Category: The Blog

Podcast 40: How I made content marketing work for our small B2B business

Posted on by The Radix Team

Google “benefits of content marketing” and you’ll be served up a host of articles explaining why it should be a part of your overall marketing strategy.

But in the four years since I joined Radix, approaches to content marketing have matured and evolved. Today it’s not just enough to be producing content; you need to have three things:

  1. A content marketing strategy to keep you focused
  2. Great content that sets you apart from your competition
  3. Reliable ways of measuring your content’s effectiveness

This may seem difficult, if not impossible, for small businesses to reach for.

I’m here to tell you it isn’t impossible for SMEs to do effective content marketing.

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, I talk to Fiona about my approach to content marketing for our own 12-person business. I explain how I’ve made content marketing work for Radix Communications since we started our programme in 2012.

Listen now to find out:

  • Why you need a content marketing strategy
  • Which free or low-cost tools you can use to run your content programme
  • Where to find the best content advice
  • How to overcome the challenges of creating good content
  • How to figure out your niche
  • … and more

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

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Resources

The B2B Content Marketing Workbook from Velocity Partners

How to make an editorial calendar in Trello

Editorial calendar template for Google Sheets

How to use Creative Commons images safely on blogs

Podcast 39: What’s so hard about writing engaging B2B marketing content?

Posted on by The Radix Team

If you haven’t heard already: producing engaging content is the top challenge for 60% of B2B content marketers. The issue is right up there with measuring the effectiveness of content marketing, and just being able to consistently produce enough good content to go into marketing and sales funnels.

Like our founder, Fiona Campbell-Howes, pointed out in B2B Marketing’s Content Marketing Benchmarking Report 2015:

Creating engaging content is a pressure that’s only going to intensify for marketers – especially as the brands with big budgets plough more of their cash into New York Times-style newsrooms and Hollywood-grade videos.

Here at Radix, this is a challenge we have to overcome every day. So in this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, Fiona, David and I share our thoughts on why it can be tough to produce engaging content and share our secrets on exactly how we do it.

Listen now to find out:

  • Why good content starts with a good brief
  • The importance of giving your audience something of value
  • Why the way you feel about your project can make or break the results
  • How creating content for the sake of content kills engagement
  • … and more

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

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Related listening/reading

This Old Marketing episode 139: Most brands failing at customer experience

The attention economy and the demise of the middle ground

Podcast 38: Got content? B2B Marketing Summit 2016 takeaways

Posted on by The Radix Team

For one day in June, The Business Design Centre in London was filled with some of the most experienced and interesting minds in business to business marketing. And we were lucky enough to be there.

With keynote speeches from Joe Pulizzi and Carlos Hidalgo, plus five different session streams: what did we learn at the B2B Marketing Summit?

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, David, George and I share our personal highlights and favourite B2B content marketing and copywriting takeaways from the likes of Bray Leino, Danfoss, Earnest, OmPrompt, Octopus Group and DSM (you’ll find the video David mentions here).

Listen now to hear us woefully mispronounce various names (sorry!) – and also find out:

  • Why more content doesn’t mean good content
  • How dynamic/intelligent content is still the future
  • What you need to ask before starting a project
  • Why SMEs don’t appreciate being patronised by B2B brands
  • … and more

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

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Podcast 37: The battle to stop B2B content from going to waste

Posted on by The Radix Team

A staggering amount of B2B content goes unused after it’s been produced:

In this episode I’m joined by Fiona Campbell-Howes, Radix’s founder, and David McGuire, Radix’s Creative Director, to examine what leads to content waste and if there’s anything you can do to stop it.

Listen now to find out:

  • How a lack of review time can lead to B2B content getting benched
  • Why it always seems to be the work you like most that disappears
  • The effect strategy changes can have on publishing content
  • Why delays gaining permission from third parties can stop publication altogether
  • What editorial can do to reduce waste
  • … and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Podcast 36: Pay, gender, location & skills – the state of UK copywriting

Posted on by The Radix Team

Everybody’s talking ‘bout the Pro Copywriters’ Survey – and no wonder: it revealed a 28% gender pay gap in UK copywriting.

But the understandable outcry over the gender pay issue may have drawn attention away from a few other juicy findings in the survey. Stories of a huge London price premium, an all-round lack of training, and a university education apparently harming your earning potential. A hint (if you squint at the stats a certain, determined way) of workaholic Yorkshire writers and lazy Scots.

The survey provoked some (ahem) lively debate around gender, pricing, training and sector specialisms at our recent #b2bcopychat on Twitter (see the Storify below) – so in this, the 36th episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, we thought we’d sprinkle a bit more fuel on the fire.

Radix’s MD, Fiona Campbell-Howes, Content Marketing Manager Emily King and I pick out our personal highlights of the discussion so far, and ask:

  • Which qualifications impress copywriting recruiters – or is it all about experience?
  • Why on earth don’t more copywriters specialise?
  • Does anybody – male or female – really negotiate over pay?
  • Do Yorkshire copywriters really work 40% harder than Scottish counterparts? *
  • Is there any discernible advantage to hiring a copywriter based in London? **

(Fiona may or may not also imply that the best writers all naturally gravitate West. You might think that, Fiona; we couldn’t possibly comment.)

You can listen in the player at the top of the page – or to download the episode, right click here.

If you like, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here and we’ll pop up in your fruit-based device on a regular basis. Or alternatively, add our RSS to your podcast player of choice.

Our music is by Industrial and Marine. Bangin’.

* Hint: no.

** Another hint: HELL NO.

Podcast 35: Three kinds of B2B marketing content you’re probably missing

Posted on by The Radix Team

As long ago as 2011, Joe Pulizzi pointed out that inbound marketing alone isn’t enough for content marketing to deliver its full value.

More recently, B2B agencies have been lining up to put the boot into the funnel as a metaphor for your customers’ buying process. Velocity Partners called it a poisonous metaphor, Octopus Group suggested it’s actually more of a pretzel and – possibly most fun of all – Workbrands suggested it’s really a water park.

But still, content marketers seem keen to map their marketing assets to stages of the traditional funnel: TOFU, MOFU and BOFU. What else should we be writing, how should we really see the funnel, and what does it all mean for B2B copywriting?

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, Radix’s MD Fiona Campbell-Howes and I expand on my recent blog post about addressing these missing parts of the funnel, and discuss:

  • Why people are questioning the funnel
  • The importance of PREFU, REFU and POFU content
  • Account-Based Marketing, and what it means for B2B writers
  • Whether anyone would actually want to eat an octopus pretzel
  • … and more.

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

If you like, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here, or alternatively add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Our music is by Industrial and Marine …and if you’d like to try an octopus pretzel, there’s a recipe here (full disclosure: it doesn’t actually contain octopus).

Podcast 34: What it takes to master B2B ads

Posted on by The Radix Team

In 2014, spending on B2B display ads topped $1.5 billion for the biggest 100 B2B US advertisers.

But are B2B brands making the most of their ad copy? Often B2B ads try to say and do too much, making it difficult for audiences to draw any real sense of meaning from their ads.

Where strong, simple messages are needed, B2B ads are often filled with jargon-heavy language that obscures their meaning or leaves you wondering if they even have a message. Like Ryan Wallman, Head of Copy at Wellmark, has said: “obfuscation” in ads and corporate copy is a real problem and something needs to be done about it.

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, I’m joined by David McGuire, Radix’s Creative Director, to discuss the simple steps B2B ads could take to be memorable and relevant.

Listen now to find out:

  • The most common copy mistakes in B2B ads
  • How to write really good B2B ad copy
  • Why B2B video ads succeed where print ads fail
  • The differences between digital display ads and print ads
  • … and more

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

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Good B2B ad examples mentioned in the podcast

Oglivy B2B ad

Advanced Engineering ad by The John Knowles Company

Podcast 33: The changing face of B2B blogging

Posted on by The Radix Team

For B2B brands, blogs are the third most popular content marketing tactic, used by 81% of B2B organisations.

More than 50% of B2B organisations rate business blogs as an effective content marketing tactic, but are brands using blogs to their full potential?

In 2015, Radix saw a huge surge in the number of blog posts requested by clients. These pieces of content are more thought out and detailed compared to briefs from three years ago. The latest studies are showing that longer, more detailed blog posts get more shares and hits, so we expect to see clients commissioning longer blog posts this year.

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, I’m joined by Radix founder Fiona Campbell-Howes to discuss the anatomy of today’s top blog posts.

Listen now to find out:

  • Why the top-performing blog posts are getting (much) longer
  • How platforms like LinkedIn Pulse are affecting business blogging
  • What company blogs mean for website SEO
  • What’s involved in researching and writing B2B blog posts
  • What makes for a more shareable blog post
  • … and more

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

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Related reading

The Anatomy of a Shareable, Linkable & Popular Post: A Study of Our Marketing Blog

Buzzsumo: BuzzFeed’s Most Shared Content Format Is Not What You Think

Podcast 32: How to write a top-notch B2B landing page

Posted on by The Radix Team

A great landing page is one that spurs the visitor to take action: register for a report, sign up for a free trial or request a product demo.

As such, they’re cornerstones of digital marketing strategy, generating leads, taking names, and generally showing marketers who’s interested in what.

But to be really successful, a landing page has to be persuasively written from start to finish – and getting the copy right is no easy task.

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, seasoned copywriters Fiona Campbell-Howes and David McGuire discuss how to write a top-notch landing page for your B2B website.

Listen now to find out:

  • What a landing page needs to do
  • How to get the copy right
  • Copy pitfalls to avoid
  • What makes a compelling call to action
  • … and more

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

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Podcast 31: How to use an editorial board to drive B2B content creation

Posted on by The Radix Team

The biggest challenge for 60% of B2B content marketers?

According to the latest study from CMI/Marketing Profs, it’s producing engaging content.

It’s a top concern for brands in the earlier stages of running a content marketing programme and still ranks highly for those with established regimes.

Content that engages your audience can be difficult to produce, even with a written content strategy. So what can you do to ensure you not only produce content on a regular basis, but that it’s of a quality and usefulness your audiences will appreciate?

You could start by setting up an editorial board. Borrowed from the world of journalism, editorial boards involve regular meetings between stakeholders and copywriters to discuss ideas, prioritise content pieces and plan their creation.

But how do you run an editorial board and make sure it succeeds?

In this episode of Good Copy, Bad Copy, Fiona and I discuss how an editorial board works and how you can use the model to create a regular flow of relevant, engaging content.

Listen now to find out:

  • Who should be on your editorial board
  • How the editorial board process works
  • The tools you need to organise it
  • What challenges you may face and how to overcome
  • … and more

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

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Further reading

5 essential stats from CMI’s 2016 B2B content marketing report

Editorial Calendars: why you need one and how to make one in Trello

Slideshare: 9 ways B2B marketers can kick ass at copywriting