical role in enabling me to continue to do a job I’m great at, for clients I really like working with, alongside a team of people I love. And what I need to make that happen is for the whole thing to be very structured and predictable.

We’re all individuals with our own passions, neuroses, drivers, frustrations, and preferred ways of working. If marketers want to get people excited about contributing to their projects, the ways they engage with SMEs must be as precisely tailored as their strategies for audience engagement.

If you give people what they want, you tend to get what you want too

I use myself as an example simply because there’s no SME I know better. My proposition isn’t that everyone should adapt how they engage content contributors to align with my needs. The point is that if we want to get the most from every contributor, we need to engage them on their terms, just as we do with customers.

Thinking practically, it isn’t really feasible (or valuable) for marketers to dedicate the same time to mapping out the needs and motivations of SMEs as they with their customers and prospects. But they absolutely can do that for select ‘high-value’ contributors.

It’s important to forge close relationships with great contributors. Learn their motivations, replicate the conditions that enabled them to make a great contribution to your project, and give them more of what they want.

For some (like me), that might mean making the process extremely structured and predictable by securing a recurring slot in their diary for marketing input. For others, it could be the opposite, creating an organic workflow where they can provide ideas and input however and whenever they like.

Some will be highly motivated to become thought leaders in your market. Others will be much more comfortable providing content ideas without having their name attached to them. Discuss your SMEs’ goals and motivations to uncover how contributing to marketing could help. See how, where, and when they like to work. And use everything you learn to personalize the experience of contributing to your marketing projects.

Closer collaboration builds understanding on both sides

By thinking about contributors in the same way you think about customers, you can discover what each person needs to deliver the most valuable input. And in doing so, you just might change a few attitudes towards marketing.

Practically, all that has to involve is:

  • Frank and friendly conversations between marketers and SMEs where the marketer can really get a feel for how the SME works and what makes them tick. These are the kind of chats that used to happen naturally in our physical office world, but if you’re part of a more dispersed team, you’ll need to make a conscious effort to book these catch-ups in.
  • Being mindful of exactly where, when and how you request SME input, and put yourself in the SME’s shoes to maximize your chances of getting them on side and making them excited about getting involved with your plans. What’s going on in their diary at that moment? Do they have a major client or project delivery deadline looming soon? It’s in your interest to catch them at their stress-free best if possible.
  • Going to them with an offer rather than a request in the first instance. People often don’t really know what marketing could help them achieve personally, so reach out to let them know, and give them a chance to provide input on their terms. If they end the conversation feeling like engaging with marketing and providing input was their idea, brilliant.

Radix’s marketing processes have gone through something of a transformation in recent months. And I’m happy to say, it’s all been framed around how we can get the most from our team. Our expertise is our greatest asset, so we’ve started to approach marketing in ways that make it easy for our people to share their insights and explore topics they truly feel are worth exploring.

I shan’t embarrass the person responsible for delivering our marketing by naming them. But I hope as they review this, they know how much I appreciate their efforts. Meeting me on my terms takes so much more work than simply presenting me with a content concept and making me write it. That effort means a lot to me and builds my desire to help them in any way I can.

Doing all of this doesn’t make the marketer’s life easier – quite the opposite. But it does significantly improve the quality of the content they publish.

While my own neuroses mean that, yes, I didn’t start out wanting to write this blog, I’m more invested in Radix’s marketing than I’ve ever been before. I feel understood, and as a result, I really do want to help.

That feels like a pretty big win for me, and our marketing.

Do the facts even matter in B2B marketing?

Posted on by The Radix Team

Almost an entire November. Without sleep. In my professional life so far, I estimate I’ve spent at least 715 hours[i] researching statistics and making sure they’re accurately presented and referenced.

But sometimes I wonder… why?

So often, I encounter B2B marketing content that doesn’t disclose its sources. Or that does, but directs me towards an unsubstantiated assertion on the personal blog of a freelance HR adviser, published circa 2013.

Even when content references recent, robust research and provides a link to the original study, I’ll regularly find that – whether through a collapse of understanding or moral fortitude – the writer has misrepresented the facts.
I’ll state it plainly. Many of the claims I see in B2B marketing content are completely unsubstantiated. Many are highly dubious. Some are demonstrably wrong.

Why we need to talk about this

Now, there are many un-nefarious reasons why including references in marketing content is far from standard practice.
Marketing content needs to be many things: eye-catching, concise, effortless to read. And it’s easy to assume that by including your sources, you’ll be compromising on any one of these important attributes.

But it’s time for marketers to interrogate that assumption.
In a period when scientists worry about generative AI “hallucinations”[ii] and model collapse muddying our common pools of knowledge, I think it’s worth questioning our industry’s readiness to publish the unsubstantiated and the distorted.

I think it’s worth questioning in the pub with my professional peers, because I believe it’s in all our interests to improve the quality of the information upon which we individually and collectively base our decisions.

And I think it’s worth questioning here, on the blog of a B2B content writing agency, because I believe this is a commercial as well as ethical concern.

I think – given my lack of faith in so much of the content I see – credibility is an area in which B2B brands have a genuine opportunity to differentiate.

Exploring the issue with a representative example

To show you what I mean, I feel I need to examine at least one real-world example.

My goal here really isn’t to point fingers. After twelve years doing this job, I know too well that getting anything written, designed, signed off, and published, regardless of how well researched and evidenced it is, should often be considered a triumph.

I also know that I myself am far from without sin. I’ve definitely used statistics I didn’t fully trust because they were central to telling a client’s story. I’m sure I’ve also quoted figures without including as much context as I could.
So, I’ll keep this example quick. And then I’ll suggest some strategies all B2B content creators might benefit from adopting, myself included.

No sources = A missed opportunity

At last year’s Content Marketing Awards, this animated content piece was a finalist in the “Best Infographic (one-time)” category.[iii] It was also honoured at last year’s Killer Content Awards in the “Short-Form Content” category.[iv]
Let’s look at its first significant claim: “Currently, there are more than 171M VR users worldwide”.

No source provided in the text. No source provided in an endnote.

As explained above, I know credibility isn’t the only target B2B marketers are striving to hit. I can easily imagine a creative professional deciding that the missing source was making this visually sophisticated piece a little too busy. That it needed, on balance, to be sacrificed for clarity and punch.
I understand the rationale.

Still, this kind of omission is a missed opportunity to make me trust your brand. To make me welcome your communications, because they inform and entertain me, and help me in my professional or personal life.

And, if I remember my early-2010s copywriting apprenticeship correctly, that’s pretty much the defining goal of content marketing. The reason why content marketing is, in the words of Joe Pulizzi, “a far cry from the interruption marketing we are bombarded with every minute of every day.”[v]

Weak, old data, inaccurately presented

I go looking for the missing source for the “171 million VR users” claim. I soon find myself clicking into multiple, SEO-sired, “X stats you must know about Y” blog posts. Here’s one.

Most of these posts append a “more than” to the 171 million figure. The ones that provide a clear source almost inevitably cite the data gathering and visualisation platform, Statista.

None that I find go as far as to link to the relevant page on Statista. So, I do some more googling, and I find this data set. It shows a suspiciously identical 171 million as the forecasted number of VR users in 2018, based on a survey conducted in 2014.

That’s right. A survey conducted eight years before this publicly garlanded infographic led with 171 million VR users as evidence of a top tech trend for 2023.

Figures that are simply wrong

The second statistic featured in the infographic is: “29BN: The amount of IoT devices that will exist next year”.

Again, I try to find the source. Again, I end up back at Statista. Its latest information, released in July 2023, quotes 29.42 billion as the forecasted figure for 2030.

Not for “next year”. But for some seven-plus years into the future from the infographic’s likely moment of creation.
(Incidentally, this is almost double the actual[vi] – not forecasted – figure Statista now provides for 2023.)

I hope that’s enough of a dissection to illustrate my point.

Maybe, in the future, I’ll have time to perform an audit of claims and referencing quality across a variety of B2B content. But for now, you’ll have to take my word for it: this is far from an isolated incident.

The wider issue (and its impact on my inner child)

I’ve seen countless infographics, white papers, ebooks, and videos in my professional life that devalue credibility (and frankly, veracity) in this way.

I’m sure some of you have, too. I’m sure you’ve thought, “Wow – that’s a surprising figure.” Then followed the trail from tertiary source to secondary source to primary source… and found yourself looking at a seemingly baseless assertion in a product manager’s LinkedIn bio.

And, if you’re anything like me, I’m sure it hurt you. Just a tiny bit. I’m sure another tiny leaf tumbled from your already ravaged tree of faith in humankind.

My own tree of faith isn’t doing so well. It’s pretty constantly shaken by news articles that fashion a sensationalist headline from an innocuous aside.[vii] By interviews in which politicians steadfastly repeat “facts” that have been carefully or unthinkingly severed from all context, allowing their meaning to instantly drip away.[viii] By reports that even peer-reviewed scientific studies aren’t as infallible as you might have hoped.[ix]

If no one else cares about the facts, why should you?

You might reasonably ask: am I really telling B2B technology brands – commercial enterprises – to hold themselves to a higher standard than many online news outlets, almost all MPs, and some scientific researchers?

Yes. I am.

Because B2B tech brands aren’t reliant on the commuter’s idle click. Or the votes of an only partially engaged population. Or the results to author a career-defining paper.

No. B2B tech brands rely on sales. Often, they rely on complex, protracted sales in which multiple stakeholders collectively make a relatively high-risk investment decision.
And in this scenario, credibility is invaluable.

Convincing the hard to convince

I wish I had a way of proving it – doubly so, considering the subject of this piece – but I believe that among the business leaders who have to approve any B2B purchasing decision, there’s almost always at least one smart, sceptical individual.

I believe they roll their eyes at contextless, too-good-to-be-true statistics in marketing materials. That they scan the endnotes on the last page of my ebook, and what they see bolsters their opinion of, and trust in, my client’s brand.

I like to think that the content they admire is the content I admire. Content that’s transparent, accurate, and authoritative while also being eye-catching, concise, and easy to read.

If you can convince that person – that sceptical critical-thinker – to advocate for your solution… why wouldn’t you?

The truth is, it isn’t an either/or

You can create content that’s both beautiful and credible. And win over that hard-to-win-over CFO. (And make me feel better about our collective moral trajectory.)

How? Here are a few ideas:

  1. Expect your copywriters to get as near to the primary source of a statistic as they can. If you’re able to dig deeper than they have, flag up your concerns.
  2. If a statistic sounds too good to be true, investigate. If the copywriter’s misrepresented the facts, ask them to double-check every statistic in the piece.
  3. If a figure sounds an order of magnitude out, check the copywriter’s maths. Most of us didn’t get into this job based on our arithmetical prowess.
  4. Be aware of “zombie” statistics that a) are so overused you’d want to think twice about citing them, and b) aren’t even true. “Humans only use 10% of their brains” is the classic example.[x] (Thanks to Matt Godfrey for this tip.)
  5. Ask your copywriter to prioritise statistics from the last 18 months. If they want to use an older figure, they should be able to explain why.
  6. Ask your copywriter to use a range of referencing methods – hyperlinked text, full in-text references, footnotes, or endnotes – to minimise the impact of your content’s sources. In a thought-leadership piece on your blog, hyperlinking the text might be the neatest solution. On a landing page, however, you might include details of a source in the body copy rather than risk people clicking or tapping away before they’ve accessed your content.
  7. Really don’t want to do any of these? Consider a disclaimer. Include a little boxout at the start of your ebook saying, “We’ve not included our sources because they detract from the reading experience. If you’d like to check our working, just email us at: [email address].” (Thanks to the wonderful Irene Triendl for this one.)

Sometimes, your copywriter will need to deviate from the path set out above in order to create the best possible content piece. Because the figures that your product narrative hinges on are, in the end, only available through Statista. Or because the most recent source for that salient data point is the 2020 US census.

That’s OK. This is about your broader stance. It’s about the standards you strive to uphold, and how they reverberate across the breadth of content you create, quietly saying things like, “Hey. We’re here to educate and inform. You can trust us. We do things properly here.”

How we do it at our agency

Respect for accuracy and authority has been hardwired into our agency’s internal processes for years.

Our reviewers (aka our writing team, wearing different metaphorical hats) are taught to check and challenge the facts and figures in their colleagues’ copy, flagging anything that looks incorrect, problematically old, or poorly referenced.

Yes, we’re human, and sometimes less-than-rock-solid claims do slip through. We’re also a business, and if a client wants to use a questionable statistic despite our reservations, we’re not going to stop them.

But the fact remains – we’ve designed our processes to help us raise the bar.

What does good referencing look like?

Here’s another finalist from last year’s CMAs, also selected for the infographic category.

  • The featured statistics have a source
  • The links (at time of writing) all work
  • The research is relatively recent

And yet, it’s still a swish-looking, partially animated content piece, right?

Sure, it rather stretches the definition of infographic, but that’s because of the amount of copy on the page, rather than the rigour of its referencing. And, to me at least, this content piece still feels somehow neater and easier on the eye than the example that abandoned its sources entirely.

A final thought: what would credibility cost you?

There are plenty of related issues we could drift into from here…

  • The credibility of customer proof points
  • The regulatory differences between B2B and B2C
  • The potential impacts of generative AI

…but you’ve been reading for a long time already. Thank you.

For now, I’ll leave you with this thought.

In B2B marketing, we know credibility is important. Along with originality, it’s one of the reasons the industry prizes primary research and proprietary data so highly. It’s also the reason why some B2B technology brands use independent services like TechValidate to gather and publish their customer outcomes.

So, why wouldn’t you aim to differentiate on credibility – and the quiet authority it imparts – in all the content you create?
Especially when, if you already have access to talented copywriters and designers, doing more than most of the competition could cost you almost nothing

[i] I’ve calculated this figure based on the time I’ve recorded for research, writing, and reviewing tasks in our project management system, ProWorkflow, since our records began. (Which is to say, I’ve excluded time spent interviewing SMEs, attending client calls and internal meetings, etc.) I’ve conservatively estimated that 8% of my research, writing, and reviewing time has been spent researching, writing, or reviewing claims and statistics.

[ii] Weise, Karen; Metz, Cade. When AI Chatbots Hallucinate. The New York Times. (May 1st, 2023. Updated May 9th, 2023.) Accessed February 20th, 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/ai-chatbots-hallucination.html

[iii] Here’s the full list of finalists and winners. The “Best Infographic (one-time)” category is number 57: https://web.archive.org/web/20240107022130/https://contentmarketingawards.com/2023-winners/

[iv] OneAffiniti Wins National Digital Content Award. Atlanta Business Chronicle. March 8, 2023. Accessed March 5th, 2024: https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/press-release/detail/8209/Incentive-Solutions-Inc

[v] Pulizzi, Joe. Epic content marketing: how to tell a different story, break through the clutter, and win more customers by marketing less. McGraw-Hill Education, 2014.

[vi] I say, “actual”. In this case, as so often, Statista’s business model stands between me and closer analysis of the data by placing the full details of the research behind a paywall. Given how often I see “(Statista)” next to the figures provided in statistic-laden listicles, I can’t help feeling the company may be accidentally damaging “net truth” by making it even easier for time-and-money-poor copywriters to throw up their hands – and throw in a number they don’t understand.

[vii] If you think I need a reference to back this up, you clearly frequent higher-quality news outlets than me.

[viii] If you think I need a reference to back this up, please let me know where in the world you’re living. I’d also appreciate any advice on successfully applying for citizenship.

[ix] Bush, Evan. A once-ignored community of science sleuths now has the research community on its heels. NBC News. February 14th, 2024. Accessed February 20th, 2024: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/-ignored-community-science-sleuths-now-research-community-heels-rcna136946

[x] This old Wired article provides a quick synopsis: https://www.wired.com/2014/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-10-brain-myth-explained-in-60-seconds/ (Unlike the writer, I have seen Luc Besson’s Lucy. If you want to watch a film in which someone learns to use a new part of their brain with amazing consequences, I’d recommend the 2012, late-life table tennis documentary, Ping Pong.)

We asked, they answered: copywriting for B2B social media

Posted on by Steve George

It’s understandable that clients often ask us for social media advice. We write social posts, and much of the B2B content we write gets shared online. But we’re always acutely aware that we’re only copywriters, and social media is a fast-moving field, with expertise and best practice all of its own. We can write you a great LinkedIn article, but we can’t tell you how you should use it.

So we were delighted when we were joined by social media expert Kate Stoodley from Comment Ground for episode 71 of our podcast. It gave us a great chance to ask all our most burning questions – but there was still loads more we (and our audience) wanted to know.

And so the idea for this pair of head-to-head blog posts was born.

B2B copywriters and social media specialists approach similar challenges in very different ways and contexts. There’s so much we can learn from one another. So, why not put each other on the spot with a handful of hard-hitting questions, and shine some light on what each side really wants to know about the other?

Here’s how Kate responded to the B2B copywriting inquisition. If you’d like to see how I answered Comment Ground’s questions, keep an eye on their blog: the Comment Ground Commentary. This blog’s twin will be appearing soon!

Question 1: How does the length of copy on a B2B social post affect its performance, and are there any clear trends in the data? (Also, how many hashtags is too many?)

Kate: There are many factors to consider when thinking about social post length; data and trends, the channel, the topic, the goal and of course the intended audience. While it’s absolutely worth considering best practices and guides (like this comprehensive one from Hootsuite), it’s equally if not more important for B2B companies to test, test and test again to determine what performs best for their content, audience and networks.

Across most social channels right now, there’s one clear trend emerging – that less is most definitely more. On LinkedIn, recent data found that shorter updates outperform longer ones, with 16-25 words being a general goal for B2B. Brevity also still rules on Facebook, where posts with approximately 40 characters receive 86% more engagement than their lengthier counterparts.

Interestingly, despite upping the character limit from the infamous 140 to 280, shorter tweets (100 characters and under) also still typically perform best. Hashtags can be used more liberally on this network – though we’re seeing marketers’ focus shift to quality over quantity, even on this rapid-fire platform, and especially for B2B.

Question 2: There’s a perception among copywriters that social channels are a good place to test the limits of a brand’s voice and tone. Is that fair, or is it better to be consistent with other copy?

Kate: Social is definitely a prime arena for testing brand voice and tone limits. In fact, we recommend crafting a social-specific voice to many of our clients. Simultaneously though, we also advise our B2B clients to ensure they keep the focus on what their customer wants, and how they prefer to be communicated with.

It’s tempting to view social as an opportunity to let the creative juices flow, and while that can be true, most B2B buyers aren’t looking for brands to stray too far from their core offering/messaging/style. Most B2B buyers report wanting to feel understood and in good hands – and to be able to quickly recognize a brand’s post.

Question 3: What things are B2C brands doing in social that B2B hasn’t caught onto yet? Can B2B ever be on the same level as B2C in social, given the personal nature of the channel?

Kate: To answer the second question first – Yes! B2B brands can be on the same level as B2C in most ways. However, B2B brands should not aspire to do something just because B2C can.

In terms of the personal nature of social, B2C brands are still definitely quite a way ahead of B2B. Generally, they’re doing a better job of personalizing copy and posts to resonate with consumer buying habits and different personas. However, we are starting to see exciting B2B personalized social content emerging, largely thanks to ABM’s rise in popularity.

B2C brands’ visuals tend to garner lots of attention. For B2B brands, the volume and quality of data at their fingertips presents an exciting opportunity to do the same. By grabbing a stat that their audience is really interested in and presenting it in a compelling way, B2B brands can create engaging visual social content that feels just as fresh as what B2C is doing.

Lastly, B2B is still in the early stages of effective employee and C-Suite social programs. Despite an almost over-abundance of thought leadership content and talk, there’s still a huge opportunity for B2B brands’ subject matter experts, sales teams, C-level leaders and other associates to showcase their brand’s culture and messages personally, in a way that will resonate with various target segments. After all, the people behind brands is where successful social is heading, regardless of industry.

Once again, we’d really like to thank Kate for her time and input. If you’d like to hear more from her, check out Good Copy, Bad Copy Episode 71, or visit the Comment Ground Commentary page.

Subject lines: the secret shortcut into the subconscious

Posted on by Steve George

Everyone knows email subject lines are important. They’re an offer or a teaser that either pulls readers in and intrigues them, or turns them off completely and sends them reaching for the unsubscribe button.

But here’s the big secret: subject lines do so much more than just get your emails opened. Most of the time, they’re the only thing your contact will read. They move the conversation forward – whether the email gets opened or not.

Yes, that goes against everything you’ve probably ever learned about subject lines, but stay with me for a moment. Because even when a subject line is great, most emails these days never get opened. We monitor the open rate, and the unopened majority just gets written off.

Meanwhile, every email we receive hits our pocket and grabs our attention with a smartphone notification – and that means there is huge value to be gained by looking at subject lines as discrete communications in their own right.

When it comes to opening your emails, your contacts get a decision. But, as far as reading subject lines goes, they don’t really opt in, or even make a conscious choice. They just do it. All the time. Day and night.

Taking the shortcut into the subconscious

Chances are, like me, you have hundreds if not thousands of unread emails sat in your inbox, from various companies you’ve engaged with over the years. You’ve grown indifferent to them, rarely opening them, but not going to the effort to unsubscribe from them either.

Think about those companies for a moment, then think about what they’ve said to you recently. Maybe you know that they’re having a sale, that they’re running some kind of contest or other promotion, or that they’ve got a new product launch coming up.

How did you know that? You didn’t go looking for that information, and you certainly didn’t read their emails.

Spooky.

Adding a new ingredient to your subject line soup

So, you’ve made your peace with the fact that the companies you’ve shared your details with are using subject lines as a shortcut into your brain, and we’ve determined that subject lines have intrinsic value as standalone communications.

But what does that mean when we’re writing them?

Even before factoring that new consideration in, your subject lines were doing a lot of heavy lifting. In one way or another, they’re already trying to effectively:

  • Convey the value of opening your email
  • Grab attention without looking like generic clickbait
  • Demonstrate an understanding of your customers’ unique needs
  • Offer something new or insightful without giving everything away upfront

Now, in addition to all of that, you’ve also got the task of ensuring that your subject lines convey a clear message when removed from the context of the email itself.

Here are four quick tips to help you do that (without having to unlearn everything you already know about writing great subject lines):

1: Lead with a single compelling insight/takeaway

Some schools of thought strongly argue that you shouldn’t give your most valuable insight away upfront, because if you do there’s no reason for someone to click through to whatever you’re offering.

I’ve never really agreed with that. If you’re fortunate enough to have something really exciting to share, front-loading it has to be worth serious consideration, at least. Why would you reserve your most important message for just those who open the email – when you already know they’ll likely be the minority?

2: Beware the perils of teasing

Clickbaity subject lines may have worked once upon a time, but today, people know clickbait when they see it. If you create subject lines that purely tease instead of demonstrating value, people that don’t open your email get nothing.

Once you recognise that the people that don’t open your emails are still important contacts, it becomes clear how a dangerous teasing subject line can be. If you consistently provide value, you just might inspire enough interest for them to re-engage. But if you keep giving someone nothing, it won’t take long before they finally do open one of your emails, as they scour it for the unsubscribe button.

3: Personalise the whole subject line (not just their name)

Increasingly, technology allows you to send your contact a tailored email, with strong reasons to click through that are personal to them. So why can’t the same principles be applied in your subject lines?

And I’m not talking about dropping their name and company into a generic title. Your customers provide you with enough data for you to determine what matters to them, so there’s no reason why you can’t lead with a tailored line that really resonates.

4: If your email had an eight-word limit, what would you say?

Emails are a strange beast. Because there’s no real limit on how long or complex they can be, we’re all guilty of not getting to the point quickly enough or spending too long dancing around the big thing we really want people to know or do.

I start any email I write by thinking about what I’d want to say to the customer if I only had eight words to do it. That helps me create subject lines that inspire opens more often – but say what they need to when they’re unopened too.

Say something meaningful, be heard

Seeing your subject lines as discrete communications in and of themselves is important for two big reasons.

Firstly, it’s going to help you communicate with contacts that you’ve long thought of as disengaged and perhaps re-establish your relationship with them.

And secondly, it forces you to look at your subject lines in a completely new way – one that forces you to really consider what value they’re delivering, and whether they actually tell anyone anything.

If you say something meaningful in your subject lines, you’ll be heard – by far more people than your open rates would have you believe.

ChatGPT and B2B copywriters: mortal enemies or better together?

Posted on by Matt Godfrey

Plenty of people think ChatGPT will turn the copywriting world upside down. But is that really the case in the rarefied world of B2B tech marketing, or a hype-driven misconception?

When ChatGPT hit the headlines, regular people began using it for all kinds of things, from cheating on college essays to writing poetry. It wasn’t designed to do these things (more on that later), but then the internet wasn’t designed for watching videos of cats on skateboards, and here we are.

Very quickly, the hype machine roared into action, leading to rumours that generative AI tools – and especially ChatGPT – would soon be writing everything. All the writing. In the whole world. Forever.

For a business that sells, um… writing, that could be slightly worrying. So we conducted an experiment to compare the AI against our human writers and get to know its strengths and weaknesses.

An (entirely unscientific) experiment: human copywriters v ChatGPT

My colleagues created various pieces of writing that responded to the brief: “Write 200 words on why copywriting is important in B2B technology marketing.” Then they challenged me to review the results and decide if each piece was:

  • Written by a human from scratch
  • Written by a human based on an AI-generated outline
  • Written by ChatGPT and then briefly edited by a human
  • Written by ChatGPT with no human involvement

So, I set out to brave the dangers of the uncanny valley and see if I could spot the bot…

Version 1: Human writer with AI help?

Copywriting is a critical tool for getting your message across and helping you stand out in a sea of jargon. It can turn even the most complicated tech products into something easy to understand. And without it, much of B2B tech marketing would be a bunch of tech experts talking in code nobody else understands.

It’s not just about getting through to your customers – copywriting is also crucial for building trust and credibility. When it comes to B2B tech, businesses are making some serious investments and need to feel confident they’re making the right choice. High-quality copywriting can help you earn your customers’ trust by presenting the right information in a clear, concise, and compelling way.

And let’s not forget about differentiation. In the crowded B2B tech space, it can be challenging to differentiate your business from others. That’s where persuasive copywriting techniques come in: highlighting your unique features and benefits, detailing the value you can deliver – and setting your business apart from the rest.

My initial comments:

This has echoes of another version I reviewed, but with added personality. Specifically, my personality, with the classic, Matt Godfrey-certified “clear, concise, and compelling”. You love to see it. The paragraph openers “It’s not just about…” and “And let’s not forget about…” make me think this is a writer working from somebody else’s outline. In a hurry.

My guess: AI outline, human writer

Actual author: AI copy, human editor

Version 2: AI-generated copy?

In the world of B2B technology marketing, the importance of good quality copywriting cannot be understated. At its core, copywriting is the art of persuading your audience to take a specific action through the use of words. In the technology industry, where products and services can be complex and difficult to understand, this is especially important.

Having well-written copy can help your company stand out from the competition by clearly communicating the benefits and features of your products or services. It can also help build trust with potential customers, as it shows that you are willing to take the time to carefully craft your messaging.

In addition to persuading and building trust, good copywriting can also help with SEO. Well-written, keyword-rich copy can improve your search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find your company online.

Overall, good quality copywriting is essential for any B2B technology company looking to effectively market their products and services. It helps to clearly communicate the value of your offerings, build trust with potential customers, and improve your online visibility. Investing in strong copywriting can pay off in a big way for your business.

My initial comments:

It’s easy to see how an AI would come up with this, as it’s very formulaic and uses some basic rhetorical techniques without a hint of irony, making it read like a high school book report. (“In The Return of the Native, the importance of the heath as a character cannot be overstated…”) It’s readable, but bland and repetitive, and with no sense of who its audience is.

The repeated phrases are a bit of a giveaway, too (“build trust”, “potential customers”, “products and services”). And it uses “their” instead of “its” when referring to an organisation, which every Radix writer knows is VERY WRONG and punishable by the removal of cake privileges.

Eagle-eyed readers will also have noticed that it confuses “cannot be understated” with “cannot be overstated”, which destroys the logic of the opening sentence.

My guess: AI. No human would ever use the phrase “keyword-rich”.

Actual author: AI

Version 3: Human writer?

Marketing to B2B decision makers? Without good copywriting, you might as well not bother.

Picture your ideal customer. Why should they buy your product or service? Great. Now try to explain that again, without words.

The truth is, every piece of marketing stands or falls by the message it delivers. You can build the world’s best B2B campaign – you can bullseye the targeting, the positioning, the execution, and the design – but ultimately, you need to tell your audience something.

Usually, that means copy.

Of the dozen most-used content types in B2B marketing, at least eight are copywriting-based. And not just blog posts, case studies, and thought leadership articles, either; every infographic needs a narrative. Videos need scripts.

That’s a lot of words. And behind each one, there’s thought. Structure. Empathy. Storytelling. Finding the angle – and explaining it the right way – to capture your audience’s attention. Honing your message so it lands. Sticks. Resonates.

Your marketing can deliver your message to the perfect person, at the perfect moment, in the most appropriate way. But when they unwrap that box, all you have to convince them is copy.

And that is why copywriting’s important.

Of course, you could always try expressionist dance…

My initial comments:

I’m not sure AI would opt for quite so many single-word sentences without being explicitly trained to hit this tone of voice. It is exactly 200 words, though (kudos), and it’s engaging, even while suffering from an excess of personality.

The main thing that stands out here is it chooses a single message and hammers it home; the writer knows they only have 200 words to work with, and they want to create maximum impact with them. It also clearly draws on a deep understanding of the topic and the audience, and uses a voice that confidently takes calculated risks to elicit an emotional response from the reader.

One final observation: the writer has linked out to a credible source to substantiate their claims, which is not something an AI would think to do.

My guess: Human

Actual author: Human

A useful tool, but not a replacement for high-quality copywriting

As it turned out, spotting the bot was pretty easy, and the copy it produced was passable but flawed. One of the key reasons for this is that the researchers at OpenAI didn’t initially develop ChatGPT to write, they developed it to chat – to answer questions in a conversational way.

The AI is fine at providing readable definitions and summarising key points on a given topic (though its responses may sometimes lack logical rigour and factual accuracy). But it doesn’t have the empathy and audience understanding to write marketing copy that makes readers think, feel, and act in certain ways.

There’s also an absence of critical thought. The AI takes its training data at face value, and can’t judge the relative importance of different points, or assess the authority and relevance of its sources. It can’t connect apparently unrelated concepts, or draw on insights based on lived experience or shared in conversations between peers.

And, like all AI models, biases in the training data and small variations in the input phrasing will affect ChatGPT’s outputs, so it can’t be left to operate without extensive human oversight.

However, as future iterations emerge, there will almost certainly be commercial applications of the technology in writing some basic B2B content and communications, while professional copywriters oversee its work and handle more complex, high-value projects themselves. Like many other industries that have embraced AI, a “better together” approach, with humans and AI working side by side, is the most likely outcome.

For now, ChatGPT is all set to give the world more versatile and capable chatbots for customer service and sales. It’s likely to find a home helping busy professionals write day-to-day communications. And it certainly has a place in software engineering, helping developers to quickly write and debug code.

But, for high-quality B2B copywriting that has an impact on readers and delivers the results marketers need, an expert human writer is still essential.

Still want more? No problem.

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