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In a previous article, John looked at the who, what, when, and why of B2B messaging workshops. If you thought that all sounded like a useful, but time and effort-intensive exercise, you’d be right. But it doesn’t always have to be.

Here, we’ll take a look at the mini messaging exercise, and why sometimes a small nudge is enough to refresh messaging and get you back to a place of content and branding consistency.

The trouble with traditional messaging workshops

Traditional messaging workshops normally happen when you need to make a radical change to the way you communicate with an audience. For example, new products, moving into new markets or regions, or completely pivoting the way your business operates are all viable triggers for rethinking your messaging.

The problem is it’s a massive undertaking. Just ask your friendly neighbourhood executive to join a day-long messaging workshop and see how quickly they find an urgent appointment they forgot about.

Developing new messaging requires input from several stakeholders, long meetings for them to debate different approaches, and likely an external facilitator to run those meetings, take notes, and turn them into usable messaging. That’s a lot to coordinate.

It demands a level of engagement and resources that turn a necessary exercise into a cumbersome activity that’s easy to put off until absolutely necessary. And if a brand puts off messaging work, it’s easy for messaging to drift over time, leading to inconsistent content that limits results.

What is a mini messaging exercise?

Enter the mini messaging exercise: where you take stock of your existing messaging and make small adjustments without needing to get a dozen people in a room together to hash it out from square one.

It’s designed for those situations where your messaging needs a nudge rather than a complete overhaul. For example, it might happen when you start working with new creatives, or just at regular intervals to ensure everyone remains aligned. Or it might just be a natural trigger as your messaging starts to become out of date.

The key is a smaller scale approach helps correct messaging drift without using a huge amount of time and resources.

Does that mean you don’t need a workshop for a mini messaging exercise?

That depends.

You still need a way to gather perspectives from across the business. But you and your executives will be relieved to know it doesn’t have to be the traditional act of sitting people down in the boardroom for a half-day meeting.

It could mean a standardised list of questions around your audience, market trends, and products that a representative from each relevant team answers over email. Or it could mean a short call with the relevant stakeholders – either one-by-one, or in a traditional conference call format – so everyone can bat their ideas back and forth.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure you don’t bog the exercise down in anything too onerous or long-winded. The reason a lot of messaging drift happens is because people are scared to refresh messaging regularly due to the burden of planning and executing large-scale workshops. Anything that removes that burden is a plus.

Who should be involved in mini messaging?

Like its more comprehensive older sibling, a mini messaging exercise needs a few key voices in the room to offer a complete picture of what messaging will work best for your audience.

You want representatives from:

• Marketing – to capture ideas and start connecting them to overall marketing strategy
• Sales – to understand your audience, their most common questions and obstacles, and how they might relate to your current messaging
• Product teams – to feed in necessary technical information about your products and services

If you can get these three perspectives, that’s really all you need to check if, and how, your messaging needs to shift. Again, be careful not to include too many voices in the room, especially if you’re trying to get everyone to share ideas simultaneously. The more calendars you need to coordinate, the harder it is to get your messaging off the ground.

What does a messaging document look like after you do a mini messaging exercise?

Messaging documents can take many forms, as each one must be tailored to the brand behind it and its needs.

For the mini messaging exercise, it’s easier to define what it doesn’t look like; it’s not pages and pages of carefully designed branding guidelines and examples. Often, something leaner is easier to produce (and more likely to actually get used) in cases where you’re making small adjustments or correcting messaging drift.

While there are a few evergreen components you need in any messaging document (like value propositions, proof points, and some details about your audience), the rest will depend on your needs:

• Finding your prospects have lots of questions or concerns about your product? Consider adding an FAQ or objection handling section.
• Seeing a lot of confusion around how businesses can integrate your solution into their operations? Include toolkits or practical guidance.
• Need to make sure your messaging will be applied and used correctly? Include example content to show a real application of your adjusted messaging.

Whatever goes in needs to be practical and targeted to solve the issues that prompted you to review your messaging in the first place.

How often should you look at your messaging?

Mini messaging exercises shouldn’t be prompted by big changes in your industry or business. That sort of thing normally leads to larger messaging reworks. Instead, mini messaging is best done on a regular cadence.

Every year or so, assess whether your current messaging is fit for purpose. Depending on your industry, that timeline might get shorter or longer – an AI startup will experience messaging drift much more often than a company in a more mature industry.

The reality is these checkups may lead to nothing. You may decide everything is right and well, and no action is needed. But if you do spot signs that your messaging is falling behind, then it’s time to consider whether a small tweak can get it where it needs to be.

Do you need an external facilitator or agency for mini messaging?

All messaging work has to fit the size and scope of the organisation behind it. Mini messaging is no different in that respect.

In some cases, where you just need to make small tweaks to get new collaborators aligned, you may just want to conduct a mini messaging exercise internally. If it grows beyond that scope to encompass messaging shifts responding to market trends, it may be worth bringing in a third party for the usual reasons: external perspectives and facilitating potentially challenging conversations about the core of your brand’s identity.

Even if you’re not conducting a large-scale workshop, having an external voice in the room – and support for turning those conversations into a usable messaging document or framework – can be a big help.

Messaging work isn’t a set menu, it’s a scale

My loosely-defined idea of the mini messaging exercise isn’t designed to rip up the messaging rulebook. It’s trying to demonstrate that all this work operates on a scale, and at certain points on that scale, the work can get a little lighter, less taxing, and more agile as a result.

Rather than a big-bang messaging workshop, regularly making small touches to your messaging can keep your content fresher, more unified, and more performant.

If you’re not sure exactly where your messaging work needs to sit on this scale, feel free to get in touch with us. That way, you can talk it through with people who’ve worked on messaging jobs large and small, and we can point you in the right direction based on your needs.

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Words matter. What you say to your customers and prospects, and how you say it, is the stitching that holds marketing campaigns together. But today, the value of that writing is increasingly being questioned.

Marketers face what on the surface is a difficult choice; one that’s been the primary topic of conversation for years now: To AI or not to AI? Is the cost saving and simplicity of AI-generated content worth the gamble? Does a shortcut ever pay dividends? Or are brands risking their reputations for short-term efficiency gains?

There are lots of reasons why the answer to this seems obvious to me. I’ve been in the copywriting industry for fifteen years, and we have a full team of writers with years and years of experience whose value and talent I see every day. But I do understand that value might not be clear to everyone until they work with us, or those like us.

The truth is, while AI can spit out grammatically correct sentences, paragraphs, and full pieces of work, a lot of the value good writers bring to marketing campaigns isn’t about writing at all. It’s about understanding, communicating, strategizing, spotting gaps, conducting interviews with SMEs, recognising the value in what they say, and applying years of experience to elevate the ambitions of the marketers they work with.

With that in mind, I thought it would be good to shine a light on some of the sometimes-unnoticed value a good copywriter will bring to your project.

A good copywriter can help you strategize

Often, marketers bring copywriters in when the writing is ready to begin. Makes sense, right? But, bearing in mind those writers have experience with hundreds projects, in most cases across many different clients, there’s actually a lot of value they can add in the earlier stages of a campaign.

This can range from general advice around content types to more strategic considerations. In fact, more copywriters are offering content strategy as part of their packages these days. This can be defined in different ways, and not everyone will offer everything (you may want to be wary if they say they do). But at Radix, we offer a range of services that can help you produce more valuable content later down the line:

• Content audits: So, you have your budget, but you’re not sure where it would be best spent. One of the most effective ways to figure this out is to conduct an audit of your existing content. What do you have? What’s working and performing well? What isn’t? And, most importantly, where do the gaps lie? This process is a great way of helping you prioritise content production and fill any engagement gaps that might be missing.
• Messaging workshops: All good content starts with a good messaging document and an alignment over who you want to talk to, what you want to say, and, vitally, how you say it. A messaging workshop is vital for building the foundations your content will rest on. Interestingly, while some organisations revisit this practice when major changes occur, two of our writers recently espoused the benefits of more regular tweaks rather than wholesale refreshes. You can listen to that conversation here.
• Ideas generation: Writers are inherently creative thinkers. So, if you’re at the stage of a project where you know what the campaign is, you know who the audience is, but you’re not sure how to execute, it’s a great time to let a writer loose with ideas. A good content ideation document will provide a wide range of ideas to choose from, covering everything from social copy to videos, ebooks, infographics, and beyond. It should also provide some key concepts, such as tag lines and angles if those aren’t already present in the brief. With that document in front of you, you should be able to select the right combination of assets to support your campaign in line with your budgets.

A good copywriter brings the gift of wider contextual knowledge

Fifteen years as a copywriter has made me more knowledgeable, but perhaps not in the areas you’d expect. I already knew where to put a comma and how to structure a story, but since joining Radix, I’ve become an expert on a range of topics, from data and analytics workloads and the role of AI in data science to the common pain points of retailers, fintechs, and HR departments.

Experienced writers will have had countless conversations with experts in various fields, which means they come equipped with an understanding of audiences, challenges, industries, and technologies. And they’re also accustomed to picking up new ideas quickly. These powers can help them fill in gaps in briefs, understand the wider implications of things, and have truly meaningful conversations with your SMEs. All things AI isn’t capable of as it slavishly follows your prompts without any real care for the outcome.

That last point can be so critical for getting the most value from your in-house experts. When writers have accrued a bank of industry knowledge, they don’t just understand what an SME is telling them, they can also direct the conversation to areas that they know will add value to the work. This is especially important when you consider SMEs are subject matter experts. They’re not marketing experts. Quite often, they’ll answer questions without the bigger picture or end goal in mind, which is where an expert writer, who understands the subject matter and the marketing ask, can be worth their weight in gold.

Understanding intention and communicating ideas

One of the most important differences between a human writer and an LLM is that a human writer can explain the why.

Put simply, an LLM doesn’t really know what it’s doing. It skims the internet or source documents for information and turns it into sentences and paragraphs based on likelihoods. But that’s not writing. It structures things the way most things are structured, but it can never understand why they’re structured that way, so it can never understand when to change the structure. A writer knows structure because they studied it. They probably went to university to do so, and read books like Into the Woods, The Hero’s Journey, and Aristotle’s Rhetoric. They didn’t just read those texts in the way AI ingests them; they understood them. And because they have this knowledge, they’re capable of something fundamentally human, metacognition.

This will have a huge impact on your marketing project. A writer won’t just take a brief; they’ll feed back on it, highlighting opportunities for improvement and added value. They won’t just produce a first draft; they’ll craft an outline, complete with comments sharing their thought process, which helps bring everyone together on the same page.

They’ll do the same thing when it comes to stakeholder feedback. While an LLM will respond to edit requests by simply regenerating a chunk of text from scratch, a writer who understands the piece they wrote will understand why something should change and how to change it. As part of the job is to share expertise with clients, they’ll also know when to push back on feedback with an explanation of why a specific change could make the piece less effective. They can also find a compromise between what you’re asking and what you need. And spot problems you might not have seen yourself.

Your goals are our goals

There’s probably a more nuanced way to say this, but an LLM doesn’t give a shit if it does a good job or not. In fact, it can’t even tell if it has. We’ve all seen ChatGPT offer one of those weirdly remorseless apologies for doing or saying something completely incorrect: “Ah, you got me there, I did in fact share false information.” That’s probably not something you want leaking into your content. As a rule of thumb, regardless of what service you’re procuring, it’s best to hire someone who cares at least some amount.

Copywriters have skin in the game. They’re incentivised to actually help you achieve your marketing goals. that’s how they build better long-term relationships with clients, boost and maintain their reputation, and win more work. In the end, your success or satisfaction is what will pay the bills. For an LLM, a good result is that the user stops prompting it and is therefore happy with the latest output. Job done. Was that output good or accurate? Who knows? And who cares when there are no repercussions?

As a relationship builds, your needs become second nature

Finally, perhaps the most important benefit can be found in not just finding a copywriter, but finding a copywriting partner.

We’ve worked with some of our clients for many years, and the benefits of that increase over time. Briefing is easier, because we already understand the fundamentals. We also have a really firm handle on what the marketers we support do and don’t like. And we understand the company’s culture, tone of voice, and audiences to the point that we don’t just write to them expertly, but can point out where something we’re asked to do is misaligned with those factors.

One of the biggest advantages our long-term clients experience is the strong relationships we develop with SMEs. Sometimes, persuading experts with packed diaries to participate in marketing can be an uphill struggle. But once they meet our team and see their thoughts in print, that all changes. You can read about that, and about the value of one of our long-term partnerships, here.

How many pages do you have on your website? How about the number of blogs, white papers, videos, and other pieces in your content library? And, more importantly, are they any good?

When you’re stacking months or even years of content plans on top of one another, it’s easy to lose sight of what you’ve got in your back catalogue. Good ideas can get lost on page 40 of your archive while outdated topics clog up your search appearances.

An audit helps you lay out everything in a digestible, analytical way, so you can see exactly what’s worth keeping, what’s not working hard enough, and what’s destined for the recycling bin. There are many ways to structure an audit – here’s a look at how we do it.

The shape of your audit depends on what you want to achieve

There’s never a bad time to take stock of what you’re producing, so there doesn’t need to be a particular trigger for an audit. But it’s important to set a goal to keep your scope focused and make sure your final outputs are useful. You might be:

• Building next quarter’s content strategy, and need to see where your gaps are
• Working with a new agency or freelancer, and want fresh eyes on your content
• Updating your messaging or refreshing your tone of voice, so old content doesn’t represent your brand anymore
• Reaching out to new audiences, which could mean talking about different pain points and priorities
• Operating in a fast-moving industry where topics, stats, and best practices go out of date quickly
• Seeing unexpected drops in traffic, or some of your pages, posts, and downloads aren’t performing as well as you’d hoped
• Reviewing your pages and content for SEO and GEO-friendliness
• Looking for ways to refresh or reuse existing content, instead of starting from scratch every time
• Taking on a new role and inheriting someone else’s content
• Realising there’s simply too much stuff and it’s time to streamline

How do you prepare for a web or content audit?

When you’re planning an audit, you need to do three things:

1. Decide how much content you’ll look at

Tracking back to the dawn of time on your blog might be tempting, but it can also turn an audit into an insurmountable task – so clearly define the edges. (You could even choose to automatically retire anything over a certain age, which is what we did with our own ancient content.)

Think carefully about what’s most important to your strategy. For example, you might prioritise high-traffic web pages or high-value gated assets before working through other areas of your catalogue. If it’s necessary to audit a lot of content, split it into individual content types or phases to keep the workload manageable.

2. Define your criteria for assessing the content

So, you’ve defined the quantity. Now you need to look at how to judge the quality. This can vary a lot – gap analysis and messaging overhauls demand very different styles of dissection – but the criteria often cover factors such as:

• How the page performs
• Whether the topics are accurate and relevant
• How well the content delivers brand messaging
• If it’s hitting all the right keywords

Now’s also the time to collect up some reference materials. Content plans, messaging houses, GTM strategies, style guides, and even competitor research all provide vital context for the audit.

3. Determine what the most useful output looks like

Unless you’re only looking at a small handful of content, there’s almost guaranteed to be a spreadsheet involved in this project. It’s the neatest way to keep track of what you’re auditing and the criteria you’re reviewing against.

Simple identifying information (the URL, content type, audience, funnel stage, etc.) helps you categorise your audit. Then, create a column for each thing you need to assess. Standardising how you fill these out – I’m partial to tick boxes – speeds up the process and makes it easy to compare your results.

My audits also always include a ‘traffic light’ system that provides an at-a-glance view of my assessment for each row. The exact phrasing depends on what the client needs, but it’s usually along the lines of:

• Green: This is a good example of what we’re looking for; keep it as-is or make small edits to make it really sparkle.
• Orange: This one needs to work harder; make chunky edits or rewrite to increase its value.
• Red: This isn’t worth keeping; remove this page or piece and consider banking the topic or theme for the future.

However, not everyone will find a vast array of cells and filters useful. When our team runs an audit, we often write a report to sit alongside the spreadsheet, summarising our conclusions and explaining any outliers or particularly interesting findings.

So, what comes after the audit?

It’s vital to follow all the data entry, comparisons, and colour-coding with a list of practical actions – otherwise it’s just busywork. So, that report should come complete with ideas around:

• Underserved audience groups: Are there personas that you can directly target with new or adapted content?
• Hidden messages: Are there strong use cases, benefits, or results that are trapped in low-level subpages or underperforming blogs?
• Neglected (or overstuffed) funnel stages: Does the customer journey feel balanced as they move through your TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content?
• Chances to optimise: Are you doing enough to encourage your audience to convert? Can you improve your SEO, GEO, and AI search readiness?
• Underused formats: Can you introduce more variety into the types of content you’re putting out?
• Missing topics: Are there conversations in the industry that you should offer a perspective on?
• Evergreen gems: Do you have any pieces that are ready for a return to the spotlight with some fresh promo?
• Refresh-ready content: Are there older pieces that you can update for a quick win?
• The pieces of a great story: Is there a narrative thread that you can pull together for a campaign or hero piece?

We always organise our recommendations based on what will deliver the most value, whether it’s small tweaks that you can implement quickly or a new campaign that will fill a significant hole in your messaging.

Use yesterday’s content to shape tomorrow’s strategy

An audit may be a retrospective activity, but it’s really an opportunity to think about the future. Rather than get caught up digging into the quality of every single piece, it’s best to focus on what the gaps and trends can tell you.

The trick is to keep things structured and dispassionate during the audit itself, and then let the creativity out when you reach the final stage. It’s one of the reasons many people like to work with teams like ours for these kinds of projects. A fresh, neutral perspective from another expert can do wonders for helping you see the true effectiveness of your website and content – and what you can do to make them work even harder.

Want to discover what your existing content can tell you about what to do next? Let’s talk about your audit.

When you need meaningful engagement, you turn to events. They’re one of the most impactful forms of marketing, offering a shortcut to intense prospect and customer engagement with your brand and the community around it.

But let’s ask the tough question: are event attendees really engaging with your brand? Or are they there for the free food and networking opportunities? And if it’s the latter, what can you do about it to turn your events into meaningful brand engagement that lasts?

The event engagement problem

Not every event is about engagement. Sometimes, the brand exposure of putting your logo on a big banner above a venue is enough. But what happens when engaging prospects and customers is your main goal?

I’d argue that, for the majority of attendees, the value at events is the chance to meet their peers and a day away from their usual office routine. In these cases, they’re not really engaging with your brand.

Of course, there will be some who are all-in on your organisation and are paying rapt attention to any presentations and product demos you’re offering. But the thing about this audience is that they’re already engaged. You don’t need an event to get this group invested.

You need a way to make your event part of something bigger, and spread the potential engagement over a longer period for those who aren’t already hanging on your every word.

Make your event the hero piece for your content campaign

Events are really good at drumming up interest quickly. Content doesn’t always get such immediate results, but it does have a much longer tail. So what happens when you combine both?

I know, I know. Trust the content marketing types to say content is the answer. But hear me out. You can get more genuine engagement with your event and extend its value beyond the big day itself by tying it to a broader theme or campaign.

The best bit is that you already have key themes from your marketing strategy to pull on. Your content can set the stage months before the event to hammer home the importance of your theme, build interest in the topic, and culminate with a big event where prospects can hear from your experts and network to discuss the theme further.

Then, after the event, you have an engine for follow-up content. Did your teams have interesting conversations with attendees? Follow those up with specific webinars to dive deeper. Did you hear about common challenges? Turn those into helpful how-to guides or blog posts.

A good example of this is HubSpot’s UNBOUND event (formerly known as INBOUND, but I guess that sounded too restrictive.) Not only does UNBOUND get its own series of blogs related to the event, speakers, and nearby places of interest, but it also fits in with HubSpot’s podcasts. Both the podcasts and the event feature senior leaders from all kinds of organisations discussing the most pressing trends in marketing and offering top tips for fine-tuning your craft.

While you can pair events with the usual array of promotional content, the beauty is none of it needs to explicitly be about your event. You’ll want the standard promo emails and teaser videos to create pre-event hype, but even with loosely related content, you can still build interest and engagement in your theme – and generate more interest in your event.

Events build your brand. Content handles the engagement.

Marketing is at its best when everyone works together. But there’s always that risk that things start to drift into their own corners of the marketing team over time.

And even when event and content marketing minds meet, it’s often in a one-sided relationship where content promotes the event and little else. But that would be a real shame, and a major limiting factor in how much engagement you can build and how many leads you can generate.

Instead, build these two marketing disciplines up with a shared theme and watch as prospects come for the free food and engage with your brand in a meaningful way.

Want some help planning or producing content to support your event themes?

Get in touch

When sales and marketing operate in silos, small cracks quickly widen. Your content performance dips, your customers receive disjointed experiences, and your revenue takes a hit.

If marketing teams don’t collaborate with sales, they’ll keep producing content they think is useful, but that might not actually address the things customers care about. On average, B2B buyers are 61% of the way through their journey by the time they first talk to sales. And 79% of B2B buyers initiate first contact.[1] Without appropriate and relevant marketing content, you risk sending these prospects to your competitors before sales teams even have the chance to learn their names.

Meanwhile, if sales teams don’t talk to marketing, they won’t have the right proof or messaging to support their arguments and convert conversations into new business.

If sales and marketing give prospects different messages, you risk breaking their trust and losing their business to competitors.

Alignment isn’t nice to have; it’s fundamental

Aligning sales and marketing makes the entire buying journey smoother and more consistent. Prospects hear one coherent story, from the first piece of content they see to their final call. With no friction or mixed messages, momentum builds instead of stalling. This creates:

• Higher quality leads: Sales feeds back objections and buying triggers, so marketing can ensure their messaging is saying the right things.
• Content that inspires action: Marketing creates content around real customer language and pain points – and prospects respond.
• Stronger customer journeys: Buyers no longer feel like they’re engaging with two different companies. Each touchpoint reinforces the same messaging and values, building trust and keeping it intact.

Great marketing teams trust sales as their most valuable research partners

Sales is a goldmine of customer insight, the kind you can’t get from keyword tools or market reports. It’s real feedback, from real prospects in conversation with a team that’s actively trying to solve their problem. This includes:

A reality check on your target audience

Marketing teams build personas based on who they want to reach in an ideal world. Sales teams know who actually buys. By getting feedback on budget owners, industries, champions, blockers, and buying triggers, you can target content at the people who will actually convert, not just browse.

Language that resonates

Sales hears the exact words prospects use to describe their challenges, frustrations, and desired outcomes. And this can become the raw material for messaging frameworks, value propositions, and copy. If marketing can mirror the customer’s own vocabulary, everything will feel more relevant and appealing.

Reasons why deals are won (or lost)

Sales can often tell the moment a prospect decides ‘yes’. It might be because of a specific case study or proof point, a demo that clicks with them, or a conversation that alleviates any last concerns. These moments can inform further content, such as webinars, demos, and testimonials, and create a larger bank of resources based on proven ways to turn interest into intent.

Sales teams also know the patterns behind stalled deals, whether that’s missing features, unanswered objections, or internal blockers. This insight should shape FAQs, objection-handling content, nurture sequences, and sales enablement assets, addressing potential reasons for prospects to waver earlier in the cycle.

Great sales teams have the backing of genuinely useful content

Great sales performance isn’t just about skill; it’s about having the right content and communications exactly when they’re needed. That’s where marketing comes in.

Before a prospect ever speaks to sales, they’ve absorbed your web copy, social content, emails, and larger content pieces. This context needs to be present in their first sales interaction, so messaging frameworks are vital to keep everyone on the same page. A strong messaging framework means salespeople are telling the same story, each claim aligns with what marketing has already communicated, and each conversation reinforces the same value proposition.

Sales teams also need a library of relevant content and proof points they can dip into to move prospects along their journey. Content needs to meet prospects where they are, so product walkthroughs and industry-specific proof will be vital. To make proof points as useful as possible, organise case studies, testimonials, and metrics by industry, use case, persona, and challenge. That way, sales can quickly find compelling proof at the perfect moment.

Collateral that supports productive conversations also includes:

One-pagers: A scannable summary of your product or service that clearly outlines its benefits and differentiators. These are perfect for sharing in early-stage conversations.

Battlecards: By the time prospects talk to sales, they already know a lot about your offering. Sales teams need fast access to accurate messaging so they can respond to objections and competitor comparisons instantly.

Pitch decks: When multiple stakeholders are involved in deals, pitch decks keep everyone aligned to the same narrative.

Email nurture sequences: Pre-built outreach flows save time and make sure prospects get thoughtful, consistent follow-up. The best nurture campaigns will also leave a little room for salespeople to customise them based on their conversations with a prospect.

So how do you know you’re set up for success?

True sales and marketing alignment isn’t abstract, it shows up in the day-to-day actions of your teams. Some hallmarks of sales and marketing teams that are giving each other exactly what they need might be:

• Sales and marketing meet regularly to share insight
• Both teams agree on what a qualified lead looks like
• Content is tagged by buying stage, persona, industry, pain point, and use case
• A shared content library exists that’s easy for sales to use
• Case studies are prioritised based on sales feedback, not just marketing preference
• Nurture campaigns include content sales teams would genuinely recommend
• Win/loss data feeds back into messaging and content strategy

Keep your message intact from first touch to final call

When marketing copywriters are involved in creating sales enablement collateral, messages stay consistent. Your sales teams get clear, persuasive materials that build reassuringly on everything prospects have heard so far. And the bond between marketing and sales grows a little deeper.

If you want our help to create high-impact sales enablement content and communications that keep your voice and messaging consistent, talk to us today.

[1] https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/buyer-experience-report-2025/

Document summary and synthesis, bouncing ideas around, integration tests and other operational testing code; generative AI has strong use cases across the enterprise. But do you know what large language models aren’t particularly good at? Generating engaging, successful marketing content from scratch.

And yet, the promise of automated, AI-first content generation means many leaders are mandating the use of AI in marketing. It’s an unfortunate evolution of that age-old challenge of non-marketing leadership underestimating the value of content. Only now, they have tools that can automate away the costs and pressures of creating videos, blogs, white papers, and infographics.

The humble marketing manager is caught smack bang in the middle of all of this. They’re now equipped with powerful tools, but ones that don’t quite meet their content needs – all while their budgets are moved elsewhere due to the increased AI productivity at their fingertips.

So, what can you do to have a productive conversation with leadership and make the case for a blend of AI and human-driven marketing? Read on for four talking points, backed up by the latest content performance data.

Focus on the four points that matter most

When I first started drafting this piece, I spoke to other writers to get their perspectives on AI in content creation. I heard the usual, but important, arguments about the moral, human impacts of overusing AI in content; the battle between the human soul and an algorithmic approach to creativity.

But let’s be frank for a moment. Does the average C-suite leader really care about that? Are they even allowed to care? They have to make a decision based on costs, efficiency, and output. AI can deliver content that’s ‘good enough’ quickly, and often at a low cost. This makes it a tool executives simply can’t ignore, no matter how much they value the human spirit in creative works.

So, you’ll have a better discussion with leadership if you can interrogate the benefits of AI more closely and showcase other hidden costs and risks of overusing generative AI tools.

That’s why you should focus on these four talking points:

1: AI content can reduce marketing impact and results

While AI can produce content quickly, the jury is still out on whether that content can deliver meaningful marketing results.

Research from Semrush found that content classified as purely AI-generated appeared in the top search result just 9% of the time. By comparison, content classified as human-written saw strong search results 80% of the time.

The choice between AI- and human-generated content also affects overall impact and brand differentiation. HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report found that 52% of marketers believe AI makes content creation so easy that it has less overall impact. Meanwhile, 53% of marketers struggle to differentiate their content in an AI-saturated market.

2: AI use undermines ESG initiatives and brand image

Almost all (90%) S&P 500 companies release ESG reports, and many more organisations have other sustainability and social impact initiatives in place. There are often significant resources poured into these initiatives to do right by the environment and local communities, and – if we’re being totally honest – boost brand reputation among socially conscious consumers.

As they are today, AI technologies can seriously undermine these efforts.

For one, heavy AI use is often associated with replacing people and eliminating jobs, potentially undermining efforts for social good and community enrichment.

And considering AI technology consumes 6x more water than Denmark, 35% of Ireland’s total energy use, and as much energy as 200,000 American homes, it also contradicts sustainability efforts.

This is a problem for any business. But it’s particularly problematic for sustainability-focused brands.

And make no mistake, readers can spot AI-generated content fairly easily. The Drum puts it at a clean 50/50 rate, and while that might seem low, losing potentially half your audience to AI content is not something any marketing leader should entertain.

The half of your audience that spots AI-generated content will think poorly of your brand if it’s delivering green messages with one hand, while using energy-guzzling technologies with the other.

3: AI introduces process issues around feedback, amends, and templates

As black-box systems, AI tools can throw spanners in the works of key parts of the content creation process that demand transparency and dialogue.

With most AI tools, you can’t directly trace the decisions they make, so it’s impossible to understand where a specific idea comes from, why a piece is structured in a certain way, or why the story takes one angle rather than another.

Some LLMs also struggle to make specific edits and amends without rewriting entire pieces. Their probabilistic nature means they can’t always respond to feedback accurately or make specific changes without losing what worked in the initial drafts.

And as LLMs look at words as tokens rather than a combination of letters and syllables, they can be bad at following style guides and templates – especially those with strict character or word limits.

4: AI can harm content accuracy and audience trust

All AI tools struggle with hallucinations that can lead to inaccuracies and damage audience trust. Yes, you can avoid this with judicious editing, but that breaks the promise of autonomous, efficient content creation and leaves you needing human experts (and the budget to hire them).

And, unless you’re using finely-tuned or local models, these tools are trained on general datasets. That means they lack a nuanced understanding of the specific markets or technical topics you want to cover, leading to further inaccuracies or reductive content.

And this can have a pretty hefty impact on audience perception, with 55% of people saying they’re uncomfortable reading AI-generated content.

AI has a role, but marketers must be smart about how they use it

My aim here isn’t to suggest that AI has no place in marketing. There are plenty of uses for the technology: AI can help workshop ideas, summarise complex research, and draft more formulaic content, such as press releases.

But when you’re working with complex ideas or human stories in case studies, white papers, ebooks, and blogs, the risks to accuracy, reputation, and quality may outweigh the potential cost and efficiency benefits of using AI.

These talking points might not necessarily make senior leadership understand and appreciate the value of good content – that’s a discussion you’ve likely been having for decades. However, they might at least give leaders pause before they set an AI-first or AI-only approach and help them see a middle way that delivers better results, while letting you keep a bit more of your budget.

Making the messaging is an article series exploring how Radix turns B2B marketing complexities into compelling, readable content that engages audiences of all levels and gets results. We’re lifting the veil on some of the key practices and thought processes we use to craft copy that helps technical and business decision-makers see the many benefits of different services and solutions.

Customers operating in high-risk environments such as construction areas, transport hubs, and utility sites – where even the smallest mistake can have serious consequences – must see that the solutions you offer them put safety front and centre. But decision-making involves numerous roles, and key personas need to see strategic, operational, and social value, too… No pressure.

The real challenge isn’t knowing these priorities; it’s finding a way to address them all in your content. And communicating your message in a way that resonates with every audience at the same time, without sounding like you’re having three separate conversations at once.

Operational teams want clear information about safety and practicality. Sustainability teams want to see genuine, unexaggerated ESG impact. Leadership wants to understand the impact on performance, efficiency, and ROI.

Unless you’re creating separate content for each, your messaging needs to hit all three perspectives. A smart way to do that is to tie safety and sustainability into tangible business value – so every audience can see their priorities are being reflected.

Safety is your founding principle

Everyone knows safety comes first. But the way you talk about safety can shift depending on the audience. It doesn’t have to sound like a warning label. Instead, safety can be a powerful way to show value by framing it as something that:

• Protects people and the environment
• Reduces downtime and incident‑related costs
• Lowers the risk of regulatory or reputational damage

This way, you’re not talking about meeting regulations, but showing how compliance creates operational resilience, cost avoidance, and brand protection. You’re acknowledging what operational teams already prioritise, while also signalling to leadership and sustainability teams that safety is more than a requirement; it’s a value driver.

Sustainability must have tangible business value

Sustainability isn’t an abstract idea; it has very real operational, financial, and strategic implications. When you strip away the buzzwords, it’s really about making smarter use of resources, avoiding unnecessary waste, staying on the right side of regulators, and doing what’s best for the next generation. Instead of talking broadly about sustainability, translate it into outcomes people can actually see, such as:

• Reduced waste
• Lower energy consumption and costs
• Extended asset life
• No fines or compliance issues

Then sustainability sounds less like a moral obligation and more like a smart operational strategy. Sustainability teams see their priorities are being taken seriously, operational teams understand the day-to-day impact, and leadership gets a clear view of ROI.

Leadership needs to see the ROI behind every message

When targeting content to leadership teams, you need to connect what they already care about – performance, efficiency, costs, profit, growth – to everything your solution delivers. And make that connection unavoidable.

Framing your messaging through a commercial lens helps leadership see that safety and sustainability are important contributors to business outcomes such as:

• Improved operational efficiency
• Reduced unplanned downtime
• Lower maintenance and energy costs
• Extended asset life
• More predictable performance
• Fewer costly disruptions

This gives leadership a clear, confident line of sight between safe, sustainable, and useful products and services and the ROI they’ll deliver.

Matching your message and medium

Exactly how you balance each priority will depend on the format and focus of your content piece.

Whitepapers will likely appeal most to operational and technical audiences. Although that doesn’t mean you should leave other audiences out.

Lead with the nuts and bolts about how your solution works – with all the safety, reliability, and technical detail operational teams want to see. Then weave in sustainability messaging using clear metrics and proof points on things like energy use, waste reduction, and compliance. Finally, focus on the big strategic benefits in scannable areas like your introduction, boxouts, and conclusion.

With this approach, technical audiences can appreciate the depth and detail that whitepapers offer. Sustainability audiences can see the evidence‑based ESG detail. And leadership can easily scan for the strategic benefits they need.

Videos lend themselves to sustainability messaging, as they enable you to create an emotive narrative that highlights the real-world impact beyond an individual business. Here, you can lead with environmental and social outcomes and show how people, communities, and the environment benefit. Then you can anchor the message in operational and commercial value, with subtle cues about the efficiency, cost savings, or reduced downtime that come from those sustainable practices.

Leadership tends to gravitate towards content that gets straight to the point. Whether that’s a one-pager, a short thought leadership piece, or an executive brief, lead with the headline message and the strategic impact your solution will deliver. Then, weave in safety and sustainability as proof points to show exactly how you’ll help them reduce risk, cost, and waste, while improving efficiency, compliance, and long-term profitability.

Use language that speaks to every audience

One of the most important aspects of getting your message heard by the people you need to hear it is the language you use. While engineers will understand technical complexity, decision-makers don’t always need – or want – to wade through it all. Explain technical ideas in a way that’s accurate and accessible. Use the correct terminology, but surround any complex terminology with simple language that clearly connects what your solution does to what it actually means for your customers.

When you’re crafting your key messages, the easiest way to make them land is to step into the shoes of each persona you’re targeting – and check there’s something there that reflects their priorities and everyday realities. You don’t need to write different versions of everything for each audience; you just need clear messaging with enough entry points to let everyone in.

Keep an eye out for the next article in this series soon. And if you’d like to discuss the best ways to create great content that makes your tech understandable and appealing to as many people as possible, talk to us today.

Customer advocacy is one of the most powerful assets in a marketer’s toolbox. After all, it’s always better to have someone else sing your praises than to do it yourself. But finding the right customer and crafting a story that properly portrays the value of your product or service requires careful planning and forethought.

At Radix, we spend a lot of time interviewing customers for our clients and bringing their stories to life. But we don’t always see what else goes on behind the scenes. Jana Newman is a Senior Customer Advocacy Marketing Manager at world-renowned skills acceleration platform, Udemy. We asked her to talk us through the most important aspects of creating effective case studies.

Radix: I think everyone knows how powerful customer advocacy can be. But what do you think makes a really great customer success story?

Jana: There are a few things. The power of these stories is that customers want to hear how their peers have done things, not just what tools they’ve used. Stories that explicitly share the approach customers have taken and what it’s led to are really helpful for readers from an educational point of view.

In general, I think the most powerful customer stories are the ones where the customer is the hero. It’s already implied that the customer succeeded by using a platform if it’s hosted on the platform’s website. Focusing on what the customer has done and their individual success is essential.

That’s one thing I really enjoy about my job; I get to be the advocate for those customers. They’ve solved problems and seen success, but they might not think that what they’re doing is that exceptional, because it’s their job. It’s nice to take a step back and remind them that what they’ve done is impressive, and also really useful to other people.

These stories can also be a boost to someone’s career. If we can provide them with a narrative sharing the great results they’ve achieved, it helps them shine internally. But also, if they pursue a different career or job they get a snapshot in time of this transformative thing they did that’s independently validated.

Radix: With that in mind then, how do you choose the right customers for advocacy pieces? What considerations go into that?

Jana: There are a few things to bear in mind. At the most basic level, they need to have purchased our platform and seen results. In a perfect world, all customer stories would have amazing metrics to back up their success, because they can be great for helping others understand the kind of ROI they can achieve. So you need to leave enough time for the benefits to have surfaced.

Over the years, I’ve tried lots of different software solutions for customer advocacy, including tools to track your advocates and automate customer selection. But honestly, I find the best candidates are surfaced from working closely with account teams.

They talk to the customers day in, day out. They know what they’ve achieved, but they also know them as people: Will they be interested? Are they the kind of advocate you might also put on stage, for instance? Will they be able to get internal approval to participate? There’s a whole world of nuance there that software can’t see, so a lot of my day is spent connecting with account teams and getting a pulse from them.

Radix: Once it’s clear which stories you want to tell, how do you persuade those customers to take part? Do you have to incentivise participation in any way?

Jana: Different companies approach this in different ways. Sometimes, a case study or some sort of advocacy will be included as part of a contract renewal. But in my experience, the stories that stand out typically are surfaced through strong account relationships.

A lot of willingness to participate comes down to the quality of your product. If a customer is delighted with the service you’re providing and sees results, they’re usually willing to get involved, as it’s good exposure for both parties.

One thing I do is make it as clear as possible what customers are signing up for, so any concerns are addressed upfront, and it’s easy for them to agree to participate. I’ll explain that they’ll join one interview call and provide time slots they can choose from. I’ll reassure them that they’ll see all the drafts and can approve the final copy before the story goes live.

Also, if at any point they want the story taken down, they can tell us and we’ll take it down.

Part of this is just being considerate, because customers are busy, so I don’t want them to have to guess what the process involves. I want them to know exactly what’s expected and see that we’re organised and professional in our approach.

In terms of an incentive, what they get is this asset that tells the story of their success and promotes their brand, as well as them as individuals.

Radix: So, once the customer is on board, it’s time to produce the story. Are there any things that are particularly important when it comes to that part of the process?

Jana: Having the right copywriting partnership is really important for us. Working with Radix gives me peace of mind. I know that I can prep with you before the customer interview and that you’ll have done your research. And I know that you’re experts in your craft and professional interviewers.

That bit’s important. Ultimately, we’re trusting you with our customers, so knowing you’ll ask the right questions and bring an outside perspective is great. It’s perhaps easy to get tunnel vision when you’re working internally, so there’s a real benefit to the fact that you don’t work here. You can approach the story from the angle of what matters to the reader. And you’re bringing the perspective of all the other companies you work with, and what’s currently happening in the world of content.

Radix: That’s lovely to hear. Once the case study’s been produced, it’s time to get it out into the world. How do you work with customers to get stories signed off? Are there any potential pitfalls there?

A lot of this comes down to the writing as well. If the story is well written and complimentary about what the customer has done and what they’ve achieved, there’s not a lot of room for things to go awry.

Flexibility is also really important on our end. Yes, we need approvals, but we also need to make sure the customer really likes what we’re publishing. So you have to be ready to meet them where they are.

One approach that helps expedite the process is encouraging customers to be really clear on edits. Having a communal document with tracked changes and asking for specific feedback directly in the document helps a lot. If there’s a phrasing the customer isn’t comfortable with, for instance, knowing that is one thing. But knowing what they’d like to see instead removes guesswork and gets the story over the line more quickly.

Reviews from PR teams can sometimes slow approvals down. I find that having those conversations over the phone at the outset can be really beneficial to address any questions. It’s often about simple things. Sometimes people might not know how the story will be used, for example. So walking them through these details and making them comfortable can be much quicker over a phone call than through an email chain.

Get even more insights in our B2B Content Marketer’s Handbook

If you’d like to learn more about driving marketing success, get your copy of our handbook, featuring contributions from a dream team of B2B marketing experts.

Making the messaging is an article series exploring how Radix turns B2B marketing complexities into compelling, readable content that engages audiences of all levels and gets results. We’re lifting the veil on some of the key practices and thought processes we use to craft copy that helps technical and business decision-makers see the many benefits of different services and solutions.

Before I begin in earnest, I want to address why cybersecurity and governance solutions have been bundled together in this article. Because the answer is the first – and possibly biggest – clue to how we make content about them engaging.

Cybersecurity, governance, and compliance solutions help businesses avoid disaster, rather than achieve anything particularly aspirational. In terms of how we talk about them in marketing content, they’re very similar.

These are solutions that help a business meet a basic operational need. Without them, chaos can ensue. With them, it’s business as usual. Naturally, that leads many marketers to lean into the one obvious lever available to build interest in these solutions – great and looming FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).

Fear is cheap. It takes real skill to build excitement.

If a solution primarily helps a business avoid disaster, you’d expect the marketing messaging around to focus on the scale and severity of those disasters, building a ‘What if it happened to you?’”-type fear. There’s logic to that, but the approach has one major flaw: it doesn’t respect how much your audience already understands the cost of inaction.

Cybersecurity, governance, and compliance decision-makers fully understand the risks their organisations are exposed to. That’s why they’re researching solutions like these. Mitigating those risks and helping them uphold their compliance responsibilities are table stakes. It’s a basic expectation for people whose entire working lives revolve around managing and minimising risk. So if that’s all your messaging focuses on, it will be tough to convince them yours is the right solution for their organisation.

Instead, think carefully about the mindset your audience is in when they’re searching for these kinds of solutions. They’re solving a problem, taking care of something that might not be the most exciting tech investment ever, but absolutely can’t be ignored. Lean into that, and show them just how many of their problems you can make go away.

Don’t stop once you’ve told them how you’re going to safeguard their business or streamline governance and compliance. Emphasize ease of deployment, ease of use, breadth of support, and any other USPs that will make their lives easier. Do it right, and you might just get them excited about investing in disaster avoidance.

In fields like these, trust is everything

When a buyer chooses your organisation as their cybersecurity or governance solution provider, they aren’t just buying technology – they’re placing a great deal of trust in you.  The stakes of a security or compliance breach are very high, so the faster you can begin building that trust, the better.

As writers and content creators we can help achieve that in a few ways. First, when the stakes surrounding a solution choice are high, prospects tend to favour certainty, and proof that you can deliver what you promise. That makes key proof points from customer case studies invaluable. Every point we make needs to be supported by some kind of evidence backing up our claims. If you’ve helped clients recover from DDoS attacks in minutes, or achieve >99.9% uptime, show that off and explain exactly how you did it.

Second, we need to make information transparent and easy to discover. Prospects will need to scrutinise your solution in detail before they choose it, so bottom-of-funnel product marketing content needs to be just as transparent as your eye-catching top-of-funnel content.

If you can substantiate your claims, demonstrate that this isn’t your first rodeo, and proactively anticipate and answer as many common prospect questions as possible, you’re well on your way to showing that yours is a solution they can trust.

Don’t spare the technical details

With some technology solutions, it’s more important to focus on covering the outcomes they enable. That’s where the real magic and the ‘art of the possible’ often exist. That’s still important here, but once you’ve covered how you’ll positively impact key security and resilience metrics like Mean Time to Restore (MTTR) and average downtime following a breach, there isn’t too much more to say.

Because the desired outcomes are so straightforward – robust security, low downtime, and continuous compliance – it’s worth spending a bit more time on the how to make it clear exactly what your solutions offer from a technical perspective.

Talk your audience through the structure of your Zero Trust architecture, explore the intricacies of your approach to endpoint detection and response (EDR), or lift the veil on exactly how you use AI and machine learning to automate threat response. These are the things CISOs really want to know.

The outcomes enabled by these solutions will likely be strikingly similar to the outcomes your competitors claim to deliver. These are solution markets where a small difference in capability and underlying technology can be your biggest competitive differentiator. If you’ve managed to develop unique tools or functionality, put that front and centre in your messaging, and show your audience exactly how it all works.

That’s where your SMEs become so critical. A lot of this insight often exist only in their heads. You can find some helpful tips to help you extract and amplify their expertise here.

Empathy, trust, and detail

Cybersecurity and governance tools can be tricky solutions to write about. But it becomes quite simple when you do three key things:

• Understand your audience’s mindset and needs, and how these buying journeys differ from most other enterprise technology investments
• Build trust by backing up your claims and showcasing your expertise and track record in the field
• Focus on the how and don’t shy away from the underlying technical details that separate your solutions from your competitors’

Keep an eye out for the next article in this series soon. And if you’d like to discuss the best ways to create great content that makes your tech understandable and appealing to as many people as possible, talk to us today.

Producing marketing that stands out in a crowded market is perhaps the biggest challenge creative teams face. And it’s one that’s likely to get harder as homogenised, AI-generated content overwhelms the internet. It’s maybe never been more important to be adventurous and unique – but how can you teach yourself to think outside the box? Where do the sparks of inspiration that really resonate come from?

At Radix, we’re often asked to come up with creative concepts for clients. And we also spend time finding original, creative angles for our own content, so new clients can find us. We actually have our own internal guide – a sort of creativity companion – full of exercises and techniques for shaking ideas free and approaching things in different ways.

So, we thought it might be useful to share some of the key takeaways from our guide that could help you unlock new ways of creative thinking.

Here are five simple rules for doing just that. (And a free, printable poster)

1. Embrace ‘bad’ ideas

There’s a lot of truth to the old expression “perfect is the enemy of done”.

Sometimes the desire to get something just so is a hinderance to doing anything at all. And when you’re stuck in the starting blocks because your idea isn’t absolutely perfect, it can spell trouble.

The truth is that getting started is sometimes the only thing that will bring clarity. It might be producing a first draft that unlocks the insight needed to improve it. Or it might be workshopping those ideas that almost work instead of discarding them because they’re not quite right. Either way, this is about removing barriers and actually getting things done – because perfect will probably never arrive.

Remember, bad ideas can lead to good ideas, and failed attempts plant the seeds for future best practice. You don’t want the public or your clients to see the things that don’t work, but, especially during ideation, don’t be afraid to experiment with new things. You’ll learn as much from what doesn’t work as what does, so encourage free thinking and an ‘anything goes’ mindset.

2. Put a different hat on it

The way you deliver information is just as important as the information itself. If everyone is talking about the same topic, is there a way you can stand out by choosing a different medium? Could a video series drive more engagement than a white paper for a busy CEO? Would a physical mailer set your offering apart? Or is there an emerging content type that could capture the imagination of your target audience?

A good marketing campaign requires a mix of content formats. But there’s no reason a generic ebook can’t be reimagined as a something more dynamic, interactive, and interesting that generates word of mouth.

3. Adopt a new identity

When we’re trying to come up with a fresh angle on a popular topic, one thing we do to  approach things differently is adopt different personas. There are a couple of ways we deploy this idea.

With our own content, decisions are often made based on our level of expertise on a topic. For instance, if it’s something we know well, we’ll adopt the persona of an expert. On the other hand, if it’s an emerging topic, we adopt the persona of a curator or interviewer and explore the subject through the eyes of those who do know (while educating ourselves and our audience in the process).

Here are some personas to try out:

The Expert

The expert is extremely knowledgeable in their field. They’ve seen it all play out before and are in a perfect position to provide advice or explain what something really means.

The Curator

On the other end of the spectrum is the curator; a watchful, thoughtful persona that scours and compiles different opinions. By exploring and comparing different takes on topics, you can become really useful to readers who want to gain a quick but thorough understanding of the subject.

The Trend Spotter

Predictions are risky, but there’s something intrinsic to human nature about wanting to know how the future will play out. By speculating (in an educated way) about the potential impact of emerging trends, you can create content that people really engage with – especially as this kind of content leaves lots of room for differing opinions.

The Interviewer

If there’s an interesting new topic that you don’t feel you have the authority to speak about, it can be useful to find an expert in the field (or more than one) and explore the topic in an interview. This is where your SMEs will come in handy. The added benefit of this is that your interviewees are likely to share the piece through their own channels, which will result in more engagement and traffic coming your way.

Another way to find a fresh angle is something we call the adjective game. We use this to find our voice or stance on a topic, writing a variety of headlines based on different adjectives. For instance, one that’s controversial, speculative, dismissive, amusing, or philosophical. These ideas don’t have to be immediately suitable, and it’s fine to be completely over the top. A slightly softer incarnation of an extreme headline can provide a good starting point to delve into a topic. It’s also a great way to come up with different subject lines for email campaigns.

4. Open up the floor

Within your teams, you’ll have lots of personality types, each with their own ways of tackling issues or generating ideas. Only you can think like you, but that also means you can only think like you. So, use the ideation stage of a campaign to field ideas from a broad range of people. You’ll be amazed at how differently they’ll tackle a challenge or topic, and you’ll find yourself with a wider range of perspectives and possibilities.

5. Get out of your head

As a writer, I never sit and stare at a blank page, because that’s when my brain says, “Nope.” There’s nothing less inspiring than a flashing cursor on an empty Word document.  In fact, I don’t even open a Word doc until I know what my first sentence is.

Trying to force ideas isn’t something that ever works. In fact, sometimes taking time away from that thinking allows those ideas to form properly in the back of your mind. Try stepping away; get your body moving, take a shower, walk the dog. Give your brain room to breathe and see what happens.  You can also try using different tools to force your brain into new ways of thinking. For instance, a pencil and paper might seem archaic, but they change the pace you work at, and this slightly more meditative and distraction-free state of mind might be exactly what you need.

Here, have a thing we made

There’s no single solution to creative thinking. Different things work for different people – but often the key is tricking yourself into thinking differently.

If you found these tips useful, you might like the printable poster we designed as a little reminder.

 

**When looking for inspiration for our internal creativity guide, I adapted some ideas from my friend Dion’s book, Creativity Begins With You. If you’d like to explore the topic in more detail, I highly recommend it.