Category: The Blog

B2BQ&A 104: How can you keep your B2B content fresh?

Posted on by The Radix Team

Nobody likes B2B content that’s repetitive. It’s boring to write and – more importantly – it’s unlikely to be successful if your audience feels like they’ve heard it all before. But if you often have to write about the same products, services and ideas, keeping your content fresh and compelling is easier said than done.

It’s a problem B2B marketers and content creators face all the time. So we were delighted when Chelsea Groome of Fierce Content gave B2BQ&A the perfect excuse to go in search of an answer, by asking:

“If you’ve been working with a client for a long time and their product hasn’t changed much, how do you keep their content fresh?”

Not to brag, but we think we found the *perfect* expert to respond to this.

When you think of an (essentially) one-product B2B brand that still always has a mountain of relevant and valuable things to say, Xero has to be right up there. And Content Strategy Lead Richard Allardice (or “Dice” to his friends) agreed to dive into what marketers and writers need to keep in mind… with bonus insights from his colleagues Amy Stephens and Sarah Webb.

Joining us as guest co-host this month (and sharing some great insights of her own) is Kate Terry, Head of Demand at Turtl. Kate gives her perspective on personalising content down to granular levels and in using analytics and insights to constantly update and improve content.

We also have the joy of hearing from Claire Goodfellow, a copywriter at Radix, for the copywriting tip of the month. Stay tuned to learn the secret to clear, concise sentences.

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

So, just how do you keep B2B content fresh?

Between Dice, his colleagues, and Kate, there’s plenty of advice in this episode. Here’s a handful of suggestions…

1. Consider the wider landscape

Your product might not change much, but the challenges your target audience face probably do. So think about the wider context: where, how, and why your product is used.

“Your product isn’t the only thing that changes,” says Dice. “The people who use your product will change; what they understand will change; things in the world will change.”

Remember, the information your customers need extends beyond your specific product. So if you’re struggling to keep your content fresh, consider angles that might be indirectly related to your main focus. Use your organisation’s broader sector expertise, and you’ll likely build up a relationship of trust between your audience and your brand.

2. Lose the “publish and done” mindset

With all the work that goes into creating a content piece, it’s easy to get into the habit of publishing, promoting, then moving on to the next one. But often, digital content can be updated after the fact – so even after you’ve published it’s always a live project.

Kate sees Turtl users doing exactly this. She remarks: “We see people doing things like changing the order of the content, changing the title, trying out different tests to see how the changes make an impact on readership.”

Dice goes further, and says every content team of a certain size needs to have someone who is specifically tasked with revisiting each piece, and ensuring it’s always up to date.

3. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

Having said all this, it’s worth remembering you’ll likely get bored of your content before your audience does. Not everything needs to be improved, and not always in the way you might think. So look at the data, and understand what’s working.

“Sometimes the answer is ‘no’,” comments Dice. “Sometimes a feature has not changed, we’ve written it up really well and it works… But things change around that; the context changes. Your company’s style might change, and you might want to weave that back in because otherwise that piece of content is going to start to sound a bit stilted in comparison.”

In this episode, you’ll find…

1:00 – We welcome our co-host Kate Terry, Head of Demand at Turtl

4:00 – We put Chelsea Groome’s question to Dice

22:55 – Kate and David share their highlights and thoughts

28:10 – Our copywriting tip of the month: write succinctly

Have you got a question for B2BQ&A?

We’re here to help! 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 LinkedIn, or tweet at us: @radixcom.

How to listen

Credits

  • Firstly, thank you to Kate Terry, for all the insight you shared as co-host.
  • Thanks to Chelsea Groome, for your brilliant question.
  • A massive thank you to Dice, Sarah Webb and Amy Stephens for giving us the benefit of your experience.
  • And Claire Goodfellow, thank you for that essential copywriting tip of the month.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 104: How can you keep B2B content fresh?

Chelsea Groome: If you’ve been working with a client for a long time and their product or position hasn’t changed much, how do you keep their content fresh?

Kate Terry: That’s a great question. Let’s ask Dice from Xero.

David McGuire: Hello listener, you are very welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 104.

Kate: In a moment, we’ll ask Xero’s Content Strategy Lead Richard Allardice, or Dice to his friends how you keep content fresh when you only have one product. And later we’ll get a copywriting tip of the month from junior copywriter, Claire Goodfellow.

David: Before that some introductions, my name is David McGuire. I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency. And this month, our guest co-host is Turtl’s Head of Demand, Kate Terry. Kate, thanks for joining us.

Kate: Hey, David, thanks for having me today. It’s really great to be here.

David: Oh, it’s fantastic to have you here as guest co-host. Lots of change going on a Turtl and kind of new products and surfaces and things, I understand, lots for you to do.

Kate: Yeah, a lot to do. That’s for sure. We’re in kind of high growth mode right now. So we’re really excited about some of the new product developments that have come out and new ways that we can help people make amazing and engaging B2B content. So yeah, lots coming out of Turtl these days, but all good stuff.

David: Yeah, we talk about Turtl a lot on this show. Listener, there’s no kind of affiliate relationship going on, I promise you. But there’s lots of new things there where there’s kind of more like a personalization, kind of ABM type vibe to it now.

Kate: Yeah, that’s right. So what you can do with Turtl is actually personalise your content at scale down to the individual or account level and you can use all of your data and insight and intent data you have, connect that up and turn that into a really automated process. So it’s a huge leap forward if you’re interested in personalising content down to your end user and then getting data back from them on how they’re engaging and kind of getting really granular account insight.

David: Yeah, I mean, anything that contributes to the death of the PDF is okay in my book. Kate, in your first official duty as guest co-host, would you mind telling the listener how they can get in touch with us?

Kate: I’d be delighted. 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 on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email: [email protected]

David: That’s brilliantly done. Thank you very much.

Kate: Right, it’s time to hear this month’s question. So who do we have?

Chelsea: Hello, this is Chelsea Groome from Fierce Content. And my question is, if you’ve been working with a client for a long time, and their product or position hasn’t changed much, how do you keep their content fresh?

David: Thanks, Chelsea. That’s an important question and something copywriters and marketers have to think about a lot. Though, if it’s okay with you we’ll broaden the terms from talking about just clients, so we can help our in-house listeners too. I’m chuffed to say I got my absolute first pick to answer this question. Because when I think of a brand that’s created a mountain of really fresh content around essentially one product, I think of Xero.

So I was knocked out when their Content Strategy Lead, Dice agreed to tell us how they do it. This is a little longer than one of our usual interviews, but he had so much good stuff to say I think you’re going to want to hear it. I started by asking Dice Chelsea’s question: just how do you keep content fresh?

Dice: Yeah, so I spent a bit of time thinking about this, it in some ways does depend on the size of the company, or the size of the client you’re working with. Because one thing that you know, I’ve experience lately working in a bigger place is that to keep something fresh, it needs to be someone’s job. So someone needs to be tasked with looking after that page or that product or keeping across what’s changing needs to be someone’s responsibility.

And that sounds like a really, you know, obvious thing, but a lot of the time, you know, companies I’ve worked with in the past sometimes people don’t do that. They put something out there excited. It goes out into the world, but it’s not someone’s job to look back and say, “How’s that thing going and does it need changing, and does it need improving?” So I think it’s really important to make it someone’s job to own it, be responsible for it and have the clout to be able to change it.

And another really good point that Amy Stephens who’s a Content Strategist on my team made as well, when we were talking about this, is that part of that job needs to be helping your organisation or your company be comfortable with making changes over time.

So sometimes, if you are working with a client or a company, and there’s a lot of approvals, a lot of review needed, that process is really unwieldy, there’s a bit of a reluctance to change it. Now that we’ve said it live, we don’t want to go back over that again. So part of the job of owning it is to prepare your company or client for the fact that things need to change and be flexible and, and adapt to what’s happening out in the world or happening with your product.

And I guess the other part of that is that it’s not just enough to be someone’s job, that someone needs to be watching regularly, you need to be monitoring. And so what are you actually monitoring, before you put it out there, you need to think about what is effectiveness or success going to mean for this particular thing, and what kind of metrics might be looking at, and you actually need to go and look at them, you know, sometimes I think people, you know, rest on their laurels a little bit, put something out there, it’s beautiful in the moment. But don’t watch to see what happens.

The founder of AppSumo, a guy who I follow called Noah Kagan, he talks a lot about this idea of what you track will grow. So it’s not his own idea. It’s one that he adopted from someone else. But the idea is that if you’re looking at it, and you are paying attention to it, and you’re interested in the numbers, then they will grow because you will, you know, take action or do things, even if they’re minor to, to move those things onward. So what you track will grow, and I’d add to that what you track will improve. So if you are looking at it and monitoring it, then it’s going to get better, as long as you are doing your due diligence.

And I think that if it’s a product, that might mean checking in with the team, and forming a relationship with the team, who build the product, so that you can keep each other abreast of, for example, what’s changing with your target audience. So your product isn’t the only thing that changes, the people who are using your product will change, what they understand will change, things in the world will change.

A really good example of that for us, as a UK example, is Making Tax Digital. So that wasn’t a thing X number of years ago, but then it became a big UK government initiative. And it’s highly related to our product. And so we need to be talking about that, and being really up to date with what has been said about Making Tax Digital, because that’s what our target audience need to know in the hearing. And then they need more information about it.

So you need to be looking at it connected to that product team. So you know what changes are coming ahead of time, you don’t want to be behind there. And you need to be connected to your audience, you need to be talking to them and finding out what they are hearing or not understanding, not just to do with your product, but to do with the landscape. You know, what else? What else is entering that information landscape that they might need to know? Or you might need to adapt according to.

David: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s the product, but it’s also the context in how it gets used and who’s using it and what they’re using it for. And those kinds of things on the kind of copy level, if something is not changing that much like, you know, say there’s a feature in Xero, that’s a popular feature, it’s always been there, and it’ll always will. Is that something where you would change, just kind of on the writing, on a copy level, you’d change up how you write about it regularly? Or is it something where you’re kind of refining it, you’re testing and learning? And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and you can kind of you know, afford to talk about the same thing that the same way.

Dice: I think that there’s something really important in the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” thing that you just said. There’s a temptation, I think, when it’s your job to write or refine – or if you’re trying to get work with a client, you know, because you are inherently motivated to get more jobs and do more work – to make change, yeah, to change things and tweak things and carry on.

And I think that impulse is a good one. Because most of the time things can be improved. You know, perfection is hard to achieve. What does perfection even mean? You can improve things but I think that there’s also something that people need to think about is that it doesn’t need to change. Sometimes the answer is no, sometimes it’s a feature that has long acted in the same way, has not changed. We’ve written it up really well and it works.

But you know, like I said, things change around, that the context changes. So your company’s style might change, you might change some things in your style guide, words that you might use or phrases you might use or a proposition or some nicety of language that you might start to use. And you might want to weave that back in. Because otherwise, if you don’t, that piece of content, even if the product stays the same, it’s going to start to sound a bit stilted in comparison to the other stuff.

So what can happen is on a bigger website, the top line pages, the landing pages, the home page, get the latest and greatest sort of brand propositions and feel really fun, if that’s the tone of voice for your company will feel really fresh, out of the deep pages of the product that we built 10 years ago, we generally not specifically Xero, you know, doesn’t have that same tone or the same messaging. And so while the facts or the accuracy might stay the same, the way you talk about it, your tone of voice, and your flow, and your style might need to change as well.

The other thing that happens in a large company is that writers change. So you know, the team of writers or the writer that worked on something a year ago might have changed. And so that’s where, again, this depends on the size of the company, the role of an editor really comes in when you’re looking at your publication, and you’re looking for that evenness.

So I’m the editor, I’m looking at this publication. I often try to think of a website as a publication and you know, having and editor who’s always looking at their publication, and to try and keep it as fresh and interesting. And what have we published before can we bring to the front? What are we trying to push out there that’s new? But you also don’t want to have unevenness, where part of your website is losing connection with what people need, and a part of it is really well connected.

So that might be slightly long-winded answer to your question. But essentially, like I think, yes, you would be careful, you want to just change stuff for the sake of it. And, but you also want to make sure that when new writers come in, and new ideas come in that you actually allow those to come to the surface.

So if a new writer comes in and provides a new perspective on a page, maybe incidentally, “Hey, I’ve just been looking at this page, you’re my colleague, I see that you wrote this a year ago, I think it’s awesome. But I think that, you know, we’re kind of moving to the style of shorter sentences, more clipped. And some of these longer sentences, you know, like, there’s a bit of research out there now that says that people find that kind of hard to read in a digital context. So like, how about we update that based on this new style guide entry we have now which says, we’re trying to aim for sentences of 20 or fewer words.”

Kind of an abstract example. But all of those things together, yes, you should be looking at them and monitoring them. But the level of change should be based on, you know, a few things, including whether it’ll have any impact and whether it’s actually needed.

David:  One of the things that really strikes me about Xero is that in terms of the content that you cover, the field of subject seems to be really pretty broad, but the audience seems to be really clearly defined. So it feels like almost anything that you might want to know about running a small business successfully, you can find on the Xero website. There’s a lot of small business information on there, obviously, there’s, you know, a lot of partner stuff as well.

Is that kind of a conscious thing to kind of own that space, because a lot of your customers are kind of, you know, owner/managers of businesses, so to kind of be a one stop shop like that?

Dice: Yeah, Xero’s business and accounting software, and it does a lot of stuff. You can add any number of, you know, 1000 things to it, you can integrate, almost, you know, so many things with it. And I think that I guess one of the challenges probably in the early days is when people hear accounting, with it comes with some perceptions for a small business person, genuinely of perhaps fear or concern or you know, or a lack of understanding.

So I think what’s really important if you are trying to help people use or promote or get people to use your product, if it’s an area that people may be a little bit anxious about or unsure about, you need to build up trust and authority you need to help people understand or see or get the feeling that you know what you’re talking about.

And so you’re right on the website, there’s a lot of information about our particular features because it’s a very featured product. There are a lot of things that it does. But the other thing we need to do is to help – we’re going back to that idea of the context of that landscape. The landscape in which we exist as a small business, trying to keep across the records and the finances, and you know, it’s a busy time, there’s a lot going on when you’re running a small business, or if they’re an accountant trying to make sure that they are keeping a record so when it comes to them to do their returns, it’s not, you know, problematic.

And so the landscape is already a complicated one, you’re running a business, it’s a lot going on. And so what we need to be able to do, and the content we provide is to assure people, “Hey, we’ve got some products that can help you out, use this product for X thing, we’ve got that covered. Hey, if you are a small business, and you’re trying to run your business, here’s how we can help you do that, here’s how you can choose a business name or here’s how you start a business in this particular country”. And, you know, with the side benefit that if you use Xero that will actually be easier as well. So it is a conscious thing.

So Xero, like many other companies, you know, take one of these strategies on board, which is to both inform people on their product, promote it, and help people within the wider landscape in which they work.

So really, like that depth of content is about generating trust, it’s also about generating awareness. So I might know about the company Xero, and I might go look for it. But I might not know about Xero, I might just have a problem. So my problem is, when I go to my accountant, at the end of the financial year, with a plastic bag full of receipts, they get a little bit irate with me, and suggested that I do something more digitally and modern focused. And so the problem is, you know, how do I do accounting? Or like, how do I keep my record straight, and so they know their problem, they don’t know that we that we have a solution for it.

So if they are looking for that problem, and then we would like to help them with that problem, we would also like them to know that we are a good solution to their problems. So you know that is why, you know, on a website like Xero’s, and this is not a strategy specific to us. You see that different content because we’re trying to solve the “do you know about a product? What does that product do?” problem or question, answer their question, but also answer the like, the use case question of like, “I have this life or business challenge, can you help me out with that?”

David: And there are so many challenges involved in running… I guess that also – going back to the original question – gives you loads of space to find ideas and find new and interesting and fresh perspectives and things to say.

Dice: Yes, yes. Like I think there are lots of different ways to help people feel assured, or calmer or feel like their financial records are taken care of. But also, it’s also worth saying that there are like really classic common things as well, that don’t really change that much.

For example, in these, when it comes to surprise, anybody starting a small business from a single person operation through to 10,20,30, 40 people, like they’re really really busy, you know, there’s just a lot going on, and they don’t have a lot of time, and that I don’t have a lot of time, it’s not something specific to us or our product, it’s just a, like a business challenge. And a difficult thing, because there’s just so much going on.

And in the beginning, you’re really just winging it, you know, especially if you’re just one person. And so while yes, we can put a different spin on or a fresh angle on being across things and being up to date and being ready for tax time. And we do that regularly. Some problems, or some challenges are kind of evergreen, which is that if you’re a business person, you are time poor. And so that’s kind of like a thematic thread that might go through a lot of content for any company publishing for small businesses, including ours.

And so like you kind of have this sort of like deep themes, and then on top of that, you might have a fresh angle. The latest campaign the New Zealand based one is taking tax out of the sort of too-hard basket, their angle is that, you know, people that get feel like taxes and returns are complicated and too hard. And you know, what we are saying is that doesn’t need to be you know, and so that’s, you know, it’s a fresh angle, but on a classic take, which is: tax is complicated. You are busy. We can help you.

David: Yeah. So you’ve been talking with your team. What other practical tips have you got for the listener about how they could keep their content fresh?

Dice: Sure. Okay, so, a couple of great points from Sarah Webb and Amy Stephens on my team. Amy talked a little bit about not just understanding your target audience but understanding the industry,  you know, the wider industry and what’s happening in that area. So what is changing in terms of the words that are used, what is changing in terms of the language or the themes that are emerging in terms of the technology, and what’s available to people.

So obviously, you need to be aware of that as a business where your business sits in there anyway. But as a person dealing with words, you need to also be listening for what language is changing. So you can appear up to date and modern and fresh, as you say.

Another good point that Sarah and my team made was you have to think about being proactive and reactive. So proactive measures of keeping fresh, going out and finding out industry trends, talking to users, monitoring different sources of data. So this is an interesting one that we could do a whole podcast on, which is, how do I listen or understand what people are saying.

So it’s things like looking in search logs, or looking at surveys or looking at other data that people have created, gathered other research that people have done, to understand what people are thinking, what their mental models are, what they don’t understand. So that’s proactively understanding your audience.

And then there’s some reactive stuff, which is when people write to you or say something to you, or you hear customer feedback. And sometimes that customer feedback depending on the size of the company won’t necessarily come directly to you. So you might need to, you know, ask around, is there a source of customer feedback? Do we do surveys, do we have any NPS data, any NPS feedback that we might make use of that’s really…? You want to get that pipeline of information coming towards you, or go and find it.

And also, in terms of being reactive, or proactive, you need to keep across, if you’re not writing everything on your website, which often is not the case. Or if it’s small, maybe you are, you need to be looking across what’s going on everywhere else and making connections.

So if someone else is running the blog, and you’re working on the feature information, you need to make sure that you are sharing notes, and putting things out accordingly so that you are not publishing disparate information, and that actually, they complement each other, you know, so things appear smooth, so that it makes sense when someone lands one in one place versus another and that as a person goes between them it feels coherent, and created deliberately.

David: That’s awesome. Dice, if people want to get more wisdom from you on content, and copy and more stuff like this, where’s the best place for them to hear from you?

Dice: If you have a question, and you want to reach out to me, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn and drop me a message. Always happy to chat.

David: Thanks, Dice for giving us such a full and well-thought-out answer. And thanks to your colleagues to Sarah and Amy, hello to you. Plus, thanks, Chelsea, of course for asking the question in the first place. Kate, there’s a lot in there. Could you pick out something that stood out for you?

Kate: Yeah, definitely. I really liked everything that Dice was saying. And one thing that I think is particularly interesting is this idea that your product isn’t the only thing that changes, I think it’s weirdly easy to forget that if you’re a team who actually is quite focused on what you’re doing, and what you’re bringing to market, and that’s a great place to be in, especially for myself, in demand working with sales, they’re really interested in what exactly we want to say about our product.

But I think you know, from a marketing and content perspective, it’s really important to remember the context that your audience is in, that the individuals you’re speaking to are in. And I really liked that focus that he had on kind of, you know, understanding the context and keeping up with the changes that are happening in the space that everyone’s operating in.

David: Sure. I mean, so much of it is about defining the space where you’re going to write content and understanding what your clients and your customers and prospects want to know about that you know about, as well, you know. For them, it’s, you know, it’s how to run a small business a lot of the time or, you know, and other elements of that.

And then I get, you know, for Turtl, you know, there’s a lot in there about just kind of the psychology of content, and that stuff that people will find interesting. I think one of the things also that I found interesting about Chelsea’s question is where she was saying, “how do I keep it fresh, I keep writing about the same thing all the time”.

And obviously, if you’re writing about the same thing all day, every day, but somebody is reading, once in a while, maybe the stuff doesn’t get as stale as quickly as you think. And maybe you don’t need to change it as quickly as you think. And that was one of the things that I thought was interesting. We’re always more focused on our stuff being the same all the time than perhaps the audience is.

Kate: I think that’s so true. And it’s again, such as easy mistake to make where because it’s not fresh to you, you assume that it’s not fresh to your reader, when actually, it might be working just as well as it did on day one. So I liked what he said about understanding what you do need to change and you know, reinvent and make sure it’s keeping up to date.

But actually, there’s some things that you might not necessarily need to change. So that kind of links up as well to understanding the data and making sure that you are actually tracking what is still working, what is still engaging people versus what might have dropped off and is no longer really resonating with your audience.

David: For a lot of people, of course, it’s all about the content production. And then you know, when you publish the piece that feels like the end of it, and you know, what Dice was saying about having someone whose job it is to go back and check.

One of the things that can be really interesting that you might have a perspective on is, obviously Turtl is a format that you can keep changing stuff live, after you’ve published it. And I’m kind of interested, do people actually go back and do that? Or do they have this attitude that once it’s done, it’s done and they’re on to the next thing?

Kate: Yes, people definitely go back and change and update and tweak their content. It’s something that we really encourage our customers to do. And it’s something where they’ve never really had access to the data to be able to do that in a meaningful way. So it’s pretty exciting, because it gives you a new way of working where instead of, you know, we like to think about the kind of old school publication mindset versus this more evergreen mindset.

And it actually changes the way you think about content all the way from when you’re creating it down to when you publish it, because if you publish it with the idea that you can go back and update it in mind, you’re going to have more, you know, it just informs how you actually write it, the kind of way that you write it, maybe in a way that you can either go back and regularly update it to keep it fresh, or just recognising it as like a pillar piece of content that you can create other things off the back of.

So what we see is people doing things like changing the order of the content, changing the title, trying out different tests, where they’ll run and see how different changes make an impact on readership and on the different pieces of the content that people engage with.

And even things like images, you know, you can really get as granular as you want to with testing things out. But one of the things we really like to talk about is this evergreen strategy, and how can you actually repurpose the content you already have and make the most of it?

David: Yeah, I think that’s probably a whole different podcast there. But that change in mindset from publication and done, to “this is a thing that’s live and your contents a thing that you have to keep working on”. I think some people… “I’ve not got time to write the stuff that I’ve got to write now, let alone keep it up to date!” But, you know, that’s absolutely the case that now that we’re in the digital world, there’s no reason for it to be one and done, I guess.

Kate: Yeah, exactly. Now it’s time to hear our copywriting tip of the month. So it’s from a Junior Copywriter at Radix, Claire Goodfellow.

Claire Goodfellow: Hi, I’m Claire, a Junior Copywriter at Radix. And my favourite copywriting tip is to use fewer words. Read over your sentences and ask yourself, can I say the same thing in less words? The chances are that if you can, it will make your writing clearer, more readable, and more concise.

Kate: Thanks, Claire. I love that tip. Brevity is so important. And it’s really great advice that I’ll pass along to my team as well.

David: I’m sorry to say that it’s all we have time for this episode – already! Kate, please would you thank this month’s contributors.

Kate: I would love to so thank you to Chelsea for such an awesome question. And of course, to Dice for answering it with help from Sarah and Amy, and thanks to Claire for the great copywriting tip.

David: And thank you, Kate, you’ve been an excellent co-host. It’s like you do this all the time. I hope it hasn’t been too painful.

Kate: Not too painful, no. Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed it and learned a few great tips to take away as well.

David: Oh, thank you. It’s great to have you here. Listener, remember it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer email a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media.

I’ll see you next month for another B2BQ&A when we will try to answer the question: how do you measure content quality? Until then, make good content and remember, do one thing every day that scares you. BOO! There; there’s today’s. You’re welcome.

Kate and David: Goodbye!

 

B2BQ&A 106: How can I make boring B2B subjects more interesting?

Posted on by The Radix Team

This month’s question gets to the heart of what it means to be a B2B copywriter: the tension between our technical subject matter, and the need to be compelling, engaging, and clear.

Dave Briggs, marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors, asks: “How can I take a fairly dry – some would say boring – non-sexy service, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something people actually want to read?”

To answer, we needed some serious inspiration. So we put Dave’s question to B2B copywriter and all-round creative firebrand Katherine Wildman of Haydn Grey – and as our guest co-host we called upon the woman behind WeTransfer‘s breezy tone of voice, senior creative copywriter Robyn Collinge.

This episode also includes a writing tip from freelance copywriter Mel Barfield (also known by her alter-ego AllCopyMel) and some more inclusive writing advice from language consultant Ettie Bailey-King.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Want to make B2B less boring? Here are Katherine’s tips…

Let go of your ego

To see what’s interesting about a subject, we have to really understand it. And often, that means we have to ask the big, dumb questions about what it is, what it does, and why. Making experts answer those questions clearly is a real skill, and it can take a willingness to look more ignorant than you are. (Katherine calls it “applying intelligent naïveté”, and that’s a phrase I’m 100% stealing for my next meeting.)

Meanwhile, Robyn shared that WeTransfer uses a similar approach: ELI5, or “explain it like I’m five“.

People and scenarios

The most exciting part of a product or service is usually the people who use it, and what they use it for. Failing that, it might be what might happen if you don’t use it. Just like Katherine’s dad used to make his insurance work interesting by telling stories about climbing Huddersfield’s mill chimneys, we can hook the reader into what we’re saying more easily if we illustrate it with a narrative.

Voice makes a huge difference

It’s not just about what you say; it’s how you say it. The language we choose can do a lot to set content apart, surprise and entertain the reader, or just make their life easy. In some B2B markets, just saying something clearly is enough to make you stand out. But as Katherine points out, we need to strike a “lovely balance” where we don’t overcomplicate things, but we do still use the right terminology to be taken seriously.

People, posts and resources on this topic

Helpfully, Katherine’s provided us with links to several of the things she mentioned in our chat…

What you’ll find in episode 106…

1:15 – Meet this month’s guest co-host: WeTransfer’s Robyn Collinge

2:30 – Copywriting pro tip: Melanie Barfield on using the Hemingway editor

3:19 – We hear Dave Briggs‘ question, and put it to Katherine Wildman

18:30 – Robyn shares her perspective on making B2B interesting

27:15 – Ettie Bailey-King explains why euphemisms reinforce stigma

Got a question, or a copywriting pro tip?

B2BQ&A is your show, and we’d love to feature you on a future podcast.

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: 

Credits

  • Thank you, Robyn Collinge for co-hosting; we’re glad we could make your podcasting dream a reality.
  • Cheers, Dave Briggs, for the question. I hope you found the answer helpful.
  • Thanks, Katherine Wildman for answering Dave’s question so brilliantly.
  • Last but certainly not least, thanks to AllCopyMel and Ettie Bailey-King for your amazing writing tips.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 106 – How can I make boring B2B subjects more interesting?

Dave Briggs: How can I take a fairly dry, some might say boring, non-sexy service such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something that people actually want to read?

Robyn Collinge: That’s a brilliant question. Let’s ask Katherine Wildman from Haydn Grey!

David McGuire: Hello listener; you are extraordinarily Welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 106.

Robyn: In a moment, B2B copywriter Katherine Wildman will share the methods she uses to get to the bottom of what’s interesting about boring and complicated companies. We’ll also get a copywriting tip from Melanie Barfield, and some more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

David: Before all of that, though, we should introduce ourselves. My name is David McGuire. I’m creative director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency, and we have a brilliant guest co-host this month. If you work in marketing, it’s someone whose words you have almost certainly read, basically on a daily basis. It’s WeTransfer’s, senior copywriter Robyn Collinge! Robyn, welcome.

Robyn: Thank you. Hello. I’m unnecessarily excited to be here. At the risk of making my life sound way more put together than it actually is, I mentioned to David that I had just put being on my first podcast and a list of goals for this year. So here I am.

David: That’s amazing. It’s like serendipity. Here we make wishes come true. That’s what we do. Well, would you like to perform your first official duty as guest co-host and let the listener know how they can get in touch with us?

Robyn: Yeah, I can certainly try. So listeners 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 on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email to [email protected].

David: Done like a pro. Sounds you’ve been doing it for years.

Melanie Barfield: Hi, I’m Melanie Barfield, aka @AllCopyMel. I’m a freelance copywriter. And my copy tip for beginners is to just chuck your copy into the Hemingway editor. It’s at Hemingwayapp.com. And it highlights any issues in different colors like where your sentences are too long, or where you could shorten and simplify your copy to make it more punchy. You can’t take it all as gospel, but it’s a really quick, free, visual way to see at a glance where you could simplify your copy.

Robyn: Thanks, Melanie. That’s a great tip. I’m a bit of a slave to Google Docs myself, but I’ll definitely give it a try. Now who is asking this month’s question?

Dave: My name is Dave Briggs. I’m the marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors in Plymouth. And my question is, how can I take a fairly dry and some might say boring, non-sexy service such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something that people actually want to read?

Robyn: I love this question because I’m such a huge advocate for writing like you speak. I’ll tell anyone that will listen that one of the biggest misconceptions about writing or like communicating in general is that using unnecessarily long and complex words will make you sound smarter. When in fact, I think it just does the opposite. And it’ll just intimidate and alienate your audience. So I can’t wait to hear from Katherine as she tackles this question.

David: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think as B2B and tech copywriters, ourselves, we spend all this time making dull things interesting and complicated things simple, but maybe we don’t spend enough time breaking down the “how” of that; how we do that in practice. So as you say, to answer Dave’s question, I contacted one of the most creative B2B copywriters, I know, Katherine Wildman at Haydn Grey. And I started by asking her Dave’s question: how do you take a non-sexy, boring subject that’s laden with jargon and turn it into something people actually want to read?

Katherine Wildman: I was thinking about this and my dad was an insurance underwriter, which is about as dry as it gets, isn’t it? But he used to come home from work and tell us stories about climbing up the mill chimneys in Huddersfield where I grew up. And he would only tell us when he’d done that, he wouldn’t tell mum he was about to, but he would tell us, and he would tell us about the people in the mill and the people who worked there. And it was always, always, always about the people that he talked to.

And I think the thing that I approach any project like this with is just a raft of very simple questions. And I saw a great thing on LinkedIn that said, “We don’t ask daft questions; it’s called applying intelligent naivety”. And it’s something…

David: Ooh, I like that.

Katherine: Yeah. Isn’t it lovely? It’s really nice. And people go, like, you know, “Ooh! Aren’t you clever”, which is always nice. And I think it’s about sitting with people in the room and making them, forcing them, to break it down for you. Which means you have to pretend to be far more ignorant than you might be.

Or you might be extraordinarily ignorant. I did a project about cryptocurrency recently. And I had to ask a lot of really basic questions, which is, “But what do you mean? But what do you mean? So what is it? So what? Why does that do that?” And the secret to making people break it down, which I find very hard, is to shut up. And just look like you don’t know what they’re saying, until you understand what they’re saying and don’t pretend to know.

So it’s a question of making sure that you could then take it to another parent in the playground, or to your elderly mom, or your grandma and say, “Oh, I’m doing this project. And what they do is XYZ”, and until you can break it down to XYZ. So it’s not X with the flourish, Y with a flourish, Z with, you know, some little acronyms thrown in; it has to be broken down so that you understand it. And once you understand it, and you can feed it back to them, then you’ve absolutely cracked it.

And then how you then make that glossy and interesting, I think is you, you throw it back to them. And then you sort of get a feel for where they want to go with their tone of voice. So whether they want to be edgy, or they want to be very, very sturdy run of the mill, or perhaps for some people, just the simple fact of breaking it down into Janet-and-John English is enough to make them stand out.

So at that point, I would look at what other companies in the field are doing in the UK and abroad. You’ll find like particularly Australia, New Zealand companies can be really quite wacky where we won’t go that far. But you can see where you could take it and see where you can pitch them in the middle of all the the competition that they’re trying to gain business from or do business alongside, how can you make them stand out?

So then you bring along, you know, the Voicebox kit? Nick’s brilliant kit, where he’s broken down these 11 voices? And you can show…

David: For the for the audience, this Nick Parker’s kit, yeah?

Katherine: Yes, sorry. So Nick Parker’s brilliant Voicebox kit, which, mine is getting ragged around the edges. And Nick has these brilliant examples of how the financial companies write about themselves, how do insurance companies write about themselves, and you can see people’s faces light up in the room where they go, “Oh, so we could do that!”

They’ve never thought that they could do anything other than this “business-focused solutions”, all of the stuff that we wade through every day, and become a little bit more human and a little bit more approachable and a little bit more understandable. And then it makes life easier for everybody. And then and they can choose and you can see you can read the temperature in the room as to where they want to go with it.

And all of a sudden, you’ve got this very dry, turgid, verbose, reams and reams of copy that become like a conversation. And as soon as you’re having conversation, somebody wants to engage with you.

David: Absolutely. And one of the things I was interested is that you were talking very much about how your dad was telling stories about how the, you know, not that so much the insurance but what was being insured and what the insurance meant. Are there kind of… once you’ve got the way that you’re writing about the subject, then there’s the issue of what you write about, right?

Katherine: Yes. So then it’s a question of asking people to paint you a picture. So if they have, for example, policy insurance in place, what happens if something goes horribly wrong? And then what happens if they have this policy in place and how they can sleep at night? It’s all those human emotions where you’re basically wanting to either save people time, save them peace of mind, save the money, make them money? How does their life improve by having this in place?

And again, it’s those Janet-and-John flinty details where somebody can come to it afresh and just read it and understand straightaway what you’re talking about. They’re not having to try and decipher the language. And it just makes it simple and accessible and your work is to break down those horrible pages and pages of words to just go “Actually, what does that actually say?”

And usually, the ratio is usually about sort of six paragraphs to half a paragraph, really. And there’ll be a bit nervous about that, because that’s very bold and scary. But also it saves so much time. Particularly if you’ve then got a messaging framework in place, and then everybody’s lives are just so much easier.

And I think another layer that I would throw on when you’re doing your competitor research is if there’s something where you can look at reviews online. And I know Jo at Copyhackers talks about this, which is mining for voice of customer. So it could be that you’re looking at Trustpilot, it could be that you’re looking at Google ads, it could be that you’re looking at what people are saying about the competitors, and what they do well, can you take that line and apply it to your company?

And ask the people in the room why they come to work every day. What is it that gets them out of bed? What is it that makes them feel like they’re making a difference? Because people in big businesses don’t tend to get asked questions like that, you know, “How did you get here? Why are you here? What makes you, you know, sit on the train for an hour every day again, now, to come and do this? It’s not just so that you can pay the mortgage. What is it that lights your candle about it? And can you share a little bit of that passion?” Because people will have a story to tell. And there’ll be something, there’ll be a nugget, that hand on the door in the doctor’s surgery where they turn round and they just say something and you’ve just got that gold dust, you’ve got that line.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Is there an element with something like commercial law, for example, where you need to use a certain amount of the right language or else people might feel that you’re not taking it seriously, or they might not take you seriously? Because I know, from a stakeholder’s kind of point of view, they’ll go, “If we don’t say the right words that all our competitors are saying…” then you know, the audience… if the audience is already in a world where some jargon is fairly established, is there a balance, there?

Katherine: There’s a lovely balance to be achieved. And as well, Mr. Google needs the words doesn’t he? Mr. Google needs the search words, but I think there’s a way that you can scatter them, rather than drown us in them.

Vikki Ross put a beautiful post on LinkedIn just last night about “You need to be careful where you pitch the language because you’re trying to say something that’s too technical for your audience, you’re going to exclude that audience. And if you say something that’s too simple, they don’t want to be talked down to her or explained to.” So there’s that pitch of where you’re going to be and as well paying heed to Mr. Google, who does need to find this lovely company in the midst of everything. It’s making sure that the people who need the product can get the product.

Catherine Every, again, did a brilliant post about a crypto ad, and you read this ad that she posted on LinkedIn; wouldn’t have a clue. And I think as copywriters we understand quite a lot about quite a lot of things. I looked at this thing, I thought that could be in a foreign language for all I know. But what was so clever and what Catherine highlighted was the people that need to know will know that that’s exactly for them. So it cuts out everybody else. So you’re speaking exactly to your audience.

And that’s again, that’s your audience research. That’s understanding how far down the buyer journey people are. If they’re doing policy three, do they really need to read these documents again? No. Do you need to attach them? Yes. Can you make their lives easier? Yeah, probably very much so. Even if it’s just the way that you lead into, and some people do it, and they’re quite irreverent, you know,”Read this later”.

David: Are there go-to questions or approaches that you have? You know, if you’re trying to pull out what’s interesting in a dull subject?

Katherine: So I always start every project with you get as many people as possible on the call, from the really senior people, to the sales team, to the marketers to everybody.

And my first question is, “So what do you do?” And then the secret is to shut up. And they will all, they’ll wait for everybody else to chip in. And the secret is to shut up until everybody has said every little last thing they could possibly say and then they’ll chip in again. And your thing is to just be quiet.

And then my next question is “So why should I care?” And it’s it gets to be… People say after I’ve drilled down into these, you know, it was like a therapy session. And I’ve had people in tears. I’ve had people resolving longstanding problems that have been going on in the business, but it’s a question of asking “why”.

And then this is another Copyhackers tip, which is “So that… So that… You do that so that…” and it gets people right down into the absolute essence of why they do what they do. And how and for whom. And it’s you just… people come up with things that are really surprising. And it’s a question of until you absolutely understand that you can’t go any further down that particular line, you keep asking.

And for me, the hard thing is to not pretend that I know and to presume, so have confidence that the people that you’re talking to know what they’re doing and why. And you are just there to be the mirror and to ask questions and to get them to tell you about it.

David: It’s that, what was it, intelligent naivety? It’s that thing, isn’t it? That sometimes I think that we have as external writers, we kind of have a licence to be the dumbest person in the room.

Katherine: Totally.

David: If you’re an in-house marketer, saying, “I don’t know what that means”, even if you’re pretending not to know what that means, must feel really painful because you’re undermining your status. Whereas we, you know, we have a licence to say, “What does that mean?” And even more cheekily, we have the licence to ask “So what? Okay, why do I care?” Or when someone goes, “Oh, we’re the best at this”, “Can you prove that?” No, we have to ask rude questions and stupid questions.

Katherine: Absolutely.

David: And that naivety is a superpower.

Katherine: It’s an absolute superpower. You’re absolutely right. And I’ll tag team. I work a lot with an art director, Keith Noble, and he and I will tag team until you’ve absolutely drill down. And if they won’t let me into the nuggets, Keith will try. And by the end of it, we’ve just got to the heart of it. So he’s got his design ideas. I’ve got my writing hook.

But also it’s that scenario thing. And these are all things, like…. the first copywriting book was Andy Maslen’s, “Write to Sell”; it’s the one book I’ll never lend to anybody. It’s full of squiggles, turned over corners, it is… That’s the thing that doesn’t leave the bookshelf. And he does that scenario asking in that. “So what happens if I come to you for this product? What happens if I don’t come to you for this product? What won’t happen if I come to you for this product? What will happen if I come to you for this product?” And by the time you’ve got to the fourth one, they’re telling you all the lines that you need for the website.

So it’s… Andy did psychology and you can so tell in the way that he writes because it’s all people. It’s all really quite simple what we do. But fascinating, because it’s all people, same thing. And everything is connected all the way through. So I’m sure you find this as well. You go from project to project to project and people start telling you the same things. You’re like, “I did on the last project. I’ve just learned about this”, because the trends emerge in business, and we just get to kind of sometimes we ride the wave, we’re a little bit ahead of it for people and other times we’re catching up.

So yeah, we do we have licence, licence to thrill.

David: Thanks again, Katherine; that’s a really helpful response to Dave’s question. I’ll put links to Haydn Grey and all the other resources you mentioned in the show notes. Robyn, what stood out for you there?

Robyn: Quite a lot, actually. I really love everything Katherine said. And I think particularly this idea of asking the basic questions, like I’m such an advocate for asking stupid questions, or as Katherine put it, applying intelligent naievety. It’s so good.

David: I’ve been searching for that phrase.

Robyn: I can’t wait to casually drop into my next meeting.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Just just as copywriters you get to be the dumbest person in the room. And I think as we said, it’s just a superpower. That licence to ask that slightly rude question that as grown-up business people were not supposed to ask, right?

Robyn: Yeah. And I think I’m actually really glad you guys spoke about that. Because sometimes I think as a writer, I worry that I come off a bit rude if I’m in meetings with people and briefings and I’m sitting there going, “Yeah, but why? Why is this important? Why should I care?” And so it’s, like, really reassuring to know that other people also sit there and ask these kinds of stupid questions.

David: I genuinely once did a talk where people I, I was speaking at an event and I smuggled I’d got my kids out of school and I smuggled my kids into the event. And I got someone on stage to explain what they do, and they were an accountant. And they’re like “Ah, we do this and that” and I literally put my like five year old daughter in front of him just to go “Why? Why?” until he said something that she could understand like why you do these things. And then I had my son who was slightly older and slightly ruder, and I got him to just kind of keep asking, “So what?”

Robyn: I love that, like getting your kids in there an early age. It’s funny, you should say that as well. Because something we often do that we transfer as like a little exercise, this type of stuff is ELI5. Have you heard of that before?

David: No, no, I haven’t.

Robyn: Erm, so it’s a little acronym, which usually I’m pretty anti-acronym, stands for “Explain it like I’m five”. So I think it comes from like a Reddit thread, where people just kind of go to get simple explanations to like, I guess, concepts or problems or questions. But I guess the clue’s in the name, the idea is that you want to explain something, the way you’d explain it to a five year old or in a way that a five year old would understand.

So like sometimes if we’re getting a brief in about a new tool, or a new feature at WeTransfer, we’ll do it as an exercise with like our product marketing managers and break down this thing, the way that we would explain it so a five year old would understand it.

Or sometimes in my head, I think as well, “Would my grandparents understand this?” Because one of the things about WeTransfer with our free product our audience is so broad, so we have to make sure everyone can kind of understand what we’re talking about. And so yeah, like breaking down functionality and explaining the way you could do a five year old’s a really good kind of thought starter, for when you’re writing copy about things.

David: But that’s the starting point for the copy, if you like, not the finishing point, because obviously, you have a lot, you know, your pro users and your bread and butter users, you know, are going to be kind of, you know, marketers, designers, you know, experts in their job and stuff as well. Right?

Robyn: Yeah. And then we do actually have a slightly different tone of voice for our pro audience, which I really like.

So we have a paid subscription service at WeTransfer, WeTransfer Pro, we also just dropped, WeTransfer Premium as well, where you get unlimited everything. And but yeah, with our kind of pro and premium audience, we know that these kind of small business owners, creatives, they work in agencies, so we’re able to be a bit more kind of tongue-in-cheek sometimes with our copy and really make specific references to the creative industry. Like, we can make jokes about like kerning and pixels.

And we understand it will alienate some people, but the type of people we’re going after will get the reference. And, you know, we can kind of empathise like, “Oh, we know working with clients can sometimes suck, but we’re here to help you!” They’re just these little nuggets that we know this audience will relate to.

David: Absolutely; so much is about kind of knowing your audience. So how do you take it from being easy to understand and being clear, and to actually take it into something that’s engaging and that people actually actively enjoy?

Robyn: Yeah, it’s quite… It’s tricky to kind of put your finger on it sometimes, especially because I started at WeTransfer as the very first copywriter, like four years ago. So I actually got to establish the whole tone of voice and kind of put that together. So it’s largely based on my own personality. You put it into a formula. “Okay, this is how we make it sound appealing” because it’s just kind of, “Okay, how does it sound in my head?” which makes you know, documenting our style guide and stuff difficult.

But I do have like a few go-to methods that aren’t just “Get inside my head and see how I’m talking about it.” I think I can’t remember where I heard at first, so apologies if I’m like misreferencing someone, but I read this idea that copywriting is rarely about writing about products, it’s more writing about problems. And Katherine does kind of touch on that when she talks about finding the human emotion in what you’re writing about finding your brand’s “why”.

Because when you’re writing, I guess a landing page copy or even email copy, something where you’re trying to convert someone, you’re not really writing about what your product is, you should be writing about the problem it’s solving for them. So how is your service or product, making their lives easier? What’s it solving for them? What frustration are you removing from their life? Like how will their lives get progressively worse if they didn’t invest in whatever you’re selling? And that’s kind of something I’d keep in mind. You shouldn’t be writing about your product, you should be framing it as “What’s the problem and how are you the solution?”

And also trying to avoid just saying “we” and “I” and talking about yourself; you should always kind of be writing in the second person. And yeah, using things like “you” and “your” and yeah speaking directly to people.

David: Absolutely. Like I used to… write a lot of work in the public sector. And, you know, there was a lot of kind of very kind of jargon-filled stuff. And, you know, at the time I was writing PR, I was having to get into the newspapers and stuff. I was like, well, fundamentally, why should people care? And usually anything that you as an organisation want to communicate, there’s a reason that you’re communicating it, right? You need to tell somebody, and they need to know, because of something. And actually, it’s the “Why, why are you…”

There are very few things that are actually intrinsically boring, you know, that that actually, it’s how they wrapped up, it’s how they’re presented. But when you get down to it, somebody needs to care about it, because it makes a difference to them. And why do they need to know?

Is that kind of what it comes down to? Who, who you’re talking to? How would they talk about it? And why should they care? If you got those things, you know, then you’re automatically making it a bit more engaging, I think.

Robyn: Yeah. And I think what you’re saying about nothing’s ever boring, it’s… all of the copywriters I know, are just inherently curious people, like they want to get to the bottom of things, you know, we end up in late night Google and Wikipedia rabbit holes, like about some random subject, and I think, kind of getting that passion to translate to whatever you’re writing about is a real skill. And, yeah, quite often, just breaking things down to their simplest format.

And, you know, I had a previous manager who, whenever I’d write copy would just be like, “Okay, but what are you trying to say? What are you trying to say? What, Why? Why should I care? Why should I? Say it in less, like say it in…” and I think he would say like, “Say it in three sentences. Now try and say three words” and really get to the core of what you want to say. I think once you can do that, yeah, you can. You can get people to care about it.

David: Before we wrap up, there’s time for some more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

Ettie Bailey-King: No euphemisms. Steer clear of euphemisms, coded language, or awkward, anxious workarounds for talking about people’s identities. Just be clear, and specific and accurate. Euphemisms signal discomfort, and they reinforce stigma.

If you’re not sure whether something is considered a euphemism, then you might want to run it by some people from that affected community. Or you could very quickly check on social media and see who’s using that language. Is it being used by people from that community? And are they using it with what looks like energy, enthusiasm and pride? If not, it’s potentially the kind of euphemism that’s used by people outside the community, and just reinforces otherness.

So some examples of euphemism here might be the way that many white people will use the word “diversity” when they actually should be talking about anti racism, or anti white supremacy, or anti oppression. Or the euphemisms might be terms that you might have heard in the past, for example, “handicapped”, which used to be a phrase that was used for disabled people.

Robyn: Thanks Ettie for that tip, and listener, you can hear more inclusive writing advice from Ettie next time. Thanks, also to Katherine and Melanie, for sharing your advice in this episode, and thanks to Dave for the question. Hope you found our answers useful.

David: And thanks to you, Robyn; you’ve been an awesome co-host. Delighted to have been your first podcast experience. I hope it’s not been too traumatic.

Robyn: No, honestly, I’m thrilled. Had a great time.

David: Absolutely come back any time. And remember, listener: it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer, email a voice memo to podcast@radix -communications.com, or find us on social media.

I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A. Until then, make good content and remember: no subject is inherently boring, though I did once write about a company who drilled very precise holes in very hard metal and that… yeah, I have to concede that one.

David and Robyn: Bye!

B2BQ&A 106.5: How to make boring B2B subjects more interesting (part 2)

Posted on by The Radix Team

This month’s question gets to the heart of what it means to be a B2B copywriter: the tension between our technical subject matter, and the need to be compelling, engaging, and clear….

Wait. Didn’t we cover this already?

You might remember last time, we asked Katherine Wildman of Haydn Grey and WeTransfer’s Robyn Collinge:“How can I take a fairly dry – some would say boring – non-sexy service, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something people actually want to read?”

The question came from Dave Briggs, marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors. And Dave, we’ve got another answer for you. We wanted a perspective from the client’s side, so we got in touch with Brian Macreadie, who has a long history of making legal stuff interesting as Head of Marketing at Addleshaw Goddard.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Here’s some of what Brian had to say

1. Newsflash: commercial law is sexy

Often, topics that seem dry on the surface aren’t actually anywhere near as boring as you thought. Take law: “I think the law is pretty sexy,” says Brian. “It’s an industry full of incredibly smart, busy, often pressured people making really big risk-decisions to keep companies safe. And so I’ve always found it to be alive with emotive issues and human angles.”

2. Focus on how the subject impacts real people

If you’re looking for an interesting angle, focus on outcomes or barriers to progress that potential clients will care about. Brian explains: “If we can find sources of tension in our client’s worlds and offer a strong opinion about that, it’s likely to be more evocative.”

3. If bringing a topic to life feels nerve-wracking, you’re doing it right

Brian’s time-honoured approach is to “hire a great agency and let them do their thing”. But if a creative approach is going to provoke a response in your audience, you should it expect it to challenge you too.

“If the ideas that we get pitched by our agencies don’t make us equally excited and nervous, we’re probably not pushing things hard enough to stand out,” he warns. “If a piece of content of a piece of marketing doesn’t actually move us, and I mean  genuinely evoke a smile, or a wow, or some serious intrigue, it almost certainly won’t move the reader or listener either.”

In this short and sweet episode, you’ll find…

1:01 – We pose Dave Brigg’s question to Brian Macreadie

1:50 – Brian shares his thoughts on turning marketing on its head

6:37 – David shares some thoughts too

Have you got a question for B2BQ&A?

To get your 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 find us on Twitter @radixcom.

How to listen: 

Credits

  • Thanks again, Dave Briggs for your exciting – some might even say sexy? – question
  • A huge thank you to Brian Macreadie for the fresh perspective and insights
  • And thanks to you, for listening

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 106.5 – How can I make boring B2B subjects more interesting? (Part deux)

David McGuire: Let’s have a bonus episode about making boring B2B subjects interesting. And this time, let’s ask Brian Macreadie at Addleshaw Goddard.

Hello listener, you are extremely welcome to – well, let’s call it episode 106-and-a-half of B2BQ&A, the podcast that goes in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. My name is David McGuire, I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency. And as it’s just a sort of mini episode, I don’t actually have a guest co-host this time. We’ll put that right next time.

You might remember last time we answered this question from Dave Briggs…

Dave Briggs: My name is Dave Briggs. I’m the marketing manager at Nash & Co Solicitors in Plymouth. And my question is “How can I take a fairly dry – and some might say boring – non-sexy subject, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something that people actually want to read?”

David: We got some brilliant answers from Katherine Wildman and Robin Collinge but they are both copywriters. So I thought to give us a marketer’s perspective, I got in touch with someone that knows this territory really well and who has long experience of making legal stuff interesting. That’s Brian Macreadie, the Head of Marketing at Addleshaw Goddard, and Brian was kind enough to send us this…

Brian McCreadie: Hi, I’m Brian Macreadie. I’m the Head of Marketing at an international law firm called Addleshaw Goddard, and I was asked the question, “How can I take a fairly dry – some might say, boring – non-sexy service, such as law, which is often laden with jargon, and turn it into something people actually want to read?”

I guess I have to protest before I provide an answer; I think the law is pretty sexy. Without it, trade can’t happen and it’s an industry full of incredibly smart, busy, often pressured people making really big risk decisions to keep companies safe. And so I’ve always found it to be alive with emotive issues and human angles.

So if anybody wants a fresh perspective on the law, you can go to our law firm website, https://www.addleshawgoddard.com/poetry/ and get a whole bunch of fresh perspectives where we’ve invited poets to offer what they think about the law. So just sharing that in case anybody wants a different viewpoint on the law.

But back to the question, how do we find more interesting angles on topics that might on the surface seem quite dry. So I’ve worked in several B2B industries, and the same answers apply to law as other subjects, I find.

So one possibility is to not necessarily focus on the law and instead, focus on how the law impacts people. If we can find that the outcomes that potential clients and buyers care about, or their barriers to progress, then that can become the focus of what we want to write about. If we can find sources of tension in our client worlds and offer a strong opinion about that it’s likely to be more evocative.

So a process I often follow is to consider the human that we’re aiming to help have a clearer view on how our topics impact that person, and bring those impacts to life in the most interesting way possible, perhaps using stories or humour, provocation, strong opinions. Essentially, we’re just looking for the most interesting aspects of the topic, and then bring that interesting aspect to life somehow.

So just a couple of quick examples, maybe to elaborate on that. So my team and I once delivered a real estate law seminar, where we looked at what was changing in real estate. But to make that point more provocatively, we twisted the theme to focus on what was turning real estate on its head for the people that worked in the industry. And then to further bring that to life, when guests arrived at our physical seminar, we suspended a city upside down over the heads of the people as they walked into the room just to kind of make the point.

Just one other example may be, at the start of the pandemic, we wanted to offer fresh perspectives to clients on how to transact amid all the uncertainty. So we summarised the top five to seven issues that decision makers should consider when delivering major corporate transactions back in that surreal environment we found ourselves in during the initial lockdown. And then to bring that to life in the most interesting and relatable way we brought the surreal times to life of the pandemic using Picasso-inspired imagery.

So those are a couple of ways forward and and us marketers don’t necessarily need to come up with those creative ideas or those leaps. We don’t need to do that ourselves. If we each have creative ideas then great, but we’re of course often better served focusing I find on the objectives and the strategy and the calls to action and the results. So if we each need some new inspiration, some new creative ideas, the time-honoured answer is to hire a great agency and let them do their thing.

But there is one last little imperative of that I wanted to share, if the ideas that we get pitched by our agencies don’t make us equally excited and nervous, we’re probably not pushing things hard enough to stand out. Every marketer that I know, their threshold for what makes them nervous varies; I find the competence to push boundaries comes with time. So the convenient truth is just to push it as hard – that’s right for us and right for the brands that we work with.

But I think we must each always remember that if a piece of content, if a piece of marketing doesn’t actually move us, and I mean by that, genuinely evoke a smile, or a wow, or some serious intrigue, it’s almost certainly won’t move the reader or listener either.

And just to close, you know, the writer Robert Frost offered some sage advice on that when he said,: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader; no surprise for the writer, there’s no surprise for the reader.” So if it doesn’t surprise or evoke us in any way, it won’t evoke the reader. So we do have to find that creative twist ourselves or with agencies.

I hope that helps. But just want to say one last shout out for the law. It’s an amazing B2B sector to work in.

David McGuire: Oh, Brian, I knew you’d be great at this. Thank you so much. And I couldn’t agree more: it is not about somehow making a subject sexy or interesting. It’s understanding what’s already inherently interesting about it, and bringing that to the fore. And a lot of the time, that is the human element.

And I love the point about needing to feel a little bit nervous about your ideas, but that everyone’s mileage may vary, of course. Plus, Robert Frost! What’s not to like?

Dave, I hope you’re satisfied not just with last month’s answers, but also with the insight that Brian’s given you here. For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to work in commercial law, well, there’s plenty we can apply there too.

So very short and sweet episode this month. We’ll be back answering another in a bit more detail next time. And remember, it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer email a voice memo to [email protected] or find us on social media. You can also get in touch with us on Twitter @Radixcom or on LinkedIn.

Next time we’ll dive into a question and a bit more detail with all the normal stuff like copywriting pro tips that you’d expect. I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A.

B2BQ&A 107: Which kinds of content work for which B2B audiences?

Posted on by The Radix Team

In this episode of B2BQ&A, we answer a great question from Richard Hatheway, Senior Manager for Ezmeral Marketing and GTM at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

He asks: “I have influencers, decision-makers and end-users that I have to engage, so how do I determine what type of content to use for those different target audiences?”

And as you’d expect, we’ve put together an all-star podcast to answer.

First, we put Richard’s question to Claire Drumond, Head of Marketing, Jira Software & Agile Solutions at Atlassian. But that’s not all; you’ll also hear from our guest co-host for this episode: Maureen Blandford, Managing Director of B2B Unleashed.

Meanwhile, Matt Binny brings an assortment of tried-and-true copywriting tips, and we get more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Want to figure out what content works best for your audiences?

Briefly, here’s what Claire recommends:

1. Ask your audience

If you want to know what kind of content your audience wants, Claire suggests you simply ask. Not only can you get insights into your content, but it’s also a chance to connect with your customers.

“We have a really robust community,”  Claire says. “Sometimes we will just poll the community and ask for feedback on the content before we actually publish it. And people love to give their feedback; they love to have been mentioned, and they love that we ask.”

2. Tie metrics to outcomes

Monitoring general traffic can help you see how well your content is ranking in Google, and to see if it’s reaching a wider audience. But an even better way to know that content is working is to see if your audiences are inspired to do something.

“If there’s an action that we’re asking that audience to take, we can measure if they’re actually taking that action – whether it be sign up for something, or if it’s just to read the next article,” Claire explains.

After all, you publish content for a reason. If your audience aren’t inspired to act, it’s not doing its job.

3. Think about the person at each funnel stage

If you have the time and resources, you can map what you know about your audience at each stage of their buying journey, and create content to help. But rememeber it may be a different person reading each piece.

“We like to create content for basically every stage of the funnel, and there is a different person that will find that content useful at every stage in the funnel,” says Claire. “We think that buying our products and using our products is a team sport so we make sure that we’re targeting the whole team and not just the buyer.”

What you’ll find in episode 107…

3:11 – Matt Binny shares his favourite copywriting pro tips.

3:55 – We pose Richard Hathaway’s question to Claire Drumond.

16:54 – Maureen Blandford shares her wisdom on content for influencers.

22:35 – Ettie Bailey-King reveals the importance of affirmative language.

Got a question? B2BQ&A will 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 find us on Twitter @radixcom.

(The same channels work if there’s a copywriting pro tip you’d like to share.)

How to listen: 

Credits

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 107 – Which kinds of content work for which B2B audiences?

Announcer: “I have influencers, decision makers and end users that I have to engage. So how do I determine what type of content to use for those different target audiences?”

Maureen Blandford: I love that question. Let’s ask Claire Drumond from Atlassian.

David McGuire: Hello, listener; you are exceptionally welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 107.

Maureen Blandford: In a few moments, Claire Drumond will tell us how Atlassian match different kinds of content to a broad set of audiences. We’ll also get copywriting tips from Matt Binny, and some inclusive writing advice from Eddie Bailey-King.

David McGuire: Before all of that though, some introductions. My name is David McGuire. I’m Creative director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency. And I am thrilled to welcome a brilliant guest co-host for this episode. Dialling in all the way from Chicago, it’s the Managing Director of B2B Unleashed, complex sales superfan and stakeholder whisperer par excellence. Maureen Blandford. Maureen, welcome.

Maureen Blandford: Always delighted to be with you all. Thanks for having me.

David McGuire: Thank you for being here. So I think possibly – I have to check this – were you B2B Unleashed last time you were on here, or is this new to the listener?

Maureen Blandford: I think I was in my last role. So this is new. So I launched B2B Unleashed a little over a year ago.

David McGuire: Cool, okay. So if it’s a new idea to the listener, what is B2B Unleashed? I’ve got to ask that before we start.

Maureen Blandford: Well, and I appreciate it. So it kicked off as a management consultancy focused on helping B2B organisations get off legacy mountain. So we’re all drowning in legacy, legacy tech, legacy processes, legacy mindsets. So focusing really on the gaps between product marketing, sales and success. Both the siloed humans and the siloed tech stacks, and soon to be unleashing some tech to support that hopefully later this year. So a lot of wins for functional area leaders within B2B to be slaying, if they just talk more to their compadres and other functional areas.

David McGuire:That sounds much needed. I can’t wait to see the tech as well. Maureen, before we answer this month’s question, would you mind telling the listener how they can get in touch with the show?

Maureen Blandford: Absolutely, you know I can. 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 on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email [email protected].

David McGuire: Perfectamundo! Thank you.

Matt Binny: I’m Matt Binny, freelance writer from Falmouth in Cornwall. My copywriting tips are as follows. When I’ve finished writing, I like to let it rest for a while; I go make lunch, a cup of tea, probably then another cup of tea. Then return with fresh eyes and improve. I always read copy out loud, very common tip for a reason as it’s very, very effective.

I also like to reread copy if I was someone with sort of no knowledge on the topic, or the product or service, and ask myself a few questions: “Does it tell me what I need to know?”, “Would I buy?” And also “Am I bored out of my mind?” is always a good one too.

Maureen Blandford: Thanks, Matt. Some things are classic for a reason and tips like that are popular because they really work. Now, who’s asking the question this month?

Announcer: Richard Hatheway, Senior Marketing Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, asks: “I have influencers, decision makers and end users that I have to engage. So how do I determine what type of content to use for those different target audiences?”

David McGuire: Thanks, Richard. That’s something we content writers get asked a lot. So it’s great to have an opportunity to answer it on the show. B2B tech in particular has lots of potential audiences and big squiggly buyer journeys. So I caught up with Atlassian’s Head of Product Marketing for JIRA Software and Agile Solutions, Claire Drumond. And I started by asking her Richard’s question: just how do you figure out which content works, for which audience?

Claire Drumond: The best way to identify what content works for specific audiences is to ask your audience. And I think that we often forget in the digital world when we’re creating content that we actually can talk to customers and see what they think. So that’s one perspective on it.

Another way that I know that it’s working for a specific audience is, if there’s an action that we’re asking that audience to take, we can measure if they’re actually taking that action – whether it be to sign up for something, or if it’s just to read the next article, or if it’s just to scroll through the article. We create a lot of long-form content and I know that it resonates based off of some of those metrics.

And I also have the luxury of seeing content that I create resonate with a specific audience when it gets tweeted, and I get @ mentioned on Twitter or on LinkedIn. And if I’m lucky, it’ll spur a pretty awesome conversation in social media. So I hope that answers the question. It’s mostly just about tracking and seeing if there’s a specific action that you wanted the user to take, and if they’re taking it, then you know that it’s resonating. And if they’re not, then you need to tweak the content.

David McGuire: That’s interesting, because your metrics that you track are outcome-based then. They’re to do with the next thing, the next action, rather than just traffic or something like that.

Claire Drumond: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think traffic is not indicative of the success of the content itself. It just shows if you’ve been successful at distributing that content and getting people to it. So I think that traffic is an interesting indicator for if your content is going to rank in Google, or if it’s going to reach a wider audience. But I don’t think that it’s a great indicator of if the content itself resonates.

David McGuire: Sure. You were saying about asking your customers. What does that look like? I mean, do you literally call them up? Do you have a poll? How does that work?

Claire Drumond: So we have a really robust community and sometimes we will just poll the community and ask for feedback on the content before we actually publish it. And people love to give their feedback, they love to have been mentioned, and they love that we ask. And so it’s a nice two-way conversation.

And it’s a nice way for us to connect with our customers. And just make sure that whatever it is that we’re publishing, not only resonates with them, but it’s helpful, because we like to create a lot of content that actually helps people do their jobs.

David McGuire: Do you have a sense then of when you look at different audience groups, different people in the decision making unit – or maybe you’ve got decision makers over here and you’ve got budget holders over there, and you’ve got users somewhere else – do you see that different kinds of content resonate for different kinds of audience?

Claire Drumond: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So an example of that is we create a lot of content around Agile best practices, for example. And I know that this content isn’t for our primary buyers, because the buyers that are purchasing our products are looking for more specific details about the actual tech specifications, or the product or features. They’re not really looking for best practices.

However, the people that are the end users of our products need the best practices, because that will help them be successful with our products. So we know from talking to customers, that best practices are a really useful way for the end users to understand how to do Agile and how JIRA can help them. But you wouldn’t get a lot of tries, “try” clicks, from that content because those aren’t the buyers. They’re enabling it.

So I think we have to target different areas of the funnel with different types of content and that brings you closer to trying the product and being successful in the product. But it’s far beyond just a landing page that gets you to try the product as soon as possible. So we like to create content for basically every stage of the funnel, and there is a different person that will find that content useful at every stage in the funnel.

Something that I think is unique with Atlassian is that we think that buying our products and using our products is a team sport and so we make sure that we’re targeting the whole team and not just the buyer.

David McGuire: I think that’s really good advice for anyone. There’s so many complex – sales and kind of distributed decision making units going on in B2B, especially in tech. So when you’re thinking about different stages of the funnel, is that always different roles at different stages of the funnel? Or is it sometimes one person moving through a buying journey? Or is there a mix of those things?

Claire Drumond: I think it’s a mix. It can definitely be one person, especially in smaller teams, where they become aware of us because of maybe an ad or because we published Agile best practices, and they were looking to do some new Agile rituals within their team. And they come to us, and then they end up touching all of the content through every stage of the journey until they finally try the product. But I find it more common that it’s multiple people who are touching the content in the funnel.

David McGuire: So you’ve got all of these people, you’ve got all of these buying journeys, all of these funnel stages. How do you make sure you have every angle covered? I mean, is it even possible to do that?

Claire Drumond: I think it’s possible. And we rely really heavily on SEO research to see where there are gaps. So if you pull branded keywords, or associated keywords, non branded keywords that are associated with our product, like say “scrum boards” or something like that – that is related to the product, but not directly. And we realise that we aren’t ranking for those keywords, then I think there’s an opportunity there.

So we know that we should have content in this category, we know that there’s a decent amount of search volume for it. And we are being outranked by maybe a competitor, or maybe by scrum.org, or something like that. So it’s possible if you’re looking at your SEO research on a regular basis to see where the gaps are, and to continue to create content to fill those gaps.

And sometimes it’s your own content that’s ranking that you didn’t intend to rank for those keywords, and you wanted something else to be there, you want your customers to reach something that isn’t accessible. Then you have to basically try and figure out how to compete against yourself and rank over what is there – which we do a lot. We do a lot of that.

David McGuire: Yeah, that sounds like an interesting challenge. So if the marketer that’s listening to this has maybe limited resources for content or don’t have the luxury of producing the big mountains of content that you can produce at Atlassian, where should they focus? Would you say – is there one part of the audience or one funnel stage or something else? Where should they start?

Claire Drumond: I think that if you are just starting out, and you don’t have a lot of resources, I think you need to look at two areas of the funnel. One is, what are you creating content around to be a thought leader in that will help customers understand the concepts that are related to either your product or whatever it is that you’re trying to create a funnel for.

What is that category? What does it look like, from a competitive perspective? What does it look like, from your own perspective? What are you blogging about? And are you ranking for those related keywords? If you’re not, who is? And I think if you look at that competitive landscape for that theme or subject, you can pretty quickly understand where you need to start developing content, thought leadership content.

And I’m talking about evergreen content that’s going to stick around for a long time, not blog posts that are about what’s the latest thing in the news and are going to be irrelevant in a week. I don’t think that’s worth anybody’s time if you’re just starting out and you have limited resources.

So I would say look at that evergreen landscape and start there. And then of course, you also need to make sure that your branded keywords are also SEO optimised and that you have links to those pages so that you can continue to create some domain authority around your branded stuff because that’s the most critical. So I think, top of funnel thought leadership content and very bottom of funnel branded keywords. Those are the two places that I would focus your attention.

David McGuire: That’s great. That’s so helpful. Thank you. Is there anything else on this topic that you wanted to say to the listener that we haven’t already covered?

Claire Drumond: Sure, I think the only other piece of advice that I would give from a content strategy perspective is, if you only have 10 chips, and you need to figure out where’s the best bet, make sure that it’s what is the most useful for your customers, and not the most useful for you.

Because if you create content that is useful for your customers, you will always reap the benefits of that, versus what you think you want to write about. I guess just put your customers first, put yourself in their shoes, and I think your content strategy will follow.

David McGuire: Amazing. Amen to that. Thank you. Claire, if the listener wants to hear more from you, or from a content team at Atlassian, and get more kind of wisdom from you, is there somewhere they can kind of find you online?

Claire Drumond: Sure. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Claire Drumond or on Twitter, @clairedrumond. And I definitely post stuff on LinkedIn and on Twitter, sometimes. You can definitely keep up with us there. And I do podcasts and stuff like this pretty regularly, too. So if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll be able to see what I’m up to.

David McGuire: Oh, thanks again, Claire. That is a really helpful response to Richard’s question. Maureen, there is a lot to dig into there. Did Claire say something that resonated with you?

Maureen Blandford: Yeah, you know, that was really great. A couple of things for me in particular that I love her shining the spotlight on is – the first one is that remembering that we can actually talk to customers and see what they think.

I actually love when we see copy directly from customers, whether it’s quotes, or whether it’s you were just lifting their language and using it because I think the most attractive copy is the stuff that’s going to resonate the most with customers. And that’s a great way to get it is by actually talking to them.

And the other thing I think it can’t be said enough is outcomes. So when thinking about all the different folks you’re trying to connect with, keeping in mind their outcomes, rather than your stuff. I thought that was brilliant for her to cover.

David McGuire: Yeah, absolutely. So you can kind of measure the outcomes that you’re looking for. But also think about being helpful and the end game that your customer has in mind.

So I think part of the thing in B2B and part of the thing I wanted to talk to you about in particular is quite how complex the decision making unit can look like in a B2B organisation. I know this is something you have experience of. So are there particular audiences that you feel are more important than others – if you’re trying to move someone through your funnel?

Maureen Blandford: Yeah, one of the areas I think we miss as B2B marketers, and we partly miss it because it’s hard and we partly miss it because we’re drowning. And that is B2B influencers. So not Kim Kardashian style, not who we’re mostly seeing on TikTok, although those people are all great, too.

But when you think about growing your reach, and your influence, B2B influencers are huge for that because they have a trusted network of their own, that if they buy into what you’re promoting, or what you’re advancing, they will, often unpaid – I don’t think I’ve ever paid an influencer – they will scale that message. So you’re really able to grow your unpaid reach.

So, for instance, one of the strongest B2B influencer communities that I’ve seen on Twitter is kind of the CIO or the transformation influencer community. And boy, those folks are generous. And if you can be a valuable part of their conversation, you’re included and you’re scaled and they are then more likely to look at articles you’ve written or be willing to publish or cite your folks as trusted sources. So it’s complicated to get there. But once you do, if you put the work in, how they grow your unpaid reach is just, it’s phenomenal. And I think it’s an underused channel in B2B today.

David McGuire: That sounds amazing. So, where would the listener begin to find those people and begin to build those relationships?

Maureen Blandford: So for me, Twitter for B2B influencers is the best. I kind of think of Twitter as where the influencers live and LinkedIn is where kind of the real people live. So it’s not work I do on LinkedIn, I’m sort of active. But on Twitter, just start by listening to the conversations, and start to jump in as who you are, as opposed to your brand, although I suppose you could. I’ve always started kind of with the humans, and that’s what I recommend. And sometimes people will engage with you, and sometimes they won’t. And that’s not the point. The point is just to start planting seeds, and hearing what they’re talking about. Because then speaking of outcomes, you can then approach them based on the outcomes that you know they care about, because you’ve been listening and watching the space. So I would start on Twitter, and I would start by listening.

David McGuire: That sounds great. And obviously, you know, the buyer journey in B2B. I mean, it can take months and more sometimes. How do you keep your audience’s attention? How’s their attention span over something that long while they’re going through that process? If you have kind of only limited resources for content, how can you possibly cover that?

Maureen Blandford: Well, it is for me, the resource is time as opposed to money. And that can be hard when you’re juggling the 50 million things that marketers are expected to juggle on the regular.

So for me, the thing you have to think about influencer relations – it’s kind of like learning a new language – is if you invest the time to understand it at the beginning, the payoff is just exponential in the end. Once you know how to engage with influencers, you just do it as you breathe, it takes very little time during the day. But it does take time to get immersed in the short term. And I’m not sure how to quantify that really, except to say it takes time.

David McGuire: Time – the thing that we all have so much of. Thank you, that is really insightful, kind of adds another layer to the conversation. And insightful as ever, I’d have expected nothing less. So, thank you so much. Before we wrap up, though, there is time for some more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey King.

Ettie Bailey-King: Use affirmative language. So affirmative terms are words and phrases that are very clear, specific and positive. It’s words and phrases like saying “disabled person,” “has paraplegia,” “has schizophrenia,” “deaf person,” “autistic person”. This affirmative language is distinct from the kinds of negative and shaming language that you might have heard, potentially in the recent past, or when you were younger.

So negative and shaming terms might be a phrase like “retarded,” or using euphemistic language about someone’s disability and saying that they are “confined to a wheelchair,” for example. Well, it’s not true and it’s not accurate. Wheelchairs typically liberate people. So use affirmative language to make sure that you’re being accurate, and celebratory about difference.

Maureen Blandford: Thanks so much, Ettie. That’s definitely something we all need to keep in mind and, listener, you can hear more inclusive writing advice from Ettie next time. Thanks, also to Claire Drumond and to Matt Binny for sharing your advice in this episode. And thanks to Richard Hatheway for the question. We hope you found the answer useful.

David McGuire: And thank you, Maureen for being such a brilliant guest co-host, as ever. I hope it hasn’t been too painful an experience this time.

Maureen Blandford: It’s always a pleasure, David. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

David McGuire: Oh, bless you – cheque’s in the post. Remember listener, it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer email a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media.

I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A. Until then make good content, and remember Sun Tzu said: “If you know your audience, and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of 100 blog posts”. But then again, he also said: “Don’t believe every quote you read on the internet”.

David and Maureen: Goodbye!

 

 

 

 

 

 

B2BQ&A 108: How much B2B content actually gets read?

Posted on by The Radix Team

This episode, we’re answering a question that’s been bothering Irene Triendl:

“How much content actually gets consumed in B2B? So, how much of the stuff that we create is actually read, or watched, or listened to? And how can we use that knowledge to create better content?”

It’s a damned good point. We spend all this time writing blogs, ebooks, white papers and video scripts, but who knows how much of it finds its way to an actual reader?

Katie Colbourne, Senior Manager of Global Demand Generation at Basware, that’s who. So we asked her.

This month’s episode also features a copywriting tip from Katherine Wildman, and Ettie Bailey-King is back with more of her brilliant inclusive writing advice.

Plus, get insights from our co-host, Matt Laybourn, founder of Rockee.io – the first B2B audience feedback platform.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Too long; didn’t listen

Katie brings a lot of valuable insight to this month’s podcast episode. If you find yourself without the time to listen, here are some highlights:

  1. Not a lot of people are reading (but that’s OK)

B2B audiences are smaller than B2C ones, meaning you’ll always have fewer readers. But don’t get disheartened, it’s not an entirely bad thing.

The effort to create B2B content isn’t wasted because that small number of people still need to find the answers they’re looking for. And often, the answers they need only occasionally are the most influential in the buying process.

“Your evergreen content is your bread and butter information around your proposition – your solutions, your fact sheets – which aren’t being read every single day, but actually they’re being read when they need to be,” Katie explains.

  1. Monitor metrics that indicate engagement

Keeping track of clicks, views and plays will tell you how far your content is going, and how many people it’s reaching – but it can’t tell you how many people are really engaged.

“By the time somebody lands on a web page, I’d love to tell you 100% of them engage with it and read every single word, and they fill in all the forms you want them to,” says Katie. “But actually, we’re talking sort of 10-to-15% of those people doing something on that page.”

To track engagement it’s important to look at how many people are taking action based on your content – whether that be following links, commenting, sharing, subscribing to a blog or newsletter, booking a meeting or making a purchase.

  1. Get to know your audience

At the end of the day, it’s not about creating content that will go viral, it’s about helping your readers solve their business challenges – and that starts with understanding their pain points.

“If you’re producing content that doesn’t resonate with your audience, in today’s world, then you’re doing something wrong,” Katie adds. “Because I think that’s a massive alert that you’re not listening to your customers and you don’t know your customers.”

Katie says to research your target audience, run focus groups and questionnaires, and read reports about them. It’s the same advice we got last month from Claire Drumond, Head of Marketing for Jira Software and Agile Solutions at Atlassian, when we answered “What content works best for B2B audiences?”

Get a sneak peek at what’s inside…

1:03 – Meet our hosts, David McGuire and Matt Laybourn

4:20 – What’s Katherine Wildman’s favourite short copywriting tip?

5:15 –We ask Katie Colbourne this month’s big question

23:00 – Guest co-host Matt talks useful metrics and analytics?

32:48 – Ettie Bailey-King shares some inclusive writing advice

You provide the question, we’ll deliver the answer

To get your burning B2B questions answered, just 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: 

Credits

  • We’re grateful to Irene Triendl for the great question.
  • And thanks, Katie Colbourne, for sharing your breadth of knowledge.
  • Thanks to Matt Laybourn and his fancy microphone. You were an excellent co-host.
  • And, of course, thanks to both Katherine Wildman and Ettie Bailey-King, for some wonderful copywriting advice.
  • And thank you, for listening.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 108: How much B2B content actually gets read?

Irene Triendl: How much content actually gets consumed in B2B? So, how much of the stuff that we create is actually read, or watched, or listened to? And how can we use that knowledge to create better content?

Matt Laybourn: That’s a really interesting question. Let’s ask Katie Colbourne from Basware.

David McGuire: Hello listener, you are completely welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 108.

Matt: In a few moments, Katie Colbourne from Basware will tell us how much of the B2B Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B writing agency. And we have a super interesting guest co-host this episode. It’s Matt Laybourn from Rockee. Matt, thanks for joining us.

Matt: Thank you, David. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.

David: No, absolutely. I think people will actually be quite interested when they hear what Rockee does. It’s a new thing, right? So could you introduce it to us?

Matt: Yeah. So Rockee is an audience feedback platform that is hopefully going to help B2B marketers to make even better content.

David: All right, so how does it do that then?

Matt: Good question. So it’s basically from a bit of a challenge that we found from speaking with different marketing leaders, performance marketers or creators, demand gen marketers, we were all kind of looking at what content does and hypothesising about what the good version of it looks like.

So some of us use Google Analytics, some of us used like, I don’t know, SEM, Rush and SEO tools, some of us are just looking at the amount of leads that come out of it. And all of those essentially are proxies around what content does. Now, what good content is, is in the eye of the beholder. So Rockee is designed to basically ask the people who matter most and that is the people who have actually read that piece of content. So it’s basically a feedback widget at the moment that sits on a website, which is collecting that data, getting insights as to whether the content was useful, helpful, solved problems, all the things that content is supposed to do.

So yeah, early stages, we’re only a beta stage at the moment and taking on a few early users. But yeah, we’re really excited and seeing some really interesting data already.

David: Oh, that sounds very interesting. Sounds like another very interesting data source that marketers will have, and not tell copywriters if anything works.

Matt: That’s the problem. We’ve got to tell the creators, man. We can’t just keep holding that to ourselves and then not putting it into good briefs and actually helping you guys – because the feedback loop is a thing that we hypothesise about as a theory that has never come into action.

David: When we do emails, we get asked to do different headlines and things for A/B testing. And then they never tell us which one worked.

Matt: Wow. Yeah. It’s weirdly reassuring to hear everyone having the same challenge, put it that way. Because you’re like, is someone doing this amazingly that no one told us about.

David: I know that you’re going to have lots to say about this topic, this question that we’re talking about today. But we’ll come on to that. Before that, could you tell the listener how they can get in touch with the show, please?

Matt: Yeah, 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 on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it in by email: [email protected].

David: That’s marvellous. Thank you very much.

Katherine Wildman: Hello, this is Katherine from Haydn Grey. And my favourite short copywriting tip is to remember that you’re only ever writing to one person at a time. So it’s never about the collective, all of us, some of you – nothing like that. It’s a conversation between me and what’s happening in my head, and the reader and what’s happening in their head. One to one, very intimate, very privileged. So only, only ever write to that one person. Thanks for having me!

Matt: Thanks, Katherine. That’s really great advice. So simple, but so very effective.

David: Yeah, do you know that might actually be my favourite copywriting tip of all time?

Matt: I can see why. It’s time for our big question for this episode, and it comes from Irene Triendl at Say What?

Irene: Hi podcast listeners. I have a question that pretty much bugs me every time I create a content programme for one of my clients, or actually write any content in the B2B space. And it’s how much content actually gets consumed in B2B? So how much of the stuff that we create is actually read, or watched, or listened to?

Especially in B2B, I think we all share that belief that content works, because we assume that when the vendor shares valuable expertise and shares knowledge about their market, they’re able to engage their prospect, and they drive leads because they build authority, they build credibility.

And we know that B2B tech companies invest a lot in content creation, and hope they measure the value of that. Yeah, so I would love to hear from someone who measures this sort of stuff. That’d be super interesting. And ultimately what can we learn from that form for our content practice? And how can we use that knowledge to create better content?

David: There’s a lot to answer there, Irene, but you are absolutely right. As content creators, it can be super easy just to publish and think that job’s done. But actually, what does happen next? And how do we respond to that and learn from it?

Okay, Matt, I know you have lots of thoughts on this. But first, I’d like to hear from Katie Colbourne, who’s Senior Manager for Global Demand Generation at Basware. I started by asking her Irene’s question, essentially, how much of the content we write actually does get read?

Katie Colbourne: So I think that’s a tough question to answer. But my gut would tell me that probably not all of it, or not a lot – surprising as that may sound. Just because first hand from obviously working in the industry for several years now, I know that we spend lots of effort and time producing white papers, research reports, case studies, etc.

But actually, because we’re talking about B2B audiences, they’re quite niche anyway, if you compare that to B2C, and then if you consider conversion rates and engagement, and all of those types of things, by the time you actually get down to the bottom of that funnel, if you want to call it that, I think those numbers are actually quite small.

But what I would say is that I don’t think that’s a bad thing, because I think it does, for the people who are looking for that content, they need to engage with it, they need the case studies for an RFP, or whatever it might be. I think the effort sort of pays off and does that job.

But then you also always have that evergreen content, which I think is always there. It’s kind of your bread and butter information around your proposition: your solutions, your fact sheets, which again, they’re not being read every single day, but actually they’re being read when they need to be. So when you get to certain points, no conversation with prospect, and all of those types of things.

And then I would add one more thing to that. I think if we’re talking about research reports, or anything that’s considered thought leadership, or current affairs, or anything like that, I would always say there’s a naturally a big peak in the way that’s being absorbed and read, but then that will naturally tailor off. And it’s harder to make those types of materials be evergreen content after a certain number of months. So that’s a long answer. Hopefully, that sort of answers that in many ways.

David: I think so. So to summarise, it’s a small audience for a lot of content.

Katie: Yeah, exactly.

David: But that’s okay because potentially it’s a high-value audience or it’s a valuable job that it’s doing when it is used. And also, some of them are like a long, slow burn with a little audience, but stretched out. And some do attract a lot of attention, but those might not be the most valuable pieces in the long term.

Katie: Yeah.

David: Wow. That’s interesting. You mentioned engagement and readership and things like that. In that situation, where you have different kinds of audiences for different kinds of things, what kind of metrics do you think are sensible to define what a B2B piece of content is doing?

Katie: Yeah, so that depends on obviously the piece of content. So if we’re looking at things like blogs, it would be looking at the number of page views that you’ve got, anybody that shared that blog with anybody on Twitter or email, whatever that might be – so they forwarded it on to a colleague. And equally as well, if there are links in that blog, if they’ve clicked on that. So again, it’s not just saying who’s looked at the blog, but actually who’s engaged, digested it, and read it.

If you’re talking about videos, it would obviously be video plays, but importantly, video plays sort of to the end or further on in, so you can see those statistics in most of these video platforms now.

And then I think when you’re talking about things like white papers, or research reports, it would naturally be conversions. And that’s what I was meaning around my comment earlier about, “there’s a small audience,” because by the time somebody lands on a web page, I’d love to tell you 100% of them engage with it and read every single word, and they fill in all the forms you want them to. But actually, we’re talking sort of 10 to 15% of those people doing something on that page. So again, that number is sort of dramatically reduced. So I think those would be the main statistics we would be looking for.

But then also as well, I would be also considering things like blog subscriptions, and newsletter subscriptions. So these are kind of some of those softer metrics. But if somebody’s coming to the site from their own organic searching, or whatever it might be, those are types of things that would indicate an interest there, and that they’ve been they’ve liked the content, and they want to see more and hear more from us.

David: So again, it’s not just the raw number of how many people are reading, it’s actually what those people are doing, and how much it’s kind of affecting, or engaging them, or moving them forward through the process.

Katie: Yeah, because I think, obviously, in the B2C world, you get millions of views on a YouTube video, you can see that when they release movie trailers and things like that, trailers even.

But that’s never going to be the case in B2B. And even if you did get, let’s say, I don’t know, 100,000 views on a video, the propensity of those viewers actually having any intention to buy now or if in a time in the future is so low that actually – that’s fantastic as a vanity metric and obviously, it’s great to sort of say. But if you get 100 viewers that are all engaged, that’s actually much better, in my opinion – just in the context of B2B that is, not B2C obviously.

David: Yeah, absolutely. So, you mentioned 100 really engaged viewers there. And I guess it depends on the brand and a lot of other things. But when you’re looking at the bucket of metrics that you’re looking at for different pieces of content, are there particular numbers, particular benchmarks that kind of give you a rule of thumb that – “yeah, this one!” – what stands out to you as a success? What does that look like when you’re evaluating content?

Katie: So I think if we want to get a general perception of how the content is, what good quality it is, if it’s interesting, engaging, all of these types of things, we would actually be looking across all of the different channels because that gives you I think, a fair representation, rather than just say, looking at people that are coming on to the website.

So are people engaging in it on LinkedIn? Are they engaging with it on Twitter? Are they clicking through from newsletter features? Equally, are our telling us that that was a great piece of content, it helped to start a conversation? So some of those kind of metrics or opinions, if you like, are a mixture of offline as well. If you’re at an event booth, is that the most sort of picked up asset? If you’re presenting on it, similarly, in an event Keynote, are people actively asking questions about it?

So there’s so many ways, I think, to define what a great piece of content is. But I think, again, for us, for me anyway, in my career, it’s always been a piece of content that has enough breath to be repurposed in lots of different ways. So it’s not just the white paper itself, or fact sheet, whatever it is, but actually, it’s something that can be divided up and used across different channels and definitely spread kind of the content from the asset itself.

David: Yeah, one sidebar to that I’m interested in is, you mentioned kind of the offline stuff, things getting picked up at events, people asking questions about it, that kind of stuff. Is it possible to capture that anywhere and include that in your reporting? Or is that all sort of done through word of mouth in your marketing department?

Katie: Yeah, again, I think it depends. So obviously, if we’re talking about sales guys sending a prospect a piece of content and then talking about it with them in a follow-up meeting or something, there are various tools you can actually use now to do that, to see if the prospect has engaged with it.

So you can add that to any anecdotes that also come out of the meeting. So there’s tools like Showpad, Brandfolder, all of these types of ones that allow you to see if a prospect has engaged. And that’s just coming from an Outlook email or even a LinkedIn InMail invite, whatever it might be. If it’s at an event or kind of a round table, then I guess, that is more anecdotal. Unless she was sort of capturing contacts at booths for an asset, but I think people tend to veer away from that these days, because it’s such a kind of blocker.

David: Yeah, I suppose even these days when everything is quantified, sometimes you just get a sense of the temperature of the response to something that can’t always be quantified and measured, I guess.

One of the things I wanted to ask is, how common is it that a piece of content really doesn’t deliver? Like, it just doesn’t resonate, nobody’s interested? Like, does that happen a lot? Is that half the time, is that one in 10? How many ones are there that really, really engage the audience? And how many are there where it’s like, crickets? Because there must be some that for whatever reason, just miss right?

Katie: Yeah, trying to think now. Let’s have a think. Do you know what? I think sometimes, and this isn’t any disrespect to you because I know you’re agency side, but – and I’ve been agency side for 10 years – but there have been a number of ideas over the years that we’ve suggested to clients where we suggest it because it’s cool, if you know what I mean.

So it’s actually a good idea that creators are really excited about it. But when you actually deliver that piece of content, the prospects aren’t interested because it’s just a different audience. So I think sometimes, I’d like to say that doesn’t happen as often now, I’m talking sort of years ago, when you’d sort of come up with these ideas, and not do the research.

But I think as long as you know – if you’re close to your audience and your customers, so not just from your own research, so focus groups, questionnaires, whatever it might be, but actually, you’re reading reports about them, like what are their challenges, what are their pain points, then I’d like to think that in today’s world, most of the content that you do write is relevant to somebody, it’s not a complete, sort of, waste of time.

But I think sometimes when we try and do like the bigger ideas in B2B or do those kinds of things that we want to go viral, and again, I am talking years ago now when that was kind of a thing. You know, when clients say, “Oh, can we have something that goes viral?” I think those are the ideas that, actually, they kind of don’t work.

David: But so these days, the less that you’re kind of trying to be cool, the more that you’re plugged into your audience – you might not always get those bits of content that just get a stratospheric response. But similarly, your baseline will be better. There’ll be relatively these days, relatively few pieces of content, then that just don’t resonate at all, because everything kind of has its place for someone. Is that right?

Katie: Yeah. I think that’s a fair summary. I would say that if you’re producing content that doesn’t resonate with your audience, in today’s world, then I think you’re doing something wrong, really. Because I think that’s a massive alert that you’re not listening to your customers and you don’t know your customers.

David: Wow.

Katie: Well, I don’t know, that’s just my opinion. But we –

David: No, no, I think it’s valid.

Katie: Yeah. And also I think there’s less of that in B2B as well, because obviously, budgets are smaller, things like that. So you do have to be really focused on what you’re doing. You have to be constantly thinking about “what is the cost of getting a new customer? How much is this going to convert?” There’s that constant ROI of marketing spend being analysed in B2B and that’s across the board, that’s not just where I am now. That’s always been a thing. So I think you have to deliver.

David: Yeah, absolutely. So the advice then for the listener is really to listen to the audience to avoid a piece of content that really doesn’t get read. Do you have any advice practically on how they can do that? Or which metrics to watch to see if it’s working?

Katie: Yeah, so – well I think before you even do that, I would just really ask yourself, if you think this is going to add value to somebody, and is it interesting?

So I used to do loads of social media training a few years ago and that was the first one we used to always say about posting tweets, LinkedIn posts, whatever. “Is this actually interesting? Would you want to read it?” So I would always start with that question.

And then in regards to actually releasing those answers to your audience, I would do maybe some desk research, see if there’s any latest studies on sort of what are the top challenges, and you’d be looking for sort of industry analysts, research preferably, but even analysts from sort of business publications like The Economist, they’re always good ones to look at to get that broader view.

And then if you have any customers that you can call on, or if you can speak to any of the account managers in your business that are talking to the customers regularly, just ask them what they’re hearing, what are people’s challenges, what are they struggling with, what what’s working for them as well, like, where do they want to sort of keep building on? And then to me, it’s a bit like a jigsaw, you have to sort of fit all of that research together, to come up with a piece of content, hopefully, that works, and engages and delivers.

And I would also look at what’s worked before as well for yourself. So look at your top-performing assets, so views, watches, shares, all of those types of metrics. And then equally as well, I would see what your competition are doing, that’s always really good to be aware of, because whatever they’re focusing on, obviously, I’m not saying copy your competition, but it’s good to be aware of the challenges their customers are seeing too. So I think it’s that rounded picture that you need. They’re very simple in isolation. But when you bring them all together, I think that that really gives you that holistic view for what your audience wants to engage with.

David: That’s amazing. Katie, thank you so much. If the listener wants to hear more from you, get more of your kind of wisdom and insights, where can they find you?

Katie: Yes, so you can obviously connect with me on LinkedIn. Or you can follow my Twitter handle, which is just my full name, Katie Colbourne.

David: That’s perfect.

Katie: I tweet regularly there.

David: Thanks, Katie, you’ve taken Irene’s question in a really interesting direction there. Matt, I know, you’ll be revving your engines wanting to weigh in on this one. So what stood out for you from what Katie had to say?

Matt: There’s loads, loads of really good stuff to go through there. One of the things that actually was really sort of landed for me was around audience size and total addressable market. And I think to answer kind of the overarching question “how much content actually gets seen?” Sometimes very little of it.

And that’s not a bad thing. I completely agree with what Katie’s saying on it, because that one article, that one blog, that was sat somewhere on the website that you wouldn’t expect it to be, might have influenced the most important person in that decision making unit. It might have been the thing that made them go, “You know what, I really want to work with this company.” And that unlocks a huge deal, a huge opportunity for that business, which is absolutely incredible.

So I think we have to be quite smart between some of the metrics we look at and what the relevance is sometimes, because I think we get lost in those comparisons you can see with this YouTube video got 100,000 views, she said that perfectly. Like, it’s not gonna happen in B2B, our market might only be 100,000 people, not all of them are going to watch that video. So it’s so relative.

David: Oh, it might be way fewer than that and sometimes intentionally so. Sometimes you intentionally write a piece that’s for a subset of a subset of a subset of a market. So within a vertical, it’s someone in a particular job role that’s facing a particular challenge, at a particular time.

And that’s why ABM works so well, because the content is so laser-focused on a particular person, facing a particular challenge. And no one looks at ABM content and goes but the audience is really small. That’s the point. So if the size of the audience and the size of the readership is not necessarily that meaningful a metric, what kind of metrics actually are useful in improving content, do you think?

Matt: Yeah, it’s a good point because we rely, as marketers, so much off of quant data. And I feel like such a nerd when I talk like that because I – “was quant or qual data”. And I look at it like that because I look at numbers. But we rely so heavily off of those quiet kind of quant metrics. And the difficulty is sometimes, is ascertaining where the real value in some of those metrics are.

So you’ve got your distribution metrics, just reaching people and having an exposure of your content or your advertising, be it on a website, social media, whatever it is, isn’t necessarily a metric of quality or performance. It just shows your distribution strategy worked, and you found the people. So we can’t measure things like that. But can Katie really came on to it quite nicely, it’s when you start to work into that data, you find some real meaning and value.

So I suppose the next line of metrics you look at are around value and engagement. And those are things like how many people actually viewed the video all the way through? Or how many people scrolled to the bottom of this piece of content, or what the dwell time was on a website, for example? Now you’re starting to get some proxy around that content to say, “oh, do you know what, we’re getting good engagement with it, it’s keeping people entertained or interested”.

And then again, she said it perfectly, the next kind of value is, are people doing things with this content? Are they commenting on it on social media? Are they leaving notes on YouTube videos, or on your LinkedIn posts? Are they sharing it? Are they tagging people in? That shows you’re getting traction, and obviously, we know social media algorithms love that as well.

And then there’s the final metrics, which I think are possibly the most valuable. The first one is obviously has it led to someone going to make a very positive action. So in the content itself, is there a call to action? “We want you to do X or Y, or take a demo,” whatever that might be. That’s a great indicator that content has influenced that person or changed their behaviour

And the other thing that I think is valuable and interesting, and I know has been mentioned on previous podcasts, is their feedback. Is there someone saying, “you know what, I read this, and I really enjoyed it. It helped me solve a problem, it gave me an answer to a challenge I couldn’t face, or I found it incredibly entertaining or amusing”. Those are the kind of the real deep qualitative metrics which we can go, “do you know what, we’re making valuable stuff here. We’re really adding stuff to organisation”. So, a super long answer there but there’s lots of different tools to look at.

David: Yeah. Are there any sort of, when you look at the quant data – see you’ve got me doing it now – when you look at that quantitative data, are there particular benchmarks or rules of thumb within that, where you can kind of say, well, if there’s one piece – if someone’s spent four minutes on something, if someone has spent five minutes on something, if someone has read 80% of it – is there something where it will then correlate with the other qualitative stuff, where you kind of go, alright, if the average read time on this, the average dwell time is beyond a certain amount, we kind of know it’s doing well, or are there so many variables, that you can’t actually get any meaningful rules of thumb out of it?

Matt: Yeah, you’ve just uncovered one of the biggest problems we have, because I don’t think there’s many people doing this well. So I suppose the two metrics I would always consider the most valuable out of quant is essentially, the dwell time, which also in GA4 now is, we’re kind of looking at as engagement rate. And also something called scroll through rate – so how many people have got maybe towards the bottom of the page. But these are still imperfect indicators, they’re proxies.

So as a perfect example of that, to say the best dwell time has got to be relative to the content. So I don’t know how big that piece of content is, unless I’ve got a very fancy spreadsheet or Data Studio report which tells me that blog should take someone five minutes to read therefore we expect a dwell time of five minutes. And to have that data married up with stuff that’s coming out of analytics, there’s only a very small amount of very sophisticated marketers who are doing that to kind of go “we’re really getting high read-through rates and engagement rates of our content”.

But that’s kind of what I mean, there’s a lot of imperfections there as well. Even things like the UX of the website, the layout and structure of how you put that content, has it got too many images in? Is it hard to scroll? There’s so many things, so many variables, as you say, which actually make it not quite as black and white as we need. So I think it’s a challenge we have to be talking about more in content marketing.

David: A thing I hadn’t planned to ask you about actually, but you mentioned there so I’m gonna is GA four. So the new Google Analytics. So engagements in there as a metric, is there stuff in there that’s going to help people make better content, do you think? Or is it too early to say, because I know GA four was a thing that people are just beginning to get their heads around, if they’re even doing that at the moment.

Matt: Yeah, and we’ve got to get onto it quickly, because Google are kicking out the old version of Google Analytics, I think summer of next year. So we have to embrace GA4 now, or similar packages – other providers are available, of course.

But it’s an interesting one, because they’re much more goal focused. And it is essentially a tool that is built around website performance, as opposed to content performance, we have to remember that. So we’re just trying to find the best bits of it to fit into what we do. But because they’ve got engagement rate, which is sort of replacing things like bounce rate as kind of a primary metric. And it’s also bringing into how people are scrolling through a page and how long people are staying on that page. That’s going to be a really meaningful metric.

But it is hopefully going to be easier as well in terms of managing internal attribution of our websites – so how many people read this content, and then went on to make a meaningful action or meaningful engagement. But we call it goals or conversions or events, depending on your setup. It should be a lot easier for that, and understanding what valuable customer journeys look like.

As to how we plan it into our content, in terms of how do we improve our content, that’s still going to be a bit of an interesting one. And I think it needs a bit more exploring, but it’s certainly going to help us understand the information architecture of our websites and how we structure our content, I think that’s going to definitely improve that.

But I suppose the creative element is a little bit of an unknown at this point. And I suppose that’s kind of where my theory is, you still need that qual to get the context behind what good content looks like. Because we’re always sort of gonna guess, from just quant alone, so whoever gets that blend right first is the winner, I think.

David: Matt, thanks. That’s fascinating. I could genuinely talk about this all day. But we only have so many minutes in the podcast. Where can people get in touch with you if they’d like to know more about this stuff?

Matt: Yeah. So best bet, find me on LinkedIn. Just look for Matt Laybourn. There’s not many of me, I’ve got a weird enough name for it. Or check out Rockee.io and yeah, see our new website hopefully launching this week.

David: Wow, amazing. Good luck with that. Perfect. So, before we wrap up, there’s just time for some more inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

Ettie Bailey-King: Avoid generalisations. Generalisations, broad umbrella terms and catch-all terms obscure difference. If you’re talking about asexual people, then just say asexual people, don’t hide under a broad umbrella term like the LGBTQ+ community. Unless of course you are talking about the entire community and then, of course, feel free to use that term. But just be sure that you’re genuinely speaking about the right level of detail here and you’re not trying to sweep people in under a blanket definition of their identities, their wants and their needs.

Matt: Thank you Ettie, that’s really clear, useful advice. And listener, you can hear more inclusive writing advice from Ettie next time. We should also thank Katie Colbourne for answering Irene’s questions so very well. And Katherine Wildman for the writing tip earlier. Plus, of course, thanks Irene Triendl, whose question kicked the whole episode off.

David: And thank you, Matt. You really have been an excellent co-host – no wonder you have a fancy microphone. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Matt: Yeah, very much so thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, hopefully some of this is some valuable stuff for the people out there.

David: Yeah, I’m sure people are nodding along and really beginning to think about this stuff and how they can use it. Remember listener, it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer, email a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media.

I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A. Until then, make good content and remember, once you’ve experienced excellence, you’ll never again be content with mediocrity. Yeah, actually now I think of it that sounds more like a warning. Oh well.

Matt and David: Goodbye!

B2BQ&A 109: What’s the worst thing about briefing a B2B copywriter?

Posted on by The Radix Team

In an ideal world, a B2B copywriter can read your mind and conjure up the most perfect piece of content you could ever dream of. But here in the real world, there’s briefing to be done.

And in this episode we answer a question from freelance B2B writer (not to mention Radix founder, and original host of this here podcast) Fiona Campbell-Howes, about what happens when briefings go wrong:

“We hear lots on social media about what writers find frustrating about their clients. But I’d be really intrigued to hear things from the client side: what do marketers find frustrating about writers that they work with? And what can we do to make things better for them?”

We put Fiona’s question to Sally Adam, Marketing Director at the cybersecurity company Sophos. And, as you’ll hear, she gave us a brilliant and unflinchingly honest answer. Plus, four anonymous B2B marketers each get their own personal copywriter gripes off their assorted chests.

Also in this episode, Ettie Bailey-King joins us for the final instalment of her inclusive writing advice, and Vikki Ross shares a classic pro tip from copywriting legend David Abbott. And to help us navigate it all, we get fabulous insights and lots of laughs from our guest co-host Harendra “Harry” Kapur (whom you can also find on Twitter here).

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

How can copywriters make life better for B2B marketers?

Let’s be clear: Sally considers copywriters to be “hugely, hugely valuable”. But that doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. Writers can often give marketers a frustrating time – and usually, it’s when we forget the basics:

Actually listen to the customer

Copywriters are full of knowledge, enthusiasm, and good ideas – and usually that’s a good thing. But if it means you start to make assumptions about the brief, or you’re too keen to show off what you know, that can cause issues.

“The copywriter goes off and puts a load of effort in,” says Sally. “And you’re excitedly waiting for the piece because you’ve got a deadline. But when it comes back, they’re not matching up.”

Check our creative ideas

Often, a copywriter has creative ideas that go beyond the brief. And that can be great. But if you try to spring surprises on the marketer, that can be as bad as not listening in the first place. Instead, a quick call or email can confirm you’re on the right track.

“Do check in,” Sally explains. “Sometimes the answer is ‘No, that’s not relevant here,’ and sometimes it’s ‘Wow, brilliant connection; I hadn’t thought of that myself.’ But as someone who’s doing the briefing, you’d much rather have someone ask that question than go to all the effort of creating a piece that misses the mark.”

Brush up our soft skills

If the brief involves interviewing a customer or senior leader, the writer’s behaviour reflects strongly on the marketer. And impressions really matter.

“I’m putting you in the hands of a valued customer, whose business we really value,” Sally says. “You’re representing me. We can work on the actual copy that comes back, but the experience the interviewee has with the copywriter is not going to change. That can make or break relationships and have a wider business impact.”

We’ve packed a lot into this episode. Here’s where to find it all…

0:59 – Meet the hosts: David McGuire and Harendra Kapur
2:44 – Vikki Ross shares her favourite copywriting tip
3:39 – Radix founder Fiona Campbell-Howes asks this month’s question…
4:39 – …And Sally Adam answers it
15:09 – Harry and David discuss [checks notes] …the Kama Sutra?
21:08 – Four anonymous marketers share their pet copywriting hates
29:58 – Ettie Bailey-King talks person-first and identity-first language

All it takes is a little voice memo

To have your burning B2B question naswered, just 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: 

Credits

  • Thanks, Fiona Campbell-Howes, for the question (and, you know, everything).
  • And thanks to Sally Adam, for answering it in such an honest and insightful way.
  • Thanks too to our four anonymous marketers. Chickens.
  • We’re grateful to Vikki Ross for the pro tip, and especially Ettie Bailey-King for all your inclusive writing advice over the last six months.
  • Cheers, Harry Kapur, for being an excellent co-host. Come back anytime.
  • And thank you, for listening.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 109: What’s the worst thing about briefing a B2B copywriter?

Fiona Campbell-Howes: What do marketers find frustrating about writers that they work with, and what can we do to make things better for them?

Harendra “Harry” Kapur: Oh, can’t wait to get into this one. Let’s ask Sally Adam from Sophos.

David McGuire: Hello listener; you are excessively welcome to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search for an answer to your question about B2B content writing. This is episode 109.

Harry: In a few moments, we’re going to hear from Sally Adam, content and marketing leader at Sophos, as well as a few other B2B marketers. And they’re going to be telling us about the most annoying thing about briefing a copywriter, and what we can do about it. We’re also going to hear a copywriting pro tip from Vikki Ross, so good for you. And we will get some inclusive writing advice from Ettie Bailey-King.

David: Before all of that though, who the hell are we? Well, I’m David McGuire, Creative Director at Radix Communications, the B2B tech writing agency. And our guest co-host for this episode is a B2B tech writer, consultant, speaker, all round agent of chaos, Harendra Kapur. Harry, welcome.

Harry: Hey man, thanks for having me on.

David: Hey, how you doing? For the listeners who don’t know, you were Head of Copy at Velocity, and doing your own thing now, right?

Harry: Yeah, just freelancing my little butt round town. That’s kind of what I’ve been up to. And, yeah, it’s gone much better than I thought. Because it’s like, leaving a successful agency with this fancy title and stuff in the middle of a pandemic, maybe recession type of deal. When I did it, it just felt like…

David: Perfectly sensible.

Harry: Yeah, like this could go horribly wrong. And it hasn’t. And I’m very grateful for that. So yeah.

David: I’m glad to hear it’s going well. Couldn’t happen to a nicer chap. But before we get on with this serious business of answering the question for the episode, would you mind doing your first duty as co-host and telling the listener how they can get in touch with us?

Harry: Yeah sure. So listener, if you have comments or suggestions you can find Radix on LinkedIn or Twitter @Radixcom. But if you want us to answer your question on a future episode, then record a quick little voice note and send it by email: [email protected].

David: That’s perfect, thank you very much.

Vikki: Hello, my name is Vikki Ross, and I’m a copywriter. One of my favourite copywriting tips is something David Abbott once said. He was one of the best copywriters in the world, so he knew what he was talking about. He said, “sometimes the best copy is no copy”. I say, that’s absolutely true, that sometimes you need a copywriter to say so. I hope that helps you when you’re writing, or when you’re telling someone why you don’t need to write anything.

Harry: Love that from Vikki. So much of the best stuff a copywriter does on any kind of project is wordless and invisible and choosing not to do something. And so it’s really good of her to call that out because so much of this is about restraint even. But anyway, let’s get to the Q&A part of B2BQ&A. We’ll start with a very familiar voice.

Fiona: Hi, Radix. It’s Fiona Campbell-Howes here, freelance B2B tech content writer. So, we hear lots on social media about what writers find frustrating about their clients. But I’d be really intrigued to hear things from the client side. What do marketers find frustrating about writers that they work with? And what can we do to make things better for them?

David: Hello, Fiona, how lovely to have your voice back on the show. Listener, in case you’re new around these parts, Fiona actually founded Radix and used to co-host this very podcast. And as you’d expect from Fiona, this is such a good question. The only issue is who’d be bold enough to talk to a copywriter about the most annoying things that copywriters do? Well, actually more people than you might think.

To start with, I spoke with Sally Adam, who’s content and product marketing leader at the cybersecurity company Sophos, and I asked her Fiona’s question, what do you find the most frustrating thing when you’re briefing a copywriter?

Sally: I think the most annoying thing is when the copywriter doesn’t listen to what you are looking to achieve with the piece. Usually, you’ve got a lot of goals, or the things you want to do with it. And sometimes you can see the copywriter isn’t really listening and when the piece comes back, you can see it’s a case of, “okay, I had this thing that I knew on this topic that I wanted to write about. And I’ve just written what I wanted to say on this topic rather than what we needed to achieve with this particular piece of work”.

David: Why do you think it is a copywriter would do that? Are they just trying to kind of add value, ironically? Or are they trying to kind of show off how much they know? Or do they think they know better than you?

Sally: I think it’s probably a bit of all of those. Often when you’ve been writing on a topic for a while you build up your own knowledge, your own experience of the topic, and suddenly your mind runs away. And you’re thinking, “okay, actually, I’ve got some experience here. I’ve already done this, I feel comfortable writing about this particular element because I’ve done it before”.

And so there’s a bit of a case of, “okay, this is an area where I’ve got some expertise that I can bring in, or I enjoy writing about that”. But also, I do think there’s a piece of, “okay, this could be helpful, or I can use my knowledge here to extend the piece”. And sometimes that’s great.

What is wonderful with a copywriter is when they’re joining together the different briefs you’ve done over a period of time, and they’re linking up and thinking, “okay, well, we actually did this piece. And that ties in with something she’s mentioned, let me ask her if it’s worth us joining these together, or should I reference them”.

And I love that, when people are piecing the puzzle together and helping extend the story and connect elements. The challenge is when there isn’t the check. And the copywriter goes off and puts a load of effort in and you’re excitedly waiting for the piece because you’ve got a deadline. And when it comes back, they’re not matching up.

David: So the thing there that the copywriters should be doing, but they’re not doing is to check with you. Is that really what you’d like you’d like to happen in that situation?

Sally: Absolutely, yeah. So, play back the brief. And I try and do that myself when I’m getting tasks at work is, play back and make sure I’ve understood correctly what we’re being asked for.

But, and also, as you have other ideas, if you have thoughts of connections, or ways it could go, do check in. As someone who’s doing the briefing, you’d much rather have someone ask that question and say, “is this something we can join in together?” Then them go to all the effort and the time of creating a piece that then is missing the mark.

David: And sometimes I guess people don’t feel like they’re allowed, because they know that you’re busy or whatever. But I suppose in the long run, that will save you time.

Sally: Yeah, absolutely. And I think for us who are briefing, we need to make sure that we give the copywriter the time, we give them those opportunities to ask the questions, because otherwise, we’re putting them in an impossible situation.

So yeah, very much there’s a responsibility on the briefer to support and enable and to allow the person – and to help them also feel good about asking the questions. Sometimes the answer is “no, that’s not relevant here”. And sometimes it’s “wow, brilliant connection. I hadn’t thought of that myself.”

But as with all things, it’s fine to ask the question, and we need to make sure that the copywriter feels comfortable, and isn’t going to be made to feel stupid or anything for asking that question.

David: So do you then find things tend to go better where it’s a written brief, or if it’s a briefing call, or a combination of the two? How do you prefer to work and which gives the most opportunity for that clarification?

Sally: I think both are good. And quite often, it’s good to do both together. So maybe start with a written brief so the copywriter gets a chance to think with a little bit of calm and to maybe formulate some questions that they want to ask, and some initial ideas. And also then give something for everybody to go back to when you’re just wanting to refresh yourself when you’ve been doing a different job, and writing about a different topic.

But having the opportunity to speak and explore in person, and I think explain perhaps in a bit more detail than you would do in an email is also really helpful. But also you have to ask the copywriter what would they prefer because I suspect different copywriters prefer different approaches. Some may prefer to just start with the conversation, some may want to have a really detailed written brief.

David: Can I ask about the amends process, when a piece may be hasn’t hit the mark? Is that something where when you go back with that feedback, do copywriters kind of get defensive at all, or is it kind of alright for them to sort of push back if you or stakeholders have suggested changes?

Sally: I think it’s probably true for copywriting as much as any other job. If somebody is giving you quality feedback that they’ve properly taken the time to consider and to convey back then it is a gift to take.

Now, there’s sometimes feedback that is just a personal opinion. And I think we need to make clear when we’re giving feedback if something is a personal opinion, or if it’s just experience, or if it’s a factual thing. And then maybe sometimes as a copywriter, you’ve got expertise.

Certainly, I’m sure every copywriter’s grammar is better than mine. And so do push back, if it’s an area where you feel you are the expert. But generally, if it’s good and quality, considered feedback, then hopefully it’s something that can help with the final piece.

And probably the longer that you work with an organization, the better you’ll get to know them. You’ll be able to get to know their style, and the type of topics that they cover, and the approach they’re looking for. So in my experience, the longer we work together, the fewer the amends as we go on.

David: Do you find yourself sometimes sort of stuck in the middle between a copywriter and a stakeholder, or stuck between a copywriter and a subject matter expert who are sort of at loggerheads. Sometimes I kind of feel for the marketer being stuck in the middle there. What’s that like?

Sally: That’s where you have to say, “okay, my job, my expertise is to be the person in the middle and to be the person who is representing the audience we want to reach”. And that’s the hat I need to wear, “what is going to resonate with the audience?” And that’s where I can add value between the subject matter expert and the copywriter is going “okay, great. You’ve both got really informed and interesting positions here. But let me play the role of the audience”. And that’s my part in the process, that’s the value that I bring.

David: How can a copywriter best help you at that stage of the process?

Sally: Perhaps through explaining why they’ve done something in a particular way. If there’s a stakeholder and in our case, quite often a very technical stakeholder, who is saying something, it can be really valuable to have the outsider in terms of the copywriter, share their opinion:

“I don’t know that term, that is not something that is commonly understood, that is really valuable feedback,” or “the reason I structured this particular part in this way is because of ABC”. So yeah, explaining their reasoning because there’s a lot of skill and thought and expertise that goes behind those words. And that also helps communicate and convert to the subject matter expert.

David: So, comments in the margins, that kind of thing that will kind of help you and kind of inform that conversation. Is there anything else that you finally wish that, while you have the ear of copywriters, is there anything else you wish they did differently?

Sally: So copywriters are hugely, hugely valuable. They create wonderful pieces, they turn thoughts and ramblings into coherent stories that really help get across what we’re about. So great copywriters are fabulous.

I think the final thing I’d sort of say is that when we’re briefing a copywriter, particularly for an interview situation, where it’s going to be interviewing, perhaps colleagues, perhaps its customers, perhaps it’s other people in the wider industry, you’re representing me. I’m putting you in front of senior leaders in my organisation, I’m putting you in the hands of my customer, whose business we really value and whose business we really wish to maintain. You are the representation of me.

And I know that is widely understood. But I think it’s probably worth emphasising because I think that’s probably the nervousness from my side, more than anything else. The actual copy that comes back, we can work on that. But the experience that the interviewee has with the copywriter, that’s not going to change. That’s the impression that they’re going to walk away with. And that is, therefore, probably the thing that is most important, because that’s going to make or break other relationships and perhaps will have a wider business impact.

So I’d say just bear in mind you’re representing the person who briefs you, you’re representing their organisation as well. So we’re placing a huge amount of trust in you. And it’s almost always repaid 100-fold, but you are being entrusted with our perspectives and our representation.

David: Thanks, Sally. That is a really helpful and balanced response. And there’s loads of practical input for all the copywriters listening. Harry, I know you’ve got to have some views on this. So what stood out for you there?

Harry: Well, I mean, having managed writers in my life, I know how annoying we can be. But I think Sally’s definitely clocked the most annoying thing about briefing copywriters. And it’s really, when you just don’t listen. I’ve been this guy more times than I’d care to admit.

And I think generally speaking, when a copywriter’s going into a briefing, it’s a moment of high excitement for them on multiple different levels. You might be really nervous about, “I don’t want to say something stupid in front of the smart person”. Or you might be like, “I’m really excited to talk about this brief, because I’ve got some ideas that I want to pitch the client that would fit this brief, and I can’t wait to tell him or whatever”.

And actually, I think, really, the important thing, and you just learn this over the years from doing it time after time, is just put all that stuff aside, and just go into the room, and listen, and just sit there and be a dummy. The other ones in the room is by definition smarter than you. That’s why they’re briefing you, because they know more than you do. And so just like let it in, hear it the way they’re saying it, don’t hear it the way you wish it was.

These are all obviously really hard things to do. And you get better at doing them over time. But I think, really, the big thing is just, enjoy being the dummy. Just chill. Just ask your stupid clarifying question or, test, “I thought this would be a good thing that we could do.” Just say the things that you need to say, because I think, if you spend 20 minutes really doing someone that courtesy of listening to them, they’ll listen back. They’ll be happy to talk to you about the thing. It’s a lot easier that way. But it can be hard and definitely the most annoying thing I think that copywriters can do.

David: Yeah, I mean, I think Katherine Wildman, I think in a previous episode was kind of – shared a tip about intelligent naivety. Which I think is great – actually pretending you’re dumber than you are. Just to be that blank canvas, to represent the audience.

Harry: Yeah, exactly.

David: Which is a really tricky thing to do, particularly in an area like ours, where you’re aware that they’ve hired a specialist B2B writer or a specialist B2B tech writer for a reason. Because they don’t want to have to go right back to zero and so you kind of want to show that you know the area and that there’s a real balance there because you don’t want to cross pollute with too many of your own ideas.

Harry: Exactly.

David: There’s that idea from the – is it from the Kama Sutra? – of the beginner’s mind. I think it applies here. The stuff from your old partners should not colour the stuff with your new partners. I think it’s the same with clients a little bit.

Harry: You’ve got to do a thread on what B2B marketers can learn from the Kama Sutra. Make that happen!

David: You haven’t heard my ebook about that? That’s a whole different podcast series.

Harry: I think really the challenging thing, I think that – in an ideal world, the client and the copywriter, and really any other creative representative involved in the briefing, you’re all trying to shape something together, that fits obviously the client’s vision of reality, and what will pan out and all that stuff, but then also all your own little weird, artistic, “this is a good way to say that”, or whatever your thing might be.

And you’re trying to get to that place where you’re shaping it together. And I think ground zero and that is that when the other person’s briefing you, you hear what they’re saying, even if it isn’t in the words they’re saying. You’re really trying to understand the intent behind the briefing as well.

And so listening, it’s not just sitting there thinking nothing. It’s really paying close attention to what they mean, and what they’re prioritising and all this invisible in-between-the-line stuff, all the good stuff.

David: And being that – Sally was saying that she’s the avatar kind of for the audience, for the reader. That’s really important. All the time, sitting in their seat. It’s so important.

Harry: Correct. Yeah. And there’s obviously at the end of the spectrum, there’s another kind of like, weird little issue that comes up. Which is you can know a client so well, that you have an amazing shorthand with them. And you have these awesome fluid four minute briefing sessions where they just go, “ebook, top of funnel, difficult,” and you go, “I know what you mean”.

And you go ahead and make this thing, and it’s that thing of the avatar for the customer or the prospect, I think is – so much of that is that they don’t have any other context. They don’t know what you’re talking about. They have no – they don’t know where this company is coming from, where the stuff that they’re preaching is coming from, where the best practice advice is coming from, any of that stuff. And so you do have to – you need to be able to both go down to zero and think about it like a smart prospect would be thinking about it, and how they would be approaching it.

David: Absolutely. Sally’s not actually the only person to have answered this question for us. I think we alluded to this earlier. I got a whole bunch of – Sally was the only one that was brave enough to put a name on it – but I did get a whole bunch of anonymous responses as well.

It seems there’s actually quite a lot that annoys marketers about copywriters. So we picked the best few. We’ll play those in and you can tell me what you think just off the top of your head. Okay?

Harry: Cool.

Anonymous marketer #1: I wish B2B copywriters understood that people in B2B are still people. They may not be in their primary role as a consumer when they are reading the copy you’ve written, but we can talk to them as if they are. They’re still humans. They don’t need dozens of fluffy buzzwords to understand a concept or engage with your content. Without dumbing it down or doing your content a disservice, write as a human to another human in a conversational and human way.

Harry: That’s hard to argue with. I mean, I do feel sure that we can be more annoying than that. We can be worse than that. There’s worse things copywriters do.

David: You don’t think that’s the worst thing?

Harry: No, no.

David: Okay, this is the top four.

Harry: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we need a good top three. We need to burn this into people’s back’s or something.

David: The thing that’s interesting about this is a – it’s like a B2B tech writer that’s gone native, right? I think every B2B tech writer comes into it, trying to weed out the buzzwords and trying to get away from that stuff. And probably at the end, just the whole career of having to get things signed off. In the end, they just assume that they have to write that way. I think there’s a switch that gets flicked.

Harry: No, definitely, definitely. It’s kind of like an ocean, right? It’s like the national gravity in the space is that – and this is the uncomfortable thing. If you want to efficiently work with many different clients in B2B, actually, the consequence of that might be that there’s a whole lot of buzzword nonsense in your thing, because you just split writing. Your audience is the marketing department paying your bills, and that’s kind of the extent of it. But no, writing for humans, definitely good. I’d love to see a B2B company try to talk to people as if they were cats. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe – imagine if that works. Imagine if that’s amazing!

David: B2B catnip. You heard it here first. Okay, the next one.

Anonymous marketer #2: My pet hate is briefing an agency that then subs out copywriting to someone who wasn’t in the room.

Harry: Oh, okay, okay, now we’re talking. Now we’re getting into some really good stuff. Because I’d like to say this first as like a very small point of defence on behalf of agencies. Because I’ve been in that situation, I’ve been in every version of that situation. I’ve been the guy outside the room, I’ve been the guy telling the guy inside the room to give it to the guy outside. I’ve been through all permutations of this.

And it can work. I’ve seen this work. There are times when there’s someone who’s outside the room, who you’ve never spoken to, and you didn’t expect them to work on it, and then they do something and it blows your mind. That can happen. And I think actually a lot of the magic you’re paying for with an agency is that possibility that that could happen.

Now that said, this is the worst thing. I hate this one. It’s so irritating, it’s so frustrating to – especially I think when clients really do the agency the kind of courtesy of bringing their best self to the briefing. They’re prepared, they’ve thought about the session, “I’ll explain this, then I’ll explain this and he’ll get it,” you know, whatever. They’ve really thought about doing the briefing well, and then they do the briefing, and then it’s some random who didn’t even clock all the important stuff they we’re talking about in the brief. That’s the worst, it’s so annoying. So really hard.

David: I love it. The worst thing about briefing a copywriter is when the copywriter is not there.

Harry: Yeah! What’s the point of that?

Anonymous marketer #3: When the individual hasn’t understood the client’s tone or style of writing and so returns with the monotone or “off-voice” style. Take more time to review the client’s historic style and tone please.

Harry: Yeah, that’s just basics man. That’s the – it’s basics and you’d hope that every copywriter’s doing this kind of a thing, but I think it’s really good to hear this from the horse’s mouth, from the mouth of someone who’s annoyed and irritated by it.

Because I think, especially with younger writers, I think there’s a part of us that believes that this client doesn’t know what they want. “Once I make this thing, they’ll understand how good it is like, they’ll see it in the finished product, I’ll blow their mind and it’ll be amazing”.

And I think that’s an important part of you to keep, you should always be trying to do that for the client. But really the first audience you need to know, we talked about knowing your audience and stuff, the first audience you have to know is the dude or lady who at 6:17pm on a Friday is saying to her office friends, “no, you guys go to the pub, I’ll catch up with you later,” or whatever. “I’m going to open this document that the stranger has sent me. And I’m just really desperately hoping that what’s in this document isn’t professionally embarrassing to me. It just a little looks like it’s coming from someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” or whatever.

And that’s the first hurdle you have to clear as a copywriter. That’s the first person you’ve got to be empathetic to I think, definitely on the B2B side, but I think that’s true on the B2C side as well. Maybe a lot more deferential out there. It’s really annoying. You need to know how the person you’re working for wants to represent themselves and no idea you have is more important than that.

And that’s the first hurdle you have to clear as a copywriter. That’s the first person you’ve got to be empathetic to I think, definitely on the B2B side, but I think that’s true on the B2C side as well. Maybe a lot more deferential out there. It’s really annoying. You need to know how the person you’re working for wants to represent themselves and no idea you have is more important than that.

Anonymous marketer #4: I have experienced two recurring issues. One: not being able to speak the language of the target audience or decision makers. We had a Gen Z copywriter who was writing content directed at senior C suite executives, 50-60-year-old mostly male individuals. This doesn’t necessarily mean jargon but definitely some corporate terminology that CHR or CFOs would relate with: increase revenue, decrease costs in some way or the other.

We had to go through a few rounds and I had to describe our audience in detail for them to do a good job to the whole features instead of benefits angle. Quite a few times content and copy would be about what we provide rather than intelligently talking about the value add and when this was explained most copy was a direct “here are five benefits of ….”, which in my opinion doesn’t really work.

Harry: That sucks. If you keep coming across that’s awful, that’s really bad. I mean, I guess, obviously, all that tells me is that like the most annoying thing is bad copywriting. Nothing beats bad copywriting.

David: I think there’s an element of this and it’s maybe something we should talk about on the show that I know that Leif Kendall at Pro Copywriters has for a while been talking about the idea of “do we need some kind of accreditation for copywriters?” Because at the moment anyone can stick a shingle outside their door and say “I’m a copywriter.” And the more people who do that, who don’t really embrace the craft, the more it undermines the rest of us.

Harry: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s a weird one as well, because at least in the years I’ve been doing this… Over the years, you sort of tried to collect as many absolute truths about the craft as you can. And I’ve got an empty bag. I can never find anything that pervades all industries and all contacts and all situations, because B2B, we don’t hang out because we like talking to companies, we hang out because we don’t sell shampoo.

We’re united by what we don’t do. And that’s about the extent of it, like a service company and a SAS company. It’s fundamentally different business models, and the way they approach markets are going to become completely different, the way they talk to people is going to be different. And so it’s hard, but it is a little frustrating when someone has worked with seven bad copywriters in a row and then they go “ah, marketing doesn’t work” or whatever.

And it’s like, “no, you hired bad people.” And I don’t know how to convince them of that. I don’t know how to demonstrate that to someone. Maybe accreditations would be good. But yeah, maybe it’s good that Leif’s talking about this because I really couldn’t think of many people who would take on something like that, but maybe Leif’s the guy though.

David: Yep, absolutely. Leif, the ball’s in your court. You make it happen and we will support you.

Harry: Good luck dude!

David: Okay, it is almost time for us to wrap up. But first we do have our final inclusive writing tip from Ettie Bailey-King.

Ettie Bailey-King:  You’ve probably heard people talking about person-first language or identity-first language. So what does this mean?

Person-first language would put somebody’s name first. And they might say “Ettie has depression.” That’s person-first language because the person’s name, or perhaps the pronoun talking about them comes first. You might say “she has depression”. And person-first language is really popular with a wide range of identities, and often marginalised experiences.

In many cases, we want to be referred to using person-first language because it puts the person back in the frame. I’m not defined by my depression, I’m still a real person with a full and rich identity separate from that. But many people actually want identity-first language. So what does identity-first language look like?

Well, that might look like saying, “I’m autistic,” “I’m schizophrenic,” “she’s disabled”. And in some cases, that community of people really, really wants to use identity-first language. It’s really important that we find out what people’s preferences are.

So in the example of autism, many, many autistic people say that they really want their autism to be considered part and parcel of who they are. It is not a separate trivial detail of their identity. It’s absolutely integral. And that’s why many autistic people will really, really want that language to be used.

And if we don’t respect that wish, then were really undermining their right to express themselves and to be taken seriously given their identity. So what’s the lesson that we can draw from this? Well, unfortunately, there isn’t one simple tip as to whether you should always use person first or always use identity first. Brings us back to tip number one, which is that you must always ask.

If you’re looking for a rough rule of thumb, it’s typically the case that identity-first language is popular with people who have physical, motor and sensory disabilities. So for example, many deaf people want to say “I am deaf”, they won’t say “I am a person with deafness”. So you can keep in mind that frequently identity-first language is popular with certain physical motor and sensory disabilities. But you always need to check.

David: That’s actually the last in the series of these tips. Etiie, we are really grateful to you for sending them in. They’ve been so practical and thought provoking over these last few months. And listen, if you want more information on inclusive and anti-oppressive language, you can find Ettie at fightingtalk.uk or on Twitter @ettiebk.

Harry: And of course, we also want to thank Fiona Campbell-Howes for asking the question that kicked this whole thing off. We hope you feel like you were satisfied by the answers that we came across, that we did surface the annoying things about briefing copywriters. And so, of course, we would really like to thank Sally Adam from Sophos for such an honest, thought provoking, good, correct answer, I think, to a difficult question – we appreciate that. And obviously, thank you to everyone who anonymously sent in their comments. And, of course, the great Vikki Ross, for her pro tip.

David: Thank you, Vikki. And thank you, Harry, you have been a fabulous guest co-host once again. I hope you’ll come back again?

Harry: Oh, it’s been my pleasure. I would absolutely love to.

David: Awesome. We’ll look forward to that. In the meantime, if the listener wants to get in touch with you and find out more about the wonderful world of Harry Kapur, where can they do that?

Harry: You can reach me, the quickest way to reach me is probably on my Twitter, which is @rupees1hundred, probably easier to just search my name. But also if you want to work with me, then probably best to find me on LinkedIn.

David: Great, and we’ll put a link in the show notes as well. Remember listener, it could be your question we answer in a future episode. If you have a question for B2BQ&A to answer email, a voice memo to [email protected]. Or find us on social media. I’ll see you next time for another B2BQ&A. Until then make good content and remember, one day you will die but the content you publish will live forever. Thanks a bunch, Google.

Harry and David: Goodbye!

 

B2BQ&A 109.5: Copywriters share their top tips for writing B2B content

Posted on by The Radix Team

After a longer than expected absence from the recording booth, the podcast is back, though not quite in the usual B2BQ&A format. In this episode, we’ve collected our favourite copywriting tips from the past few months.

Imagine a compilation album called Now That’s What I Call Copywriting, featuring freelance writer Matt Binny, Giles Edwards from …Gasp!, Katherine Wildman from Haydn Grey, and copywriter Vikki Ross, as well as contributions from our own in-house writing team.

You can read a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page.

Three tips for great B2B copy…

  1. Keep it short

A lot of our contributors stressed the importance of getting rid of unnecessary content. From deleting your first sentence to simply using fewer (and shorter) words, brevity is key. Giles from …Gasp! puts it this way: “If you can take a word out and nothing is lost, you should.”

  1. Stay on brief (and know your client)

When writing copy, it can be easy to lose track of the brief. When he’s reading through a piece he’s written, Matt pretends he has no prior knowledge and asks himself three questions: “Does it tell me what I need to know? Would I buy it? Am I bored out of my mind?” And always make sure you are using the right tone of voice for the client.

  1. Keep the reader in mind

Your copy may be intended for a wide audience, but it’s important to remember that you are only ever writing to one person at a time. Katherine puts it this way: “It’s a conversation between me, and what’s happening in my head, and the reader, and what’s happening in their head. It’s very intimate, and very privileged.”

We’ll be back to a more traditional podcast format in the near future, but until then, thanks for listening.

Here’s what you can expect in this episode…

0:30 – David explains why there hasn’t been a B2BQ&A podcast for a while

2:18 – Radix wordsmith, John, warns against ‘sesquipedalian loquaciousness’

2:52 – Freelance writer, Matt Binny, squeezes four tips into one

3:27 – Giles from …Gasp! tells you to trim the fat

3:38 – Katherine from Haydn Grey suggests you get personal with your reader

4:20 – Matt Godfrey, head of copy at Radix, has his tip spoken by a computer

4:52 – Ben from Radix talks tone of voice

5:30 – Copywriter, Vikki Ross, asks if no copy is really the best copy

6:00 – Radix’s Claire keeps it short and sweet

6:25 – David wraps up

Got a question? We’ll find the answer

If you have any suggestions for future podcasts, just 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: 

Credits:

  • Thanks to all our contributors for their excellent tips, and a huge thank you to Matt, Giles, Katherine, and Vikki
  • Thanks to Lisa Woodruff, Marketing Manager at Radix, for the work she does on the podcast behind the scenes
  • And, thanks to Gareth at Bang and Smash audio, for making everything sound wonderful in your earholes

Transcript: B2BQ&A 109.5: Best B2B copywriting tips

David McGuire:  Hello listener, this is not an episode of B2BQ&A, and for that I can only apologise.

It might have escaped your notice, but we have been somewhat less regular than usual with the podcast lately. I’m sorry about that. Things have been somewhat stretched, to say the least, for various reasons, some of them COVID related. But in short, we’ve had a lot to do with not very many people. So I’ve had to roll my sleeves up, get my back to the wheel, and all of those other cliches. But basically, I’ve had to put the podcast down for a minute and pitch in with the team.

Rest assured we will get back to you as soon as we can with questions on corporate social responsibility, copywriting and how to do that without greenwashing, on writing with SEO keywords appropriately, and frankly, any other questions that you have for us, you can certainly still send them to podcast at radix hyphen communications.com.

I do also have to say that I’m afraid we won’t be running the best content of the year polls this year.  There’s simply no time to get that done in anything like the high standard of quality that we’d like to for you. But hopefully we will run something else along those lines for you soon. So in the meantime, just because I feel bad that we haven’t put any advice and information in your earholes lately, we do have this collection of tips and highlights from guests over the past few months of the show. And I hope that you will find that useful.

John Kerrison: I’m John Kerrison, and I’m a Senior Copywriter at Radix Communications. My copywriting tip is to limit your vocabulary. That sounds like the opposite of what a writer should do. But often you’ll see people who are just starting out try and flex their inner thesaurus and pepper their copy with words you’d never use in conversation.

It’s important to remember that your job isn’t to show off, it’s to make things really clear and engaging for your reader. So as an example, instead of saying my work suffers from sesquipedalian loquaciousness, you can just say I use too many long words.

Matt Binny: Hi Matt Binny here, freelance writer from Falmouth in Cornwall. My copywriting tips are as follows. When I finish writing, I like to let it rest for a while or go make lunch, a cup of tea, probably then another cup of tea, then return with fresh eyes and proof. Always read copy out loud. [It’s] a very common tip for a reason: it’s very, very effective.

I also like to re-read copy as if I was someone with sort of no knowledge on the topic, or the product, or service, and ask a few questions: Does it tell me what I need to know? Would I buy it? Am I bored out of my mind? is always a good one too.

Giles Edwards: Hello, it’s Giles from …Gasp! My tip is: trim the fat. If you can take a word out and nothing is lost, you should.

Katherine Wildman: Hello, this is Katherine from Haydn Grey, and my favourite short copywriting tip is to remember that you’re only ever writing to one person at a time. So it’s never about the collective all of us, some of you, nothing like that. It’s a conversation between me, and what’s happening in my head, and the reader, and what’s happening in their head. One-to-one, very intimate, very privileged. So only ever write to that one person. Thanks for having me.

Katy: Radix’s head of copy, Matt Godfrey, is far too shy to record his actual voice, so we had to get a computer to read his tip for him.

RoboMatt: When you’ve finished writing a piece, delete your first sentence. Too much B2B content opens with unnecessary exposition, especially considering we’re typically writing for an expert audience. So, by deleting your first sentence, or even your first paragraph, there’s a good chance you’ll have a much stronger opening that will hook readers in, rather than telling them stuff they already know.

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.

Vikki Ross: Hello, my name is Vikki Ross, and I’m a copywriter. One of my favourite copywriting tips is something David Abbott once said. He was one of the best copywriters in the world, so he knew what he was talking about. He said, “Sometimes the best copy is no copy.” I say that’s absolutely true, that sometimes you need a copywriter to say so.

I hope that helps you when you’re writing, or when you’re telling someone why you don’t need to write anything.

Claire: Hi, I’m Claire, a Junior Copywriter at Radix, and my favourite copywriting tip is to use fewer words. Read over your sentences and ask yourself, can I say the same thing in less words? The chances are that, if you can, it will make your writing clearer, more readable, and more concise.

David: And there you have it: a roundup of advice and information. I hope that’s helpful for you until we can get back with the other podcast proper.

Obviously, I’d like to thank everybody that contributed to that, once again. You’re all wonderful. And I’d like to thank Lisa Woodruff, who’s the Marketing Manager here at Radix. And does so much for the podcast behind the scenes. And Gareth at Bang and Smash Audio, who is very much the unsung hero, making all of this sound vaguely audible and make sense. So thanks to them.

And thanks to you for listening and for bearing with us while we get back to you with a proper podcast sometime in the near future.

B2BQ&A 110: How can you find the right SEO keywords for niche B2B content?

Posted on by The Radix Team

Researching keywords is relatively easy in a popular B2C market – where data is plentiful and vocabulary is simple. But how do you find search intent in the rarefied world of B2B tech? That’s what Emily King from Bluefruit Software wants to know:

“It’s one thing to know what you call your product or service, but it’s another to know what your potential audience is actually using in their searches. So how do you find this out?”

Such an important question needs a very special guest… so we went straight to the top: Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media. Andy literally wrote the book on SEO and content marketing, and we’re thrilled to have him on the podcast.

And we don’t just have Andy’s sage advice for you. In this month’s episode, we’re joined by guest co-host Ruth Connor, Content Marketing Specialist at B2B Marketing and Propolis. You’ll also hear a copywriting pro tip from UX writer Fiorella Rizzà, and there’s news of an exciting challenge to mark the 10th anniversary of this podcast.

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

Want to find the right keywords for B2B tech? Here are Andy’s five tips:

1. Embrace the B2B niche

Writing for smaller companies that focus on niche B2B tech has opportunities in search that some of the bigger companies might miss.

Andy explains: “If you don’t have super-high domain authority, that’s a benefit because it pushes you towards key phrases that are less popular – but much more targeted. The niche is where the fun is: you can find phrases that a small number of people are searching for, but they’re thrilled when they find you. The click-through and conversion rates are high. It’s an enormous opportunity.

2. Prioritise the bottom of the funnel

Andy recommends targeting the key phrases that indicate strong commercial or transaction intent – the person who has their wallet out, but just needs a bit of help.

“Start by optimising your homepage,” he advises. “That’s the page for which you have the best chance of ranking. Next, optimise your service pages. Those pages have strong intent; the visitor is looking for help – they need a service or a product.”

3. Empathy is the ultimate search marketing skill

Andy suggests the ultimate source of keywords is your own audience.

“If you get asked the same question two or three times you should be answering that question in your content,” he says. “We listen out for the topics that our audience really, really cares about. We put plans in place to publish on those topics. And then, as we’re publishing, we look for keyword opportunities.”

4. Target key phrases for which the best answer is very long and detailed

The number of searches for which the click-through rate is zero keeps growing because Google’s Featured Snippets are so informative.

According to Andy: “We should all be looking for opportunities to write content that is keyword focused, but also where the answer to the question is deep and long with details.”

5. Don’t just rank high; be interesting

The days of fooling search engines with low-quality filler content are long gone. “You’re not doing SEO if you’re not sincerely trying to make one of the top 10 pages on the internet,” Andy proposes. “You have no right to rank if you made another medium-quality piece.”

“But also, as you do this, don’t forget to inject your own voice; say something that’s provocative or counterintuitive. Put people into your articles and include contributor quotes from people with interesting ideas.”

Further reading (and watching)…

Here’s what you can expect in this episode…

1:59 – Ruth Connor explains why the BBC is a role model for content atomisation

5:11 – David McGuire poses Emily King’s question to Andy Crestodina

13:54 – Ruth and David discuss personas and the importance of talking to customers

23:49 – UX writer Fiorelli Rizzà shares a copywriting pro tip

24:15 – David McGuire announces a new challenge to mark our 10th anniversary

Got a question? We’ll find the answer.

To get your burning B2B content questions answered, just 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 LinkedIn, or Twitter @radixcom.

How to listen: 

Credits

  • Thank you, Andy Crestodina, for sharing so much SEO wisdom.
  • Cheers also to Fiorella Rizzà for this month’s copywriting pro tip.
  • And of course thanks to to Ruth Connor – our excellent guest co-host.

Podcast editing and music by Bang and Smash.

Transcript: B2BQ&A 110 – How can you find the right SEO keywords for niche B2B content?

Emily King: It’s one thing to know what you call your product or service, but it’s another to know what your potential audience is actually using in their searches. So how do you find this out?

Ruth Connor: That’s a brilliant question. Let’s ask Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media.

David McGuire: Hello listener, and welcome back to B2BQ&A, the podcast where we go in search of an answer to your question about B2B content writing. We’re back for a new season, and this is Episode 110.

Ruth: Wow, Episode 110. That feels pretty special.

David: 10 years.

Ruth: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Well, in a few moments, we’re gonna hear from Andy Crestodina, the CMO and co-founder of Orbit Media studios, and all-round B2B SEO colossus. He’ll take a stab at answering this episode’s question: “Just how can you find the right keywords when you’re working in a super geeky B2B niche?” Or nitch as Americans would say.

David: They do, they do.

Ruth: Plus we’ll hear a copywriting pro tip from Content Designer and UX writer Fiorella Rizzà and we’ll reveal details of a new search to find the best B2B content of all time.

David: Before all that though: Who are we? Well, my name is David McGuire. I’m Creative Director at Radix Communications, a B2B writing agency. And our guest co-host for this episode, I’m delighted to say, is a consultant, B2B tech marketing director, and the resident content marketing expert and trainer for B2B Marketing and Propolis. It’s Ruth Connor! Ruth, welcome.

Ruth: Thank you very much, David, I’m really delighted to be here.

David: As a content marketing expert yourself, where do you find inspiration for content marketing?

Ruth: That’s a great question. And this is something I used to talk a lot about with my team. And we’d always look to actually the BBC and shows like Strictly Come Dancing, Line of Duty, and, more recently, Happy Valley. And that’s because I think the team at the Beeb do a great job of something I’m really passionate about when it comes to content marketing – which is recycling, reusing, and repurposing.

So, taking that big piece of hero content and turning it into loads of different spin-off pieces of content. And I think they do a great job in some of those shows. I think you know you’ve kind of cracked the content marketing nutshell when you find people producing their own content because they’re so passionate about those shows. And I think the last few weeks on social media and Happy Valley just shows the strength of the sentiment for those shows.

David: Wow. So if you’re in search of B2B marketing inspiration for your content, look to Happy Valley, look to Strictly and the way that they atomise things. That’s an amazing thought to start us off on this episode.

Before we get on to answering this episode’s question, though, Ruth, would you mind performing your first official duty as co-host, and telling the listener how they can get in touch with us?

Ruth: I’d love to David. Listener, if you have any comments or suggestions you can find Radix on LinkedIn (radix-communications-ltd) or Twitter (@radixcom).

Or if you want us to answer your question on a future episode, record a quick voice note and send it by email to: [email protected].

David: That is perfect. Thank you so much.

Ruth: Now it’s time for the B2BQ&A for this episode. And our question comes from a very familiar voice.

Emily: Hi, B2BQ&A. This is Emily King from Bluefruit Software. I just had a question about how to effectively find out which keywords your target audience is using in their searches.

So, it’s one thing to know what you call your product or service, but it’s another to know what your potential audience is actually calling it and what they’re using in their searches. So, how do you find this out?

David: How lovely to hear from you again, Emily. Listener, in case you didn’t know, Emily actually started this podcast almost exactly 10 years ago. And for that, we’re endlessly grateful.

But anyway, let’s get on with Emily’s question, which speaks to a bigger point. How can you make SEO work for you when you’re dealing with niche B2B audiences and subjects? And do you reach a point where talking to your customers is better than doing digital research?

To answer we have an SEO and content marketing expert whom I’ve wanted to have on the podcast for basically as long as I can remember. Orbit Media CMO, Andy Crestodina publishes such helpful well-researched advice on digital content, I just knew he’d have something interesting to say here.

So I asked him Emily’s question: How can you find the right SEO keywords, when you work in a geeky B2B niche?

Andy Crestodina: If you’re in a B2B niche, especially a small one, you actually have big opportunities in search that some of the bigger companies might miss. So, it’s exciting to do SEO in a micro-niche for B2B. Niche companies tend to be smaller, which means in a way they have a bigger challenge because they don’t have super-high domain authority and difficulty ranking.

That actually is a benefit, it just pushes you towards the less competitive, longer tail, less popular – but also much more targeted – key phrases.

So it’s not a problem that you’re a smaller online player when you’re in a niche, when you’re targeting the more specific phrases, you can’t target the big general phrases. But those phrases are not as valuable as it might seem anyway, because you know less about the visitor; the visitor does not have strong intent.

People who search for single words or the business category, very hard to convert them, because they’re less likely to have a specific need to look for a specific answer to need a specific service.

So the niche is really where all the fun is, in B2B keyword research. You can find phrases that a small number of people are searching for, but they’re thrilled when they find you. The click-through rates are high, the conversion rates are high. So, it’s an enormous opportunity.

And it’s something that the big companies will often miss. So there’s plenty of blue ocean in those longer three-, four-, or five-word key phrases that others fail to catch or to target, and that you can really target and win what might just be a trickle of traffic, but they’re very passionate, very engaged visitors.

David: How hard is it to find out among that ocean of key phrases, which are the ones that your audience, in particular, are really interested in?

Andy: Every key phrase equals intent. So when you think about the true story in the life of the person who just typed that on their keyboard – and it’s happening right now, as we speak all over the world – the more specific the key phrase, the more you know about their information needs.

So if you think about keywords as being intent, you can target key phrases and therefore intent, that is at different stages in the person’s process, as they consider options. Some key phrases are simply information intent queries, they’re looking for an answer, they want to solve their problem themselves. They’re not at all interested in buying or becoming a lead event for anything.

Other key phrases indicate strong commercial or transaction intent. They’ve got their wallet out there ready to go, they know they need help, they’ve given up on every other option they need, they need help, they’re raising their hand, they need a service. So I would always prioritise beginning your keyword research and content, content marketing and conversion, copywriting and SEO, with the bottom of the funnel.

Start by targeting the key phrases that indicate the person really needs help. And those are generally going to be not content marketing; typically, they’re like service pages. Start by optimizing your homepage, as that’s the page for which you have the best chance of ranking.

Next, optimize your service pages. Those pages have strong intent, the visitor is looking for help they know they need, they need a service or a product. The problem with using software and tools to do your keyword research for you is that they don’t really know or care what your audience is looking for. They don’t know you; they don’t know them.

Sometimes, what you might think of as a blockbuster key phrase, like “Hey, we rank really high for this, you know, ‘What is the sales tax in this geography?’” Like, great, that person just wanted a quick answer. They’re never going to convert, they’re never going to convert!

David: And is there a role for maybe interviewing or talking to real customers, or maybe even talking to your salespeople to get a view of the questions that real people ask, and how they kind of map to intent?

Andy: The ultimate source of keywords is your audience. And there’s lots of ways to get that. One of them is, of course, talking to people. And if you get asked the same question two or three times you should be answering that question in your content.

But when I do that – and when we all do that (and we all should) – search is not your primary concern. Because once you write this article, you can literally send it to exactly the person who asked you the question.

Who needs Google? – you’re already talking to this person.

So, what we should do is listen for the topics that our audience really, really cares about. Put plans in place to publish on those topics. And then as we’re publishing look for keyword opportunities.

Some will have keyword opportunities; some will not have keyword opportunities. If you write the thing that your audience really loves and wants and you give it to them, but there wasn’t a keyword related to it, you can publish it an adjacent topic that does add the keyword that links to this great piece you made. But yes, I think empathy is the ultimate marketing skill.

There’s other sources of empathy, such as if you have a site search tool, and people are searching for a phrase – that’s a source of empathy. And then sometimes, of course, the keyword research tools, and Google itself will tell you what people are looking for related to your topic or your industry works like a charm.

David: Are there other opportunities or trends with search at the moment that are particularly relevant to B2B tech?

Andy: Well, there’s a risk and a threat in search right now that we should all be aware of, which is, as I alluded to a minute ago, none of us should be targeting phrases for which there’s just a short, simple answer.

The number of searches for which the click-through rate is zero keeps growing because Google gets more informative on its own platform. So we should all be looking for opportunities to write content that is yes, keyword focused, but also, the answer to the question the visitor is asking is deep and long with details, because Google’s search results are so informative. Click-through rates to websites are on the decline.

So, target key phrases which give up the I. Remember years ago, we used to publish glossaries? Remember this SEO strategy? We’re like, “Oh, I’ll make a big glossary and answer, you know, tell everyone with the top…” No, that doesn’t work at all anymore. No traffic at all.

So, target key phrases for which the best answer is very long and detailed and 2000 words and you can’t get it in a Featured Snippet.

David: Any final tips for the audience of B2B tech marketers when they’re thinking about keyword research or optimising their content? While we have a world expert with us, the audience would be upset with me if I didn’t ask.

Andy: The ultimate in the best advice is: when you’re publishing a piece of content related to a search, that you literally make a sincere attempt to create the best page on the internet for that topic.

You’re not doing SEO if you’re not sincerely trying to make one of the top 10 pages on the internet. You have no right to rank if you made another medium-quality piece.

But also, as you do this, don’t forget to inject your own voice; say something that’s provocative or counterintuitive. Inject it into this keyword-focused piece that’s going to touch on all the related topics and semantic SEO and subheads and detail, but put yourself in there and throw in some strong points of view.

Search is, of course, library science. It’s an information retrieval technology. But your reader has a brain with an amygdala and can feel emotion.

So if you want to be memorable, and not just a lovely Wikipedia for your industry, then don’t forget that some of the best results from digital come from differentiated voices, strong points of view, Op-Ed. You know, the counterintuitive prediction or perspective of voice. Put people into your articles and include contributor quotes from people with interesting ideas.

Don’t just rank high, be interesting – and have fun.

David: Andy, thank you so much. If the audience want to hear more from you, more of your points of view and your wisdom, where can they best find you?

Andy: I write an article every two weeks at orbitmedia.com. So orbitmedia.com/blog is where you find the main source of my stuff. I put it all together into a book called Content Chemistry.

And also LinkedIn would be my best social media platform. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. The blue button that says Follow? You can skip that and go down to Connect. You know how that works. But yeah, anyone’s welcome to reach out anytime. I’m happy to help however I can.

David: Thanks, Andy. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard so much clear, valuable advice in just a few minutes.

Ruth, you’re an experienced marketing leader, as well as a content marketing expert in your own right. You must have enjoyed that, right?

Ruth: I thought it was great. I thought it was super helpful. And I think what really kind of my takeaway is: when you’re working in a niche tech sector, some of the more generic pieces of advice you get around keyword research just aren’t that helpful, because they don’t cut the mustard for the space you work in.

But Andy got straight to the point of giving us some really helpful pointers as to how we could get started.

One of the things I do think we should also mention, though, is first off Andy talks about both the fun and opportunity for those B2B marketers working in niche tech sectors. And truthfully everybody needs fun and opportunity in their role. So I thought that was a great starting point from Andy.

David: Yeah, absolutely. And as a marketer yourself, do you find it difficult to know, kind of search terms, and use the research as a starting point for good content? Where do you go to?

Ruth: That’s a great question, and I always start with the customer.

Because I really believe that nothing interesting happens in the office. And what I mean by that is marketing teams need to get out there and speak to their customers, speak to their client-facing colleagues, to maybe sit in on meetings, go to trade shows with them, ask the Client Advisory Board, ask the user group, wherever you can get in front of customers, and get a real sense of how they talk about the challenges or pain points or issues that they face in to really understand the language that they use.

I’m picking up on something that Andy mentioned, I also feel that those conversations and those bits of insights really give you the topics that your audience is passionate about and care about. And I think there’s a lot to be said, for producing really helpful content. And I think if you start by listening to what the customer has got to say, tap into the knowledge and insight of your client-facing teams, really unearth these topics that you can tell the audience care about, I really believe when you come to publication, just like Andy said, you can add in the keywords, you can make it a bit more SEO friendly during the publication stage, but it’s all got to start with some customer insight for me.

David: Yeah, and I love that about going to trade shows! I was here like, the listener can’t see, but I was here with my hands in the air like preach, you know, like, just as a younger marketer and a younger copywriter, working on trade shows, even if I wasn’t doing the selling just supporting was so helpful, because I got to hear the conversations that were happening.

And I suppose from that point of view, it’s not either/or, it’s both/and when you work in such a niche market. It’s using those conversations and what you can glean can help you understand where the search intent is in the keyword report and understand what the keyword report means.

And then the other way around, the keyword report can help you understand the language that people are using to address the problems and the questions and the issues that you’ve heard them talk about, whether it’s on a trade show, or writing case studies is another one that I love, because you get to talk to a customer about their thing, and about their challenge and about their world. Like every case study makes me a better writer.

Ruth: Definitely. And you know, David, I think what you’ve just said picks up on something Andy mentioned as well about every key phrase equals intent, and how you’ve got different key phrases at different stages of the customer journey.

So, for example, if somebody’s right at the start of their customer journey, as content marketers, we tend to focus on producing what we call TOFU content. But this is the kind of content that needs to talk about pain points, challenges, questions – those are the kinds of things we need to be thinking of when we’re thinking about our key phrases and our keywords.

If you’re producing middle-of-the-funnel content, rather, I think that’s when we need to see things that relate more to the solutions that somebody might be searching for.

And then when you get to the bottom of the funnel, that’s where it could be more product focus keywords.

So I think Andy made a really good point about thinking around this premise of every phrase equals intent. And those phrases change depending on where somebody is in their journey.

David: I was interested in what Andy had to say about zero search queries and how that changes the nature of the content that people are producing. Is that something that you see?

Ruth: Actually, I hadn’t really thought about this until I heard this in Andy’s advice. And that got me really thinking about that. And that’s something that I’m definitely going to go away and consider a bit more.

David: Yeah, although AI might change it all, again. If, soon enough, ChatGPT gets pulled into Bing, if Google sorts out Bard, you know, you might have these chatbots answering the questions, instead of a list of search results, perhaps.

Ruth: Yeah, that’s true. Actually hadn’t really thought about it from that context. So that’s really insightful.

David: Anything else that stood out for you?

Ruth: Yeah, one of the things Andy mentioned was about the idea of starting with the bottom-of-the-funnel content first, so bottom-of-the-funnel keyword research, content marketing to support the bottom-of-the-funnel stage.

And I would always, always advocate this as a starting point because, ultimately, a very small number of your target audience are active in the market at any one point in time. And I think you need to be if you’re starting out on your content marketing strategy, or you’re revisiting your content marketing strategy, you will always want to prioritise the most commercial-focused activities first, in my opinion.

I think it wins you friends with the sales team. I think it buys you goodwill from your superiors and your stakeholders to then move back up through the funnel to the different stages. So 100% agree with Andy’s point around starting with the bottom-of-the-funnel content first and then working out through the other layers. So you get, you know, to the top of the funnel.

So yeah, 100% agree with that point.

David: Absolutely. You know, I think when content marketing first became an approach, it was so new and so different, everyone almost kind of the product marketing almost became a dirty word. You know, because that wasn’t what content marketing was about.

But, sometimes, the most helpful thing you can write is about your product for someone who’s at that stage of their buying journey. And absolutely, it needs to be included.

Ruth: What do you think about the persona perspective, in this context, in the sense of Andy talks a lot about mapping it to different stages of the customer journey?

But I also wonder if there’s a case for mapping it to different personas in your buying unit. So you know, for example, you might have a C-suite persona, but then you also might have an end-user persona.

And I guess the same would be true, as the customer journey point too, you probably need to think about the personas that you’re writing for, and think about their journeys that they might go on. So your keywords might be different for the C-suite part of your DMU versus the kind of hands-on end-user DMU.

Or are personas old hat, in your experience now? Have people moved on from them?

David: I don’t know, I must admit, I kind of like an avatar more than a persona, for me.

Ruth: Tell me a bit more about that.

David: I’m fortunate in my career to have had enough lives and to have known enough people and enough clients and whatever, that for most sort of what you might call a persona for most job roles, challenges that people are facing, I can normally think of someone that sort of works in that job.

So I can normally write to a person that I have in mind, rather than a persona. And it’s just a bit more, a bit more real.

And it comes back to the point that you were making right at the beginning around getting out to trade shows and meeting people, you know. Doing case studies, interviews, whatever you can do to meet the customer because you might well meet people that map to those personas and makes that more three-dimensional for you. So you can get from a persona to an avatar. You’re like, “Oh, I’m not, I’m not writing for, you know, the CTO and the automotive sector. I’m writing for Janet.”

Ruth: And I think when you give them a name, and you give them an identity that makes it even more real, and I guess if you can base it on somebody that you’ve actually met in a real-world situation, all the better.

David: Before we finish up this episode, we do have a couple more things to share. First, we have this copywriting pro tip.

Announcer: Copywriting pro tip.

Fiorella Rizzà: Hi, I’m Fiorella Rizzà. I’m a Senior Content Designer. And my writing tip is if you need to read it twice, it’s not good enough.

Ruth: Thanks, Fiorella. It sounds so simple, but it’s so, so effective.

Before we go though, David, I gather you’re looking for some of the best pieces of B2B content ever.

David: Yeah, that’s right. As I mentioned earlier, this is the 10th anniversary of the podcast. So, we thought we’d do something a bit unusual to celebrate. And we’ve set ourselves a challenge to find the best B2B content of all time. I mean, it could be a blog post, a video, ebook, white paper, who knows. But the first stage is: we need to compile a long list of contenders.

So, listener, have a think about content that stuck with you, and please send us a nomination, anything you like on social media, or vote at radix-communications.com.

Speaking of which, Ruth… Do you have a particular favourite you’d like to put forward for the list?

Ruth: I do. You actually, so my favourite piece of content is Vital Stats by Earnest. This got shared with me many moons ago on a content marketing training course at the IDM. And they use this Vital Stats video as an example of a good piece of video content. But as the name suggests, it was also jam-packed with loads of really helpful information around how you could make the case for content marketing in your business. And I went back to the business I was in and I used all the stats in the Vital Stats video to make the case for introducing content marketing in my business at the time.

And frankly, I haven’t looked back.

So, when I went to work in earnest, I actually got to work on I think it was Vital Stats 3, and it was a proper fangirl moment for me, because I loved the first two iterations and now it was my job to help champion Vital Stats 3.

So Vital Stats 1 by Earnest is one of my favourite pieces of content of all time.

David: Amazing. I’m not sure I know it, I think I’ll go and look it up straight away. And we’ll absolutely link to it in the show notes so that the listener can have a have a look, get inspired and send us suggestions of their own as well. Thank you for that.

Ruth, if the listener wants to get in touch with you and chat about content marketing. How can they do that?

Ruth: Oh, you can find me on LinkedIn, drop me a message. I love to have a chat with anybody. Always happy to talk about content marketing and help out wherever I can.

David: Thanks for co-hosting. Also, Ruth, you’re an absolute natural. I do hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Ruth: I’ve had a lot of fun, thank you David for asking me. And I think whilst we’re at it, we should also thank Andy Crestodina for his wisdom and super helpful tips.

And Fiorella Rizzà for that copywriting pro tip because that’s what I think we’ll all remember.

And of course, we must thank Emily King for the question that kicked this whole episode off.

David: Yeah, not to mention kicking off this very podcast. Emily, wherever you are listening. I hope you feel that we’ve done justice to your question.

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

Announcer: 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 time for another B2BQ&A. Until then make great content and remember, Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. I’ve never been shushed by Google though. At least not yet.

4 places to look for inspired B2B content ideas

Posted on by The Radix Team

It’s Friday, somewhere around 2 pm. You hear the Zoom ringtone. It’s your boss calling. “Quick, I need you to whip up some new content ideas – original ones that are going to get people excited about this new product. And have them on my desk by the end of play.”

You think: “New content ideas that are going to appeal to our audience’s interests, provide a solution to their challenges, keep them engaged, and I’ve got less than a day to come up with them?”

It’s a challenging brief – and on any other day, you’d go to an experienced B2B copywriter to help. But in this case, there’s no time.

Even worse, you already used your best ideas in a previous campaign, and the cogs in your brain have seized up after a long week. Inspiration has well and truly left the building.

So, what do you do? How do you find the spark again? Where is inspiration hiding? Here’s where to look.

1. AnswerThePublic will tell you what your audience is thinking

AnswerThePublic is a search listening tool for market and customer insights that pays attention to autocomplete data from search engines. It provides a direct line to what your customers (and admittedly, everyone else) are thinking.

Use it to track trends, and generate content ideas that reflect what people might want to know based on what they’re already searching.

2. Your team are the experts – make the most of their insights

If you want to produce more targeted content that will speak to your specific market, you need to look closer to home. As far as we know, Google processes at least 2 trillion searches a year. That’s around 3.8 million searches every hour. But these searches won’t all come from current or potential customers, or from folks with a robust understanding of the hot topics in your industry.

Your team are experts about your products and services, the industry, and current trends – and they might have ideas of their own to contribute. Your salespeople, in particular, are talking to customers all the time, determining their interests and challenges. So get in touch with your team and use their expertise to fuel your creativity.

3. See what generative AI has got to say

We’ve already investigated if generative AI can write like a B2B copywriter (spoiler alert: not quite yet), but how does it fare at generating content ideas?

With a well-thought-out prompt, AI solutions like ChatGPT can churn out a lot of ideas in seconds. But these chatbots are designed to borrow and collate ideas from other sources, which means they’re unable to produce unique ideas. (Plus, you don’t know how many other marketers are asking for the same thing and receiving very similar results to you.)

It’s not all bad news. The AI-generated content ideas might just be the thing to get your cogs turning again, and give you a starting point where you can add your own personal touches.

4. Don’t do anything at all – not a single thing

Really, I mean it. I’ve stolen the idea from Andrew Boulton, freelance copywriter, lecturer and brand language consultant. In Andrew’s list of 99 ways to have more fun as a copywriter (and possibly get a bit better at it), he says:

  • “Let yourself be idle – your brain will thank you, and reward you.”
  • “Treat your imagination like a puppy – feed it, walk it, let it snooze, clean up its poop, treasure it always.”
  • “Don’t type a thing until the words are bursting out of you.”

These ideas might feel counterproductive, but sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself and your brain is just to take a break. You never know what ideas might come to you when you’re not even trying.

Okay, let’s replay the scene…

It’s Friday, somewhere around 2 pm. You’re full of excitement for the weekend when you hear the Zoom ringtone. It’s your boss calling. “Quick, I need you to whip up some new content ideas – original ones that are going to get people excited about this new product. And have them on my desk by the end of play.”

You think: “New content ideas that are going to appeal to our audience’s interests, provide a solution to their challenges, and keep them interested? I know exactly where to start.”

And, hey, if there’s a twist of fate and the deadline gets pushed, leave it up to the experts.

Storytelling in B2B marketing: how to use a three-act structure

Posted on by The Radix Team

If you’re in B2B, you must have noticed that good content marketing is all about storytelling.

Gone* are the days when you could publish a dry, academic white paper and hope it brought customers flocking. Now, the internet is crammed with entertaining stuff, and the only hope you have of grasping customers’ attention – even for a moment – is by hooking them in with a really engaging story.

What does a good B2B story look like?

But in a B2B marketing context, what does an engaging story look like? How do you go about creating one? How can you weave a product like a GPS signal simulator – like the ones our client Spirent makes – into a story that will captivate test engineers for long enough to register who’s telling it and why they should be interested in that company?

I’m from the old days of B2B tech copywriting, when we mainly wrote academic white papers, so I didn’t really have the answers to these things. Luckily, though, my husband James is a scriptwriter who spends half his professional life writing offbeat comedies and kids’ TV shows, and the other half lecturing to Falmouth University film and digital animation students about narrative structure and story development.

So yesterday I persuaded him to come and talk to the Radix team about the basic elements of what makes a good story – to see how we can use them in the copywriting we do for our clients.

This is essentially what we learned.

A good story has three basic “acts”

First is the setup, where you set the scene and introduce your main character(s) and their essential outlook or motivation.

Then comes the second act, where the character experiences a series of escalating conflicts, which could be physical, emotional, philosophical, practical or whatever. The stakes grow higher and the audience wills the protagonist to win through.

In the final act, the conflicts are resolved, and the character either gets what they wanted at the beginning, or realises that what they wanted isn’t actually what they needed after all – and then proceeds to get what they need.

Most short stories, novels and films will follow this same basic structure, although it may be convoluted or played around with.

Using the three-act structure in B2B marketing

So how does this work in B2B? For a start, you have to get through your three acts very quickly. Tragically, there aren’t huge audiences eagerly awaiting your next piece of content. The best you can hope for is that someone will keep reading or watching for long enough to register who’s telling the story.

So if it’s a video, aim to bundle through the three acts in just one or two minutes. (That may seem impossibly short, but it’s not.) If it’s an infographic or an ebook, get the story out as economically as possible without losing clarity or entertainment value.

Creating your protagonist

Secondly, base your protagonist on what you know about your target audience. If you’re doing things properly you will have done some persona-building – so you already have a good mental image of your ideal customer, what they do all day, what motivates them, what gets them down, and so on.

Now turn that person into the main character of your story – and make them the hero. That way, your customer should immediately identify with your character and want to see what happens to them and how they prevail.

Raising the stakes

Then, have your character go through a series of escalating conflicts that prevent them from getting what they want. These should be conflicts that your audience will recognise and empathise with. You want them to identify with your character and become invested in what happens to them. That’s the only way they’ll read your ebook, watch your video, or play your online game right to the end.

(And if the end is where you put your call to action or registration form, you need them to get there – otherwise, from a lead generation point of view, the whole exercise is pointless).

Lastly, you resolve their situation. This is probably where your character discovers the amazing widget or service that you’re selling, and all their problems are miraculously solved.

Earning the right to pitch

If you’ve made the first two acts good enough, and your audience is sufficiently entertained and invested to still be with you, the third act is where you’ve earned the right to pitch your product – as quickly, engagingly and clearly as you can. No one likes being sold to, but many people will tolerate a quick sales pitch if they feel they’ve had some entertainment value from the preceding acts.

A great example of B2B storytelling

Here is a B2B marketing video that use this three act structure to really good effect.

Noodle Live teaser video – by Noodle Live

It introduces a sympathetic main character (based, I’m sure, on a persona-building exercise profiling the ideal customer) and their motivation in the first few seconds, then spends around a minute putting them through a series of escalating conflicts preventing them from getting what they want, then resolves the situation via a one-minute sales pitch for the product in question.

It works really well. (And as James pointed out, the fact that the character and world are quite cartoony also works well, because more people identify with characters that don’t look human than with characters who look almost human – it’s the “uncanny valley” effect).

Case studies are stories too

And the same applies not just to fictional marketing stories, but also to case studies (and many other formats too). Establish a “hero”, frame the case study as a series of escalating conflicts and then resolve the situation. That makes a far more interesting story than one that starts with something like: “XYZ is the largest supplier of ABC widgets in Western Europe. It was looking for a way to make its supply chain more efficient.”

That’s all, folks

There was tons more about story, including the seven basic plots – which can also be adapted for B2B marketing purposes – but that’s enough for one post. I’d be interested to know if you’ve seen any great examples of storytelling in B2B marketing, though – if so, please do let us know on Twitter @radixcom.

* Well, not quite gone. We still write a lot of white papers for clients, and they’re still very useful for explaining in detail how a certain product solves a certain business problem. They’re just not very likely to ignite that first spark of attention when there’s so much competition out there.