Writing great marketing content is damned hard work

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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.

 

Why more face-time with writers and content creators is more useful than you might think

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Would in-house technology product and marketing teams benefit if they met more often, in person, with the writers/creators of their product marketing content? It’s a given that the writing/creating team would. But to our way of thinking it’s a two-way deal. And let’s face it, face-time’s been a big deal in the news lately.

The more familiar that writers can become with the insights and knowledge residing in the heads of their clients, the more clarity and understanding they can gain. Likewise, when the in-house team living so close to the trees, so to speak, can hear more questions and observations from third parties more frequently, they can’t help but get a better understanding of the forest by seeing it from a new, or at least a different, perspective. They can also gain more understanding of the marketing and sales point of view from the outside in.

It’s hardly an argument that all content utilized in the marketing and selling process must be as compelling and engaging as it is comprehensive. Content that is wooden, formulaic and indistinguishable from competitors’ propaganda falls flat in a short-attention-span marketplace. Conversely, content informed by an outside-in point of view stands a far better chance of standing out from the crowd and building the brand as customer-friendly, customer-centric.

Do your content creators get to mix with your in-house teams on a regular basis or are they limited to the perfunctory “sourcing sessions”? We understand the value of time, of course,  but might an investment in more face-time and F2F interchange pay off, too?  Is it feasible to explore commonality of interest here? How often do your in-house folks shmooze with the outside team?

 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 writing and content-creation agency for the I.T. industry.

Five reasons why marketing-phobic start-ups usually suck

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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.

Smaller screens call for shorter B2B content

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This post first 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.

To get your online content consumed, you have to hook your visitor.  Problem is, there’s never been so much bait in the water.  Exercise: go through your website and try cutting it in half. Yes, half.

“If I had more time I’d have written a shorter letter” is an apt description of the quandary in which many B2B marketers find themselves today.  Smaller screens, smaller form factors and resistance to scrolling have made the creation of content that compels reader action a thornier challenge.  You have to grab attention faster, hold it tighter and compel action more irresistibly today in the at-a-glance state of mind that characterizes your busy, distracted target audience.

Making fewer words say more is the order of the day. This calls for instincts and aptitude long associated with creators of billboard copy and “transit ads” — what you see on (and in) buses and the roofs of some taxis.  This is where messages have always had the toughest job.  They had to say it all in a very few words, almost instantaneously.  The lesson here is to pay attention to the really great billboards out there.  The ones that convey so much in so little verbiage.  They’re useful models not only for informing your mobile web pages but inspiring all your marketing content no matter where it lives.

The cut-in-half exercise: Were you able to do it? What did you delete?  Is it more readable, more informative, more compelling?  What can you do to stay short(er) and sweet(er) online today?

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

Best practices for your B2B website content

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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.

Fred Hoar and the timeless lessons of success in Silicon Valley

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Hard to believe it’s been nine years and a few months since Fred Hoar died. 

For newbies in the tech biz, during the formative years of Silicon Valley Fred was the dean of All Things Marketing.  The Toastmaster of High-Tech. And he wore this mantle like a suit of shining armor almost from the time he migrated here during the Vietnam ’60s to be the voice of Fairchild Semiconductor, the seminal force in just about All Things Silicon.  Prior to this he’d worked in mid-town Manhattan during the Mad Men ’50s and early ’60s, applying advertising and PR to RCA (that’s the Radio Corporation of America, for you Millennials — um, look it up) overlooking Rock Center.

I had the honor of delivering remarks at his memorial service, to an SRO crowd in a large church in Palo Alto on a sunny but sad winter’s afternoon.  While the end had not come suddenly, the kick-in-gut news was still a shock, especially for the many of us who’d worked for him at one of his many stops along a glittering career path in Santa Clara County, from Fairchild’s tilt-up in Mountain View to his lectern at Santa Clara University where he regaled eager graduate students right to the end.

Another tribute to his force-of-nature personality and charm: how often so many of us recall his homilies and observations. And what more could a teacher/mentor hope for than to have his apprentices so fondly remember the advice, insights and admonitions of the Master?

Thought of him again recently at this year’s RSA show.  Fred liked these bustling events and made no bones about it, unlike many of us who pretend to dread them even as we sign off on the purchase orders that seem to grow chubbier every year, in any economy. Sometimes I think everything I learned about how to survive and prosper in the Valley I absorbed from my Apple years under Fred — and listening to him for years thereafter.  And what I’m reminded of at an event like RSA, is that that the more things change in this business the more they stay the same. Of course, the techniques of “global communications” may be radically different than Fred’s day — the prominence of social marketing comes quickly to mind — but the basics of value propositions and holding peoples’ interest remain the same. The most obvious differences are superficial: people don’t line up for phones anymore they continually stare into the ones in their hands. Far fewer coats and ties, way more denim. And women’s fashion has, thankfully, lost the shoulder pads. The booths are sleeker and convey more at-a-glance information (necessary for the ADD that’s a universal in business today).  But those marketers who rise above the pack still practice what Fred preached: keep it simple, memorable and worth peoples’ time.  No one was ever bored into buying anything. People never pay real attention to “marketing”, they’ll always pay attention to “interesting”.  Thanks, Freddy.

 

When he’s not ranting on this site, Stan DeVaughn holds forth along with comrade-in-communication Peter Davé on The Write Stuff, the blog of Silicon Valley’s premiere technology content-creation agency Write Angle, where IT vendors go for written content that drives revenue.

The first step toward making your B2B marketing content drive revenue

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This post appeared today on The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle — Silicon Valley’s premiere, hi-tech writing and content-creation agency.

So when an authority like Marketo weighs in on why a steady stream of great content is key to driving B2B revenue today, we’ll pay attention.

Marketo is a leader in marketing automation (MA), the software that more and more companies use today to make their marketing teams more measurable and accountable, more engaged with customers and better enabled to scale time and resources. In other words, it makes the companies that use it better at marketing and selling. And it’s been good for Marketo, and for Eloqua, to name the two biggies in MA.  Expenditures on marketing technology, according to Gartner, will exceed corporate IT budgets by 2015.

At Write Angle, we were struck by something Marketo had to say via a recent post by Heidi Bullock: “Technology is awesome, but it really is only as good as the people who implement it and manage it on a day-to-day basis. That’s why it is important to think about your team structure when putting software systems in place”.

So which member of this team was first on the team list cited by Marketo? It was the day-to-day manager of content.

No matter which member of your team is tapped for the job, the skill-set is the same: It must be someone who can conceive and create a steady stream of compelling content, from written web copy, case studies or white papers to engaging video that showcases your value proposition from all angles — and re-purposes this content across all media and platforms. Whether you have the talent on hand for this key task, or choose to outsource to a content writing service, the overarching need for marketing content in today’s content-marketing world is clear.  The question is: How clear is your content today and how do you know for sure?

Easy ways to boost visibility of your B2B marketing content

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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.)

 

Does your website say good things about you?

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If lame marketing content is such a serious disadvantage why is there so much of it on so many high-tech websites? No early-stage company thinks of itself as a sub-par marketer.  But this is what’s conveyed by many high-tech websites with vague or overblown claims and unclear messages indistinguishable from the competition.

And it makes no difference if it’s a mature brand or an upstart in an established category or an early-stage outfit struggling to establish leadership in a new one. In each case, content that clearly communicates who you are and why you’re significant does three things, all of them good:

• It sets you apart from those who are less articulate and creates an air of accessibility.
• It facilitates understanding of your industry, especially a new one.
• In a new space it cements your standing as a leading exponent of the “new, new thing” whatever that happens to be.  Industry watchers and sales prospects will naturally gravitate towards you.

We were again reminded of the dearth of writing that sells in this post by New York Times best-selling author Dave Kerpen ( Likeable Business and Likeable Social Media). Self-evident and relevant as his principles may be, especially to B2B brands in technology, they are no less elusive. Clear and compelling written content will positively differentiate your messages and give you a leg up. People who write well are taken seriously more readily, he says.  Likewise for young companies striving to seriously impress prospects and opinion leaders.

In mercurial marketplaces, expressing your brand with precision and speed can represent a key competitive advantage — but only for those marketers who can see the writing on the wall. What’s your written content saying about you?

When he’s not ranting on this site, Stan DeVaughn can be found holding forth on The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle, Silicon Valley’s premiere content creation and writing agency for I.T. and other technology categories.