Before you write: getting on the same page with marketers

If you’ve been writing for a while, chances are you’ve tried your hand at copywriting, content marketing or even transcreation.

You’ve likely tinkered with the attention-grabbing, persuasive language that aims to draw in audiences and grow sales.

These days, though, you’re a UX writer. Your tools to engage, guide and build trust are microcopy and support content rather than landing pages and email campaigns.

But this distinction between roles—even for small teams working at the same company—is one that creates silent, unspoken silos.

We want to keep the product solid and consistent, but that usually stops at our own team’s responsibilities.

When UX people don’t talk with their marketing counterparts, things start to break—and customers will notice. The experience becomes disjointed and confusing at the turning points: conversion, upselling, retention.

In this post, we’ll look at how UX teams can proactively keep communication open with their product marketing colleagues by following simple guidelines and routines.

It all starts with a meeting—even a remote one.

Scenario:

You’re the UX writer at a SaaS company, and today you’re focusing on a user flow that’s part product writing, part product marketing—like an upgrade page or pricing plan. Somewhere on the other side of the pond, you know a marketer is working on the same funnel, thinking along the same lines.

As you realize what this implies and who you need to talk to, you can make the first move and plan a kick-off meeting to go over what the two teams need to do together.

Even if you don’t manage people yourself, this can be an opportunity for you to own the process as a writer and lead by example.

Reach out and explain what’s happening and why it’s important to stay aligned. Involving your respective team leads is a good idea, as they have more visibility over business decisions and can provide strategic details that apply to your scenario. The same goes for any other stakeholders who can advise on technical feasibility.

Share resources that might be helpful upfront, such as technical requirements, flowcharts and preliminary Figma sketches. As you prepare for the meeting, ask the marketing team if they can provide any relevant assets as well, whether that’s email campaigns or staging links to the new homepage. They don’t need to be perfect—drafts are good enough at this stage.

When you go into the meeting, try to approach it with the same collaborative and proactive spirit. As the host, it’s good to do the honors by guiding the session and staying on track.

For example, you could start by defining the goal with all participants. Here are some of the expectations I usually set for a kick-off meeting like this one:

• We want to understand how you’ve visualized the overall flow and at which steps you think we should be working closely together.
• We’d like to know if you’re aware of any potential blockers as we move forward.
• We can brainstorm ideas together, but we’re not going to make any final decisions right now.

From this point on, it’s mostly about listening. I focus on taking detailed notes on what the marketers have done so far, which key points and concepts they’ve covered, how they envision the result and any doubts or concerns they raise.

Once you’ve written everything down, ask follow-up questions to fill in the gaps.

Here are some examples from a past project of mine, where the UX and marketing teams needed to decide how to present the value proposition on an upgrade page:

Journey

• Is the user ready to commit at this stage in their journey?
• At which point during the trial should we suggest an upsell?

Positioning

• Do the differentiators we’ve highlighted resonate with the specific target audience we’re addressing?
• Should the offer be perceived as custom-made or off-the-shelf?

Flow

• Should we lead with this benefit to attract more attention?
• Would these case studies shine more if we showcased them at a different touchpoint?

Content

• Are we doing enough to mitigate the user’s concerns around security?
• Are we using consistent wording both on the website and in the product?

Once you have the bigger picture, go through the points the marketers have shared with you. Summarize them out loud as a way to recap where you’re at and make sure you got everything right.

After that, you can spend some time outlining the steps in more detail. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy—bullet points or a simple title/subtitle/call-to-action structure will do for now. Here, you’re still just trying to reach a general agreement on the content, so focus on gathering feedback on the direction first. The actual designs and polished copy will come later.

Once you’ve done all the above, you might be ready to wrap up the meeting. The closing is important, as this is when things tend to fall apart. A meeting that doesn’t lead to action items is ineffective and an unproductive use of everyone’s time, so always try to wrap it up by listing clear next steps for each team.

Some examples of small but concrete steps:

• Based on what we’ve seen today, we’ll put together a lo-fi prototype of the in-product flow and show you how it connects to the marketing funnel.
• The designs and copy will be more fleshed out, which will give us room for discussion and additional feedback.
• We’ll get back to you in two days and open the floor to your comments.
• Can you let us know when we could take another look at your updated pages?

Now that the meeting is over, you can regroup and work on the short-term goals you’ve defined.

This doesn’t need to be a one-off occurrence. Based on your priorities and bandwidth, your team can turn these sessions into regular checkpoints to prevent mistakes and misalignments throughout the project.

This approach has worked for me as an in-house UX writer at small to medium-sized organizations. You already know your colleagues—you just need to keep the flame burning.

If you’re a freelancer or external contractor looking to kick things off with a new product team, your approach might look a bit different.

Here’s what you can read next:

The onboarding brief: what I ask before joining a small product team

Are you a UX writer or team lead who loves smooth kick-offs? Keep reading — this list of discovery questions might come in handy.

Elisa TrippettiElisa Trippetti