Marketing teams have never had more ways to create copy.
They have templates, tone of voice guides, automated platforms and, increasingly, large language models capable of producing several versions of a message before somebody has finished making a cup of tea.
The problem is no longer producing words.
It is knowing whether those words are any good.
Do they lead with something the audience actually values? Do they turn features into meaningful benefits? Do they sound persuasive without becoming pushy? Do they make complex information easier to understand? And, most importantly, are they likely to make somebody stop, read and act?
That is the thinking behind my Persuasion and Response Copywriting Workshops for internal marketing teams.
These are practical, interactive sessions designed to help people understand why effective copywriting works, not simply hand them another set of rules to remember. The aim is to give marketing, communications and content teams a toolkit they can use to improve their own writing, judge agency work more confidently and get better results from AI-generated copy.
Because a large language model can produce an answer.
Your team still needs to recognise the right one.
Copywriting training built around your real work
I do not believe in delivering the same generic copywriting presentation to every organisation.
Before the workshop, I ask participants to send over examples of the communications they are currently working on. These might include campaign emails, landing pages, social posts, webinar invitations, internal communications, product sheets or longer-form content.
I review that material in advance and use it to shape the session.
That means the workshop is not built around imaginary brands selling imaginary products to imaginary people. We can examine the real challenges your team faces and apply the techniques directly to live briefs.
Participants are also encouraged to bring their laptops and copies of current work into the room. Throughout the day, they rewrite, test ideas, share approaches and receive constructive feedback.
No death by PowerPoint.
Your team writes.
Starting with the thinking
One of the most intensive workshops I developed was created with Nomads Agency for Medtronic’s marketing and education teams.
The participants worked across very different communications, including healthcare professional emails, clinical campaigns, webinar invitations, social media content, lead-management emails and information for people living with diabetes.
Before writing a word, we looked at the audience.
For healthcare professionals, that meant understanding practical objections such as time pressures, implementation complexity, funding, patient compliance and uncertainty around outcomes. It also meant understanding what motivated them: better patient outcomes, more efficient care, reduced workloads and access to useful real-time data.
For people living with diabetes, the concerns were different. Ease of use, lifestyle impact, access to funding and the day-to-day burden of managing their condition all influenced how the message needed to be framed.
Participants were asked to identify three motivations, three objections and three things the audience genuinely wanted to hear before rewriting the copy they had brought with them.
That exercise sounds simple.
It is also where a surprising amount of marketing copy falls apart.
Teams often know everything about the product but have not stopped to consider the conversation already taking place inside the reader’s head.
From features to value
Once the audience is clear, we move into techniques that help teams make their copy more benefit-led and commercially effective.
The So what? test is one of the most useful.
Every time a product feature or fact appears, we ask: so what does this mean for the reader?
A system that provides real-time glucose readings is a feature.
Helping healthcare professionals make quicker decisions and reducing the risk of dangerous blood sugar levels is the benefit.
The FAB framework takes this further by separating the feature, advantage and benefit. It helps writers move away from simply describing what something does and towards explaining why anybody should care.
We also use the X, Y, Z formula to create focused lead messages:
We help X do Y by Z.
Who are you helping?
What are they trying to achieve or overcome?
How does your solution help them do it?
In the Medtronic workshop, this thinking helped reduce a long, technically accurate proposition into a much clearer lead message:
Automating insulin control to improve diabetes care.
The full explanation can follow.
But first, the reader needs one ball they can catch.
A practical persuasive copywriting toolkit
The second half of the workshop focuses on techniques that make the writing itself clearer, more engaging and more persuasive.
We look at the power of addressing the reader as you, shifting the emphasis away from the organisation and towards what the audience will gain.
We explore the rule of three, which can make information easier to process and remember.
We examine sentence rhythm, using a mixture of short and long sentences to create energy, emphasis and pace.
We replace corporate vocabulary with familiar words, while recognising that specialist terminology is sometimes essential when speaking to an expert audience.
We use the inverted pyramid to put the most important information first.
Then we move into more overt persuasion techniques: emotion, repetition, promises, temptation, pratfalling and stronger calls to action.
These are not tricks to manipulate people. They are established ways of making an argument clearer, more memorable and more likely to prompt a response.
The workshop repeatedly moves between explanation and action. Participants take the copy they have brought, apply a technique, compare the difference and decide whether it genuinely improves the communication.
By the end of the day, the theory has been used rather than merely heard.
Tone of voice workshops that help teams apply a brand
I also run workshops designed to help internal teams and agency partners understand and apply a new brand tone of voice.
For The AA, I helped deliver a series of interactive sessions at Elmwood’s London offices. The attendees included internal teams writing B2B and B2C communications, alongside agency partners working across areas such as social media and direct marketing.
The challenge was not simply to introduce four tone of voice principles and hope everybody remembered them.
The sessions explained why the voice needed to change, how it supported The AA’s wider Always Ahead positioning and how it should flex depending on the audience, channel and task while still feeling like one recognisable brand.
The workshop combined examples, discussion and practical exercises.
Participants explored the difference between content and tone, considered why verbal identity matters, tested the new principles and rewrote communications using the Always Ahead approach.
This was particularly important for a business operating across consumer, B2B and regulated communications. The writing needed greater energy and relevance, but it also needed to remain clear, reassuring and credible.
Good tone of voice training gives people confidence rather than making them afraid of using the wrong adjective.
Helping teams work better with AI
AI has made this kind of copywriting training more important, not less.
A large language model can produce options quickly. It can summarise information, imitate structures and help a team get beyond the blank page.
But it does not remove the need for judgement.
Somebody still needs to spot when the lead message is buried, when the copy is too focused on features, when the tone feels generic or when a call to action lacks any reason to act.
My AI copywriting training for marketing teams is therefore not about teaching people to compete with technology. It is about helping them direct it, question it and improve what it produces.
The more copy your team can generate, the more important it becomes to know what effective copy looks like.
Workshops shaped around your organisation
I have delivered copywriting, persuasion and tone of voice workshops for organisations including The AA, Stagecoach, Philips, Pandora and Medtronic, as well as universities in England and the Netherlands.
The format can be adapted around your needs.
It might be an intensive full-day persuasive copywriting workshop, a tone of voice rollout for internal teams and partner agencies, or a focused session helping marketers improve benefit-led, sales-focused and conversion copywriting.
The techniques are practical.
The examples are relevant.
And the learning is applied to the work your team needs to produce when they return to their desks.
The result should be clearer copy, stronger judgement and a marketing team more confident in its ability to persuade, whether the first draft comes from a person, an agency or an AI platform.
To discuss a Persuasion and Response Copywriting Workshop for your internal marketing team, get in touch.
Bring your briefs. Bring your laptops.
And bring the copy that has been bothering you.