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© Benjamin Haas

As writers of content for marketing, we at Write Angle work for companies of all stripe from nascent start-ups to large publicly-held brands. How to best measure the effectiveness of this or that content invariably comes up along the way and there’s never a shortage of opinions on how to do it. Which is the most important metric — click-through, volume of readers, new site visitors, orders, revenue?  We put this question to the Linked In community recently, asking  1) what measurement methodologies do you find to be the most effective and 2) how do you rank order your content assets from most to least effective and why?

We were prompted by Contently who passed along the work by Ascend2 and Research Partners: http://contently.com/strategist/2015/04/27/the-most-effective-and-difficult-types-content-marketing-in-one-chart/ Their research examines the relative effectiveness of articles/case studies, videos, infographics, research/white papers, webinars/online events, eNewsletters, photos/illustration and news releases.

We would now like to know what you think of these findings. Yes, it’s using an awfully broad approach to determining meaningful findings. Still it raises some fundamental questions about content categories and their respective “effectiveness”, presumably in triggering new site visitors, generating new sales leads, increasing conversion rates and driving revenue.

How do do you measure the value of the content your team creates?

“Content” is a perishable.  Blame those pesky algorithms.

We live in content-marketing world. And at Write Angle we counsel clients to be wary. Why? Because marketers live in a part of this world characterized by the cat-and-mouse of search practitioners vs.search algorithms — and the creative tension it causes between SEO gurus and content writers. Just throwing “content” out there isn’t enough. It has to be be right stuff at the right time.  And it must stay fresh.

The surefire way to prosper in this world is to create and publish material that earns you a consistent place in search rankings. Today, this means the top three-to-five.  Easy to say, tough to do.  And this is where we come in because organic search is the baseline tactic for the written content of marketing campaigns.

New research from Chitika , according to Danny Flamberg of Booster Rocket, based on 300 million search impressions last May, “indicates that winning and losing at natural search is clear; you either win big or die quickly. If you don’t place among the top 3–5 positions on the search engine results page you get none of the benefits of your investment. It’s win big or go home”. (Download the complete report here.)

Boiling down the findings: you get 33% of the traffic if Google ranks you number one. Come in second and you get about half of that. Third place earns you about half again (11%). This, BTW, is the response rate of old-time direct mail!

In other words, if you don’t make page one (92% of all traffic) the maximum access you can hope to achieve is about 8% of  total search-driven traffic.

“For most marketers, rankings drive traffic; that’s the payoff,” Flamberg says. “There’s not much value in bragging rights to a position that doesn’t pay off in site traffic…it doesn’t pay to be number two.”

As content-driven rankings are key to brand awareness and lead generation, you need to put your brand’s best foot forward with refreshed content — the kind that’s regularly adjusted to changing algorithms.

Is your content driving the traffic you want? Do you keep it fresh?  Is it the right stuff at the right time?

© Edbockstoc

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.

© Alexeys

You’ll notice that there’s no shortage of “best practices” tips online today. And the guidelines for how to write/create content for websites that real people (as opposed to web-crawlers) actually read is no exception: today on Google there were nearly 78 million results. So, why are we weighing-in?  To briefly enunciate our philosophy: when it comes to what should go up your site, there is a deceptively simple tried-and-true golden rule. Less is More.

“Deceptively simple” because anyone charged with web content knows the burden on the gatekeepers who do the vetting.

The point is, whatever makes your cut must be better than ever. More compelling, more readable, more useful and stickier. Because your visitors insist. The most recent studies reveal a sharp decrease in the amount of time spent by website visitors.  It’s now less than half a minute. Not a lot of time to drone on about your product-as-hero. Or wax eloquent about your leadership and heritage. With this kind of attention deficit, everything a visiting skim-reader sees must be ultra high-return. It must instantly attract, impress and hook.

With this in mind and with so much recycled stuff out there, here is our condensed list of must-do’s as commonly practiced by the best-seller vendors:

1.  Know your reader. Exactly the same as the ancient marketing tenet of “knowing your customer” to the greatest extent possible. What do your buyers want to know about your value proposition? What were they really buying when they cut a check? Why do they turn away from one thing and lean toward another? What are those things? We are constantly amazed at how many marketers are still in the dark when it comes to reader familiarity.  It all begins right here.

2.  Put yourself where they are. See #1 above. Chances are you lean toward video and everything visual when it comes to learning and gathering information. Ditto your prospects. The national and regional news sites figured this out long ago.  Try to find one today worth its pixels that has no video or streaming on their home page, or every section  That intriguing screen capture with the arrow inviting the click is irresistible.  Use video to showcase brief product descriptions, short clips of your people sharing insights, and/or a customer or two (or five) endorsing you with a brief problem/solution testimonial. Caveat:  ALL video has the shortest shelf life of anything on your site. You have to be committed to this. Which reminds us to tell you to…

3.  Think like a baker. It’s all about freshness.  You don’t see the same, stale stuff in the pastry case while your barrista is putting the cap on your low-fat mocha every morning.  Maybe not exactly the same thing but the underlying principle is, absolutely. You make your site a destination for a larger audience when you respect the value those folks put on fresh (AKA new) information, tidbits, tips, and news they can use: precisely what people are looking for and the best way for you to rise through the rankings. Last but not least: give something away, like a free sample at a bakery.

4.  Write in chunks.  There’s a bit of controversy today about “linear” writing styles vs. the “chunky” approaches.  Linear = feature stories, magazine articles, novels.  Chunky = headline news, wire-service dispatches and police blotters.  Which category do you think a stressed-out, short-attention span customer falls into?  Chunking does three things to improve your site content: more efficient conveyance of information, helps readers speed things up to find what they’re looking for, and it presents page-to-page information more consistently which makes your site easier to navigate

5.  Ask for the order.  More honored in the breach than in the observance. What do you want your reader to do, think, say to peers, or act upon? Your call to action is right up there with your contact page as the key element(s) of your site.  Make it clear, compelling and memorable.  Above all, make it brief.

We love this description of outdated web-site content: “Archipelagos”. This should resonate with a lot of B2B marketing people.  Islands disconnected from larger land masses. If you’re like everybody else, you probably have some of your own. Call them orphans, legacies, or whatever, they amount to low-return assets begging to be re-purposed, updated, and/or overhauled. Or just trashed. They are not working as hard as they should — certainly not as hard as you. They need tending.

The operative phrase here is “low-return”. Content, after all, is an asset of value.  You want your visitors exposed to valuable, useful, high-return stuff on your web site. Everything should scream out to customers that you’re a hot company worthy of their attention and interest.  And nothing says “ordinary” faster than dated material. Or, worse, irrelevant content.  Ironically, very often a lot of these vintage pieces — case studies, podcasts, videos, white papers, et. al, — lend themselves quite well to spiffing up. The bones of a once-hot case study may well inspire a whole new generation of them. Same for videos or white papers. The key here is to stay current.  And to remember the three categories of B2B visitors: those who are in basic research mode, those who are narrowing the vendor selection and those who are on the verge of awarding a contract. Have relevant content at the ready for each stage and each state of mind.  And never forget that by the time people call you for a meeting, they’re probably 80% down the selection road already.  Something to think about.

How often do you clear the cobwebs on your site? What’s your process for ensuring your stuff is relevant to what your visitors are search for right now?

We live in an era of screen extremes. Our TVs have never been so gargantuan while we’re consuming more content than ever on screens we hold in one hand.

“If I had more time I’d have written a shorter letter” is an apt description of the quandary in which many content generators find themselves today.  Smaller screens, smaller form factors and resistance to scrolling has 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.  To get your content consumed, you have to hook the consumer.  And there’s never been so much bait in the water.  Exercise: go through your web site and try reducing it by half.

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?

Patrick May’s take on techie-speak yesterday was yet another reminder of language getting in the way of clear speaking and thinking.  The concept of “TLA” the initials for three-letter acronyms, is a long-standing techie tradition.  TLAs are used in marketing techno-speak the way Howard Cosell used to throw around multisyllabic words and ornate phrases.

But there was method to Cosell’s legendary loquaciousness (go ahead, look it up).   He was trying, and succeeding, to differentiate his brand of sportscasting from the drab uniformity of jock-speak and coach-isms.

It’s just the opposite in Silicon Valley, where so many techno-marketeers want their palaver to be consistent with what they hear in the echo chambers of their cubicles and conference rooms.  Too often, what we end up with is incomprehensible, convoluted drivel that’s counterproductive to the key process of successful marketing, namely, communication.

We have two antidotes to the brain-suffocation caused by terminal TLA.

1. Speak and write your main thoughts in plain English, a language honed over the centuries to communicate with vivid expression.  If you must use three-letter acronyms be certain that the concepts behind the words can be understood by a reasonably intelligent 12-year-old.  Think we’re overstating it?  Peter Lynch, peerless investor in the Warren Buffett league, used to say he never bought a stock whose business he couldn’t explain to his seventh-grade son — an engaging and intelligent lad, but not a child prodigy.

2. Spend less time in your cubicle and more time out in the marketplace talking to the people who buy and use your products.  Get them to describe how your offerings are making their business lives simpler, more productive, more satisfying.  How do they express themselves?

In the words of Hal Gregersen, professor of leadership at INSEAD, the solution is to leave the cocoon of an office: “Observe the people using your products and services. Pay attention. Second, network with people who don’t look, think, act, or dress like you”.  The latter may not always be easy to do in the heterogeneous zone of the Valley.  But where there’s a will there’s a way. Or,”T.A.W.” as some might put it.

Follow customers, not trends

There’s an old saying that nobody’s as gullible as a salesman afraid of missing out on a trend. We would put some marketing people into this category today.

Consider two astute observations that came our way recently. One is that you shouldn’t believe all the hype about “in-bound” (as opposed to outbound) marketing; the other says quality content on a web site always trumps search-engine optimization (SEO). You’d think that both contentions would be self-evident truths.  In practice, too many marketers seem only too eager to err on the side of excess when it comes to perceived trends affecting their craft.

The dramatic rise of social marketing is the “trend” here that so many marketers seem afraid of missing out on.  Don’t get us wrong. We’re avid practitioners of all things digital but we’re in solid concurrence with Seattle-based PR exec Howie Barokas. To his way of thinking, the advent of social media has given too many marketing types, particularly when it comes to PR, a bad case of myopia about potential customers and the content aimed at them. While social media has changed the way people consume information and buy things, at the end of the day it’s just another channel. However important, it’s just another element in the mix of advertising, direct marketing, tradeshows, webinars and all the other means by which marketing content is made available.

As for the plight of the SEO-obsessed, we commend the sentiments of our colleague Efi Rodik: “People are sifting through the garbage online to find the good stuff—information that is informative, engaging, and above all, relevant. If your site is so keyword-optimized that it barely passes as English, then you’ve got a problem.”

Having responsibility for marketing content, you can never lose your focus on your end-user. We share Rodik’s view that customers looking for information or resources on the web will always want content that’s easy to read and understand. “If you’re pounding your keyword,” he says, “rather than focusing on providing useful, compelling information, then you’ll lose a conversion, your bounce rate will go up, and your ranking on your search-engine results page will suffer”.

It’s been almost ten years since our partner organization, Chasm Group, crafted the message (content) handbook for Citrix.

As a so-called living document the handbook has been through a number of revisions during this time, most often during  launches of major strategic initiatives. But its form and purpose remain the same: to help everyone associated with the brand clearly understand and consistently articulate who the company is, what it is they do and the value this delivers to customers.

Structure of the Citrix messaging bible is classic. It’s a useful model for many brands. It begins with a simple overview and setting of the context in a crisp executive-summary format.  In two pages, it describes what’s happening to the company message, including a very brief recapitulation of what’s gone before, and what’s taking place now–and why this is important.  Two sections that follow explain the basic messaging principles and the brand values, or promises implied by the product offerings.  The remainder of the handbook amounts to a detailed guide within the guide: it explains how to put to the message to work in live situations with customers and prospects, including real case examples and specific use-case benefits.  These tools include everything from the elevator pitch for each product through the detailed product benefits right up to what must be eliminated from current messaging and customer conversations.

In the same vein, our client McAfee carefully fortifies its messaging guides with a style-guide plus a yearly writers workshop that presents “how-to” guidelines and reminders about the form and spirit of McAfee content.  Here, content creators from one end of the company to the other are reminded that over-promising or breaking faith with the brand is a slippery slope. Protection of the brand, what it is and is not, should always be the primary mission of the content creator.

While a messaging handbook should not be confused with a style guide, the objectives of these workhorse documents share much in common.  They encourage and promote consistency of the brand.  They are key tools in amplifying and strengthening all company messages and marketing content.  They enable creation of the fingerprint or ID of the company.  No mystery why you rarely hear the complaint that “our message is too confused” or “We’re just not getting our message across” from organizations that make the effort to formalize such guidelines and insist on adherence to them.

How do you ensure content efficacy and consistency? How does your team work to encourage fidelity to your brand?  What else can you be doing?