Fractional copy, messaging & brand voice support
The copy and messaging duo that becomes part of your team.
We know that when you’re moving fast, there’s always copy that needs doing. We work with a handful of brands to make sure everything they publish does their brand justice. (Plus, we’re around for all those “hey, does this sound right?” Slack messages at 4:38pm.)
Two copywriters in your corner. (And your Slack.)
When you're growing fast with a small team, keeping copy consistent is hard. New launches, new channels, AI giving you meh copy... it starts to feel all over the place. Fractional is how we fix that. We quickly become part of your team, live in your Slack threads, and make sure everything that goes out sounds like you.
Direct access to us
No juniors. No account managers. Just direct access to the two of us in Slack to kick ideas around, jump on things fast, and help you make sure every bit of copy that goes live does your brand justice.
Part of your team
Send us briefs, half-formed ideas, scrappy Notion docs... whatever you've got and we'll get to work. We'll also keep an eye on everything that's live for updates and improvements as we grow.
PDPs, emails, decks... done
PDPs, emails, flows, decks, campaigns... whatever needs copy next, we'll get it done. We dig into your customer reviews, your competitors and what's already working, so everything we write sounds unmistakably like you & is rooted in what your customers actually respond to.
Ready for design & dev
Even the best copy doesn't work if it never sees the light of day. That's why we write as much as we can directly in Figma or Klaviyo, so it's ready for your designer or dev to run with straight away. And we're always happy to jump on a call with your designer or dev too.
Client revenue increase after a 4-week messaging, voice and copy sprint.
Number of clients worked with since 2012.
One client grew from £5.6M to over £28M YoY after a messaging & copy overhaul.
Another client grew their annual revenue by almost 400% after a 4-week sprint.
Keep your messaging tight while you scale
The one thing we hear the most is that the best part of fractional isn't just the output: it's having two people who genuinely care about your brand on-call. We're in your Slack, across your launches, reading your customer reviews. We learn your brand inside out and do everything we can to feel like part of your team rather than a supplier you check in with once a month.
And having that shorthand is how the good stuff happens. You can send us a messy voice note and we'll send back a ready-to-publish PDP. You say "we need a retail deck" and we know what needs saying without you having to explain. You say "this copy we wrote last year doesn't feel right" and we'll know exactly how to fix it.
(We call this the hive mind. When it feels like everyone is having the same ideas at the same time.)
On-call support
5 days a month of on-call copy, messaging & brand voice support.
There's always a launch coming, a page that needs updating, an email that needs to go out by Thursday.
This is for brands that always have something on the go and want two people who can just pick it up, do it properly, get it ready to go live quickly, and make sure it sounds unmistakably like them every time.
Fractional support
10 days a month of fractional copywriting, messaging and brand voice support.
For brands that are growing fast and need copy that keeps up. We're across everything: the big strategic stuff, the day-to-day copy, the brand voice. You've got two people who are on it: thinking about your copy, sweating the details and spotting things before you have to.
“An absolute game-changer…
transformational for us as a brand.”
Let's see if we're a good fit
Before we talk briefs and budgets, we just want to see if we get on. Fractional is a proper ongoing relationship, so the fit matters as much as the work
Grab 30 minutes with us whenever suits you.
We'll get into your brand, what you're trying to do, and whether we're the right people to help. And you'll get a pretty good sense of whether you want us in your Slack every day.
Book a call or drop an email to hello@dowordsgood.com
Trusted by brands like...
Get to know the brothers you're inviting into your Slack
Choosing the right people to work with isn't just about skills or track record. It's a vibe thing. Are they easy to work with? Do they get your brand without a 40-page brief? Are they egomaniacs? Do they say "synergies"?
For what it's worth: We think (and we've been told) that we're easy to work with. We get under the skin of brands fast, and we'll shape our process around yours, not the other way round. Whether we're doing a one-day Punch Up or embedded as your fractional copy team, we try to feel in-house from the off.
Oh, and we’ll never, ever, ever say synergies.
JACK
BARCLAY
Older brother. Obsessed with brand voice. Has genuinely rewritten a headline 103 times before we sent it over.
When I’m not at my desk: pretending I’m Carmy from The Bear, searching for wild mushrooms with the kids, or working on the home renovation with an AF brewski in hand.
JOE
KARAALI-BARCLAY
Younger brother. Former solo marketer for an ecomm brand. Feels like the walls are closing in if he doesn’t have a process and a system.
When I’m not at my desk: updating my Strava, puppy training, trekking out to craft breweries, or rewatching Mad Men under the banner of “professional development”.
FAQs
What’s the difference between On-call and Fractional support?
Yeah, it’s a good question. Ultimately, it’s about how much support you need and, by extension, what kind of role you want us to play.
On-call is more for teams that need copy on an ongoing basis, but aren’t at that “we need a full time copywriter” stage yet. Think everything from “can you sanity check this email before it goes out?” to reworking PDPs, emails, etc… month after month.
Fractional is twice as many hours deeper, ongoing ownership of messaging, brand voice, etc…. Think more thinking time, more copy going out and two senior copywriters proactively owning your messaging and copy on all fronts. (Like having two heads of copy.)
How does working together actually work day-to-day?
Great question. So, when you start fractional support, we’ll set up a shared Slack channel and add you to our client portal.
Slack can be used for anything from hitting us up with a question to jumping on a huddle to briefing in small tasks, but your client portal is where we’ll add tasks, track progress, store feedback, etc…
Oh, and we’ll work in your tools where possible (Klaviyo, Figma, CMS) so you’re not stuck copy-pasting from a Word doc like it’s 2009.
How quickly can you turn things around?
That depends on the brief, but the whole point of fractional is momentum.
We’ll get to work on your projects as a priority and get you a draft to review fast.
Do you just write copy, or do you help with the strategy too?
Oh, definitely strategy too. We see copy as your brand strategy in words, and we try not to write a word until we’ve done the deeper, more strategic thinking.
(Because that’s how you end up with copy that sounds nice but doesn’t really reflect your brand or grow with you as you grow.)
TLDR: we’ll help you figure out what to say, who you’re saying it to, and what needs to be true for someone to buy… then we’ll write the copy.
Do you use AI at all?
Ah, this is the big question, isn’t it? Yes, we do use AI but almost entirely only for the boring bits.
(We use it to organise our research, run sentiment analysis on customer reviews, double-check trends and studies, etc…)
Occasionally, we’ll use it to explore new angles or to speed up our own process for writing low-impact batch work (like product descriptions).
But all of the thinking, positioning, drafting and final writing is done by us, the old fashioned way.
So you can rest easy that we’ll never send you anything with an em dash or a “this is not X, it’s Y” structure.
Oh! And if you’re a team that uses AI, we build every team that does a longer engagement with us with their own customGPT that writes email captions, social captions and other day-to-day copy in their voice.
Which one is the better copywriter?
Our lawyers have advised us to say “no comment”. And considering games of FIFA used to end in thrown controllers and getting separated, that’s probably for the best.
Will you feel like part of our team, or like “external agency people”?
While we’re more than happy to be hired guns, we absolutely love teaming up with brands where we feel like part of the team.
So, in other words, whatever works for you. But we much prefer becoming part of the team. (And we think the work is better for it, too.)
Do you join calls and standups?
Oh yeah, 100%. We’re happy to do a regular check-ins (and jump on calls for launches / handovers / stakeholder wrangling), but we’re also very pro async too.
Can you work with our existing brand voice?
100%. If you’ve already got a voice, we can write it that voice from day one.
And, as you grow, we can help you update it so it never feels restrictive or like you’re outgrowing it.
If you don’t have a brand voice yet, we can help you put one together as part of our monthly tasks.
What if we’ve got a launch coming up and everything’s urgent?
There’s always going to be months where you’re swamped and everything is urgent. We get that.
In times like that, proactive communication helps us allocate hours to jump in and help out.
(Plus, while we can’t bend time, we’re pretty good at triaging and getting shit done. We’re also cool with you “borrowing” hours from the following month too.)
Is there a minimum term?
There’s a 3-month minimum commitment.
That’s because fractional is more like hiring a team member than outsourcing a task.
And that means that the first few weeks are about getting properly embedded with your team, learning your product, your customers, your data, and how your team works.
By month three, everything has usually compounded and we feel like part of your team.
At the end of month 3, you’ll be able to let us know if you want to continue fractional support, no pressure.
If you’re not sure Fractional is right for you right now, a Punch Up or Sprint is a great “try us” entry point first.
Can you write everything for us? (Product descriptions, blogs, socials…)
We can definitely help with a lot, but we’re not a content mill.
Fractional works best when we’re focused on the stuff that moves the needle: messaging, conversion journeys, launches, key pages, emails, retail decks.
Blog content doesn’t usually fit into that bucket. (But we have been known to do it on occasion if people ask nicely. So yeah, pretty much everything.)
Can we pay by card? Or split the invoices?
Yes, 100%. We know that cashflow is a tricksy beast.
So we accept corporate cards (including Amex), and if you need to split billing out over up to 4 months, it’s no biggy. (No fees or anything like that. Just let us know and we’ll divvy it up.)