When a new Harrogate-based practice needed a copywriter for architects to refine their website messaging, they turned to me to ensure their new content would engage prospects, deliver against SEO objectives and reflect their new brand.
Grace & Morris is an architecture practice in Harrogate, Yorkshire, which provides a full planning, design and project management service for high-end residential properties. The team behind Grace & Morris had already established a successful practice in Leeds and wanted to differentiate their new venture, with a lifestyle-focused appeal that would appeal to affluent homeowners.
The brief
The team had built their own website and – wary of outsourcing their vision to others – had written their own website copy. The marketing manager was keen to use a copywriter for architects who could optimise the copy and give it a ‘lift’.
The team’s brief was simple: “Review the website copy and ‘polish it up’ so it works as hard as possible.” The team had an SEO expert lined up who was ready to optimise the website once the copy was finalised.
How we worked
We started with a project kick-off call. This allowed the team to share everything they needed and for me to ask questions. The two owners and the marketing manager joined this call which was essential to make sure all I could gather all the important information. This call also gave me an insight into the team dynamics so I knew the best way to communicate with them.
Many businesses find it difficult to articulate their brand tone of voice, and this architecture practice was no different. I shared my tone of voice form to help the team express how they wanted to align the copy with their visual branding. They reviewed this and completed it together before passing it back to me. I then talked through the responses with the marketing manager to make sure I understood the rationale behind their responses.
Once I had all the information I needed, I started work. I created a first draft, wrote up my suggestions and rationale for certain elements and then sent this to the team for them to review.
The feedback process
The architect owners and marketing manager discussed the first draft copy together and input some of it into the website so they could visualise how it would work. We then had a feedback call to agree on the next steps. I took this feedback on board and made the changes we’d agreed.
Once these two rounds of work were complete, we handled further small tweaks through quick phone calls and emails. The team showed me how the copy appeared on the website, which allowed me to adapt the messaging so it would look good and be easy to read.
“Laura’s professional eye refined our content with a perfect balance of commercial focus and respect for our brand tone of voice”
Timeframe
This was a relatively small project, and took four weeks from kick-off call to final approval for all content, including case studies.
Results
The website was finalised in good time for the pre-launch campaign, supporting the architecture practice’s programme of activity. Despite initially planning to optimise the website copy for SEO, this wasn’t needed. The copy I’d written already delivered against SEO requirements and is (at the time of writing) currently sitting in the top half of the first page of Google results. The team continue to write their own high-quality blog articles and case studies which are helping support this position.
You can visit the Grace & Morris website here.
Here’s what Tina Hutchinson, the marketing manager at Grace & Morris said about working with me:
Case study: content writing retainer for SaaS“Like most businesses, we feel passionate and protective of our brand, so finding a copywriter who appreciates that, who is experienced enough to challenge constructively and move at pace can be tricky. We were lucky enough to find Laura to do just that!”
“I am proud to say we had created a solid foundation internally, but Laura’s professional eye refined our content with a perfect balance of commercial focus and respect for our brand tone of voice, all whilst creating a cohesive flow that enhanced the overall user experience.
I’d feel confident to recommend Laura to anyone looking for expert input to take their content to the next level.”
Breathe is an HR software company, providing HR SaaS to SMEs across the UK. Their target markets are SME business leaders and people responsible for HR management and administration.
With a gap in their content team and the need to continue creating and updating content to fit their busy content schedule, I worked on a content writing retainer with them for two years. A year later, I worked on a further retainer of 11 months with them.
As a freelance content writer, I was able to provide several services to support the team. Here are a few highlights:
Blog repurposing
Great content deserves to be seen but needs regular spring cleaning to keep it working hard from an SEO perspective. The team at Breathe gave me a list of blogs to repurpose as part of my content writing retainer. With access to their Monday.com board, I delivered blogs in line with their updated keyword targets and any other changes, while running due diligence checks on stats and legislative information to ensure all content was correct. Naturally, I ensured keywords were incorporated naturally and effectively for SEO dynamite. I also provided page titles and SEO descriptions. Some of this work involved merging multiple posts into single blogs. Every post was delivered to schedule.
Blog writing
Refreshing existing content is an easy win, but writing new blogs is a surefire way to show your audience you’re on top of current topics. Again, working from the team Monday.com board, I delivered a series of blogs in line with keyword and title requirements. Some blogs had very specific briefs, others were left open for me to write as I felt fit. Again, every blog was written to a tight schedule, and I turned edits around in a flash.
“Her work is well-researched and very well-written. I would highly recommend Laura’s services” – Carl Sadecki
Gated content for SAAS
Information-rich gated content is lead-generating gold. However, it needs to be up to date. The Breathe team briefed me to update a selection of their guides – all of which related to employment law, leadership and team management. I researched the topics, sense-checked the data and ensured links and statistics were still relevant. If there were stronger links or better statistics, I updated these. In some cases, social attitudes were shifting – especially if the content was written pre-covid. In this case, I edited things and alerted the team, so they were aware of my changes.
Content writing training for team members
I was asked to run a training session with a newer member of Breathe’s content team to help with their development. During the two-hour session, I shared my methodology around content creation, particularly focusing on research and helpful tools to help with blog writing. The feedback I received was that the session was very useful and shaped how the writer builds their content to this day.
Content writing retainer results
I worked with Breathe in two separate contracts. During my first content writing retainer, I wrote 82 articles for Breathe. These have been read by more than 870,000 people and generated more than 4,000 clicks through to other content, including requests for software trials and demonstrations.
“Laura has been a great asset to our content team over the past few years. She fully understands our brand voice & our goals, always creating insightful and interesting content that is enjoyable to read. Laura has re-invigorated some of our older blogs with her engaging writing style, as well as shared her valuable knowledge in updating some of our core website resources. Laura also kindly ran an incredibly useful training session with me when I was new to content writing, sharing some golden pieces of advice that I implemented & still use today. I can’t recommend Laura highly enough, nor thank her enough for all her hard work and help.”
Aimée Brougham-Chandler
You can see some of the work I completed for Breathe here.