Content marketing

Useful first, chosen later

Most buyers decide who to shortlist long before they contact anyone. Content is how you get onto that list without paying for the position. We work out what is worth saying, then either write it or help your team write it.

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Have something to say

A point of view, real expertise and numbers nobody else holds. Everything after this is distribution.

Say it where they are

Fewer places, chosen because your buyers read them, not because a platform is easy to post to.

Know what it earned

Content is measurable. Pipeline it assisted and deals it appeared in, rather than likes.

Where it goes wrong

Most content stops at the keyword list.

The research is rarely the problem. Long tail search data is the most honest picture available of what your buyers are actually trying to work out, and guessing at it from the boardroom is how most content budgets get spent on nothing. The failure comes from stopping there. Someone exports the list, briefs a thousand words against each line and publishes on a schedule. The result restates what is already on the first page, in the same order, using the same phrases, and gives nobody a reason to pick you over the four other firms saying it.

The list tells you what to write about. It cannot tell you what to say. That part has to come out of the business: the objection you handle differently from everyone else, the numbers your own operation produces that nobody else can publish, the thing you tell clients in the first meeting that visibly surprises them. That is not a writing problem, it is an extraction problem, which is why the useful work usually starts with an hour of somebody's time rather than a brief.

There is a newer reason this matters. Anyone can now produce competent, unremarkable writing at zero cost and infinite volume, so competent and unremarkable is worth nothing. A reader has no reason to finish it and a model has no reason to quote it over the identical paragraph on a larger site. Scarcity has moved to the thing that was always scarce, which is having something worth saying.

Two ways to brief a piece both start from the same research

Keyword led

The list is the whole brief
Restates what already ranks
Written to a word count
Success is publishing on time
Anyone could have written it

Keyword informed

The list decides the subject
The business decides the answer
As long as the point needs
Success is being sent to a colleague
Only you could have written it

The data tells you what to write about. It cannot tell you what to say

Capability

Four parts, and the first one has to come from you.

Strategy and ideas

What is worth saying, to whom, and what you are deliberately not going to cover. Built from the questions your buyers are actually working through and the ones your team is tired of answering, then narrowed to the few you can answer better than anyone else in your market.

Audience researchLong tail and question researchEditorial strategyMessaging and positioningCompetitor gapsContent audit

Producing the work

Some clients want the whole thing written. Others have people who can write perfectly well but no time to plan, edit or finish anything. We do either, and we tell you which one we think you need rather than selling you the more expensive one.

CopywritingLong form and guidesCase studiesExpert interviewsEditing and house styleDiagrams and designVideo and audio

Publishing and distribution

Where it goes and how it keeps working after the week it went out. A schedule you can see, organic social in the two or three places your buyers actually read, a newsletter that builds an audience you own, and the internal linking that turns a library of articles into something that sells. Where that audience is meant to talk back rather than just listen, branded communities is the next step up.

Editorial calendarNewslettersOrganic socialLinkedInRepurposingInternal linkingRefresh and pruning

Reputation and results

Getting the work in front of people who were never going to find your site, and proving what it did. Digital PR and expert commentary on one side, assisted pipeline and honest reporting on the other. The SEO and AI search page covers the same PR work from the other direction, where the prize is a citation rather than a reader.

Digital PRExpert commentaryGuest publicationsAwards and directoriesAssisted pipelineRevenue reporting

Formats

Different jobs need different shapes.

Foundations

Cornerstone guides

The definitive piece on a subject you intend to own. Long, updated rather than replaced, and the thing everything else on the site links back to.

Foundations

Comparison and buying pages

Sits at the point of deciding and usually earns more than anything else on the site. It is also the content most businesses are too polite to write, which is exactly why it works.

Trust

Case studies

Proof with numbers in it. The most requested and least produced format we deal with, because producing one means asking a client for figures rather than a quote.

Trust

Original research and data

Something only you can publish, because only you have the numbers. The most reliable way we know to earn coverage and citations from the same piece of work.

Regular

Editorial and commentary

A clear view on what changed and why it matters to the people you sell to. This is where the trusted adviser position is actually built, one useful opinion at a time.

Regular

Newsletter and social

Distribution for everything above. The newsletter is an audience you own and nobody can reprice. Social is an audience you rent, and worth renting where your buyers already are.

Six of these done properly beats sixty done to a deadline

Industry figure / Google

15%

The share of searches Google sees each day that it has never seen before. Google first published that figure in 2013 and has recalculated it ever since, including after AI search arrived, and it has not moved. Demand keeps regenerating faster than anyone can copy it, which is why a keyword list is worth having and never worth stopping at.

Talk about what yours should cover →

How it runs

Get it out of your heads, then onto the page.

Listen

Time with the people who hold the answers. Sales calls, support tickets and the questions your team keeps repeating.

Decide

What you are going to be known for, and what we are not covering. A short list beats a long one every time.

Make

Written, edited and designed. Yours, ours or a mix, agreed before anything is commissioned rather than after.

Publish

Against a schedule you can see, in the places we agreed, structured so it can be found and quoted later.

Review

Quarterly, not monthly. Content pays back slower than ads, and judging it in thirty days is how good work gets cancelled.

Straight answers

Things we will probably talk you out of.

Content is the easiest place in marketing to look busy without moving anything. Here is where we will disagree with the plan.

Publishing weekly because someone said to
A cadence you cannot hold at a standard worth reading is worse than a slower one you can. Nobody has ever chosen a supplier because they posted on time.
Generating content at volume
It is cheap, it reads like everyone else, and it gives neither a reader nor a model any reason to choose you. We use AI throughout our own work. We do not use it instead of the work.
Ghostwriting a view you do not hold
We can write in your voice. We cannot invent your opinion, and readers can tell. If nobody in the business will put their name to it, it should not go out.
Gating everything behind a form
A guide nobody can read earns no trust, no links and no citations. Gate the one thing worth trading an email address for and publish the rest.
A blog that links to nothing you sell
Articles sitting in isolation from the pages that make money are a hobby. Every piece should have a route to something commercial, even if it is one line at the end.
Writing whatever you feel like
Content aimed at no question anybody is asking is a company newsletter. The search data exists, it is cheap, and it should decide what goes on the list even when you decide what the piece actually says.

Insights

Technology moves fast. We write down what actually matters.

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