Insights Archives

Subject lines: the secret shortcut into the subconscious

Posted on May 29, 2018May 22, 2025 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.

How to tell a compelling brand story in a world full of heroes

Posted on February 6, 2018May 22, 2025 by Steve George

As I took stock of everything I’ve learned throughout the year, I had an interesting realisation. One of the most valuable copywriting lessons I learned this year didn’t happen in the Radix office.

It didn’t even happen in this world.

I’ve been a passionate player of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games) since my early teens. My hobby has taken me to dozens of fantasy worlds, but my experience this year really stood out – and helped me develop as a B2B copywriter.

Everyone’s a hero. So now what?

The nature of MMORPGs makes traditional video game storytelling very difficult. In a world where millions of players are running around together and constantly interacting, it’s hard to make each and every one of them feel like they are the one true saviour of the digital world – destined for glory and power above all others.

Yet, in spite of the obvious challenges, the game I played this year – Final Fantasy 14 if you’re interested – does it almost flawlessly. In the game’s world of Eorzea, every single player character is the “warrior of light”, a chosen individual destined to save the world from multiple catastrophic threats.

That got me thinking about the B2B copy I write. I’ve often found myself working on a project for a client that wants to stand out from their competition and sees themselves as a lone hero, but – at first glance – doesn’t really have any massively compelling USPs.

A crowded and competitive market is much like a world full of heroes. Every company wants to stand out and feel unique, but only a handful have an offering that’s obviously differentiated and able to deliver value above that of the alternatives.

It’s a difficult situation that many copywriters dread. But thanks to my online experiences, it’s a challenge that I’ve learned to embrace and overcome. Instead of clutching at straws and trying to scrape some kind of pseudo-unique proposition together, I’ve learned to embrace it – and devised a few tips to help you craft your own compelling stories for businesses in hero-filled markets.

Finding your individuality

The game makes every player feel like a uniquely significant hero by using:

Almost endless character customisation options
A strong supporting cast of non-player characters
A unique character development system where you can be whatever you want to be

Those tactics are great for game developers looking to achieve the same. But how exactly do they translate into tips and strategies for a brand that wants to be a hero, when its competitors are all offering the same?

The honest answer is “not directly”. But, by thinking about the principles behind those game design decisions, I’ve helpfully engineered them into three simple tips for brands that need to find the extraordinary hidden in the everyday.

Differentiate the brand through tone

So, your brand can’t do anything more than your closest competitor can. It’s a grim reality that few company stakeholders – especially those in marketing – will ever hold their hands up to. But if you can, you’ll be at an advantage.

Because products and capabilities aren’t the only way to differentiate a brand.

Voice and tone are important weapons in any brand’s arsenal. They provide a simple way of showing your reader your attitude, your ethos, and why working with you is a different experience – even if on paper the features and benefits look much the same.

Even if you can’t offer a massive amount of unique value, you can make dealing with you a unique experience – and as a copywriter, we can help you demonstrate that by talking to the customer in a unique way.

Be more open, honest and friendly than your competition. The person reading your content is going to remember that, and often simply being honest and approachable is enough to secure customer interest in an offering.

Tell your customers’ success stories

Telling real success stories is a great way to make your company look heroic – even if, realistically, many of your competitors could have solved the same problems and achieved similar outcomes.

That’s because your reader might not be looking for unique value. Often, they just need to know that you solved a real, relatable problem for a customer in their position, and that the outcomes achieved were positive and appreciated.

(By the way, if you haven’t already read Kieran’s blog post on everything you need to know about B2B case studies, you really should.)

It’s really helpful if your writer can talk directly to a satisfied customer. Often, by explaining why they chose to work with the company and what they gained from it, customers can help uncover USPs and differentiators that senior stakeholders hadn’t even considered.

Because ultimately, in your customer’s world, you’re not the hero anyway. They are.

Say the things other companies are scared to say

If you’re in a well-worn sector, where best practice is well-established and there’s little genuinely new or exciting to say, don’t fake it.

Instead, try cutting the crap.

Is there an elephant in the room that people are scared to address? Is there common jargon or shallow promises that get thrown around a lot in the marketplace? Or – if you’re feeling particularly brave – is there a glaring weakness that is common across all available solutions in your market?

Discussing the points that others are afraid to – and being open and honest about them – is a great way to make a brand stand out, and show your attitude in practice.

Whether it’s breaking the silence on an underdiscussed flaw, or just openly acknowledging that most solutions in the market are very similar and will deliver similar results, openness can pay dividends.

Don’t bullshit. Ever.

Whether they want to rise to the top of their market, make a difference to their customers or simply continue growing, every company we engage with as B2B copywriters wants to be a hero. If they have a compelling story to tell already, then that’s great – but often, they’ll look to us to provide that spark.

A clear, differentiated narrative is a luxury not everyone can afford. Especially in B2B tech, too many brands overstretch trying to look unique, and end up undermining their credibility by pretending something’s different when it’s not.

Instead, it’s up to us to find ways of making the ordinary extraordinary, and helping individuals stand out from a crowd of others with the same capabilities, on the basis of their attitude. Their ethos. Their people.

As copywriters, we’re in a unique position to make that happen. We can influence things like tone, voice and honesty in communication to help a single voice rise above the static. We don’t need to try and sex-up product offerings or call on unsubstantiated facts to fabricate a narrative that simply isn’t there.

(Even if, sometimes, we need to push back on a brief, and have those awkward conversations for the brand’s own good. Because somebody has to.)

If the offer looks the same on paper, we need to be honest about that. Because the conversation that happens next is when we can really make our chosen champion feel like the only hero in their world.

Content SOS: what to do when B2B writing goes wrong

Posted on March 11, 2019May 22, 2025 by Steve George

We’ve all been there. You (or one of your clients) have a great idea for a piece of content, it seems simple enough to create, and you drop it in with the most readily-available resource to bring it to life.

Then it happens. Flop. It’s all gone Pete-flippin’-Tong.

Perhaps it’s gone to the wrong writer – someone without the requisite knowledge of the market or subject area to do the best job first time.

Or maybe you’ve just had a stab at writing it yourself and – much like the shelving unit you were sure you could build on your own – it now hangs loosely from the wall, crying out for some expert attention.

That’s usually the point a marketer will turn to an external professional. And as a result, I find myself rescuing clients’ broken projects more often than any of us would probably care to admit.

So if you’re experiencing a content SOS, read on. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up along the way, to help you get things back on track.

#1) Settle in for a long task

One of the most common misconceptions I come across is that rescuing a piece of content is a lot easier than writing it from scratch. Not only is this incorrect, it’s the kind of thinking that can seriously hinder your content rescue operation.

A quick fix is rarely the best one, and solving this issue properly is going to take time. While yes, sometimes large swathes of the existing content may be reusable, it’s important to recognise the unique challenges posed by a project gone wrong.

There’s a higher level of stakeholder expectation than usual, because this has already gone through a failed attempt – even if that failure wasn’t yours personally.

Meeting that expectation takes time, focus, and dedication to turning this tangled mess into the best piece of content it can be. Chances are, it was rushing that got you here in the first place. Doing it again isn’t going to help you get out.

#2) Conduct a full content autopsy

Before you can fix the problems with your content, you need to understand what those problems are.

The you there is very important. Even if your angry stakeholder or bemused boss has a very clear idea of what they think is wrong with the piece, it’s important that you conduct your own analysis of the problems that conspired to cause its demise.

Often, big problems (think ‘this reads horribly’ or ‘you’ve entirely missed the point’) are caused by a series of much smaller, underlying issues with the piece. It’s on you to sniff those things out.

Inversely, one big misconception could be throwing up lots of false problems with the content. In that case, you need to be able to look past what the person giving the feedback has decided is the big problem, and determine where the piece really went off track.

It’s worth spending some time really breaking down where things went awry, so you can resolve all the problems with the piece at once – rather than treating the most prominent symptoms and hoping that cures the disease.

(And if you’re not sure of the best ways to pinpoint what you don’t like about a piece, check out David’s blog post that details 5 tests your B2B copy needs to pass.)

#3) Rebuild your story

Once you’ve identified what the major (and minor) problems are with the piece, you’ll need to start planning out a revised story or structure for it. This process can vary in difficulty depending on how much you’ve had to edit and cut away.

If you’re truly able to say that the issues are isolated to specific sections of the copy, then great – you’ve probably not got much work to do. However, in my experience, the kind of problems that cause total content failure tend to be pretty insidious.

With all of the bad cut away, you’re likely to end up with a bit of a mess of points that, while objectively correct and of value, don’t stand up on their own without a coherent narrative.

You’ve got to rebuild that narrative. You must find the thread that links the copy you’ve identified as salvageable – filling in the gaps as needed once you’ve done so.

#4) Fill in the blanks (and don’t be afraid to do some serious rewriting)

Personally, once I’ve cut out the irrelevant copy and information from a piece like this, I like to approach it as I would a completely fresh project.

The copy left over acts as a brief, giving me the key points I need to hit – and when paired with feedback on what’s missing, forms a full picture of what this piece actually needs to say, do, and look like.

The key here is looking at the previous content as source material rather than copy you need to keep. All too often I’ve seen writers try to crowbar passages from a failed piece into the revised version. Usually, that’s a mistake; while there’s nothing wrong with those passages per se, keeping them forces the writer to approach their new copy in a specific and limited way.

Much like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, a pre-existing passage clearly defines what can and cannot connect to it. Trying to drop pre-loved copy into a reworked piece puts a burden on your new creation, dictating and shaping what you can write around it.

Inevitably, this pulls the copy in a direction. And problematically – because the existing passages have been lifted from a piece that didn’t work – that direction tends to be the exact one you’re trying to get away from.

(If you’d like to learn a bit more about the differences between copyediting and rewriting, my colleague George explored the subject in detail a couple of years ago.)

There is no quick fix

The one thing I’m really trying to pass on through these tips is that fixing a problem piece of content takes three key things: time, care, and attention. It’s as much as – if not more of – a job than writing something from scratch.

Understanding that, and making your peace with it, really is half the battle.

The problem is, when you face a challenge like this, you’re usually up against the clock. Very few marketers factor an allocation for ‘total first draft failure’ into their project timelines, so it’s easy to feel the squeeze when it comes to turning a rewritten or restructured piece around.

Once you understand the value of investing a decent chunk of time into a thorough rework instead of just slapping on a few plasters and hoping for the best, it’s worth selling that idea to others around you so you’ve got the time to do this right.

If you aren’t given the luxury of that time, though, you do have options. You could always hand it off to some experts that have a lot of experience helping businesses and agencies out of situations like this – and are masters of creating great content within tight turnaround times.

Now if only I knew where you could find that…

9 ways to measure B2B content performance (better than bounce rate)

Posted on January 22, 2019May 22, 2025 by Steve George

As B2B copywriters, we all believe in the value of the content we produce. But when our clients need to prove the effectiveness of what we’ve created, all the belief in the world isn’t going to be of much help. They need to measure content performance.

That’s where analytics comes in. Analytics can prove how effective our content is, tell us what’s working and what’s not, and help refine what we do to get better results.

But analytics isn’t a magic wand that you can wave to instantly understand every aspect of content performance. What you learn will ultimately be decided by what you decide to measure. Choose poorly, and you can end up seriously misinterpreting what you customers want from your content – and your business.

To help us understand how best to measure the success and impact of our B2B content, we recently invited 3WhiteHats analytics consultant Jake Kimpton onto the Good Copy Bad Copy podcast.

In fact, Jake spent a good deal longer with us than we could include in the programme – so here’s a roundup of all the tips he shared on using analytics to work out what content works, and what doesn’t.

Bye-bye, bounce rate

According to Jake, there are two big mistakes that a huge number of marketers make when it comes to measuring content success: looking at bounce rates, and obsessing about the average time spent on a page

“Bounce rates in particular are a bit of a trap for marketers”

Firstly, he explains, bounce rates are based on averages, so they don’t give you a clear idea of individual engagement with a given page, which is what we as content creators really want to understand.

Secondly, they assume that a bounce is a bad thing. People look at bounces as deflections, drawing the conclusion that when someone leaves a page, they did so because they didn’t like what they saw. But that’s based on the obviously nonsensical notion that we all stay on websites until we find a piece of content that dissatisfies us – completely ignoring the idea that we might simply leave because we found what we came for.

Jake gave us a great example of this during our interview. “Imagine I’m browsing your website, and I come across a blog I like. I read it myself, I invite a colleague over to my desk to take a look, and I’m totally engaged with it. Then, when I’m done, I close the tab, satisfied with my experience.

“That’s a bounce. It’s an almost perfect content engagement scenario, but it’s read as a bounce.”

And he’s totally right. We perceive bounces as a negative, when really, they may represent the best possible outcomes that our content can drive.

So what should we measure instead? Engagement

The short answer is that we should be measuring the big thing that really matters to us – reader engagement. But you already knew that; it’s why you started looking at average stays on pages in the first place.

The big thing we need to change is how we measure engagement. Jake told us how the team at 3WhiteHats use reasonably simple scripts to measure things like mouse movement and navigation throughout the page to build up a much more reliable picture of who’s really engaged with content. (He assures us it’s easier than it sounds.)

“Ultimately, only you can decide what success looks like for your content” says Jake. “You know what kind of actions you’d like the people reading your content to take afterwards – so often, those are the best things to measure.”

Tracking things as simple as “contact us” links on each page can give you a clear idea of which content is inspiring the right action from your audience. And when paired with detailed information about page navigation habits, you can understand where you’re going wrong if those events are happening less frequently than you’d like.

Eight more ways to measure content performance

During our conversation, Jake provided a lot of practical tips that marketers can use to improve the way they measure content success using Google Analytics. Here are his top eight tips:

Add extra tools to your blogs such as social sharing functions, comment sections and reaction polls that make engagement tangible.
Enable scroll depth monitoring in Google Tag Manager to see how far readers are scrolling through your content before moving on in their journeys.
Use HotJar or a similar tool to heatmap your content pages and see where activity is really happening… and where it’s tailing off.
Make sure you’re adding a suitable number of calls to action in your content so you can clearly see how many people have followed which links for more information.
Track where your newsletter signups have come from so you can determine exactly which piece of content persuaded someone to subscribe to hear more from you.
Keep an eye on your referral traffic to identify when people are actively sharing your content and are genuinely excited about it.
Look at your new vs return user rate for each page so you can gain a better understanding of whether bounces represent dissatisfaction with your content, or if people are simply saving it for later.
Add a data layer for each page that tells Google Analytics what they are so it can better understand when the page is serving its purpose for readers.

Define what ‘good’ looks like – then measure

There’s a common thread between the insights that Jake shared with us: to successfully measure how well our content is performing, we must first define what good performance looks like.

If the ideal outcome of reading a piece of content is that a customer’s problem is solved, a bounce may actually be a sign of great performance. Whatever the action or outcome that you want to drive with your content, there’s a way to measure it. Start with that – not the metrics that are easiest to find.

Interested in learning more? You’ll hear more analytics insights from Jake on episode 67 of Good Copy Bad Copy. And if you want to discuss your own content needs, get in touch with us.

Five things every good B2B video script should have

Posted on September 16, 2020May 22, 2025 by John Kerrison

Here’s a cold, hard fact for you: video content generates more clicks, traffic, shares and sales than written content.

That might be an odd thing to hear from a copywriting agency, and it’s not to dismiss the value of the written word – a good marketing strategy should contain both, of course. But, today, more and more marketers are adopting a video-first approach to their campaigns. And for good reason.

For a lot of people, video is just a more accessible way to consume information quickly. And it’s a habit we’re already familiar with. In fact, it’s estimated that people will spend 100 minutes a day watching online videos by 2021.

There are measurable returns, too. 91% of marketers say video has increased their website traffic. 95% say it has increased understanding of their product or service. A further 96% say it has directly helped them increase sales. And 92% say video gives them a good return on their investment.

However, what I’m telling you isn’t a secret. Right now, video marketers feel the level of noise and competition has increased. So, the challenge isn’t just creating videos that your audience love, but creating videos that stand out in a world of video content.

The big question, then: how the hell do you do that?

Well, all great videos start with a script, and at Radix we’ve spent years perfecting the art of writing video scripts that cut through the noise and speak to your audience. Along the way, we’ve learned there are five things that every B2B video script must contain.

1. The ideal structure

A video can be used for all sorts of reasons in B2B marketing. It can be an advertisement, a case study, an explainer or a deep dive into the specifics of your product. But regardless of the purpose, having the right structure is key to delivering the information with impact.

At Radix, our writers know story structure inside out – whether it’s applying the traditional three-act structure to a case study video, or knowing the best way to frame the story of your product or service, so your audience sits up and takes notice.

The techniques we use can be traced back to Aristotle’s Rhetoric – an ancient exploration of the art of persuasion that’s well worth any writer or marketer exploring.

2. A perfect balance of show and tell

Video is a multi-dimensional format and a good script has to describe what your audience will see and hear at all times.

As with all good writing, the rule of thumb when scripting a video is “show don’t tell”, but knowing how to get that balance right is a fine art.

Just like in films, long chunks of exposition will stand out a mile off, so finding an interesting and visually stimulating way to impart information is at the heart of any good video script.

3. Access points for directors, animators and voice-over artists

The script is just the very first stage in your video process. Once completed it will be passed on to a director or animator whose job is to interpret your script and bring your video to life.

For that reason, it’s important your scriptwriter is able to convey their visual ideas clearly and concisely. A familiarity with screenwriting language is a big plus here.

They probably don’t need to know about contrazooms or lap dissolves, but things like establishing shots and cuts can help make sure that the vision spelled out on the page looks the same on screen.

4. Sharp, succinct timing

By far the biggest challenge in writing a video script is writing to a tight timeframe.

Every second of animation or live video costs money to produce. More to the point, your audience doesn’t want to bed in for a three-hour epic. They want to be told what they need to know as quickly as possible. Each frame needs to pull its weight.

Writing a script that’s simultaneously concise and engaging – and still delivers all the required information – is a skill that comes with experience.

5. An in-depth understanding of your audience

This applies as much to any kind of B2B marketing as it does to video, but knowing the audience you’re speaking to – and what their challenges, wants and needs are – is integral to producing an engaging piece of work.

Before they put pen to paper, your scriptwriter should have a good understanding of the industry your targeted persona works in, where they are in the sales funnel, and what it is they’ll want to take away from watching your piece.

The more direct you can be with these messages, the more likely your video is to result in clicks, shares and conversions.

It sounds like a lot, but we can help

At Radix, we have years of experience writing video scripts for organisations of all sizes in all industries, and for a wide variety of purposes – from five-second social media GIFs to product deep-dives.

To learn more about the services we offer, visit our B2B video scriptwriting page.

5 cognitive biases, and what they can teach us about B2B copywriting

Posted on May 22, 2020May 22, 2025 by John Kerrison

As is customary, I would like to start this blog with a magic trick. Please follow the instructions below closely – and remember to tip your wait staff at the end.

First, I need you to count very slowly backwards from fifty.

43… you know the rest

Now, quickly, think of a vegetable.

Was this your vegetable?

How did I know that you were going to pick a carrot? (If you didn’t, just play along. No one likes a contrarian.)

Is it because someone told me of your fondness for them? Is it because I’m standing behind you right now whispering carrot into your ear? (Yes, in the case of the person who proofread this post.) Or is it because an inbuilt cognitive bias allowed me to manipulate your thoughts?

An inbuilt cognitive what?

Put simply, a cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects our decisions and judgements. There are hundreds of them.

(And, if you don’t think you’re susceptible to such weakness then I have some bad news for you – that, too, is a cognitive bias.)

Take, for example, confirmation bias; a pattern of thinking that makes you more likely to favour information that confirms your existing beliefs or notice patterns that you’ve recently been made aware of. To paraphrase the writer Jon Ronson, once you become aware of confirmation bias, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

Or how about the Dunning-Kruger effect, where unskilled individuals tend to overestimate their ability, while experts tend to underestimate theirs. Which, if you think about it for too long, creates a kind of cyclical loop which makes it impossible to know which you actually are.

For those of us in the B2B copywriting trade, understanding these biases can help us learn a little bit more about how our audience thinks, acts, and makes choices. Which, in turn, should help us engage with them more effectively. Like any superpower, they can be used for good or evil… so I’ll try to keep it ethical.

Here are five cognitive biases I think all B2B marketers should at least be aware of.

1. The Availability Cascade

The theory behind the availability cascade is simple: if you repeat something often enough, people will start to believe it to be true.

That’s why straplines are so useful in marketing. It’s why you know Ronseal does exactly what it says on the tin. And it’s how Kanye West convinced everyone he was the best rapper in the world, simply by telling everyone that he was the best rapper in the world over and over and over again.

It’s also why our political landscape has recently been transformed by a handful of incredibly irritating slogans. You probably don’t need me to name them here, but one of them rhymes with Shmake Shmamerica Shmate Shmagain.

Political opinions aside, these recent campaigns show that there’s actually little need for debate, or even manifestos if you have a good marketing strapline.

If a slogan can sell Boris Johnson – a man who hid in a fridge to avoid a live television interview – it can probably sell your product too. The secret is to make your message both memorable and consistent.

2. Authority Bias

I recently saw a full-page magazine ad in which TV personality Richard Blackwood was the face of a promotional campaign for a toilet.

My first thought was, ‘I bet that was an awkward phone call from his agent’. Followed shortly by, ‘what makes Richard Blackwood an expert on toilets?’ You can come up with your own amusing answer to that, should you desire. But the answer is probably ‘nothing’.

This is what’s known as Authority Bias, a pattern of thinking that sees us attribute greater accuracy to and be more influenced by the opinion of an authority figure – regardless of whether or not they have any knowledge of the subject matter.

The lesson for marketers here is simple. Using case studies, testimonial quotes, and any other instance where an authority can speak on your behalf will always have a stronger impact than simply telling your audience how great your, um, toilet is.

3. Decoy Effect

The decoy effect is used all the time in subscription pricing models. The rule states that the preferences for either option A or option B will change in favour of option B when a third option – C, shall we say? – is introduced.

Horrible and confusing sentence, that. Essentially, if you have two options, and want someone to opt for the more expensive latter one, then introduce an even more expensive third option and Bob’s your uncle.

(I know I said that this would all be ethical, and that definitely sounds a bit…not. But what were you expecting from a blog that started with a magic trick?)

On a serious note, although I absolutely can’t condone doing this, it is a trick worth being aware of. Now you’re wise to it, you’ll no doubt see it everywhere. And although it might not help your marketing much, it might save you a quid or two on your next SaaS subscription.

4. Anchoring or Focalism

I went to school with a boy called Ian who had a full beard at the age of 13. He went on to move to Canada where he now works for an accountancy firm, lives in a large house and has two children.

In other news, anchoring describes our tendency to focus on one piece of information when making decisions – and it’s usually the first piece of information we receive.

This is why it’s important in marketing to lead with your main selling point. And it’s also the reason why, when I now mention Ian (who absolutely didn’t exist) the first thing you’ll think is ‘oh yeah, the child with a beard.’

I mean, it’s obviously not the only reason. But you get my point.

5. The Present Bias

Ever been asked where you see yourself in five years? Incredibly hard to answer, isn’t it? But that’s because, in general, people don’t really like working towards long-term goals.

As much as we like imagining a future where we’re richer, healthier, smarter and being asked less tedious questions, research shows that we fall short of effectively working towards that future. Why? Because meeting our present needs will always be more important.

Also known as ‘Hyperbolic Discounting Bias’, the fruits of this cognitive quirk are most often seen in the form of ‘buy now, pay later’ deals.

How does this translate to B2B copywriting? Well, if people want a better future, but are secretly bad at delaying gratification, why not describe both the long and short-term rewards?

So tell your audience what the enduring impacts of your product will be, but also be sure to mention how fast it is to get up and running, how quickly they’ll see results, and how there will be a 20% discount at the point of purchase.

How does your buyer think?

It’s not about manipulating your reader – at least, it shouldn’t be; your brand’s likely after a lasting relationship as a trusted advisor, and you don’t get that by hoodwinking your customer. Instead, smart B2B copywriters use these little elements of psychology (and dozens more like them) to write B2B content that really resonates. Knowing about the reader’s sector, challenges and pain points can get you so far – but if you want to inspire action, it helps to learn how people think.

How to put a positive spin on your cybersecurity content

Posted on April 22, 2020May 22, 2025 by George Reith

Cybersecurity can feel like an inherently negative topic. Even if you’re a brand that’s trying to focus on the protection and peace of mind you deliver, you still have to talk about the many dangers you mitigate for your customers.

But there are good reasons why cybersecurity vendors should avoid dwelling on the doom and gloom. So how do you put a positive spin on the topic without downplaying the risks – and the need for strong measures to combat them?

In this article, I’ll look at four ways cybersecurity brands can create strong content – without getting bogged down in the risks, threats, and what-ifs.

Why cybersecurity content needs a balanced approach

When writing content for cybersecurity experts, there’s a big reason to avoid too much negative-speak: notification fatigue.

Network analysts, CISOs, and anyone else involved in the security game will get notifications about potential threats constantly. Some are legitimate issues that require attention, but these are needles in a haystack of false positives. When you’re exposed to so many notifications constantly, it’s easy to start tuning out all the alerts and alarms.

So when a cybersecurity vendor comes in with a big, scary headline and an urgent intro, their audience is likely to dismiss this as yet another alert that doesn’t mean anything. They’ll tune your content out, just like they ignore the hundreds of empty alarms that flash up on their monitoring platforms.

And even if they do take notice, the engagement you get from negative content may not be the kind your business is looking for. Research on negative news articles by the American Psychological Association found that while they pique interest, they also cause readers to feel “stress… anxiety, fatigue or sleep loss”. Not feelings you want your content to evoke if you’re looking to develop a positive, mutually beneficial business relationship.

Four ways to balance your content

So how do you strike a positive chord with your content when your entire solution is designed to avoid a negative outcome?

Of course, you can’t just ignore the reality of security threats altogether. But there are a few tweaks you can make to highlight the wider benefits of your solution and tackle the subject of cybersecurity risk in a more balanced way.

Focus on real benefits

One tactic you can take is to shift the message from the damage your solution avoids to the concrete benefits it delivers. For instance, you can talk about how you offer:

Cost savings compared to other security approaches
Time savings that can help teams reinvest resources elsewhere
A more strategic, proactive approach to security
Simpler reporting to stakeholders on the security and cyberthreat landscape
Peace of mind for cybersecurity teams and business leaders

When deciding on a different messaging approach, think carefully about what to focus on. Depending on what solutions you offer, some of these messages might not be appropriate. There’s also a chance your competitors are already making some of these claims, and you don’t want to march to the beat of their drum if you can avoid it.

Don’t overclaim the risks

Overpromising is the enemy of all good copy – especially when you’re dealing with a negative topic. Yes, you can say DDoS attacks are a business disruption and impact the user experience. But will they irreparably harm brand image and put the whole business at risk? It’s unlikely, and your reader knows it.

While you clearly want to make your piece stand out and show the real threats out there, don’t get too carried away. Otherwise, you’ll undermine your credibility and erode your reader’s trust.

Avoid the urgency

Most cybersecurity professionals run on a strict time limit. But they know this intimately, and don’t need you to remind them. There’s simply no way you can frighten someone that deals with risk for a living. So, if your content is built around trying to scare people, it won’t work.

That’s not to say you should avoid writing about deadlines completely. Release dates, end-of-support deadlines, and upcoming events in the cybersecurity world are all great topics for your content. But don’t talk in generalities about how the clock is ticking and how they’re letting cybercriminals get ahead. Cybersecurity professionals are well aware of the pressures they face.

Make it specific

Negative talk is always at its worst when it speaks in generalities. So, if you are going to talk about big cyberthreats and risks, back it up with a specific example to keep your content focused.

Writing in vague terms about irreparable brand damage is tired, and likely to paint your content a dull shade of grey. By contrast, referencing specific big attacks that have affected brands in your sector (they’re only a quick search away) will bring some much-needed colour.

Specifics aren’t just a nice way to make your content stand out – they also help your reader build their own business case. Content that shows the reality of high-profile breaches will grab attention, and that will aid your customers in securing executive buy-in for new cybersecurity initiatives.

If in doubt, seek a second opinion

Make no mistake, finding the balance between realism and feel-good benefits isn’t easy. If you’re trying to identify the right approach yourself, a second pair of eyes can give you a great steer on whether your content is too negative (or not negative enough). You can get this from a colleague, from industry peers in other businesses, or you can ask your friendly neighbourhood copywriter.

Better yet, you could ask a specialist tech copywriter who has strong industry credentials and experience working with brands to get the right tone and voice. That way, whether you need to tweak your messaging around cybersecurity or make some changes to your tone, you’ll get the advice you need to appeal to your target audience (without spiking their heart rate).

How to give copywriters better feedback

Posted on November 8, 2019May 22, 2025 by George Reith

Amends are a natural part of the copywriting process. Sometimes it’s because a writer missed something in a brief or didn’t fully grasp the topic. In other cases, new information comes to light halfway through a project, plans shift and change, or a new stakeholder wakes up and wants their say.

Regardless, if you run projects that involve copywriters, you’ll likely have to give them feedback so they can amend their first draft. But not all feedback is created equal.

If you can deliver your comments in a precise, constructive, positive way, you’ll get far better results from your writers – both on that project and in the long term.

Follow these five feedback tips, and you’ll find your writers are better motivated, and better equipped to make the right changes to their drafts.

1. Be specific

Try and be as prescriptive with your feedback as possible. Telling a writer the piece is “generic” or “lacks impact” leaves them guessing what needs to be done.

But if you instead highlight specific phrases you feel need more authority, or give concrete examples of areas that need more detail, your writer will have a much better idea of what you’re looking for.

This isn’t to say you need to hold your writer’s hand. But if you don’t give them a good idea of where changes are needed, they’ll be left guessing – and likely missing the mark once again.

(This is also true of things you do like. If you can highlight specific sections for comment, rather than saying things like “this reads well”, then your writer will be able to carry that feedback into the next piece.)

2. Use positive framing

Just in case you roll your eyes looking at this subhead: yes, we’re all adults working in this industry. So no, you don’t need to sugar-coat our feedback unnecessarily.

But we’re human beings too – and nobody likes re-writing work they’ve already done. A little psychology can help you get a more engaged writer – and a better result.

If you come in with strong negative criticism right from the first round of amends, you’re likely going to put your writer on the back foot and make them feel defensive. And defensive people seldom do their best work.

But what if, instead of saying “you missed out points x, y and z”, you said “can we include points x, y and z?”

Your writer isn’t an idiot – they’ll be able to read between the lines and realise they forgot to put the points in. But they will absolutely appreciate you helping them save face.

A little positive framing can make the world of difference to your copywriter. It will keep them better motivated during the amends process, help them act on the spirit of your comments, and ultimately lead to better changes to your piece – and better content overall. And that’s the real goal, isn’t it?

3. Consolidate your criticism

Maybe you have a lot of stakeholders who need to offer their feedback on a document. Or maybe you come back to a piece a few days later and have additional thoughts. Either way, you should avoid the temptation to send feedback to a writer in bits and pieces.

The average copywriter needs several reference documents at a time (brief, product spec, company website etc), and if you add several different emails to the mix, you’re making their job far harder than it needs to be.

And if the various comments conflict (believe me, they often do), you’re far better placed than the writer to consider which should take precedence. If you don’t want to go to another round of amends, it’s best not to make them guess.

4. Consider what’s possible (and what isn’t)

We’d all love the perfect stat to come falling from the heavens to give every blog a punchy intro. But if no one’s published the study, that stat simply doesn’t exist. And if it doesn’t exist, no amount of desk research will help your copywriter find it (no matter how nicely you ask).

Similarly, your writer might be limited in other ways. If they can’t talk to any subject matter experts, end customers, or other specialists, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to add the extra depth or unique insights you’re asking for. Even an experienced B2B tech writer is only a writer.

So, before you request a change, consider what your writer will realistically be able to do with the time, information and resources available.

5. Build in time for changes

It’s well understood that rushing any creative process leads to poor results. For the first draft at least. Yet, when it comes to amends, there’s always an expectation that they should be done quickly to avoid derailing the project. But just as rushing the initial draft leads to suboptimal copy, editing a document too hastily can also lead to ineffective changes.

The key is to keep amends in mind when first planning out your content delivery schedule. A good rule of thumb is that any writing project will require two rounds of changes – one round for any big tweaks or new additions, and another to sand off the remaining rough edges. So plan for that, and anything else is a bonus.

(That’s also why we allow for two rounds of amends in all our quotes.)

Good content needs a good feedback process

Robert Graves once said, “there is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.”

Were he around today, he would no doubt approve of a great amends process. And once you see the impact changing your feedback can have on the quality of your content, you’ll probably be converted too.

So, take these lessons to heart, and show your copywriter a little kindness during the amends process. They’ll likely be very grateful for it – and deliver you even better copy as a result.

B2BQ&A 100: How can I stop clients and stakeholders meddling with my wording?

Posted on September 28, 2021May 21, 2025 by Claire Goodfellow

It’s the 100^th episode of the Radix Communications podcast… and it’s all change. New format, new sound, and a new name. So if you were expecting Good Copy, Bad Copy, don’t panic; you’re in the right place.

You’ll still hear great guests discussing B2B content and copywriting. But as the new name suggests, each episode of B2BQ&A will focus on a specific question, submitted by you. You set the agenda, and we go in search of an expert who can answer.

To kick off, we have an excellent question from marketer and content specialist Zdenka Linkova.

Zdenka asks: “How do you convince your clients to check for the factual accuracy of a content piece, like an ebook or a case study, rather than checking and changing every single word in your document – and leave the tone of voice and wording up to the copywriter?”

As our Barriers to B2B Content survey revealed, this is a perennial problem for writers and marketers alike. So we enlisted Doug Kessler, no less, to give us the definitive answer.

For this special episode, we’re also joined by a very familiar voice. Fiona Campbell-Howes returns as co-host, as we take the opportunity to reflect on the last eight and a half years of the Radix podcast, revisiting some of the wisdom from our previous contributors over the last 99 episodes.

You’ll hear from (deep breath): Emily King, Fiona Campbell-Howes, James Henry, Doug Kessler, Lorraine Williams, Pauliina Jamsa, Lasse Lund, Kate Stoodley, Maureen Blandford, Dr Andrew Bredenkamp, Harendra Kapur, Nick Mason, Shaema Katib, Matthew Harper, Alice Farnham, Angela Cattin, Mwamba Kasanda, Professor Chris Trudeau, Raine Hunt, Joel Harrison, Dr Christine Bailey, Rhiannon Blackwell, Luan Wise, Natalie Narh, Kavita Singh, Sonja Nisson, and John Espirian.

Huge thanks to you all, and to everyone else who contributed to the last 99 episodes. And huge kudos to Emily, who had the idea for the podcast (waaaay before it was cool) and kept it running for so long. You rock.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a Radix podcast without a copywriting tip of the month. Radix Copywriter Ben Clarke lets us into the secret of how to make sure your tone of voice is on brand for the client you’re writing for.

You’ll find a full transcript of our podcast at the end of this post.

So, how do you get clients to stop meddling with your wording?

A conversation with a client or stakeholder, asking them to trust that you know what you’re doing as a content creator, is never an easy prospect. But like most difficult conversations, it can be well worth it if you get the outcome you want.

Thankfully, Doug Kessler has loads of tips to make sure you raise the subject at the right time, and in the most constructive way. Here are three to get you started:

‘If it’s making the copy better, it’s not meddling.’

Whisper it quietly, but the first thing to consider is whether the client or stakeholder reviewing your work might actually be right. It’s important to remember that they have probably been in this game for a long time, like you. And they might be tweaking your copy for the better.

‘Defend your work without defensiveness.’

If you want clients and stakeholders to listen to you as an expert writer, first you have to establish credibility. And that credibility cannot be demanded – it has to be earned. Start by by standing your ground in situations where you have the expertise, but also accepting neutral things that aren’t going to change the copy that much.

‘You’ve got to brief them clearly.’

If you can be really clear in advance about which aspects of your content need feedback, you’re more likely to get constructive results. So if your work is going to a client or stakeholder for review, adding a note to say: “We’re reviewing writing style separately, but I really need you to check the technical accuracy of this piece” might make them more inclined to focus less on the wording, and more on the facts.

In this episode, you’ll find…

1:20 – We welcome our co-host Fiona Campbell-Howes and introduce B2BQ&A.

4:45 – We mark our 100^th episode by revisiting clips from the last eight years.

10:50 – We put Zdenka Linkova’s question to Doug Kessler.

23:35 – We hear some more wisdom from the last 99 episodes of the Radix podcast.

29:50 – Our copywriting tip of the month from Ben Clarke.

31:20 – We listen to a final set of past contributions to the podcast.

Have you got a question for B2BQ&A?

We’re ready to asnwer you! Send us a voice memo at [email protected] And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share, you can find us on Twitter @radixcom.

How to listen:

You can download the episode here (right-click and select “Save As” to download)
Or you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts
Alternatively, add our RSS to your preferred podcast player
And don’t forget you can follow us on Spotify

Credits

Firstly, thank you to Fiona Campbell-Howes. It was wonderful to have you back as our co-host.
Thank you to Zdenka Linkova, for your brilliant question.
And Doug Kessler, thank you for answering it so expertly.
Thanks to Ben Clarke, for that excellent copywriting tip of the month.
And last but absolutely not least, thank you to everyone who has contributed to the last 99 episodes of the Radix podcast. We couldn’t have made it to 100 without you.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash

Transcript: B2BQ&A 100: How can I stop clients meddling with my wording?

How do you convince your clients to check for the factual accuracy of a content piece, like an ebook or a case study, rather than checking and changing every single word in your document and leave the tone of voice and wording up to the copywriter?

Fiona: It’s a brilliant question and I love it. Let’s ask Doug Kessler.

David: Hello, listener and welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search and an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is also Episode 100 of the Radix Communications Podcast, so if you were expecting Good Copy, Bad Copy, don’t panic, you are in the right place. You’ll still hear great guests and co-hosts sharing advice on B2B copywriting – just in a shorter, more focused format. With a new sound and a new name.

Fiona: This episode, we ask Doug Kessler a question from Zdenka Linkova. How do you get clients and stakeholders to focus on checking for accuracy and let the writer handle the wording and the voice?

David: But first, where are my manners? We need some introductions. My name is David McGuire. I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications the B2B writing agency. And for this special episode, I’m joined by a suitably special guest co-host. It’s B2B technology writer, co-founder of this very podcast and my former boss, Fiona Campbell-Howes. Fiona, welcome back.

Fiona: Hello, thank you very much and thank you for having me back.

David: Oh no; anytime. How have you been?

Fiona: Good? Thank you. Yeah, surprisingly good, considering, you know, what we’ve just all been through. But yeah, the writing’s going well and I think I’ve been quite lucky in having quite a lot of clients and quite a lot of work. So I think our sector, especially, was one that survived the pandemic pretty well. Did you find the same at Radix?

David: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve never been so busy as we were over the last year or so. Which is, admittedly, a nicer set of problems to have than a lot of people have had lately. Do you feel that the market has changed at all, for B2B writing over the over the last year, 18 months?

Fiona: Well, I think what it seemed to be is, in all of the content that we wrote over the last three or four years or so it was all about digital transformation is going to happen in the future, and the future is going to be like this. And then suddenly it happened. And then every tech company suddenly had to rethink what the future is going to be. So all the content that had been produced kind of went out of date overnight. And we were called in to produce brand new content with brand new predictions about the future. So yeah, that’s pretty much how it’s gone for me.

David: Yeah, that sounds very, very familiar. And the new company, the new world post-Radix, for you is Greythorne. Is that right?

Fiona: Greythorne, yes. That’s my alias. It’s basically just me. I’ve got an unnecessarily swanky office – next door to yours.

David: It’s good to know you’re not far away.

Fiona: In the next-door building. I did move one building away. We could just about wave to each other. But we’re facing in different directions. So that’s where I am. And I’m doing pretty much what I was doing before at Radix. So it’s still B2B tech content.

David: Just without having to wrangle a team of 20 people?

Fiona: Yeah. So it’s more wrangling clients and less wrangling of people. Which does give more time to do the writing, which I actually really enjoy.

David: Well, great. Can’t criticise that at all. So anyway, Fiona, I’m sure you know, if you cast your mind back, you’ll remember how this goes. But could you please tell the listener how they can get in touch with us?

Fiona: Well, yeah, I sort of remember how this goes. But I’m wondering if maybe there’s new jingles – so I’m looking forward to finding out. So listener, if you have any comments or suggestions, you can find Radix on LinkedIn or on Twitter @radixcom. Or if you want us to answer your question, email us the voice memo, [email protected].

David: Well, I guess that answers that. In just a moment, we’ll hear from Zdenka Linkova and from Doug. But this is our 100th episode and it’s one where one podcast is turning into another. So we’re going to mark that by playing in a few clips and thanking some of the people who have contributed over the past eight and a half years.

Emily King: “Welcome to Episode One of the Radix Copycast. Here we’ll be discussing some of the current trends and issues in B2B technology copywriting.”

Fiona: “You have to show the benefit of what you’re offering to your audience. It’s no use talking about your own product or talking about your own company or saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got a webinar’, ‘we’ve got a white paper’, those don’t seem to work. It’s can you show the value of opening the email to the recipient.”

James Henry: “I’m not sure having a three-act structure automatically engages the audience. But I think the human brain is hardwired to expect stories to have a certain shape. So if your story has got three acts, in whatever kind of proportion to each other, that’s just enough for the brain to sort of click into ‘Ah, I’m hearing I’m experiencing a story here’, then what you have to do is bring the engaging kind of elements to it.”

Doug Kessler: “Structurally rich and semantically categorized content, which makes it automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable, that seems to be the characteristics of intelligent content.”

Emily King: “Hello, and welcome to the 26th episode of radix. His podcast, which we’ve renamed Good Copy, Bad Copy,” (Fiona: “Nice.”)

Lorraine Williams: “If you can write something and then leave it, even if it’s for like an hour before you go back to it, or do something different away from anything, you have a slightly different headspace. So you won’t still be in that zone. So just, if you can leave it a whole day, that’d be amazing. Because you will definitely spot things.”

Pauliina Jamsa: “Stand-up comedy is all about dealing with difficult things, and making fun out of it. So, all the videos and content that I’m doing, I always have a little glint in the eye, so to speak. So it’s done with a sense of humour which makes even serious topics much more fun.”

Lasse Lund: “The data shows our customers are really interested in getting into, like, the nitty-gritty detail of what’s going on with some of our products and stuff like that. And so they do like the other stuff, too, at certain points. But that’s just one example of that we, you know, it’s one thing to rely on gut instinct. And the longer you’re in a company that the better that will be, right? But also making sure to measure and track and pull lessons away.”

Kate Stoodley: “It kind of has to again, come down to having social be a seat at the content planning table, and be a really collaborative approach. I think that’s really the only way that things can can really make sense. Because just because you can put something on social doesn’t mean you should.”

Maureen Blandford: “Generally what resonates with targets are their own words. If I’m selling ,particularly in a complex sale, I need marketing to behave the way in the market that great salespeople behave. So bubble up pain, ask good questions.”

Fiona: We just heard from Emily King, me, my husband James Henry, Doug (who we’re going to hear from in a minute), Lorraine Williams, Pauliina Jamsa, Lasse Lund, Kate Stoodley, and Maureen Blandford.

David: It’s always been an excuse to talk to really good people, this podcast. It’s changed a lot over the last eight and a half years. I think that’s safe to say.

Fiona: And thanks very much to all of you for being part of the podcast.

David: So lots of memories there. Fiona, when you started the podcast with Emily back in 2013, did you think it would get to 100 episodes?

Fiona: I didn’t think it would get to 10 episodes! I have to say I was a very reluctant participant at the start. So I don’t even know if I could be thought of as the co-founder of the podcast, because it was Emily. And you know, she had a lot of podcasting experience. She’s very keen that we did this and I was absolutely terrified. So if anybody’s listening, I apologise for the fact that I was so reluctant back in the day. But yeah, I thought we’d run out of topics after five or six. So the fact that it’s still going, what, eight years later, and 100 episodes. Yeah, it just shows how much there is to talk about in B2B copywriting.

David: Yeah, I mean, it’s now had three names. So for the first 25 episodes it was Radix Copycast, then it had 74 episodes as Good Copy, Bad Copy, before being B2BQ&A. And also, both of the original presenters have now left. I’m kind of wondering if it’s one of these Ship of Theseus things. At what point does it cease to be the same podcast? Although they called it the Ship of Theseus on Wandavision, but to me, I just always think of that as being Trigger’s Broom.

Fiona: Yeah, I had to look up the Ship of Theseus. You said, is it like the Ship of Theseus/Sugarbabes/Trigger’s Broom. So I was alright with the Sugarbabes and Trigger’s Broom, butt Ship of Theseus I had to look up. Well, I think you’ve had Emily back on as a guest presenter or co-host and I’m back here now. So you know, there are certain elements that recur.

So we’ll hear from some more guests later in the episode. But first the part we’re actually here for where we take our listener’s question and find an expert to answer it. Here’s Zdenka.

Zdenka: Hi, this is Zdenka Linkova. I’m a freelance content specialist from the Czech Republic. And I would like to ask for your advice on clients feedback. How do you convince your clients to check for the factual accuracy of a content piece, like an ebook or a case study, rather than checking and changing every single word in your document and leave the tone of voice and wording up to the copywriter? Thank you very much. Take care, and bye-bye.

David: Oh, this is a great question to start our new format. Although, Zdenka, if you don’t mind, we’ll take clients to include internal stakeholders, too, so that we can cover both agency people, freelancers, and in house marketers. Our research into obstacles to great B2B content shows stakeholder interference is among the biggest frustrations for B2B content marketers worldwide. 86% of respondents said it was an issue. What’s more, six out of ten think their sign off process makes their content worse. So we went right to the top for this one. Doug Kessler, creative director and co-founder of Velocity Partners. He’s known for content that’s a little outside the usual B2B comfort zone. So I asked him, How do you stop pesky clients meddling with your copy?

Doug: I do think it’s only meddling if it’s wrong, if it’s making the copy better, it’s not meddling. And so we think of it as meddling, whether it is or it’s irrelevant. And, you know, I think the core thing is you earn your credibility, you can’t just demand it, you have to earn it. And you have to deserve it. I do get prima donna writers who, the work isn’t good enough to be Prima Donna, if you know you slam-dunked it by all means defend everything to the last minute. But if you haven’t, listen and take on board stuff. Now we all know, some of that isn’t great.

But first thing is your positioning as an expert, as an expert writer, and as really good at this. And your positioning as it goes up, you get less and less of that. And, of course, there are stakeholders who come in and don’t know you and so there’s that. But your job is to earn that credibility and part of earning that is defending your work without defensiveness. Accept the neutral things that aren’t going to change it that much the things that make it better embrace, so be ready to do all that.

Whereas I do find some writers are like, every note seems to be a stain. And we’ve got to get out of that mindset. They’re not the enemy here. And so, you want feedback, we need feedback for our work, right? So you just want to focus that feedback on the person’s area of expertise, you don’t necessarily want style notes from a techie. I once got a ton of style notes. And at the end of the call, I realised this is the lawyer, they were asked to review it, because of legal reasons. And he’s given me all the style points as soon as he hung up, I pretty much crumpled it up.

But you want to try to focus it on their area of expertise, then you’ve got to brief them clearly, don’t just send them the copy. You’ve got to brief them on what is it for? What’s it not for? Who’s it for? Who’s it not for? What do you want from them, and what don’t you want? So if you are really clear and say, Look, I don’t really need you for style, I need you for accuracy – you might find that they’re, less inclined to improve your style.

So some of that actually briefing them is a big part of it. And I think maybe the last part is or a third part is don’t ask if you don’t really want the input. Now, obviously, if it’s you’re client you may not have that option, but you don’t have to ask everybody. And so there’s always that option, you know, I guess finally if it’s a chronic problem, and it’s a stakeholder you can’t get away from you got to have that difficult conversation. There’s a book called difficult conversations. I absolutely love it. It helps you have these and get them to the table to say we seem to have a working problem, let’s talk about it. So there’s that too.

David: Is this a problem that you still yourself get sometimes? Or do you get to a point where your Doug Kessler, Nobody messes with you?

Doug: Absolutely. No, there’s absolutely no, I get no points, I get kids out of college with a ‘how to write copy’ book on their desk in front of them, telling me how to fucking write copy. And so I get it all the time. And in truth, no, I was going to lie there. I said, in truth, and I was about to lie and say, it doesn’t bother me – it can really fucking bother me. But let’s face it, it’s a service business, we have to give the client what they want. But our job is to make them want the right thing. It’s not an obstacle to our job. This is our job. We’ve got to take that seriously.

If we’re failing to make them want the right thing. That’s our fucking fault. Right? We cannot cry about it and moan about it. So it’s a service business, and I’m in a service business, I don’t care if they’re right out of college, they’re the fucking client, they’re paying the bills, I will listen. But my job is to try to make them want the right thing. And if you fail over and over and over, well, you know, you got to fire that client or fire that boss by quitting. So if you really don’t, you’re just out of sync with what good is, you’re never going to please them or yourself. So find something else. Find somewhere else.

David: Thank you. So, to summarise, just in terms of tips for the listener, you were kind of saying it starts with briefing them clearly, earning it, earning the credibility, picking your battles a little bit on the feedback that you push back on, and what you won’t push back on. Anything else that I’ve missed there, or are those really the key things aligning around what good looks like?

Doug: Yeah, those things, I think, aligning up front to agree on what good looks like is a really big one. And if it’s the thing about they’re killing my mojo, like they’d systematically went through at every conversational moment, they stomped it out – you may not be aligned on what good copy is. And you need to kind of talk about it in the abstract before you talk about it for this specific piece of copy. And if you really fundamentally disagree then, well then, if you still want to please that stakeholder or client, you do it their way you don’t get to have all bitter about it. They’ve agreed they don’t want to do conversational, let’s say.

But let’s face it, some of this is: be open to being wrong. One person’s conversational is another’s cute, like, I hate cute. And I know that a lot of writers who go for conversational trip into cute very easily. I know I do it myself. There are times I think it was fine. And I read it later and think wow, that that’s horribly cute. That’s ‘Look at me’ writing and I think a lot of writers are very proud of the ‘look at me’ writing. It’s not what we’re here for. It’s not to make people say, wow, it’s so well written, it’s to change their mind and incite action and do something not to, to say Wasn’t that a cool turn of phrase. So these cool turns of phrase that we’re so proud of, might truly be jangling for the reader.

And so we should be open to being wrong. And that, our conversational and cool turn of phrase, actually didn’t serve the brief.

David: Thanks again, Zdenka, for your question. And thanks, Doug, for such a thoughtful response. Fiona, you’ve been at this writing game for a while, you must have some thoughts on this, I’m sure.

Fiona: Yeah, this is actually one of my favourite topics. Because I’m sort of jumped to the end of what Doug was saying, you know, having those difficult conversations with clients or stakeholders about them, in quote marks, ‘meddling’ with your copy is something that I’ve come to really enjoy doing. And I actually sometimes hope that stakeholders will meddle with my copy, so that I can have those conversations.

So, yeah, I really like this topic. And I really like Doug’s answers to it. Because there’s just so much wisdom in everything that Doug says, he’s like a sort of Egyptian cotton sheet.

David: I’m sorry what?

Fiona: You know how Egyptian cotton sheets have got a really high thread count? I think that with Doug, you get a really high wisdom count, a high insight count. I’ve got his interview in front of me, and I’ve just bolded all the things that I think: Yeah, he just said that really well. That’s absolutely brilliant. And it’s so true. About how you can’t demand credibility, you earn it. So very often, when stakeholders have input into your copy it is actually, right, they are actually helping to make it better.

And you can’t just, as a writer, just assume that you are the best and that everything you write is the best possible way it can be written. Because there are many people who are very good writers, and they may not be a writer for a living, but they do have some very valid suggestions to make. So, I really like that. But once you kind of earn your credibility, and part of that you actually do by having those difficult conversations with stakeholders. I find it’s much easier to earn your credibility by working in collaboration and having conversation rather than communicating with the stakeholder through the comments on a Word document.

David: So how do you actually approach those conversations, then if that’s something you particularly relish doing?

Fiona: So there has to be real reason for it. So, to give you one example. Recently, I’ve been working with a big tech company, one that you’ve heard of, I mean, not you, you’ve heard of all tech companies, but one that everybody’s heard of. And there were let’s say that about eight to ten, stakeholders for each piece that I was writing, and there was a real was a real division between one group of stakeholders who were briefing me to write something like a white paper, and another group of stakeholders who were reviewing that copy, but who wanted to see something that would read like an article in wired. And so I was caught between these two groups, and whatever I wrote for the first group would not wash with the second group, so I had to rewrite it.

And after three of four times of having to rewrite the entire thing from scratch, because it didn’t read like an article in wired, I thought, okay, we’re going to have to have that conversation. So let’s request – this was going through an agency as well, so I didn’t have direct contact with the stakeholders – let’s request a meeting with these stakeholders. And let’s just work out what it is they actually want to see? And how can we all get on the same page with what the output looks like? So how do I get brief to produce something that everybody wants to see? And that went really well.

So, those conversations were had. They weren’t confrontational conversations at all. They were really collaborative conversations. Like, we’re all working towards the same goal, we want to produce a brilliant piece of content. And since having that, I haven’t had to rewrite anything, which is brilliant for me. But also, I think they’ve got much better content out of it, as well. So the whole thing about being aligned on what good content looks like and making sure everybody knows what the end product should look like, is really, really important. And sometimes it does take a conversation like that.

David: So if you had to take one point away from what Doug said, to answer Zdenka’s question, how would you put it?

Fiona: So I think for Zdenka and for all the other hundreds and thousands of writers out there that are getting these horrible bits of feedback from clients and clients meddling in things that they shouldn’t be. I think the thing that Doug said, for me, is that we’re not enemies, it’s not us and them, it’s not the client and us and it’s a kind of war of attrition. I think the thing to know is that we are, or we should be on the same side.

It should be a collaboration. So, I’d say the way to stop stakeholders meddling is to have those conversations and to make sure that you are collaborating and not being confrontational with each other.

So in a moment, we’ll hear from Ben Clarke with his copywriting tip of the month. But first, as this is Episode 100, let’s hear some more wisdom from the last 99.

Andrew Bredenkamp: “There are, as with anything else, parts of the writing process that are very repetitive, and don’t require a very sophisticated process. And I think in those situations we’re looking at automating some of those. And so it’s really a collaborative… as in many fields, AI will not be replacing people, it will be taking away the grunt work, taking away the boring repetitive tasks and leaving the humans to do the higher end thinking and creative pieces of it.”

Harendra Kapur: “Very often, when people do research, they’re researching to collect facts. The thing I find way more interesting and way more useful, is to research for opinions. Really, the most useful thing for me is a phone call with a customer or a blog from someone with actual skin in the game, just complaining about their job, or just the category. That is so much more useful to me than ‘12% of people use this system and that system.’ ”

Nick Mason: “The reason why we are sort of anti-PDF, if you like, where we’re on that side of the of the argument, is we see it as a format that was created obviously, a long time ago; I think back as far as 1991. And really, so much has moved on since then. And PDF really, to our minds, hasn’t kept pace with that.”

Shaema Katib: “Of course, we do have a clear good standard of what good content is based on historical performance, right. So these are our safe bets; content pieces that we know, will always work. Things like case studies, we’ve we’ve always seen that many of our best performing content have that credibility factor in them, like, they have things like statistics, testimonies, customer success stories in different formats, whether it be videos, case studies, or webinars. These things have always performed the best on a global scale.”

Mat Harper: “I get the impression that marketers are always trying to justify their worth, and justify them being in the company. So to spend time on something that isn’t easily measurable, or doesn’t quickly show return on investment, is difficult.”

Alice Farnham: “It’s really about sort of bringing, I think anyway, it’s about bringing out the best of them and bringing out that sort of individuality within the orchestra. But at the same time having a sort of coherence, and the sort of vision of what you want as well.”

Angela Cattin: “So that’s the classic where a company’s using it’s own data and there’s naturally lot’s of sensitivities around that. So naturally in those instances, you want to go out there with very bold message. And there’s just a little bit of sensitivity, and you have to rein it in a little bit.”

Mwamba Kasanda: “And that is a critical differentiator. Rather than people seeing an advertisement, an email, but when they have their actual contact within the business talking to them about the campaign, it’s much more powerful and and that person can also put it into their into context, into their world, and make it relevant for where they are right now.”

Chris Trudeau: “There’s even more data now suggesting that as, you know, people know what they like. When you ask them do they want plain language, they don’t know what that means. So they tend to think as I was listening to one of your podcasts from a few months ago, that plain language is dumbing things down, but yet that’s not what it is. When you read something that’s clear, how many times have you actually said, ‘Oh, this is too clear’? You know, nobody says that.”

David: We just heard from Dr Andrew Bredenkamp, Harry Kapur, Nick Mason, Shaema Shazleen Katib, Mat Harper, Alice Farnham, Angela Cattin, Mwamba Kasanda, and Professor Chris Trudeau. We are super grateful. Now let’s get that copywriting tip.

Ben: My name is Ben and I’m a copywriter at Radix. For my copywriting tip of the month, I’m going to steal a piece of advice I learned from Fiona when I first joined the company. Every time you switch the brand you’re writing for, just take 15 minutes to read some of their work. Even if you’re already familiar with them. It could be a few blog posts, emails, or even an ebook. It will help you really capture their tone and voice, and get you in the right headspace for approaching the task at hand. It’s especially useful if you’re writing for multiple brands a day.

Fiona: Thank you very much, Ben. I’m glad to hear you found the advice helpful. I have to say, it wasn’t my advice. I nicked it from George RR Martin, who said that, because there are so many characters in his Game of Thrones books, whenever he comes to write for a character that he hasn’t written for a while, he goes back to read previous sections where that character featured so that he can get back into their voice. And I’ve always found it really useful. And I still do it now. So it’s a very good tip. Thank you.

David: I wonder which B2B tech firm is the equivalent of Hodor?

Fiona: I don’t think we should say in a public forum.

David: Well, that is very nearly all we have time for. But before we go, let’s hear one last chunk of distilled wisdom from our guests over the last 99 episodes.

Raine Hunt: “I think what people forget is, they are still consumers, in their jobs and outside. And as such, the messages must be more sophisticated than they have been to date to ensure that we are responding to the needs of those individuals. So that’s where the value proposition and what you stand for, and what makes you unique is so important for marketers in the NHS.”

Joel Harrison: “The biggest thing that’s made a difference in this industry is the understanding of the importance of emotion. And it is about understanding what drives an individual. And being able to really focus in on that, whether it’s on a granular level, or a kind of persona based level is, I think, what’s made the industry so much more of a wonderful, fulfilling place to work for everybody who’s remotely creative.”

Dr Christine Bailey: “Right now, we need certainty. It’s a very uncertain world. So we need some data points. And we’ve also been conditioned to believe that the more points of evidence we have, the more likely people are to believe us. So that’s another reason why it’s good to use data and insights in our story.”

Rhiannon Blackwell: “So that, for me, is the most critical thing about content in ABM. I think it’s really important that whatever you do produce, clients can recognise themselves in it. So not only the relevance to what they’re trying to achieve, but also the language that’s being used.”

Luan Wise: “When it comes to writing content, I think there’s best practices, whether it’s social media content, or blogs or anything else, and that’s: know who you’re writing it for, and write it for them. And to have a purpose, particularly when we’re doing it for business. Make sure you include a call to action, make it into a conversation and make it social on social media. That’s a good post.”

Natalie Narh: “It’s always, lik,e thinking about how you might perceive it and then putting yourself in the shoes of someone else to see how other parties might perceive it as well. And I think if more businesses did that, at every stage of production, they would then get to realise how the story changes over time. It sounds like a very simple thing to do, but I don’t think people question their processes enough.”

Kavita Singh: “So I would say, if you do want to do more diversity content, set a target. You know, for us we do a monthly feature or blog. And you know, sometimes it’s around mental health, you know, I’ve done one on psychological safety in the workplace, these all contribute to different aspects of diversity.”

Sonja Nisson: “It’s an approach to market which you could coin with this mantra: ‘Help, don’t sell; talk, don’t yell; show, don’t tell.’ So it’s a different approach to marketing, and it came out of sales experience, really.”

John Espirian: “It’s even more the case these days, especially now we’re in pandemic land, the last thing we want to get is a sales message. And yet, she says, and I totally agree with this, that if you give away your information, your ideas, as generously as you can, that’s actually what gets people’s attention. So you know, valuable content is is actually being as helpful as you can to the other person. That’s what builds trust. And actually, ultimately, that’s what does business for you.”

Fiona: So we just heard from Raine Hunt, Joel Harrison, Dr Christine Bailey, Rhiannon Blackwell, Luan Wise, Natalie Narh, Kavita Singh, Sonja Nisson, and John Espirian. Thanks very much to all of you for contributing. And thanks too, to Ben Clarke to Doug Kessler and to Zdenka Linkova. I hope you feel we’ve answered your question.

David: And thanks to you, Fiona for coming back in and co-hosting. It’s been lovely. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Fiona: I have it’s taken me right. Yeah, it’s been a pleasure.

David: We don’t have the ‘pod yurt’ these days, you’re not surrounded in a cardboard box trying to—

Fiona: No, I am! I am! I’ve built one. I’ll send you a photo.

David: I look forward to it. Listener, remember, in a future episode, it could be your question we answer.

If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer, email a voice memo to [email protected], or find us on social media.

David: I’ll see you next month for another B2Q&A. When we’ll be answering: How important is grammar, really? If you have any answers or thoughts on that please do send them our way. Until then make good content and remember, we have every right to create our own destiny, but none to interfere with someone else’s. Unless it’s to insert an Oxford comma. Goodbye!

B2BQ&A 111: How can ABM content balance relevance and brand voice?

Posted on July 28, 2023March 17, 2025 by The Radix Team

Account-based marketing owes a lot of its power to the way its content can speak to this reader in particular, and address their unique needs. But how much tailoring is too much?

That’s the question we’ll be tackling in this episode of B2BQ&A, on behalf of Rhiannon Blackwell, Account-Based Marketing Leader at PwC.

Specifically, Rhiannon asked:

“How do you strike the right balance between your brand voice and messaging and hyper-relevance with a client, for example, by using their language?”

To answer Rhiannon’s great question, we’re thrilled to welcome two further well-known experts from the world of ABM. Our special interview guest is Andrea Clatworthy, Head of Marketing Transformation in Europe for Fujitsu, while our guest co-host Judy Wilks is International ABM and Executive Content Lead at Autodesk.

Along with Radix’s own David McGuire, we try to get to the bottom of how to show a customer or prospect you really understand them without being, well, creepy.

But wait; there’s more. You’ll also hear an essential copywriting pro tip from Sarah Mullaney, freelance copywriter and content writer, and owner of She’s a Writer.

You’ll find a full transcript of this episode at the end of this post.

Need to balance relevance for the client and your own brand voice? Here are the key takeaways from the podcast:

1. Use the client’s language

It’s important to mimic the language your clients use when they talk about their business. Make sure that everything you say to them, you put in the context of their brand – not your own. According to Andrea: “It could be as simple as just recognising whether a client calls their customers ‘customers’, or ‘consumers’, or even ‘clients’.”

2. Focus on your customer’s worries, not your brand

Relevance to the reader is all-important in ABM, but it can be especially tough to find that blend between what your brand wants to say – and how it wants to say it – and what the reader needs to read. As Andrea explains: “Whilst your brand is important to the customer, it’s not the primary thing that they are worrying about.”

3. Be careful how you use research

With a lot of B2B content, there’s a temptation to show more of your research than you should. But in ABM, the risks of getting it wrong are even greater, so be careful – if you tell your reader things they already know, you’re not going to get very far. And remember, there’s a fine line between “personalised” and “creepy”.

4. Understand how people consume content

Finding out how your audience consumes information can give you a good indicator of how to deliver your content. “It’s worth the effort to find out if a client is turned on by numbers and graphs,” says Andrea. “Or if they prefer video over written, or they like snackable content rather than long-form. Figuring that out can be really helpful.”

**5. Don’t tell the client you get them – show them**

This golden rule holds true for any writing, but if your ABM content can show an understanding of your reader’s business (without telling them their business) you can provoke a powerful response. As Andrea explains: “If you get it right, the reader or, if you like, the consumer of your writing, will have a positive emotional reaction. And they’ll be more likely to share content internally and be your advocate.”

Want some further reading? Here are the sources Andrea mentions:

For a great primer on ABM, Andrea recommends Bev Burgess and Dave Munn’s excellent book A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing.
If you want to gain an insight into how people like to consume information, a good starting point for Andrea is DiSC® profiling.

Here’s what you can expect in this episode…

4:01 – David poses Rhiannon Blackwell’s question to Andrea Clatworthy.

15:00 – Co-host Judy Wilks gives her thoughts on Andrea’s insights.

21:58 – Judy and David discuss the fine line between “personalised” and “creepy”.

24:23 – Sarah Mullaney from She’s a Writer shares a copywriting pro tip.

25:05 – David updates us on the search for the best B2B content of all time. Ever.

Got a question? We’ll find the answer.

To get your burning B2B content question answered, just send us a voice memo at [email protected]. And if there are any other thoughts you’d like to share, you can connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter: @radixcom.

How to listen:

You can download the episode here (right-click and select “Save As”).
Or you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Alternatively, add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Credits

Thanks to Andrea Clatworthy for sharing so many ABM insights.
Heartfelt appreciation to Rhiannon Blackwell for her question.
Cheers to Sarah Mullaney for sharing a fantastic copywriting pro tip.
And enormous gratitude to Judy Wilks for being an excellent guest co-host.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 111 – How can ABM content balance relevance and brand voice?

Rhiannon Blackwell: How do you strike the right balance between your brand voice and messaging and hyper-relevance with a client? For example, by using their language.

Judy Wilks: Well, what a great question from Rhiannon, and something that’s very close to my heart. Let’s ask Andrea Clatworthy of Fujitsu, what she thinks.

David McGuire: Hello, listener, and welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 111.

Judy: Account Based Marketing, or ABM for short, relies on your content talking to a very specific audience about their very specific needs and concerns. But the big question is: how do you balance that with delivering your own messaging and brand voice at the same time?

In a few moments, ABM expert Andrea Clatworthy will answer that very question posed by our friend and colleague, Rhiannon Blackwell of PwC.

Plus, we’ll hear a copywriting pro tip from Sarah Mullaney and get an update on your search for the best B2B content of all time.

David: Before all that, let’s do some introductions.

My name is David McGuire. I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency, and I’m delighted to say that we have another ABM leader as our co-host for this episode. It’s Judy Wilks, International ABM and Executive Content Lead at Autodesk.

Judy, thank you so much for joining us.

Judy: Thank you for having me. I’m very happy to be here.

David: That’s some job title. What does it actually involve?

Judy: That’s a very good question. So, in a nutshell, our team designs and creates content that does two things: content that fuels regional ABM programs and content that fuels global executive engagement within Autodesk.

David: So, from that point of view, as well as Andrea’s viewpoint, which we’ll get in a minute, you’re very well placed to help us answer Rhiannon’s question as well. So, that’s amazing. Thank you so much.

Before we get on to that, though, would you mind performing your first official duty as our co-host and telling the listener how they can get in touch with us?

Judy: Absolutely.

So, listener, if you have any comments or suggestions, you can find Radix on LinkedIn or Twitter: @radixcom. Or, if you want us to answer your question in a future episode, just record a quick voice note and send it in by email: [email protected].

David: That’s amazing. Thank you.

Judy: Now it’s time for our B2B Q&A for this episode. It comes from someone I know well from the ABM circuit; it’s PwC’s ABM leader for global marketing, Rhiannon Blackwell.

Rhiannon: How do you strike the right balance between your brand voice and messaging and hyper-relevance with a client – for example, by using their language,

David: Thanks, Rhiannon. It feels like we have a lot of ABM experts on the show today, which is great, because this really is an important question.

Relevance to the reader is all-important in ABM. When we’re writing ABM content, it can be especially tough to find that blend between what the brand wants to say and how it wants to say it, and what the reader needs to read.

So, how can you strike that balance? Well, I asked Fujitsu’s Head of Marketing Transformation in Europe and long-time ABM evangelist, Andrea Clatworthy. And I started by asking her Rhiannon’s question: just how do you balance client relevance and brand voice?

Andrea Clatworthy: This is such a great question. And it’s not an uncommon one.

It’s like a “depends” answer, which is never a good one, but I think it’s right to find the balance. And so thinking about it depends. For instance, if what you’re trying to do with your customer is perhaps reposition yourself, then you probably want to dial down your brand a little bit – without breaking the rules – and use more of the customer’s voice.

If perhaps it’s a new customer, or it’s new territory for you and you’re trying to break in, then perhaps you want to dial up your brand whilst recognising their voice. So it’s a really fine line.

And I find what we try and do when we’re creating the story and the narrative and the value proposition, we’re thinking all the time about what’s important to the customer. And whilst your brand is important to the customer, it’s not the primary thing that they’re worrying about. I would edge towards dialling it down just a little bit, but don’t break the guidelines.

I think it’s really important not to break your brand guidelines because they’re there for a reason. But you can stretch them. And you can take some liberties… perhaps.

Having said that, sometimes it’s appropriate to use some of the branding elements that your customer might have. So perhaps they’ve got an imagery style that you want to mimic rather than be 100% them.

Or it depends on what the communication is that you’re going to be providing. So, supposing it’s in the form of an infographic or something, as part of a conversation, and you want, you expect, and you’d love them to then use that asset, that you’ve created for them, with their stakeholders in their company, as part of their business case process if you like. Then you might want to make it slightly more their brand.

So, even though it looks like yours, and you’re suggesting this awesome thing, it’s easier for them to reuse that asset.

David: And that makes their life easier and turns them into kind of a representative of you. And I guess that goes for both brand elements, design-wise, but then also if they have a particular vocabulary, like a particular way of talking about a subject or an issue.

Andrea: Yes, there might be a project name that they use, or it could be as simple as just recognising whether they call their customers “customers”, or “clients”, or “consumers”? So, use the language that they use when they talk about their business.

David: Is there a chance, though, that a writer working on ABM Content could almost be too keen to show how much research they’ve done? And end up either telling the reader something they already know? Or just being a bit creepy?

Andrea: Yeah, that creepy thing is spot on, isn’t it? And actually, it’s relatively easy to get it wrong and I’ll give you an example of somebody pitching to me.

So, I’m a gamer. And somebody came in to see me, I reached out to them and said, you know, tell me stuff about your proposition. And they came to me, and they’ve ABMed and done everything personalised and tailored to me, which is great. And they focused on this gamer aspect. And I like a particular type of game, but they pitched to me using first-person fighter game, and they’re not the sorts of games that I like.

So they got the gaming bit, right, but they got the type of gaming bit wrong. So instantly, I’m kind of like: this is a bit creepy, and it’s wrong. So I gave them that feedback, you know, say thanks ever so much. It was so nearly right but made it completely wrong.

So using that research correctly is a trick there.

David: And I guess that must be easier – or maybe riskier – if you’re writing to accounts that you know well.

Andrea: If it’s an existing account, it’s much easier to get that balance right, because you know them and you’re in dialogue all the time, and you know completely what you’re doing. And the marketing part of that ongoing engagement will be reflective of the conversations that the account team or whoever is having.

So it’s much easier to get that right; it’s much harder when you don’t really know who you’re talking to. Then you probably edge a bit more on your brand, but reflect the language that you know that they use.

David: And when you’re doing your research in that case, and you’re thinking about the challenges they’re facing, and how your products and solutions can match that, how much are you thinking about the position that the company’s in? And how much are you thinking about the individual role? Like, are you thinking, “Oh, this is a company in the retail sector,” or are you thinking, “This is a CTO,” or whatever?

Andrea: It’s a bit of both to be quite honest. And then a bit contextual.

A company in the retail sector might be in growth mode, or they might be in massive reduction mode, as we’re seeing happening across the piece, they’re just reflecting where they are, because the language that you use might be slightly different.

If they’re in growth mode, and they’re being really prosperous, then they’re going to have a slightly different outlook on any future investments that they’re going to make, compared to if they need to reduce in one shape or form whether that’s people, or stores, or whatever. So it is both.

That persona piece is important too. So if it’s a CTO, then you know, there’s loads of work on personas and I think most people are probably reasonably comfortable with those.

But, then if you know who that CTO is, as a human being, then picking up on some of those things is equally important if you can get it right.

So I think that there are a few bits to this. There’s a bit about emotion. If you get it right, the reader, if you like the consumer of your writing, copy, assets – whatever it is – they have a positive emotional reaction, hopefully. And then they’re more likely to continue the conversation or, you know, share internally, and be your advocate. So, that’s a very clear signal.

David: I’m interested in the emotional response. What kind of response is that? Is that kind of a relief at feeling seen; that someone is recognising what they’re struggling with? Is it kind of delight and surprise, like, what sort of emotions are you seeing from the best content that you send?

Andrea: Yeah, those ones, and “relief” is a great word. Because actually, if you get the personalisation bit right, and what you’re suggesting you can help them with is right as well, then that’s the combo, because what you want people to do is to choose you above everybody else.

So, if you’ve delivered those messages correctly, you can kind of get a sense that these people get me and I can see how we could work together. And they’re going to solve a business problem one way, shape, or form, whatever that might be, with me when I choose to work with them.

So, it’s a bit of euphoria as well, I guess,

David: It’s not adding on something to make them feel emotional. It’s actually listening and thinking about what they really need, and then expressing that in a really kind of clear and impactful way.

Andrea: I think you’re spot on. That listening piece is really important, isn’t it? If you think about the old elephant adage: two big ears so do the listening first. If you get that right, then it can really help.

Now, how do you listen? That would be the next question.

We can read stuff, right? But quite often, if you’ve got an account team in with that account, they’re really getting to know those people, that person. So that they’re your primary source of that first-party insight if you like. It’s really important to include them in the process that you’re going through to create whatever it is you’re creating.

David: Okay, so we’ve thought about the branding, the voice, the vocabulary, and the kind of messaging that you’re aiming to deliver to make that connection. What else is important in ABM content that really works?

Andrea: Great question, again. I think it’s worth considering the format of the content that you’re going to be delivering.

Understanding how people consume information can give you a really good indicator of how to deliver that content. So, if somebody is very much numbers based, then think about making sure that there’s numbers and perhaps graphs.

If somebody likes to consume video over written, or perhaps they like snackable content rather than long form, and then working some of that out can be really helpful.

And clearly, you want to use omnichannel anyway. Don’t just rely on one thing.

There are some little things you can do. So you can use some DiSC profiling, for example, which will give you an indicator of the type of behaviours and brain workings, to use a non-technical term, that could determine how people like to consume information. So that’s quite a good starting point.

David: It’s really thinking about the individual and what they need, really in a kind of 360 way.

Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. And, we know, don’t we, as good marketeers, that different content and content formats work better at different stages of the customer journey. So, building that in as well to your comms plan is a good thing to do.

David: That’s amazing. Thank you.

So if the listener wants to find out more and really dive into the subject of creating really good ABM content, where do you suggest they go for more information?

Andrea: A really good starting point is a bit of reading. There’s a really great book by Bev Burgess called A Practitioner’s Guide to ABM. And it is a practitioner’s guide, so that’s a great place to start.

I’d also recommend reaching out to organisations like yourself, David.

David: [Laughs] Thank you very much; the cheque’s in the post

Thanks, Andrea, that’s great. It’s so helpful to know there’s no one right answer; you can dial your brand voice up and down – depending on the job your content needs to do.

Judy, what stood out for you there as an ABM leader?

Judy: Well, actually, “everything” is one answer. There was such a lot of great stuff in there and like a topic that I could talk about till the cows come home.

But there were two key things that Andrea said that I think are kind of foundational.

And number one is: never break the brand rules. That’s just a good starting point for any ABM. Not your brand rules, nor the client’s brand rules.

And then moving on, I pulled out this quote, and I wrote it down and I’m going to read it because I think it’s really essential to ABM.

Andrea said, “Whilst your brand is important to the customer, it’s not the primary thing that they are worrying about.” And that’s just absolutely crucial, you know. It’s a nice way of saying the customer doesn’t care about you or your brand. You have to make sure that everything you say to them, you put in the context of their business.

So what that means with getting that balance right between your brand and voice and theirs, is that if you, if your piece, either visually or stylistically shouts your brand, you’re actually not going to get your point across because your point in ABM is always: I understand your business. And if you’re shouting your brand, you’re not going to get that point across. So you need to think about that.

But, at the same time, it’s really powerful when you get it right that you can show the synergies between two brands.

David: So is it more complicated than the way the content sounds, the way the content looks, the vocabulary you choose, the register you write in, are maybe led by your brand, so that it’s recognisable, but the content, the stuff that you write about, the messaging, that kind of stuff is led by their priorities?

So maybe the content is about them, but the branding and the voice are about you? Or is it more nuanced than that?

Judy: I think that is your starting point. And then it depends.

I think you can look at it like a continuum. Absolutely, the content will always 100% be about them. That’s the starting point. But the continuum is then how much do you kind of shift the brand, the tone, the voice, the vocabulary, to reflect the customer, as well?

And that will depend on a couple of things. It will depend on: what is your level of awareness with that customer already, and what is the level of the relationship?

If, as Andrea said, you need to establish awareness with the customer, then you’re probably going to want to lean more towards your brand. But, if you’re at the partnership stage, then you might want to show how the two brands work together, so you really visually and stylistically get that partnership message across.

David: Yeah, and I guess, all of this with the proviso that when you talk about the vocabulary that you use, any specific terminology should be their terminology. So if they call their customers “clients”, or they call their customers “members”, for example, or if they have certain initiatives that they have their own language for, then you should absolutely adopt that rather than trying to impose your terminology on top of something that they would recognise.

Judy: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I don’t really have anything to add to that. I 100% agree.

David: With a lot of B2B content generally, there’s always a temptation, when you’ve done your research, to show maybe more of that research than you should and end up telling the reader things that they already know, to kind of show off how much you know.

I guess that’s an even stronger temptation, in ABM, given how much you will know about your particular audience, right?

Judy: Yeah. And this is a podcast so you couldn’t see me smiling then. But yes, absolutely. That is a real danger because as you say, you do a lot of research into the company and their business and you know a lot about them. And it’s ABM, so you really want to show them we understand your business. But if you just tell them what they already know about their business, you’re not going to get very far.

So I apply the adage here that you don’t tell someone you’re funny, you make them laugh. It’s the same thing: you don’t tell them everything you know about their business, you show that you understand their business by the recommendations that you make in the content.

And, let’s face it, you’re never going to know their business as well as they do. But the value that you bring is that you are an outside perspective. So you show them you understand their business, by adding that outside perspective to what you know about them – and perhaps sending them something they hadn’t thought of before.

David: Yeah, it’s the same thing as when I’m training copywriters in general how to do this stuff. OK, you’ve got this knowledge about them. So what?

So it’s not, you know, “Ah, this company has workforces on three different continents” or whatever it is, it’s “Because you have a workforce on three continents, you will need to handle time zones in this way or handle collaboration – and here’s a way that we can help you with that.”

Like, we’ve done the thinking around the “so what?” about the information that we have – we’re not just parroting back the information.

I think that’s obviously all the more important in ABM, and I think in any B2B content, that’s useful.

Judy: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, in any content, the more you talk about the customer, and the more you show an understanding of their business – without telling them their business – then it’s going to be more powerful. So yes, that is exactly it.

Which takes thinking. It’s one thing to have a load of data, it’s another thing to then analyse that data. So, suddenly the writer is not just a writer, you know, the writer is suddenly an ABM strategist as well.

And, I always say, “Writing is thinking.” It’s not just about putting words on a page, you’ve got to have those thoughts first before you can then articulate them nicely on a page.

David: Yeah. Do you have any advice on how much of your research it’s even okay to show before you start to kind of worry them that you’re getting a bit creepy?

Judy: Well, now we’re talking about talking to the individual, and as well as talking to the company. And, the topic of creepy personalisation, as I often call it, comes up a lot in ABM. And, I think one good standard is to think: how would I feel if it happened to me?

So, for example, on my Twitter profile, I probably say I’m a cat fancier. But if someone gave a business presentation, and it had cats all over it and used cat analogies, or gifs… is that going to make me like them more?

David: Of course it is! Be honest…

Judy: All right, well, even if you take cats out of the equation, you know, that’s creepy. And we come back to what is the one key word that sums up ABM? It’s relevance. Are cats relevant to that conversation? No, they’re not.

I think it’s much more powerful, if yes, you do your homework about that person, but you also try and understand their values. What are their motivations? What’s their personality type?

So, don’t just kind of look at what they do out of work, “Oh, David plays golf, let’s put some golf analogies in here.” That’s not relevant.

But, if you understand their motivations and the type of person they are, then you can tailor the content in the right way. So for example, if I think of myself as a bit of a change agent – and typically, I’ll have plastered that all over LinkedIn – it won’t be very difficult to find. If I’m that type of person, then you need to position whatever you’re proposing as some bold, exciting, disruptive move.

That’s much more powerful than putting some images of cats or golf into your content.

David: Before we finish this episode, there are a couple more things we need to do. First, it’s time for our copywriting pro tip.

Voiceover: Copywriting pro tip.

Sarah Mullaney: My name is Sarah Mullaney, from She’s a Writer, and my B2B copywriting tip is to have core materials about the values or proof points of the client within reach when you’re writing about them.

You can use these to focus less on what services or solutions the clients are offering and keep bringing the copy back to why the client is a leader in their field and why their customers continue to use them.

This will help you to get into the mind of the reader writing the most purposeful and benefit-driven B2B copy for them.

Judy: Thanks, Sarah. That sounds like a really useful tip for making sure that you can stay on track during the day.

So, David, I gather that you have something to ask the listener.

David: Yeah, I do… To mark the 10th anniversary of this podcast, we’re continuing our search for the best B2B content of all time.

Now, in particular, we’d like the listeners’ help finding the best blog posts, case studies, and web content. There’s so much to choose from out there, it’d be really helpful if anyone could tell us where to focus our search.

All you need to do is to jot down one or two of your favourites and email them to us at [email protected]. Or just fire them at us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Anyway, Judy, thank you so much for co-hosting. It’s been so much fun to do this with you. I wish we had more time.

Judy: I know. Well, I’ve already said I could talk about this topic forever. So, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.

And I guess while we’re at it, we should thank everybody else that’s been involved in this episode.

So, in no particular order, thank you, first of all, to Andrea Clatworthy, for answering the really great question. Thank you to Sarah Mullaney for the pro tip. And lastly, thank you to Rhiannon Blackwell for asking the question in the first place.

David: Rhiannon, I hope you feel that we have done you justice.

Remember listener, it could be your question we answer in a future episode.

Voiceover: If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer, email a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media.

David: We’ll be back soon for another B2BQ&A.

Until then, make great content. And remember: a writer only begins the content; it’s the reader who finishes it. Well, either them or that stakeholder who won’t sign it off anyway.

David and Judy: Goodbye.

Taking the shortcut into the subconscious

Adding a new ingredient to your subject line soup

1: Lead with a single compelling insight/takeaway

2: Beware the perils of teasing

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

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

Say something meaningful, be heard

Everyone’s a hero. So now what?

Finding your individuality

Differentiate the brand through tone

Tell your customers’ success stories

Say the things other companies are scared to say

Don’t bullshit. Ever.

#1) Settle in for a long task

#2) Conduct a full content autopsy

#3) Rebuild your story

#4) Fill in the blanks (and don’t be afraid to do some serious rewriting)

There is no quick fix

Bye-bye, bounce rate

So what should we measure instead? Engagement

Eight more ways to measure content performance

Define what ‘good’ looks like – then measure

1. The ideal structure

2. A perfect balance of show and tell

3. Access points for directors, animators and voice-over artists

4. Sharp, succinct timing

5. An in-depth understanding of your audience

It sounds like a lot, but we can help

An inbuilt cognitive what?

1. The Availability Cascade

2. Authority Bias

3. Decoy Effect

4. Anchoring or Focalism

5. The Present Bias

How does your buyer think?

Why cybersecurity content needs a balanced approach

Four ways to balance your content

If in doubt, seek a second opinion

1. Be specific

2. Use positive framing

3. Consolidate your criticism

4. Consider what’s possible (and what isn’t)

5. Build in time for changes

Good content needs a good feedback process

So, how do you get clients to stop meddling with your wording?

In this episode, you’ll find…

Have you got a question for B2BQ&A?

How to listen:

Credits

Transcript: B2BQ&A 100: How can I stop clients meddling with my wording?

Need to balance relevance for the client and your own brand voice? Here are the key takeaways from the podcast:

1. Use the client’s language

2. Focus on your customer’s worries, not your brand

3. Be careful how you use research

4. Understand how people consume content

5. Don’t tell the client you get them – show them

Want some further reading? Here are the sources Andrea mentions:

Here’s what you can expect in this episode…

Got a question? We’ll find the answer.

How to listen:

Credits

Transcript: B2BQ&A 111 – How can ABM content balance relevance and brand voice?

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**5. Don’t tell the client you get them – show them**