Why words and video are so important.
A conversation with Luke Thornton and Tim Goodfellow.
Watch the full length interview here. Produced by Influence Media.
Luke Thornton is the director of Influence Media, a multi service marketing agency and Tim Goodfellow is a freelance copywriter, working with tech businesses and other brands.
Together with the team at Influence Media they produce the Real Stories interview and C4DI newsletter each month.
This month they have a long form conversation about all things marketing, business and email.
Watch the full thing above or read the interview below.
Luke: Tim, let’s get right into it. What is copywriting?
Tim: It’s not about copyright, which is what a lot of people sometimes think. I'm a freelance writer, but I write for a business audience, whether that's website copy or advertising copy, or blogs and articles. It's all done with the purpose of marketing a business or an organization and communicating the value they offer to their target audience.
A lot of the time it's about creating content around their industry, around their products, around what they do, saying, you know, ‘this is who we are, this is our identity, this is why we can solve your problems. And it's about communicating that stuff with words really.
Why copywriting is important
Luke: Love it. Thanks for explaining that. Can you help us understand how you got into copywriting in the first place? I suppose it’s not really a common job or position or business is it really…
Tim: It's certainly not. And it's not something I was particularly aware of during my education. I did English at university. And like a lot of writers, you get to that stage, and you think, ‘What are my options here? Many English students become teachers, but I wasn't keen on that. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But it seemed like journalism was the only option. That excited me to a certain extent, but upon leaving university, I sort of had a change of heart. It was only at that point that I discovered copywriting.
I realised you could write for a living and be quite creative, arguably more creative than in journalism. And to be honest, in some cases get paid a lot more. That was obviously a benefit. So, I worked in a business for a while doing a bit of copywriting and at that point I was at a crossroads and thought, I could work as a copywriter in another company, or I could go freelance and work for lots of different businesses. I took that leap of faith and struggled along for a while. But now I’m in the fortunate position to be working with lots of different businesses on their copy.
Luke: Yeah, and it’s been exciting to see your progress over the years as well. It's definitely hard the first year or two isn't it but now you're obviously working with brands like C4DI and the like which is great to see. What are the main benefits of copywriting for businesses? Are there SEO benefits and that sort of thing? How does it affect their ability to communicate?
Tim: Yeah, I mean you touched on the SEO side of things. That's what a lot of people are aware of. They hear this buzzword and think, ‘we need to do that.’ And getting your website to appear high on Google for the search terms that are relevant to your business, is important. A big way of doing that is by having relevant textual content on your website.
But I think [copywriting] is also about having a unique identity and a unique tone of voice. Understanding that part of your brand is the way that your business talks. It’s very easy to end up saying the same things as everybody else in your industry. There's a lot of noise out there, online, and it's very easy to blend into the background.
I'm a big believer that the way your business talks and the words you use can be a really good way of standing out from the crowd. To be different and to think about creative ways of explaining what you do, that's sometimes when you need a specialist.
Getting into marketing
But enough about me. You’re obviously a marketing business as well. How did you get into that?
Luke: Yes, it certainly wasn't a linear path. I was actually at university doing an engineering and construction degree which I did enjoy, but I realised that this wasn’t really aligning with my particular talents and abilities. I did photography in sixth form as a break from all the sciences and maths I was doing, and I absolutely loved it. I realised this might be possible to do as a career perhaps. I didn’t know if the money would be as good as the other path but who knows, at least I'll be able to enjoy what I'm doing, which is huge, considering work takes up a large part of our lives. It’s been a bumpy ride, but it’s definitely been worth it. It was when I started working in the fitness industry (still a passion of mine to this day) that I realised marketing was for me.
This was right around when social media just started to kick off. Instagram was around a couple of years, Facebook was getting fairly mature as a business and photography was a huge part of that so I started implementing that into the social media management and took accounts from fairly small to quite large, at a time when the organic reach was like through the roof, especially compared to where it is now. And that was kind of where I was when I started my business and joined C4DI.
Growing a business and being a freelancer
Tim: What’s been the biggest challenges for you growing that business? Perhaps you can impart some wisdom to other people that are maybe at the beginning of their business journey.
Luke: Yeah, good question. I think ultimately you need to know what you want. You need vision. And then you've got to commit to that vision. How we get there is the rest of it and is a bit of a winding path. I think you've got to be a little bit naive as well. Because if I were to go back to my prior self and say, ‘this is what you are going to go through.’ To be honest, I don't know if I would have said yes to that. Would I have taken the road less travelled? I don’t know.
In terms of challenges, it’s how much stress are you able to handle, particularly if you’re going through an expansion phase and maybe clients have their own problems which gets passed on to you. It’s important you find some consistency in the ups and downs. The environment where you work needs to be nice and stable, it needs to be somewhere you like being and the people around you are hugely important as well.
I think a big part of it is knowing what you want and handling the stress along the way but also being open minded. I've had so many mentors over the years, people who I've got wisdom from. Without that I wouldn't be where I am today, for sure.
But your business is a bit different to mine so what is it like being a freelancer?
Tim: It’s interesting because often I get asked, ‘what's your plans? Are you planning to employ somebody?’ And fortunately, I'm at the point where some months I am at capacity in terms of the work I can do. But I'm quite happy being a freelancer at the moment. For me, being in business is not necessarily about growing and growing and scaling up. Maybe that'll be the plan in the future. But right now, I remain committed to the vision I had initially, which was to work for myself and have some level of freedom and flexibility. Obviously growing [the business] does afford you other benefits. But there are also other responsibilities as you well know, which is okay, but I enjoy the flexibility that you get by being a freelancer. Also, when you offer something like copywriting, it’s quite difficult to replicate in some cases.
The flexibility allows me to work in a co working space where I've met a lot of people. It's where I met yourself and a lot of others that I now consider friends. I've almost got an office environment and a community here in Hull of other freelancers and other businesspeople who I can engage with, on a human level. That’s obviously hugely beneficial to the health of the business.
What’s helped you grow your business?
What’s been one of the biggest helps for you in growing your business?
Luke: When I first started, I was on my own and to be honest felt a bit lonely as a freelancer. I just lived across the road from C4DI and saw this big building as I drove past. I thought it looked cool and found out it was a place for people who wanted to hot desk. So ended up basing myself here. I totally agree with what you said regarding community, I think that's so important. As somebody who really values that and thrives in that environment, I think that was really good for my work.
From there, it was a case of having good systems and processes in place from the start. This is very foundational; if that's not right, once you start revving things up it just collapses basically. Another big thing is having good people. We're really lucky to have some really talented, creative and just good people in the business. And I want to create an environment in which they can thrive, that I’d want to be a part of if I was in their position.
Another thing [that’s helped] is finding clients who align with your values. Those are your dream clients. Initially I had like a vision board of all these dream clients in Hull and further afield that I wanted to work with. Once you’ve got that target you can start figuring it out, creating relationships and expanding that network.
What about you?
Tim: I've sort of mentioned the community at C4DI and I suppose it's pertinent to stress how helpful that's been. I joined C4DI soon after I started out. I knew I needed a space to be based and I assumed networking was almost the only way that I could grow my business, which I think was a perhaps a little closed minded. I've discovered more ways [to do that] as it's gone on, but I sort of knew that I needed to talk to people and get to know them and I still believe that's true. So just being in C4DI has resulted in me making different connections and now doing some work with them too. But frankly, just having a space that I can separate home life from work life has been valuable. And it's a cool area. It's nice to wander around during the day and see the deep and the Humber and everything.
I should also mention a broader network and community particularly of other copywriters that I'm connected to online. I've learnt so much from these people, many of whom I've never met in person, but I’ve followed their progress and learnt from content they've put out. There’s an absolute wealth of content out there for starting businesses. I suppose it's inevitable that writers are going to be writing a lot of stuff about what they do, because that's what they do. So yeah, there's plenty of resources online that have helped to push my business forward.
Producing a newsletter that people want to read
Luke: You mentioned C4DI there and that we work with them on the newsletter. How does that all work and get pulled together?
Tim: Yeah, I mean the first thing I would say is through doing this we’ve discovered there are some incredible businesses doing amazing things, connecting with international vendors and producing some interesting technology in this building and area. And that was kind of the main purpose of the interviews, which you've been filming, and I've been writing out, to highlight them.
That structure provides two levels of content for people to access. An important thing with marketing is to provide entry points for different types of audience. The videos provide people with an easy way to access and if they want more information, they can get it in the article.
Then there's the newsletter too. The idea with that is providing a product. Marketers have known for a while that email is still very much a viable form of marketing and a viable tool. Because people still use email. They’re still looking at their inbox every day. It makes sense that you'd want to be in that inbox. But the problem now is everybody knows that. So, there's a lot of emails getting sent out. And if you want your newsletter to be successful, and you want it to be effective, you've got to put effort into it and it's got to be a good product. Essentially, it's got to provide value upfront.
In some ways, ‘newsletter’ is a misleading term, because if you just send out an email with a list of news and things that's happened to your business, that’s probably not going to interest most people. They’ve got so many other things to do and so many other interesting things to read. Most people want to read something that is going to provide them with some insight or value that they can't get anywhere else. So, with this we wanted to provide a mix of different information, a reliable source of updates, about technology, about local business and things like that. Hopefully it's something that people sign up to not because they happen to be a part of C4DI but because they want to find out new information.
The importance of video
You guys produce the video side of the content (and you do a good job of it too). What’s the importance of video today for businesses and in marketing in general? Why do you think it’s kind of the go to tool?
Luke: Yeah, I think it's interesting. Years ago, I'd started to notice that video was doing better than everything else, really. But not only that, I was always drawn to it. Fast forward to today, if you scroll through a feed those pieces of content will catch your eye more quickly than if it was just text. Pictures are great but with video you can communicate so much more. People watching this right now can see who we are, what we sound like, what our mannerisms are… There's just more information there.
From a business standpoint it’s also more accessible than ever before. 50 years ago or whatever, to get into this space, you'd need to have a TV production camera, which very few people had because the amount of capital you need to outlay to get into that was massive. Now it's a lot more cost effective. It's still not cheap, but it's accessible. For us, it's about being able to tell those stories via the moving picture. We can capture real life conversations in video, and then people can see what they're like in real life which is pretty powerful.
Tim: Great, I’m sure we could talk about all this for much longer but maybe that’s for another time.
For now, be sure to sign up to the newsletter here, where you’ll be the first to hear about future interviews and any news and events from C4DI both in Hull and Northallerton. It’s been a pleasure, Luke. Thanks for watching/reading.