It’s been over a year since my last blog.
And that hasn’t been for the lack of ideas or desire to write.
Most of my client work has been under strict NDAs, so I haven’t had results or findings to share, which makes most, if not all, anecdotal commentary challenging to publish.
So what can I tell you about my work as a freelance copywriter and content strategist? How has 2026 been so far?
Well, in the last case study I wrote about my work with 3 localised franchises of Home Instead, which involved becoming the lead copywriter for website content (landing pages and blogs), email marketing (lead magnets, email sequences and client newsletters), and occasionally social and print assets.
Much of my UK client work has been very similar over the past year.
A lot of fresh copy or restructuring and refining existing copy that works for various levels of a marketing funnel. The intent: to connect and develop relationships that nurture and convert potential clients when they are ready.
It’s also been about priming content in a way that allows for repurposing.
Now traditionally, most of that work would start with a website landing page or a blog. But with some clients (and this includes some of my US and MENA clients), we’ve opted to start from a sales outreach point, whether that’s a LinkedIn series, a direct mailer or a cold email sequence.
In some cases, this has been a direct response to a decrease in search engine traffic, from generative AI boxes on engines like Google. I wrote a blog about this some time ago. The idea is that we are spreading our reach with a wider, but also more targeted net and no longer relying on old ways of doing things. We are also picking up tactics that we once considered outdated or too expensive to run, for example, referral networks.
The last year has seen a dramatic change in the way most B2C and even B2B marketing is approached. The way we look at our marketing funnels has changed. And for the first time in a long time, companies are willing to embrace a new way of investing and promoting themselves, because they know that their consumers are searching for and consuming content around products and services differently.
Now, I realise that there will be someone who fundamentally disagrees: “marketing is still very much the same”, they’ll say.
And that’s true.
But what’s changed is that most businesses were only implementing a small fraction of what they could do to promote themselves. That approach has been pretty linear: they post a blog, mention it on socials and maybe write an email.
All of that gets lost in the noise these days, and a small budget delivers little return like this.
I’ve been very lucky. Most of the clients I work with can see this and are happy to go back to the sandbox and test new strategies.
This has seen me, a freelancer on their team, directly in the middle of pulling old ideas apart and putting them back together with a fresh approach. It’s also meant I’ve had to learn a lot, whether it’s new systems or apps and how they relate to implementing new-to-me strands of marketing.
That’s been incredibly fun.
And challenging.
My blog, as a result, has been very much on the back burner.
I’m wondering if I need a new approach? Maybe a new series that’ll help capture some of what I’m doing. The ‘Work Lately Editions’.
