Writing great marketing content is damned hard work

© Alphaspiri

 

It used to really fry my first boss, an award-winning copywriter, to hear some bozo say “how fun it must be to just sit around and write all day.” Yes, there were people who actually said this. Anyone who’s ever written for a living can relate to the irritation. Good writing, or creating good content, or whatever you want to call it, is damned hard work. There’s just no other way to put it. Especially for those who take the craft seriously and seek to commit acts of literature even when it is “just website content”. The quotations are used advisedly because website content that compels busy, distracted people to take the action you want them to take involves thoughtful insights expressed in appealing ways. No easy task. Ask the people whose words got you to click on those call-to-action buttons once you got there.

Words and images that prompt the desired action is the essence of marketing: you must pinpoint your target market, understand the needs of the right buyer and package a deliverable product or service at the right time. All of this implies deep knowledge of your buyer, customer or user. It’s the offshoot of clear thinking.

Muddy writing is the product of muddy thinking. You have only to read the techno-speak and gobbledygook blathered and written, often in emails, in the typical corporate office today, even by those who should know better, in companies of all shapes and sizes: the acronyms, the language inflation and the use of nouns as verbs and verbs as nouns, as in, “We have to watch our spend this quarter”. (Presumably, you’re also paying attention to expenses.) Or, “We need to effort this, immediately”.  (Whatever “this” may be, let’s hope we do it, too.) And don’t even get me started on sports-speak. When I hear people who don’t know a left hook from a right cross talk about “punching above our weight” I want to punch them. Or when they allude to the “two-minute play” when they probably mean “two-minute offense”.

Full disclosure: If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter post.

 When he’s not ranting on this site, you can read Stan DeVaughn and his comrade-in-communications, Peter Davé, on The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle, Silicon Valley’s premiere writing and content-creation agency for the I.T. industry.

 

Buyers of expensive IT security ask why they’re still insecure

© Alexskopje

This is an edited version of a post that appeared in The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle — Silicon Valley’s premiere creators and writers of technology content for the I.T. industry.

We do a lot of work for IT security clients and the numbers they share with us about attacks and monetary losses numb the brain. The money spent by corporate America to maintain some semblance of protection and to fend off cyber attacks is astronomical. If you’re reading this, you know what we mean. Still, the attacks and the cost of defending yourself grow unabated. What’s going on here?

One of these clients who does big work for big brands told us recently that a perception of low return on their security dollar has created a growing, board-level frustration and alarm within these companies.  “They question the ROI on the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in IT defenses and they have every right to be pissed,” he said. Of course, our clients have a vested interest in encouraging the upgrade of aging defenses so easily overcome by wily, super-smart and well-financed cyber-criminals today.

Computer security is a multi-billion industry employing some of the most brilliant technologists in the world.  They labor relentlessly to stay a step ahead of the bad guys who, just like terrorists, only have to be successful once, while techno-sleuths and defenders must succeed 100% of the time.  Yet, even in the breaches that merit the bigget headlines, most of the time the crooks used ridiculously simple methods to break in.  In other words, many organizations are overlooking basic precautions even as their security systems grow more complex and expensive.  Just like street crime,  bad guys preyed on victims of opportunity.

Like muggers, Cyber-attackers scan for companies who may not be properly utilizing the defenses they have or whose passwords fail the tough-to-guess test. To us in the business of marketing some truly amazing preventive technology, this is an eye-opener.  Here’s hoping they can open more corporate-security eyes as well.  The chain around the company’s digital assets is only as strong as the weakest link. And the bad guys go straight to it.

 When Stan DeVaughn is not ranting on this site, you can read him and his comrade-in-communications, Peter Davé, on The Write Stuff.

Five reasons why marketing-phobic start-ups usually suck

© Rtrembly

We chuckled when we read this piece in Forbes describing why start-ups are reputed for their aversion to marketing.  Not that we find marketing or entrepreneurs especially amusing.  It just seems odd to us, in an age bristling with new tools and techniques to quantify such things, we still hear “wanna-preneurs” whining about their inability to measure the marketing function.  Hello? With folks like Eloqua and Marketo so visible and prominent, not to mention the abundance of so many online choices for determining if and how your marketing efforts are working out, the old fears about wasting-half-your-money-but-not-sure-which-half should seem archaic, right?  Apparently not to everyone.  Here’s a brief summary of the alleged fears, and our responses:

1.  Start-ups don’t understand it.  Only the business-challenged ones. The best and brightest young entrepreneurs share this in common with their seasoned elders: they “get” marketing.  They know that a company eschewing it will very likely struggle to acquire customers in the necessary volumes.   Or, as we like to say, marketing doesn’t start with a product, it starts with a customer.

2. It costs money.  So does everything else that adds value.  For that matter, useful things are rarely cheap. What did you go to all those meetings with VCs and angels for, their bottled water and coffee? We know damn few investors who are shelling out good money to striplings and greenhorns who’ve not cut their teeth on product launches, rollouts, roadshows and all the “marketing” that those efforts entail. Yes, all this is marketing.  Knowing what people place value upon is marketing. Understanding the difference between a real value proposition and hyped elevator pitch is marketing. One more thing: there’s a lot fizz out there about how to get “free” marketing or publicity and how to make people basically work for nothing besides the pleasure of associating with you.  We say this: the old adage about getting what one pays for is as true today as it was when it was coined. Pun intended. BTW, here’s the real-world definition 0f a value proposition: it’s the dollar difference between the value assigned by the customer to the product’s benefits minus the sum of the product’s price + adoption cost.  The bigger the remainder after the subtraction, the more compelling the value.

3. They don’t see it as a priority. See #1 above. Serial entrepreneur Joel Gascoigne’s thoughts express ours precisely. “I think a very valid fear when starting to consider marketing a start-up is that you only get one chance with people you reach. The idea that someone will make their final decision based on their first impression is very believable. We’ve found out this is far from the case…I believe that what feels like ‘too early’ is in fact a great time to start marketing. Most people have probably delayed much longer than they should”.

4. It’s hard to measure success.  In fact, it’s never been easier. There’s an entire category of software (SaaS) that analyzes your outreach, lead-volume, targeting efficiency, lead nurturing, close rate, time to close, cost-per-close, and revenue-per-new customer — to name just a few metrics — that’s being utilized like crazy today. By start-ups. Gartner expects this category to outgrow  I.T. budgets in another two years.

5. Not knowing whom to hire. A start-up would be wise to outsource some functions, depending on expertise level of the founding team.  As far as vetting, it’s no different from any hiring process. You look for domain expertise, certainly, but savvy (and significant accomplishments) in the specific function you want, e.g., PR, web development, content creation, and social media, in our opinion, trumps technical credentials. Be diligent about reference checking and seeing recent work samples.  Finally you want someone you’d be comfortable and confident sharing a foxhole with. Because in the early going you’ll be in one sooner or later, together.

Remember the old saying on the wall of the dentist’s office: “Do I have to floss all of my teeth?” “Only the ones you want to keep.”  Here’s the marketing version: “Do we have to market all of our products?”  “Just the ones you want people to buy.” 

When Stan DeVaughn is not ranting on this site, you can read him and his comrade-in-communications, Peter Davé, on The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle–Silicon Valley’s premiere technology writing and content creation agency for the I.T. industry.

Best practices for your B2B website content

© Huntz

This post first appeared in The Write Stuff – the blog of Write Angle, Silicon Valley’s premiere content creation and writing agency for the I.T. industry.

Whenever we’re assigned to write clients’ web pages we follow best practices, same as we do for all content.  What “best practices” call for on websites is not so different from other forms but the web does force the writer and editor to become a little more brutal.  Actually, it’s the audience that’s the force at work.

Customers are not interested in your product (or service), they’re interested in their problem.  They don’t care about you so much as the need they’re trying to fill or the hard facts they’re trying to gather as the basis of filling that need.  And this tells you two things:

1.  To the extent that your product or service is too much in the face of the site visitor, you increase your chances of a quicker “bounce”, or departure of this visitor.

2.  Ditto above if your content is jargon-heavy with with acronyms or industry-speak.

Except for those pages or links that are specifically tailored for existing customers, or prospects who are well down the path to a decision, you want your web content to widen the top of the funnel.  So, you’re going to score points to the degree you show an interest and expertise in the problems they have, not the fixes you offer.  Not yet, anyway.  With this in mind, product-focused content should be avoided.  Your ‘welcoming lobby’ should be a pressure-free zone to introduce the visitor to your business, same as your social-media strategy should be at all times.  It’s where you start to build trust.

Use only those words and expressions that you are certain your prospects use.  Search engines use signals throughout social media for ranking search  results.  This means that your web site is only incidental to the wider territory your prospects cover every day and in which they interact with other prospects online.  Be sure to use the words and phrases they are looking for, not the flavor-of-the-month terminology you think is cool.

When he’s not ranting on this site, Stan DeVaughn holds forth along with comrade-in-communications Peter Davé on The Write Stuff.

Easy ways to boost visibility of your B2B marketing content

© Pressureua |

This post appeared today on The Write Stuff, the blog Write Angle,  Silicon Valley’s premiere content creation and writing agency for I.T. and other technology categories.

No argument here with PR veteran Len Stein that it pays to be click-smart in a click-driven world. So what does this mean for B2B marketers tasked with creating content that sells?

Plenty. Because every company is now a publisher (as well as a merchant), marketing troops are the tip of the spear in this publish-or-perish era.  They’re charged with creating authentic content that speaks directly to the information needs of your market. As obvious as this might seem at first glance, it’s a deceptively simple prescription that all too often falls prey to what the company wants to say about itself rather than what a customer needs to hear or learn. It also calls for social media savvy that’s a must-have for your content team.

Successful marketing organizations push their content well beyond their target publications and media that now represent only one conduit among many in reaching hot prospects. Today, by proactively posting links on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere, you encourage readers to relay these links among their followers and communities via the familiar share buttons prominent on their sites.  This “network effect” increases online visibility, in some cases by orders of magnitude.  And this dramatically improves your “connection rate” with the right readers in your market category. These simple techniques help your marketing team expand the presence of your content well after it goes live.

Put these steps on your check-off list each time you’ve updated your web site, built out a new micro-site, published a strategic white paper, generated a new series of case studies, posted new video, or earned feature-treatment in key media:

• To drive optimum traffic, include keywords in every piece of content. Caveat: craft carefully to ensure you pass muster with new search algorithms — here’s where an expert outside writing service can contribute.
• Never fail to use your blog to reference all your new content . Think of yourself as a columnist.
• Promote links to your content across your communities and social media channels, including customer councils, Linked In groups and all relevant industry associations.
• Encourage your customers not to hesitate re-tweeting links.  For example, most would be only too glad to give visibility to case studies that feature them.
• See that your PR agency does all of the above vis-à-vis the communities in their own social-mediaspheres.

And continually ask yourself what more you can be doing to make your content larger than life in a click-driven world of look-alike, me-too content. What can you add to the list above?

As Big Data grows bigger, vendor differentiation grows more important

iStockphoto, scanrail

 

This post appeared today in The Write Stuff, the blog of Silicon Valley’s premiere technology writing service Write Angle.

Communicating what makes you different in the Big Data analytics market has never been more important than right now. The sheer number of exhibitors staking a claim in the Big Data bonanza at the Strata Conference underscores how quickly competition is emerging in this market.

 This week’s conference showcased a veritable Who’s Who in the industry today, including one of our clients, Glassbeam.  Distinguishing itself among the throng of Big Data players, Glassbeam develops big data applications that help companies improve their business and IT operations by intelligently extracting strategic and tactical insights from huge amounts of multi-structured machine data by way of pre-packaged applications.

 To communicate this market position, we helped Glassbeam by preparing fresh web content, creating a product-management solutions brief, a white paper on multi-structured data and a strategic case study featuring Aruba Networks.

 As the competitive landscape become further cluttered with more vendors, claims and counterclaims, credible content  that sets a vendor apart from the crowd will only grow in importance.

 

(When Stan DeVaughn isn’t ranting in this blog, he’s collaborating with Write Angle agency partner Peter Davé in a never-ending quest to purge Silicon Valley of lame marketing content. He approved this message.)

 

What your momma can teach you about writing good content

© Edbockstoc

This post originally appeared on The Write Stuff where Stan DeVaughn blogs on behalf of Write Angle, Silicon Valley’s premiere technology writing agency.

Chances are your mom was a tough customer with a sophisticated BS-detection system.  Especially when it came to shopping and sifting through manufacturers’ claims. Today’s mothers, if we are to believe the studies, are every bit as shrewd.  Difference today is that mom knows her way around the Web and how to find exactly what she wants. Hint: she goes far beyond the brand’s website to find “the friendly neighbor over the virtual fence” who can share the inside scoop on how different products compare.

In other words, today’s moms’ behavior in their marketplace is identical to that of the hardest-nosed prospects in yours. So what lessons can you as a B2B marketer draw from the most successful consumer brands when it comes to building credibility among their most skeptical customers — those prove-it-to-me moms who guard their family’s budgets with a fist as tight as any corporate controller’s?

1. Redouble your efforts to make everything you present specifically relevant and timely to the target. Successful brands understand that today’s e-customers turn first to experts and respected peers, never the brand spokespersons.  And just as moms go right to the blogosphere for tips and guidance, B2B buyers increasingly go straight to the alpha opinion leaders in their categories.

2. Try harder to instigate only those discussions about your industry and technology that the opinion makers and thought leaders want to have. This is a subtle shift from a time, not so long ago, when marketing departments and their various agencies would look for issues that a company might be able to “own”.  The trick today is to pinpoint specific hot buttons drawing the most buzz and then to weigh in with your perspective based on the experiences of your users. If your brand message is delivered in harmony with the hottest issues, over time, you enjoy the halo effect. This inspires direct conversations with more of the hottest prospects and the trials that convert to sales.  From there the credibility spreads and accelerates.

3. Constantly test your material.  A/B testing among various customer segments can reveal surprising data about user sentiments and product usage. Expose different messages that emphasize a different spin and compare the responses in terms of the activity they draw.  Then craft the next wave of content accordingly. Your mom would be proud.

Why content creators must insist that engineering delivers.

© Stelogic

 

What can the Grammys teach B2B marketers? That if you’re promising something, you’d better deliver it. There’s a simple lesson that content creators and all marketing-communicators (listen up, PR people) can learn from the way  last week’s Grammy Awards, ostensibly a tribute to Bob Marley, fell short.  And then heard about it.  We understand that engineers don’t report to marketing but the fact is that whatever is pushed and touted in the mediasphere today must be realized in the marketplace.  The penalty for failure is swift and severe as never before.

You take a certain amount of ownership when you create the content that customers and prospects consume. There’s a social contract here. And never underestimate the enforcement power of the digital culture in which those customers/prospects live. In other words, don’t get “Grammy’d”. Or, engineered. Get on the delivery track to fulfill your content’s promises — insisting on real proof points and testimony from satisfied users/beta-testers willing to speak up on your behalf. Even if they’re not in a position to testify, you’ve done diligence just by verifying.

When he’s not ranting on this blog, Stan DeVaughn can be read on The Write Stuff, along with Peter Davé. Write Angle is Silicon Valley’s premiere agency for technology writing and content creation and where the unofficial motto is Trust But Verify. At least when it comes to product claims.

Your customers want value, not a “relationship”

© Clivia

We love it when marketing myths get exposed.  So when a team of consultants at the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) revealed these results from a recent study, we were intrigued to see a couple of generally accepted marketing 2.0 truisms debunked.

CEB surveyed 7,000 people and learned that buyers really don’t want a “relationship” with brands despite what a lot of New Age marketers would have us believe. What’s more, the theory that a company can somehow build-up this mythical relationship by interacting more often with customers was also rejected. Turns out that when it comes to customer interaction, more is not necessarily better and can often be worse.

While the study focused on consumer brands, in our experience and to our way of thinking there’s a stark message here for B2B marketers: know who’s who in your own customer base — and distinguish those who may be relationship-minded vs. everyone else.

There is no linear relationship between volume of outbound messages and the elusive thing that CEB terms “share of wallet”. Interaction that may seem reasonable and even informative to some buyers will be irksome to others. Takeaway: instead of hammering all prospects and customers alike with endless messages intended to get their attention, carefully consider if the content of your message promises value to your prospects’ research in your category — or just adds to their overload.

The trick is to know exactly what your existing buyers perceived in your value proposition that was consistent with their idea of value. This enables you to flavor future content with the most relevant, like-minded ideas. It’s reality-based marketing, not mythology.

 

(This post also appeared today in The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle technology writing services)

How to Make Your Product Stories Become the Stuff of Hollywood Scripts

© Oxlock

 

We read this analysis of “storytelling” recently and were struck by the similarities to the principles that can elevate marketing content from good to really good, or even great. Yes, we’re talking about the guidelines of Hollywood screenwriters.

Before you scoff, consider that your users and customers do not read your website. At least, not necessarily.  Neither do they devour your PDFs.  In fact, they steer clear of anybody’s “marketing content”.  However, they DO read what piques and holds their interest. And this is exactly what great storytelling is and does.  See if you don’t agree how something like a case study or a customer use-case is a close cousin to a great script:

Heroes: They draw an audience like a magnet.  Especially if the “hero” is a character with whom people can relate and identify.  If it’s an underdog fighting the odds, so much the better.  Maybe a beleaguered security professional making tradeoffs between network productivity — and the possibility of compromised data.  IT folks can certainly relate to this.

Antagonist: In a security case you’d call them the bad guys but “they” can also be an abstract. Like the “before” in a before-and-after set of “before” circumstances.  An example would be the conditions that existed in a company where employees are not free to utilize their own smartphones and tablets securely.  In such cases, mobility is a myth. And productivity suffers. Or, in a different sense, there is Apple vs. Microsoft where, in Apple’s messages, we can always count on Windows, or Android, being cast as the straw man or whipping boy.

Big Moment:  AKA, the “aha” that’s the hero’s awakening to what must be done to resolve the conflict, or rectify the wrong, of the situation at hand. “What we need is an app that enables our employees to bring their own devices and stay secure and productive while they access company data wherever they roam!”

Transformation: Now comes the commercial message.  The hero wields your product or service like Luke Skywalker’s Light Saber, overcoming the problem and the odds. Mission accomplished.

Does your content attract and hold the audience you’re looking for today?  Can it work harder? How can you transform your brand’s story into a nonstop page-turner?  Do you see opportunities for your existing product line or new offerings to be dramatized in compelling stories and cases?

 

(When he’s not posting on this blog, Stan DeVaughn sees to it that technology companies place priority on customer value in their marketing content and communications.  You can also read him at The Write Stuff, the blog of technology writing service Write Angle.)