Category: Content Format Tips

B2B Content Hall of Fame: how CB Insights created a God-tier newsletter

Posted on by The Radix Team

As a B2B technology copywriter, I regularly part with my email address in return for the chance to look at a research report, eBook – whatever I need to add depth and credibility to the content I’m writing.

The result is an inbox swimming with newsletters from every tech field and industry. (Yes, I know I should systematically unsubscribe. Just like I know I should make myself lunch, instead of hitting Nemo’s.)

Unless they’re relevant to what I’m working on at the second they arrive, most of these newsletters are terminated on sight. But there’s one exception. The newsletter from CB Insights.

I’ll leave that newsletter be. And then, when a brief gets delayed and I find myself with a spare ten minutes, I’ll go and find it, and open it up. Sometimes I’ll even right-click and download the pictures. And then turn my screen towards my colleague, and show them an Amazon patent for a flying distribution fortress. Or a wildly inappropriate data visualisation.

And occasionally, even though I’m far from the company’s target audience, they’ll be something of genuine use to me – or anyone working in the tech sector. Like a neat little guide to Bitcoin and blockchain.

It seems I’m not alone in making an exception for CB Insights’ newsletter. Six times a week, it goes out to nearly 370,000 people – a six times its circulation in 2014.

Here are a few things that, IMHO, the CB Insights is getting very right…

It’s not afraid to be edgy.

CB Insights’ subject lines are short and rarely sweet. Here’s a selection from the last few months:

  • your analysts are wasting $25K
  • depressing bar chart
  •  Silicon Valley petting zoo
  • deathless cars
  • 86 page report – FinTech deals boom
  •  Slack is a waste of time
  • Zelda – sooo popular
  • an IoT butt plug
  • AI kills 10 million jobs
  • Peter Thiel loves millennial blood

Make no mistake: CB Insights wants your attention. It’s more important than taste, decency, and sometimes, even relevance.

That said, the newsletter will rarely serve you up clickbait without delivering something at least slightly nutritious in return, even if it’s just a lesson in how not to conduct a survey:

CB Insights’ boldness is understandable, when you consider every bit of frivolity is underpinned by cold, hard a-b (and in this case, c) testing. And that post – go on, click the link, but come back – leads me to another of their strengths…

It shares genuinely useful stuff.

Remember that blockchain guide I mentioned before? It’s far from the only useful content I’ve received from CB Insights. And I’m not even in the company’s target audience.

If you’re a startup or a venture capitalist, you’ll find predictions, patents, and insights into who and what are being mentioned on public company’s earnings calls.

In addition to this home-spun content, you’ll get a well-curated set of articles from around the internet, all teased in the house style – i.e. with lovingly crafted headers such as ‘Tortoises against bot abuse’.

And, if the edition’s attributed to CEO Anand Sanwal, you’ll always receive something even more useful – the reassurance that someone loves you.

It ropes its readers into making the content.

When you’ve an engaged readership in the hundreds of thousands, you’ve a ready-made research group. CB Insights’ newsletter regularly contains bracketed competitions, designed to gauge reader opinion on hot topics. This provides the company with:

  • Fresh newsletter content for a number of consecutive weeks
  • Another reason to open – will your contender have made it into the next round?
  • Fascinating results…

It’s at a massively unfair advantage. The scoundrels…

As professional a producer, aggregator and analyser of data, CB Insights is in an enviable position when it comes to creating compelling newsletter content.

But that doesn’t diminish the company’s achievement. After all, it’s the tactics it uses – its braveness with tone, its faith in testing and optimisation, the way it expertly mixes the valuable with the laughable, the way it weaponises its readership…  – that make its newsletter game so ridiculously strong.

Oh, and the clever bastards have also made sure it’s staggeringly easy to sign up for. (Yes, you probably should.)

Every month, a different Radix copywriter will nominate a piece of B2B writing for our Radix B2B Content Hall of Fame (essentially a compendium of projects we wish we’d worked on), and explain what makes it work. If you’d like to suggest an inductee, please do get in touch.

B2B website copywriting: why it’s all about your customer

Posted on by The Radix Team

The customer is always right.

It’s a mantra that’s stood businesses in good stead for centuries. But its meaning goes far beyond the customer service advisor nodding along while being shouted at by a customer.

In B2B today, websites are usually the business battleground. With so many alternatives a click away, you have to get it right to stay competitive. And here too, the customer (or the reader) needs to come first.

So why do so many B2B sites manage to get it wrong?

In the copywriting world, we’re used to hearing horror stories of businesses that start new website projects from a design point of view, and end up neglecting the copy altogether. The result is a completely new website in appearance, but with the same old copy or, worse, copy that was hastily cobbled together at the end of the project.

Content like that is always going to let your customer down.

In an interview for Business Reporter, Good Growth’s James Hammersley used the M&S failed website reboot of 2013 and its 8.1% drop in sales, to highlight the perils of failing to put the customer first. He states the answer to creating better websites is rarely a technology issue – or even a new website altogether.

It’s thinking about your customer. And often, that’s a writing thing.

So to avoid a costly nightmare before undertaking any web copy project, ask yourself these nine vital questions (they’re taken from David’s Nine Sacred Principles of Badass B2B Web Copy):

Question 1: What are we trying to achieve?

Think of any website you truly admire. I’ll hazard a guess and say it’s simple, informative, and gets to the point – right? It tells you exactly what you’re looking for, with minimal effort on your behalf. That’s the essence of great web copy.

At each stage you need to ask yourself: “so what?”. It’s a really good way of checking your copy and you’ll likely highlight anything unnecessary. If you find something that doesn’t help you achieve your goal, get rid of it straight away.

And one last thing: doing something because your competitors are doing it isn’t a good enough reason. Make sure all your decisions are backed up by experience, data, and a clear sense of purpose.

Watch: The First Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Clarity.

Question 2: What does the customer want to read first?

You’re not special. There, I said it.

And neither’s your website. Given that there are currently… [Googles]… 1.3 billion websites in the world, chances are at least some of them do exactly what you do.

So when someone finds one of your pages, what’s the first thing they see? Lots of copy? Stock photos? Aspirational words? If you don’t know already, that’s a big red flag.

Why? Because what’s important to you may not be important to your visitors. And if you don’t grab their attention within the first line, you’ll likely lose them to one of those other sites. For good.

So think about where your visitor has arrived from (perhaps Google, a social share, or another referring page). This tells you what they’re expecting to find… and you can use that thought as the basis for your copy brief.

And remember, keep it simple.

Watch: The Second Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Focus

Question 3: What does the reader truly care about?

Or more precisely, what are their problems, and how can they begin to overcome them?

Simply, it’s not all about you. In fact, it’s not about you whatsoever. You need to speak your customer’s language and talk how they talk.

That’s easier said than done because, let’s be honest, you’re programmed to believe your product or service is the best. But you need to keep quiet about that (for now at least).

Instead, you need to demonstrate that you understand the reader’s issues, and that you have solutions.

Watch: The Third Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Perspective

Question 4: What information are they really trying to find?

Take a moment to think about your current web pages. Are they pages that you think your customers want, or pages your customers actually want? Often, there’s a big difference – and this is where you need hard data to back up your decisions.

Luckily, there are a couple of simple things you can do to discover what your customers want, without even asking them directly:

Web analytics: find out which pages people predominantly arrive at, and where they go to from there. Also, consider the search engine terms (keywords) they used to get there.

Search: if you’ve got a search box on your site, the terms people have entered into it are a goldmine of information. This will also tell you the kind of words and terminology customers prefer to use, i.e. if you’re not using the words your customers are using, they’re not going to find what they’re looking for.

Indeed, the same principle can be applied to Google. Things like Google Trends can be a treasure trove of insight into the words and phrases people are using when looking for something in particular.

Watch: The Fourth Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Kindness

Question 5: What language does our customer use?

Back in the day, copywriters were often given a spreadsheet of “keywords” to smuggle into the copy. And if they were lucky, they’d get this before writing, and not be expected to crowbar them in afterwards.

Thankfully due to a change in Google’s algorithms, keyword-crowbarring is now a rare request (and one we can comfortably decline). It leaves copywriters to instead focus on writing valuable content that strikes a chord with readers.

That’s not to say that SEO and keyword research no longer matter – far from it. We still get the spreadsheets, and they’re still valuable. It’s just that now we use them to help us write for people, not just for Google. Because they tell us the words that your audience can relate to.

Watch: The Fifth Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Empathy

Question 6: Do we have something genuine to say?

If you don’t – no matter how hard you try – your audience will see right through you. And remember you for it as well.

You come across examples of it every day. Think about the clickbait links you see at the bottom of genuine online articles. And now consider the poor fool who’s had to write that content because they have nothing constructive or interesting to say.

It’s an important factor when writing copy. No matter how much you want a shed-load of traffic to go to your website, there’s absolutely no point in trying to trick people into coming to it, if all they do when they arrive is shrug, and click “back”.

(Here’s a hint: if you’re thinking “traffic”, and not “reader”, you’re doing it wrong.)

Watch: The Sixth Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Integrity

Question 7: How quickly will they get the point?

B2B web copy needs to work on several levels – because that’s how people read.

There’s the five second-skimmer who’ll be fairly random about where they look – focusing on titles, captions and bullet points. But there’ll also be the detailed readers, who want as much information as possible. And everyone in between.

And guess what? Your website copy needs to accommodate every one of them.

Simply, your copy needs to be straightforward and do exactly what it says on the tin. Otherwise it’ll cause confusion and drop off. This also goes for you other copy (print, emails and adverts).

Watch: The Seventh Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Consistency

Question 8: What do we want them to do next?

To avoid the risk of visitors dropping off a website, a good copywriter will always give users an escape route from a particular page.

This could be in the form of a call to action or a link to another connected page within the same website. But if the copy just kind of…stops, your visitors won’t see any logical next step or action. They will simply leave.

So what do you do? Simple – have the natural next step in mind from the moment you start writing the copywriting brief.

Watch: The Eigth Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Prescience

Question 9: How should we order the site creation?

Think of your website like a big tree. Your homepage is the trunk. And the roots, they’re what feeds it – say, referrals from Google. (Or Bing. Hey, it could happen.) And your leaves and branches? They’re every other page on the site.

It might sound counter-intuitive, but when writing a website, it’s always best to start with the leaves, then the branches. That’s where your bread and butter is – the really granular detail.

Once you know how you’re delivering these arguments, it’s easier see the themes and the highlights, and to be consistent as you work your way back, through the branches, to the trunk.

So if you can, brief your writer on the detail first, then zoom out.

Watch: The Final Principle of Badass B2B Web Copy – Patience

Nine easy steps – simple, right?

Website copywriting projects are seldom as straightforward as they seem. And hitting the mark rarely comes easy.

Websites that appear simple probably look that way because they took the longest to craft and refine. But once you have the basics down, the rest is a process of test and learn – figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and refining accordingly.

If you’re in doubt, think about your reader. In the end, they’re all that matters anyway.

Want more detail? Grab The Nine Sacred Principles of Badass B2B Web Copy. (It’s free, and we won’t even ask you for your email address.)

Podcast 59: writing email subject lines, B2B InTech 2018

Posted on by The Radix Team

Here’s a simple fact. Your B2B marketing email can be as good as you want, and if your subject line’s no good, nobody will read it.

But here’s where things get really meta… even if your subject line is brilliant, two thirds of your audience are still not going to open your email. That means, most of the time, the subject line and preview text is the only part that will reliably get read.

We tend to think of subject lines as a functional thing, just to get the email opened. But more often than not, they’re all the copy you’ve got.

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy: The B2B Copywriting Podcast, we’re joined by senior copywriter and content lead Steve George, who’ll share:

  • His five go-to approaches for B2B email subject lines
  • How mobile usage is affecting subject line copywriting (in more ways than you think)
  • Why we might need to think differently about what a subject line is for
  • Whether his choice of hat makes a difference to voice and tone

You can also hear our special report from B2B InTech 2018, where we’ll recap favourite sessions, and talk to senior tech marketers, like Scott Stockwell of IBM’s Watson IoT and Malin Liden from SAP, about what they got out of the day.

Want to contact the show?

We want to hear from you. You’ll find us on Twitter… or feel free to send your thoughts, jokes, questions, suggestions, complaints or hat recommendations to [email protected] (better still, email us a voice memo).

Next month, we’ll be talking about what you can expect from a messaging workshop, and inducting the first member to our B2B Content Hall of Fame. 

 

Ways to listen…

You can download the episode here (right-click and “save-as” to download). Or stream the episode in the player at the top of the page.

(Or you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here. Alternatively, add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.)

 

Credits:

Thanks to Scott Stockwell, Sinead, Lukas, Laura Sutton, Malin Liden and Alysha Ferris for allowing David to interrupt your day, and speaking with such clarity.

Audio editing and music by Bang and Smash.

 

How to write an awards entry (and win*)

Posted on by The Radix Team

Ah, January. That strange post-Christmas period where B2B copywriters relearn how to juggle briefs like we’re in some kind of crazed copy circus, all while abstaining from things that we love. But hey, at least we’ve got awards season to look forward to.

And entering? Surely all it takes is to read the questions and have a wee gush about how great you are?

If only it was so easy.

Here at Radix towers, we’re flattered to have had our share of success writing clients’ awards entries. (Heck, we’ve even been nominated and won before in our own right, too.) And with deadlines looming, we thought it made sense to share a little of our secret sauce. Anyone can answer a question, but what does it take to actually win?

From our experience, it generally pays to be mindful of the following…

Knockin’ the judges dead (metaphorically, with words)

1. Stay on point.

Typically, you only have so many words to tell the judge why your candidate is so deserving of the award. Wasting time talking about how good Steve is at Magic: The Gathering wouldn’t win any us any favours – so we don’t (we’d need a lot more than 300 words for that, anyway).

Instead, we prioritise what makes our entry so unique, ground-breaking, and interesting – and present it proudly, right at the start. (With persuasive language, in an active voice.)

2. Provide evidence. For everything.

Our clients may love what we do, but if we can’t back up our grandiose claims with cold, hard stats, then we stick to the humble truth. If we are indeed the best (perhaps even the only) specialised B2B tech copywriting agency in the South West, then you can bet we’ll have the data to prove it. Nobody likes a blagger.

Wild, unsubstantiated statements undermine the credibility of everything else in your entry. So if you can’t prove it, don’t say it.

3. Tell a compelling story.

Who wants to read endless lines of self-congratulatory guff? OK, it may be the judge’s job to do exactly that, but let’s cut them some slack. Instead, we tell a compelling story that’ll seize their attention and keep them on our side.

Especially if you know the judging process includes a committee discussion, it pays to have a succinct, powerful “THIS is the one who did THAT”.

Of course, it’s still important to articulate why the candidate is so damn great, so it pays to break it down into a digestible beginning, middle, and end. For example: What objectives were set? How were these objectives met? And what super-amazing things happened as a result?

The judge needs to be able to describe exactly why you should win, in two seconds flat.

4. Mind the marking scheme.

The more we know about how the decisions are made, the better.

Sometimes, it’s obvious. If a question is worth double points, that’s the one where we really set our stall out. Often this means getting tactical; we may be itching to talk about a particularly juicy project, but in many cases, it pays to reserve the big guns for the highest-scoring questions.

If the scoring process is mostly numerical (each answer is scored out of ten, or five) then it’s a question of marginal gains: finding enough relevant things to say in each one, to gain a one-mark edge here or there.

But if it’s a group of people discussing each entry around a table, then it’s wiser to take the best shot as early in the entry as possible. It’s simple behavioural science: if they get a feeling early on that this entry is a good one, they’ll then see every subsequent point as a confirmation.

5. Check, check, and check again…

Slinging a first draft off for consideration may be tempting (gotta hit that deadline), but chances are we’d just secure a fast-track to the recycle bin. At Radix, we value quality – no rush jobs, no jargon, and no wince-inducing typos. It’s not like there are points for good grammar and spelling, but if it comes down to a gut decision, you need to look like a contender.

So we proof, we ask for a second opinion, we proof again… and then maybe (just maybe), we send.

[Editor’s note: it is an inescapable truth that the copywriting gods will now punish us for our hubris, and you’ll spot a typo in this blog post in the next three seconds. We can only apologise; such ancient and mischievous forces are beyond our control.]

The clock is ticking.

Most importantly, you do actually have to meet the entry deadline. (Yes, we know most awards end up extending the deadline “by popular demand” *cough* but you can’t rely on that.)

It’s not uncommon for an awards entry to run to 2,000 words or more. So if it’s going to be good, you do need to book out a fair chunk of time.

(Of course, nobody does… which might just be why a certain B2B copywriting agency finds late January tends to bring a sudden influx of urgent awards entries to write. Having ten writers in a room does mean we can turn things around pretty fast.)

If you have any questions about this post, or you’d like some help from Radix in hitting your own scary deadline, just get in touch at [email protected]

—

* Radix Communications Ltd cannot guarantee that you will win an award. Obviously. But by reading this far you have already won our esteem and our thanks. Well done you.

Podcast 57: how to write up a B2B marketing event

Posted on by George Reith

Whether it’s a launch party, industry expo, or dinner gala, B2B marketing events happen every day. To get the greatest mileage out of all their hard work, a marketer will often want a copywriter there to capture the day in beautiful prose.

Sounds easy enough. But as a writer, it’s really easy to get this job horribly, horribly wrong.

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy David, Fiona and I share our dos and don’ts for tackling client events, as well as our own personal event successes and horror stories.

Listen now to discover:

  • Why you should always record an event twice
  • How events can make you a much better writer
  • Why it’s essential to capture the ‘feel’ of an event
  • What every writer needs to know before they set off

…and if you want to read the event copywriting blog post I plug so subtly in the conversation, you’ll find that here.

How to listen

You can download the episode here (right-click and “save-as” to download). Or stream the episode in the player at the top of the page.

(Or you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here. Alternatively, add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.)

Credits

Intro and outro music by Industrial and Marine.

How long should a blog be?

Posted on by George Reith

Blogs began life as “weblogs:” personal pages people used to catalogue their experiences. An intimate, personal and often raw format, businesses quickly began trying to capture this same kind of energy in their own blogs.

But while you can write about how your day went in a few hundred words, you need a lot more page real estate to get into a meaty business technology topic.

So how long can a business blog be before it overstays its welcome? And how long should a blog be to engage your audience?

How long is a piece of string?

Other B2B content formats tend to have strictly defined layouts and lengths. We all have a rough idea how long an email or social media post can be before it becomes unbearably long. And though many marketers often see white papers and ebooks as interchangeable (here’s a guide to help you tell the difference), the general consensus is that these are longer-form pieces of 1,500 words or more.

But the blog? The blog can be a wide range of lengths – and there’s not a lot of agreement on what kind of word count is best for engaging your audience.

What does the research say?

When it comes to engagement, a quick Google will yield a lot of opinion pieces, articles and scientific-looking tables about what size of post is best.

One type of opinion you’ll see regularly is the idea that in the smartphone age attention spans are too low for you to hold attention after a certain number of words. And it seems the blogging community has taken this message to heart, with WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg claiming that the average WordPress post is just 280 words long.

So, is brevity the soul of blog engagement? The research would beg to differ.

Buffer Social’s study found that blogs got the best engagement at 1,600 words. Other common stats support long-form blogs as better for engagement, and search ranking:

  • On average, top ranked searches have 2,416 words
  • Long content outperforms short-form posts by 40.54%

Despite the numbers being fairly convincing, Rand Fishkin of Moz says we should be careful about taking this data at face value.

After all, the data leaves a lot of questions unasked. Specifically, when it comes to how different length posts rank in search, we need to ask:

  • What set of keywords does this apply to?
  • Will the keywords I use see similar results?
  • Is correlation the same as causation?

I’ll leave the first two questions to the SEO experts out there, but when it comes to correlation and causation: it’s safe to say there’s very little. While long content may be more engaging and rank higher, it doesn’t do those things just because it’s long. If I wrote the word “blob” 600 times, that would be no more or less readable and engaging than if I wrote it 1,500 times.

The depth-length correlation

Long posts tend to engage and rank better, but that’s not necessarily because they’re long. In general, it’s because longer posts will go into greater depth on a topic and (hopefully) be better researched. And we all know a little research and depth goes a long way to creating better content.

The key is in that depth, though. The longer word count merely allows for it. In fact, I’d go as far as to say word count is only earned once the depth is there. Radix’s own creative director David McGuire hit the nail on the head in a recent LinkedIn post, saying “a longer blog post isn’t necessarily better; it just has more words.”

If you were to chart depth against word count on a poorly drawn WordArt graph, it might look something like this:

To summarise this wonky majesty: if you have a lot of depth, you can have a lot of words without turning your blog into a shallow load of waffle.

It’s time to earn your word count

So, the next time you look at an in-progress blog and ask “is this the right length?”, think first about whether it has the right depth to justify that length.

If you’re just putting out a quick opinion piece on a topic, 400 words may be enough. If you’re really going to town on the research though, give yourself permission to break the 1,500-word barrier.

For more copywriting tips, tricks and blogs of varying length, subscribe to our monthly insights email.

White papers v ebooks: what are they, who are they for, and which do you need?

Posted on by John Kerrison

Whether it’s Ali vs Frasier or Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, it seems we have a societal obsession with pitching heavyweights against each other to see who comes out on top.

The purpose of this blog is to compare two of content marketing’s “big hitters” – white papers and ebooks – to see where their different strengths lie and what sets them apart.

Hopefully this will act as a helpful guide you can use to decide what kind of content you want to create. Although there’s also a chance I might lose focus and veer off with some bizarre analogy in just two paragraphs’ time.

Why all the confusion?

Back in my content writing “salad days”, I didn’t really see a real distinction between an ebook and white paper. Both just seemed like long and daunting assets I might soon get asked to create.

To me they were a bit like the content version of Nick Nolte and Gary Busey: I knew without doubt that they were entirely different things, but couldn’t figure out exactly what the differences were—or if in fact they were dissimilar enough for the industry to really need both.

Our Twitter interactions with other copywriters tell me I wasn’t alone in this confusion.

Of course, looking back, I was wrong. Nick Nolte actually has a pretty decent back catalogue if you squint, and it turned out the only reason I so often confused the two is an arrest photo of Nick where he looks like he’s playing the lead role in a Gary Busey biopic.

(I did warn you there was a tenuous analogy coming.)

The point I’m trying to make – obviously – is that despite initial impressions, white papers and ebooks are very different. Here are three reasons why.

1. Appearance

White papers and ebooks are both pretty lengthy pieces of content, but that’s really where the similarities end.

One of the big differences is that an ebook is more likely to try and hold your attention with bold design choices like illustrations, graphics, embedded videos and charts to make its content easier to scan and digest.

The assumption is, if you’re reading a white paper you’ve willingly sought out some in-depth detail. An ebook on the other hand is trying to introduce a subject to you, and may use these extra touches to keep your attention.

In my mind, to make the distinction, I always imagine the two pieces as a comedy odd-couple. The ebook being a young, trendy teenager, obsessed with design and new-media, and the white paper being the stuffy older brother in a button-down shirt carrying a handful of spreadsheets.

[Editor: wait, you mean like this?]

Okay, that’s a little unfair—unless you happen to like stuffy older brothers—but a white paper is absolutely more likely to have long chunks of text, and in-depth explanations and statistics than it is an embedded video or image.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. It really depends who you’re trying to target and what you want to say. Ultimately, it all comes down to the different roles the pieces play…

2. Funnel Stage and Purpose

One of the reasons I described the ebook as the younger brother is because is because it’s almost always used earlier in the marketing funnel. It’s largely used to present an idea, issue or trend whereas a whitepaper will drill down into that subject and find the detail and finer points within it.

Audience

Part of the reason for these different levels of detail are that the pieces are intended for different audiences.

There are no hard and fast rules around this, but maybe a hypothetical example will help:

Imagine you’re an IT services provider trying to persuade companies to adopt your SaaS offering. There are two routes you could take here: you could aim for the upper levels of the organization and try and outline the business benefits of Software-as-a-Service.

To do this, you might send the CEO an eBook talking about the cost savings and innovative capabilities this IT model can deliver. Right here you want to hit the top-level benefits, have pull stats jumping out of the page, and elements that sell the perks of the solution even when skim-read.

Your other approach might be to target the head of IT.

Now, it’s likely that someone in this position will already be aware of SaaS, so here you may send a whitepaper detailing the technical specifics of how your particular solution works in practice.

This would include details around what migration would require, how moving to the cloud may affect the way the department is run in future, and other details a technically-focused CTO would understand and care about above business benefits. It’s also likely to contain facts and stats about other organizations using similar services, based on research studies and surveys.

Essentially, a whitepaper provides the experts’ view of a specific subject for people who need that level of detail. An eBook on the other hand is designed to whet the audience’s appetite and encourage them to learn more.

And which one wins? Let’s call it a draw.

Still not sure which would be best for you? Need to know more? Want to commission us to write some terrifying ebook/white paper hybrid? Get in touch with a member of the team, and we’ll be glad to have a chat.

Header image adapted from a photo by Garrhet Sampson on Unsplash.

Booking a successful B2B web copy project: a clients’ FAQ

Posted on by John Kerrison

Often, the first really meaningful interaction your customers have with you is through your website. They may have come across you on social media or heard of you through word of mouth, but your website is where they’ll dig in, find the information they need, and start to make a decision on whether they want to get in touch.

That’s why your website copy is so important.

And here at Radix, we’ve seen that reflected in recent years, with four years’ continuous growth in website copy as a proportion of our work.

Where once B2B marketers might have tried to carry out the writing in-house, they’re increasingly turning to professional copywriters like us when it’s time to renew the site. (Whether that’s because their old site wasn’t giving them the results they wanted, or they simply remember what a nightmare the job was last time out, we can’t say.)

For most, running a web copy project will be a fairly rare occurrence – so clients tend to ask us the same (completely understandable) questions:

“What do you need from me to write our web copy?”

There are quite a few bits of information which will make it easier for us to give you an accurate quote and – ultimately – to write your copy the way you want it. And we can get that knowledge from you in a number of different ways.

In the past, we’ve held immersive workshops in clients’ offices, or a series of calls with heads of departments to ensure we glean exactly what it is they need their website to do, what information each individual page needs to contain, and how the overall feel of the site needs to come across.

But generally, we’ll be looking for:

1. A proposed sitemap, if you have one

A sitemap makes it much easier for us to identify what your needs are and provide an accurate quote. (If you have a wireframe or preliminary design too, so much the better, as we can get a feel for how much copy you’ll need on each page).

2. A sense of your audience, and their buying process

It’s also great if we know exactly who your web visitors are, and where they tend to arrive from. For example, a curious visitor with little knowledge about the finer details of your industry is going to need different information than a seasoned industry expert. Also, how much do they already know about you? Will they be turning up fresh from Google (and how much is search ranking a priority), or are they following up to confirm you’re credible, after a different initial point of contact?

3. How your brand should sound

The tone and voice of the various areas of your website – and your overall brand – are very important.

Your voice needs to be consistent, as a representation of the personality of your brand. But we tailor the tone to your audience’s needs as they interact with the site. Even for the same visitor, the tone you use for a cheery greeting might be completely inappropriate for an error message.

(Though as our colleague Katy pointed out, even Microsoft can get that one wrong.)

So as we go along, it helps us to understand the context of each page – why somebody would read it, and how they’re likely to feel about that.

4. What each page needs to say

Perhaps the most obvious part – but, potentially, the most time-consuming. Because we need to know all the information you want on every page of your site – and which parts of that information are most important to your audience.

Of course, if you have an existing page of content to point us at, that’s somewhat easier. But even then, it’s helpful to have some guidance: what’s working for you, what’s not, and what’s new. You’re refreshing the site for a reason, after all.

5. Some idea of your SEO requirements

If you’d like the site to perform well on Google, it’ll be useful to have some kind of keyword strategy and/or research, so we can make sure each page aligns with what your audience are looking for, using the same language as they will. We’ll talk more about this in a bit.

“What if I don’t know about the voice and tone I want to adopt?”

Lots of brands already have extensive brand usage guidelines when they come to us – and some of them are even useful. But if you don’t, there’s no need to worry: as experienced copywriters, tone and voice are our marmite and toast.

Broadly, there are two approaches we can take. We can chat about your brand, your existing copy and what you do and don’t like, then approximate something for you. Or we can conduct a proper voice and tone workshop, and give you a short, usable document with some rules, suggestions, hints and examples.

(The former is OK if we’re the only ones writing for you; if you have writers in-house too, the guide is a good idea, because it can help you to stay consistent.)

“What’s the best stage to bring a copywriter into my web project?”

Most of our clients come to us with a plan for their site, normally devised between them and their web developer, and ask us to populate the pages. That makes it easy for us to give you an accurate quote and delivery schedule.

However, we’re open to other ways of working too. So, if you’d like our input on how many pages we think you should have and what should go on each one then we’re more than happy to put our experience to good use.

Likewise, some people like to create the copy first, and the design later. That’s fine by us.

“Do you write pages that are short/long/scrolling/really long/parallax/mobile/really, really long?”

The short answer is yes. Whatever kind of web page you want (so long as it contains words).

There’s been something of a cultural shift in web design over the last few years which has seen a rise in more mobile-friendly, scrolling websites. These tend to have smaller chunks of copy in panels scattered across the length of the page, whereas a traditional website will have tabs at the top of the page and longer sections of copy.

So alongside the traditional “250-words, title, copy and some bullet points” kind of web page, our price list also includes options to buy your web copy by the chunk. So we can build a quote for whatever kind of page you – and your web designer – can dream up.

“Do you do web design?”

Nope. We’re strictly words-only.

BUT we do often work in tandem with freelance designers and web developers, agencies, and in-house experts. We’re happy to collaborate in this way if you think it would add to the process, and may even be able to recommend someone if that would help.

“What’s your approach to SEO?”

Ah. We could (and possibly should) write a whole blog post about this. But in short…

We’re not search engine specialists, but we act on guidance SEO experts provide – like keyword recommendations and research. If one of your site’s objectives is to attract search engine traffic, it’s a good idea to work with an SEO consultant (as well as – not instead of – your copywriter, of course).

Most of the copy on your website is aimed at people. Some of the rest is primarily there to please search engine robots. And some parts (like your page title) is a mixture of the two.

Usually, we’ll work on the people-facing parts of your copy (on-page body text, meta description), incorporating keyword recommendations as appropriate, and leave the search engine-facing bits to the experts. Where the copy is dual-purpose (titles, headers, alt text), we tend to collaborate – generally, we’ll suggest something, then recommend you have your SEO team tweak it as appropriate.

We find it’s a good balance, because refinements to Google’s algorithm improved its ability to prioritise quality content, satisfying at the intent behind each search – there are fewer tricks and shortcuts. We use the keyword research to deduce your web visitor’s intent, then – without focusing too much on the technicalities – simply write the best page we can.

It seems to work well – and we’re regularly recommended for website projects by SEO agencies, so they must be happy too.

“Who else have you written web copy for?”

We’ve had the pleasure of writing web copy for dozens of B2B, technology and industrial brands – including some of the world’s largest organisations.

Sometimes, that work is confidential (we’re happy to namedrop, but only in private) – but to give you a flavour, a few sites we are allowed to tell you about include:

Aon Employee Benefits

VoxGen – conversational software and services

Tectrade – cloud services and consultancy

TomTom – fleet tracking technology

The Daniel Group – customer feedback for industry

Penzance Dry Dock – industrial and marine operations

“How much will my new web copy cost?”

Once, copywriters could quote a flat, per-page price for web copy. But that was when pages were all fairly standard. These days, a page could be anything from a 30-word text panel and a couple of buttons to a 1000-word Homerian epic in parallax form.

That’s why our Senior Account Managers will work hard to define the exact scope of the copy you want, and build you an accurate quote in advance.

But that’s not to say we can’t give you a good, ballpark idea before your sitemap is finalised. All the components we use to build our quotes – various sizes of panels and pages – are included in our price list, so it’s easy enough to get a thumbnail picture if you know the rough dimensions of the site.

If you’d like a copy of the price list, do get in touch.

“How much time will I need?”               

If history is any guide, significantly more than you’ve allowed so far. There’s something about web projects (the temptation to make last-minute additions to the site, maybe) which means they never seem to run to schedule.

But whatever’s delaying things, it won’t be the copy. We’ll give you a firm schedule alongside your quote, and we’ll stick to it.

Obviously, that schedule will depend on the scale of the site, and the amount of input we need from you and your stakeholders. But given a little advance notice, we’ve been known to take smaller sites from fact-find conversation to signed-off copy within a matter of days.

Got any more questions? Our Account Management team are here to talk you through the process. Please drop us a line…

Podcast 48: B2B blogging keeps changing – so how do you write a good post?

Posted on by The Radix Team

Blogs are one of the most-used content tactics by B2B marketers, according to research by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. (In fact, they’re the second most used.)

And guess what? Here at Radix, we wrote more blog posts in 2016 than any other content format.

Blogging is still big in business to business marketing – but things are changing, fast. In our recent #b2bcopychat, some people were noticing a trend for longer, better-researched blogs… while others had heard whispers that the format might be dying out.

Which is true – or could it even be both? Join Fiona, David and me as we discuss why blogs play such a huge role in B2B marketing, and how to write blog posts that readers will want to engage with.

Listen in now and find out:

  • Why blogs are such a versatile format
  • Why they’re getting longer, better, and more expensive
  • The importance of quality, and niches
  • Our top tips for writing quality blog posts
  • … and more

You can download the episode here (right-click and “save-as” to download). Or stream the episode in the player at the top of the page.

(Or you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here. Alternatively, add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.)

Notes from this episode…

Want to know what a present participle is? Then check out this explanation over on Grammar Monster.

Thanks to Paul Hewerdine of Earnest, and the #b2bcopychat gang for their input to this episode.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Everything you need to know about writing a B2B case study

Posted on by The Radix Team

The written case study is the WD-40 of B2B marketing tools.

It’s been around forever, it’s not exactly glamorous, and it’s popular for one simple reason. It works. (Regularly lubricating those narrow few inches at the base of the sales and marketing funnel.)

The power of the case study is easy to understand. What’s more persuasive than learning how a company has helped someone just like you? And helped them so much, they’ll sign up to tell the world about it?

But some case studies are way more powerful than others. Because – let’s be clear about this – writing a genuinely brilliant case study is tough.

You need 100% commitment from your company and the customer. You need above average interviewing and writing skills.

And, of course, you need the magic formula…

Prologue: the case study formula

Unlike a can of WD-40, what goes into a case study is far from a trade secret. As Radix’s glorious leader explained in a recent B2B Copy Chat, the basic formula is simple:

You can mess with the order of these elements, but unless you’re writing for a particularly iconoclastic brand, you’ll save yourself both time and trauma by leaving well alone.

This flow is natural and chronological, and provides a solid structure for everything from your interview questions to your first draft.

Chapter one: getting the background

Track down the best person talk to about the case study. This will usually be the customer’s main point of contact with your company.

Arrange a quick call with them to discuss:

  • What the customer does
  • What the customer bought
  • What they think the case study should focus on
  • Who you should talk to at the customer company, and what their job entails
  • Where the case study will be published
  • If there’s an existing template you need to work to

You’ll also want to establish who’ll attend the call with the customer, and who will lead.

Your ideal scenario is as follows:

  • You will lead the call. You’ve a short time to get all the information you need to write this thing. Plus, it’s important to have the freedom to go off-script if you suddenly spot a great new angle on the story.
  • Only the customer (and you) will attend. In our heart of hearts, we all know the quality of a telephone call is inversely proportional to the number of people on the line.

By the time you’re done, you should have a basic understanding of the ‘solution’ part of your case study – i.e. what was sold, when, and how, be it a product, service, or combination of both.

This won’t just help you prepare for the customer call, it’ll let you focus on the stuff that only they can tell you.

Chapter two: writing your questions

Remember the other three bits of the formula? The challenge the customer was facing, the benefits (how the solution solved those challenges – and then some!) and the customer’s overwhelmingly positive feelings about the whole experience?

Put together a list of open questions, designed to give the customer ample chance to talk to each of these subjects.

Always prepare more questions that you think you’ll have time for, and always prioritise, aiming to cover the most essential points early on. (If you need extra inspiration, my colleague George has some excellent advice on weird-but-powerful questions, many of which can be used to great effect in a case study interview.)

Chapter three: talking to the customer

Yes, Jason. A thousand times, yes. In these thirty or so minutes, the case study’s potential for greatness will be decided.

The material you gather from the customer will dictate how much – or little – you can achieve at your keyboard later on.

Here’s how to run the call.

  1. Arrive first – you’re representing yourself and the brand, if you work for an agency, and leaving a customer hanging is always less than professional
  2. Greet the customer warmly when they join, and introduce yourself
  3. Recap the purpose of the call
  4. Check how long the customer has (and reprioritise your questions accordingly)
  5. Ask if you can record the call, and assuming they agree, set your recorder rolling
  6. Work through your questions – keeping an ear open for answers that suggest further questions, and an eye on the clock
  7. Mentally – or literally – tick off the formula elements as you cover them
  8. Press for concrete results (e.g. how much money has the solution already saved the customer? How much faster, in hours, days or weeks, can they now do the thing they do? How many extra people would they need to do this stuff manually? Etc.)
  9. Ask any bonus questions that have occurred to you during your conversation
  10. Wrap things up by thanking the customer for their time, and assuring them they’ll get to review a draft of the story before it’s published

(If you want more interviewing tips, you’ll find plenty here.)

Chapter four: writing the damn thing

You know how you work best. I always create an outline of the case study first – with sections based on the magic formula – and listen back to my recording of the call, filling in the gaps as I go.

Here are some classic best practices to guide you as you type…

Lead with your biggest result

Your headline has to capture attention, and sell the rest of the piece. Unless it really doesn’t fit with the story you’re trying to tell, be sure to put your most concrete, most impressive result front and centre. (e.g. ‘How Radix learned to write blinding B2B copy 160x faster.’)

Make the customer the hero, but keep the business case clear

A great case study pulls of the deftest of balancing acts.

It tells a hugely relatable story about human beings, but it also keep the one thing the reader really needs to know – the incredible business results – front and centre.

Write from the heart, but use subheads, box-outs, pull quotes – essentially, every trick in your pencil case – to make the those cold hard benefits leap out to someone scanning the page.

Make everyone look good

Your interviewees will often trust you with information that could be used to show their business in a bad light. When this happens, tread extra carefully.

Your job, more than anything else, is to make everyone look good. If you don’t, you risk damaging the customer’s trust in the vendor – and landing yourself with hours of major amends.

Don’t be scared to edit the customer’s ramblings

Few people train to be copywriters. If they did, there would be the same beautiful moment on every course, a couple of weeks into the first term.

The lecturer would leave the whiteboard and its arcane hieroglyphs – MOFU, CMO, ROI – turning slowly to face the hall. They’d pause just long enough to win the attention of its fifty, wide-eyed undergrads, and in a slow, patient voice, gentle as a hand placed on a shoulder, they’d say:

‘It’s OK. You can rewrite what your customer said to make it read well. They won’t sue you. If anything, they’ll be pleased.’

Do strive to keep the customer’s voice

The fact you’ve actually spoken to the customer automatically elevates your case study above a lot of the case studies already sent out into the world.

So when you add their glowing testimonial, be sure to preserve their more interesting turns of phrase and speech patterns. It’ll add life and authenticity to the finished piece.

(Frankly, I always aim to keep as much of the customer’s voice in there as humanly possible. If you can tell their story almost entirely in their own, neatly quoted words, so much the better.)

Remember the call to action

What should the reader do when they’ve finished reading? Since most case studies are designed to sit at the bottom of the funnel, the call to action will often be to get in touch with your company.

Make your call flow neatly out the story – e.g. ‘See how much faster you could write blog posts…’ – and add a placeholder until you’ve identified the best link, phone number, or email address.

Chapter five: acing the amends

Sharing the first draft of a B2B case study is a good feeling. But it’s rarely the end of the story.

Be ready to tackle amends from stakeholders at your company, then amends from the customer, then extra amends from either. Or both.

This (probably) isn’t your fault. It’s just what happens when you’re trying to please different parties, with different agendas. But if you’re charging for the work – say you work for a marketing agency, rather than the vendor itself – be sure to factor this time in when giving your quote.

Epilogue: I could drink a case of case studies

When everyone involved is fully engaged, the case study is easily one of the most rewarding content pieces to write.

You get to talk to a real human being, who daily uses the thing you’re trying to sell – giving you invaluable insight for future projects.

And you get to make a lot of people feel good about what they do.

Which, you know, is nice.

Use your new power wisely. And have fun along the way.