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For many years we’ve flogged the notion of the outside-in perspective and its importance to successful marketing. Essentially, putting yourself in the shoes of your customer, or the people you want as customers.  This “customer advocate” point of view is nothing new. It’s been around for as long as people have been buying and selling.

When it comes to creating the kind of content that gets people to do the things you want them to do, the point is this:  you have to talk to those people–not at them. To do this, you have to look at your subject matter through their eyes. From their POV.  Then you have to speak their language in their terminology — and sound like one of them.

This is where so much internally-produced marketing material falls short and how it devolves into fluff, assuming that people will resonate to what you think they should. It inevitably slips into company advocacy when it should be advocating on behalf of the reader.

You have to make a conscious, continuous effort to remain in their shoes.  From the inception of your concept right through final editing and delivery.  This requires fortitude and attitude.

Self-advocacy is an easy trap to fall into.  No matter how astute your marketing team may be, and we work for some of the best, when you’ve spent so much time and energy focused on your product, technology, competitors and company issues, it’s natural for your perspective to become distorted and biased towards what you’re selling. Unfortunately, this bias shows up in the way you describe it: in your terms, not the buyer’s.

Just remember: people have no intrinsic interest in what you sell. No knock on them, but the fact is that they are self-absorbed and self-interested when they’re in the discovery phase of the purchasing decision. As they should be.  So, your appeal will resonate with them only to the extent they instantly recognize–and feel–your awareness of whatever it is that interests them at that moment. This means their problem, their fears, ambitions, numbers, performance review and competitors.

If this sounds like it should be the template of your next piece of content and the platform of your message strategy, it’s because it should.  Take it from longstanding customer advocates.

In journalism and police work the five Ws — who, what, when, where and why — amount to the framework of investigation and the building blocks of a story or case. This also applies to just about any content-creation initiative you can name. The order of the questions may be different but the same regimen applies.

For example, a product launch or a major re-branding campaign might call for support materials, a web site makeover, an update to existing content and a variety of other deliverables.  Each piece will have its own objective but still be seen as part of a larger effort that should be greater than the sum of its pieces.

Making the whole exceed the sum of the parts requires a plan. Specifically, it requires asking these questions up front:

1. Why are we engaged in this effort in the first place? A product launch typically doesn’t necessitate a new web site but a re-branding would.  A major acquisition might call for something else entirely.  You may want to consider how to re-purpose existing material consistent with new messages along with creating something entirely new.

2. What is the objective or mission we want to accomplish? Giving reassurances to existing customers is not the same as acquiring new ones.  New versions of established products require descriptive material that is subtly different from the content created for an entry into a new market or an altogether new product.

3. Who is the target of this effort? An purchase influencer might respond to a very different appeal than the outreach you make to the actual buyer or the key decision maker. Once identified, “who” you are pursuing will tell you what it will take to get this target to act.

4. Where is the source material on which the content will be based?  Content creation is not the same thing as as creation of the underlying product or marketing strategy.  The content articulates the product’s benefits.  But those benefits were the outcome of rigorous efforts made earlier in a far different process.

5. When is the trigger event for delivery of the content? You may want to use the content creation process as an ingredient in preparation of the strategy – as a way to prompt ideas and new thinking. All assumptions should be challenged as a way to ensure validity and consistency with the current environment.  Best of all, it’s a good measure of how well prepared you are to embark on your initiative.  Better to know this in advance, than to find out “in real time”.

Success is based on asking the right questions at the right time. Ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers. Get the wrong answers and you mobilize the wrong effort and waste a lot of resources.

What’s your process for content creation?  How do you create and prepare source material to generate compelling marketing content?

We read last weekend’s NYT piece on computer-generated news stories with great interest (and we will quickly add that, no, this post is not being written by a machine).  The story reminded us of something we used to hear NetApp chairman Dan Warmenhoven say repeatedly to anyone who listened.  According to Warmenhoven, writing the plan isn’t so much about the the plan you end up with.  Rather, it’s largely about the process you go through to produce the plan.  What you think about, discover, debunk or become aware of as part of the diligence of the planning process can often force you re-think your strategy, tactics and even some of the fundamentals of your whole business.  This can make a huge difference.

Our experience with the process of writing white papers, case studies, speeches, or even blog posts is absolutely consistent with Warmenhoven’s observation.  The ideas and insights that can, and often do, bubble up during interviews — not to mention the reflection that happens during the editing process — provide the driving force a team may need to re-think its assumptions.  They can drive improvements to your strategy and a sharpening of tactics.  They can fortify a connection with a customer or a partner, especially during preparation of a case study.  We think of these things as being the equivalent of the “hallway conversations” you miss when your interactions are strictly via email, teleconference or webinar.   While we won’t  minimize the power and significance of machine intelligence, sometimes an “end product” includes what’s learned during production. Ask Dan Warmenhoven.

Do you see the content-generation process as way to make observations about your business or product strategy?  Do you look at producing case studies and white papers as a chance to broaden relationships with customers?

 

Is the white paper dead?  Recent studies suggest they’re not, but there’s no denying that too many of them have fallen into a zombie-like state.  Fact is too many fall short of their sales mission.  But the findings such as those by Sirius Decisions last year reveal that white papers remain primary tools for building influence.

One out of every two B2B customers in the Sirius survey considered white papers the most important source of content when it came to making purchase decisions.  Even more important than analyst reports (54% vs. 39%).  A separate study by Eccolo Media showed that 47% of purchase decision-makers considered them “extremely important” in the buying process. The unmistakable take-away:  the venerable white paper is very much alive.  Now you just need to keep yours kicking.

So what’s the difference between white papers that make customers want to know more about you and the ones that make readers quickly turn to something else?  Turns out that the principles of producing a successful paper today are no different than what it takes to create any successful initiative across all marketing and sales.  It must be carefully targeted, well crafted, optimized for social media and oriented towards a specific result.  Last year, a study by Ziff-Davis revealed that the primary purpose of white papers in the buying process was to provide information during the customer’s research-and-discovery phase.  Message: Those customers will be looking specifically at what you know and have to say about their interests, not yours.

One out of three B2B customers utilize white papers to look for new ideas and solutions. Message: keep your content fact-rich but easily digestible.  Know when and how to use infographics to make a key point, for example.

Nearly one in four readers will narrow their vendor selections with the content found in white papers. Message: spotlight what makes your solution competitively superior. To the greatest extent you can, make your comparisons measurable, quantifiable and, if at all possible, graphic so as to be very quickly understood.  Remember that your reader is at least as busy as you are.

One out of ten readers will make the vendor selection based on white paper content. Message: readers will be influenced to the extent they are convinced your solution is a rifle-shot at their problem.  So you must be intimately familiar with what this problem is. Tailor the content to the customer’s need in the terminology they use and the issues they grapple with.  Know your customer.  Understand their anxieties. If this sounds like the age-old best practices of selling and marketing, it’s because that’s exactly what it is.

At lunch the other day with a couple of serial entrepreneurs, questions came up about the optimum timing of product launches and web site debuts.  Inevitably, the conversation turned to the value of blogging.  Nobody denied the value.  There was, however, disagreement as to timing.  So when is the best time to pull the trigger on your new blog for your new company?

There are those who argue that, in the early going, time and energy should be devoted to customer- and product-development. Exclusively. That there are not enough hours in the day for everything.  We won’t argue. Still, in the web 2.0 marketplace, a few minutes a day, or even per week, during which you crystallize your thoughts and share them with your ecosystem is to our way of thinking not a bad use of time.  In fact, it can be a highly productive one. Why?  It forces you to “stand down” for a brief period and clear your head and think about things in a different way.  Yes, you can go for a walk or shoot hoops or jog or pound golf balls.  Or any number of other things that puts you into a different gear.  The thing about crafting a blog post, however, is that you can make that same shift AND get yourself published. This is no idle indulgence in vanity.  It can foment discussions that serve your larger purposes as you prepare your count-down to launch.

Almost three out of four start-ups die during their first five years.  We wonder, right along with successful entrepreneur Martin Zwilling how many of those failures had a blog.

To the extent your customers are readers today, you are a publisher.

“Marketing content” and “riveting quality” are rarely spoken in the same conversation.   Indeed the latter is typically invoked disparagingly, as in “The content isn’t exactly riveting”.  At Write Angle we’ve been at war with flat, yawn-inspiring content for years.  But this isn’t about us, it’s about you and your mission to deliver content that attracts, engages and retains visitors to your site and converts them into users and customers.  Marketing content can be more than good, it can be downright engaging, which is what you should be striving for at all times.

But there’s another quality right up there with engagement.  More is better today when it comes to getting found online and upping your rank on search engines.  And speedy delivery goes hand in hand with volume.  While “good” is good, when it comes to content good and fast is even better.  Says Kyle Monson, a former editor at PCMagazine now at JWT, “a company’s ability to speak honestly and quickly to its customers, fans, and detractors is a huge competitive advantage”.

Step one: recognize and embrace the publishing mandate of your enterprise which is the imperative of Web 2.0.  Back in late ’80s and early ’90s as technology pulled companies into the age of networks it meant that many of them were suddenly in the telecommunications business as much as the business of their category. Today, in the real-time world of Web 2.0, you’re in the publishing business.  Your customers and prospects are your audience.  How are you building, engaging and growing this audience?  How are your “ratings” right now and what can you do to improve them?

Nobody’s ever been bored into reading something.

People love good stories.  After all, it’s part of what makes us human.  And no matter if it’s a technology white paper, a product brief, a speech or a Op-Ed submission to technical journal, readers are people first. They want to be engaged on their terms, not the author’s or the vendor’s.

It’s incumbent upon the content creator to engage the consumer/reader.  No matter how compelling you believe your material is, don’t assume you have a reflexively engaged audience.  It’s not up to the reader to find a way to stay interested.  So, how to do this in an age of short time and shorter attention?

Right from the start, at the concept-stage of your project, it’s fundamental to get inside the head of the individual you envision on the receiving end.  Think about yourself as a reader or a member of an audience. What is it that grasps and holds your attention?  Of course, the subject matter has to be relevant to an issue or problem you might be dealing with at the moment but if what you read is fluff that evaporates before the end of each sentence, or so opaque and dense with jargon that you have to re-read each paragraph, chances are you’ll put it aside.  Even if it’s clearly worded, a tract that reads more like a textbook is unlikely to inspire the calls-to-action envisioned by the author.

By storytelling, we don’t mean anything touchy-feely or non-analytical.  The watchword here is “anecdotal”.  Incorporating real-life vignettes or business anecdotes gives authenticity, immediacy and texture to your content.  The reader can identify with it. We won’t argue that the objectivity of numbers and statistics don’t inject strength into any argument but the objectivity of the numbers weakens them as a communication device.  And make no mistake, you’re trying to communicate — images and ideas and opinions. You need to motivate a prospect.  Reassure a customer or partner. Capture their interest and, ideally, their imagination.  Get them to think in a new ways about familiar things.  And get them to want to read your content when you have something else to tell them.  Your objective is not just to get your content approved for publishing.  It’s to get read.

Although it’s been said many times many ways (apologies to Mel Torme), most marketing content-related projects call for answers to at least a half-dozen questions.  And all members of the team should weigh-in.  As simplistic as they may appear, questions not unlike the ones below can reveal information that makes the difference between a worthwhile end product and an endless cycle of revisions and finger-pointing:

1.  Objective: What is the purpose of the proposed document and/or web content?

2.  Target: Who is the reader?

3.  Message(s): What are the key take-aways or leave-behind messages you want to create in the reader’s mind about your company and/or its offerings?

4.  Differentiation: What are the core, competitive differentiators of your offering(s) that you want this  particular content to convey?  How do they differ from competitive offerings and what is significant about this difference?

5.  Features/Benefits: Relative to the differentiation you describe above, specify the features that make it superior and explain the corresponding benefit(s) of each.  How to they “benefit” a buyer?

6. Substantion/proof points: What evidence or field results illustrate the validity of your claims (e.g., customer testimony, metrics, competitive superiority, etc.) ?

Is this exercise part of your own preparation today? What other questions would you ask?  What did we miss?

What do customers want to know when they’re looking for solutions to problems that you purport to solve?

Whenever we’re assigned to write clients’ Web pages we follow best practices as we do for all content.  What ‘best practices’ call for in Web content 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.

We like to say that customers aren’t interested in your product (or service), they’re interested in their problem. Specifically, visitors to your site aren’t interested in 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.

As for the language you use, choose your words carefully.  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.

How do you gauge your content when it comes to driving traffic to your site?

We counted five metrics described today which are amazingly similar to the ones we consider key gauges on the web-content dashboard.  Because the world in which we now market and sell demands that we do those things that are necessary to be found online, the name of the game is to enable more and more of the people you’re interested in to find you there.  And, as study after study shows, the way you do this most cost effectively is to generate a steady stream of content intended to establish your credentials as a worthy exponent of whatever it is those people are looking for or researching.

1. To create smart, hard-working content, the kind that attracts real prospects and prompts them to take the specific actions you call for, you first have to identify the content that’s hardly working.  Expecting a different result from doing the sames thing(s) repeatedly may or may not be a definition of insanity but to us the definition of smart marketing content is anything that draws the right people to your site and entices them to take the action you want.  To begin creating it, it’s important to know about a landing page’s “bounce rate”: the amount, expressed as a percentage of the visitors who did not take the action you called for, or just abandoned your site after looking at that page.  Any landing page with a comparatively high number (compared to other landing pages) will tell you what is and is not working for you — and your visitors.

2. A landing page that gets people to do the thing(s) you want, such as request a whitepaper or e-book or provide their contacts (or all three) is said to have a high “conversion rate”.   Comparing the conversion rates among your pages is another way to weed out ineffective content or a weak call to action. Importance of landing pages is hard to overstate because this is usually the first impression you make on a visitor.  It is step one in a casual visitor’s  “conversion” to hot lead — and a sale.

3. Traffic sources reveal where your visitors are coming from when they first arrive. It’s top of the funnel where you can learn where people found out about you.  It’s the metric by which you judge your SEO efforts to see if your organic search volume increasing. “If you’ve been doing good social media promotion, then you should see a lot of referral traffic from social media sites and blogs”, says the Web consultancy Hubspot. “Every business will have their own mix of organic, referral and direct traffic, so it’s important to watch over time so that you can track how your various marketing channels are driving traffic to your website”.

4. From your site’s keywords you can determine which terms people use when they go to Google or Bing or wherever, and your site shows up.  Keywords tell you what terminology people use when they find you or when they’re researching your category. They also provide insight about the things people were thinking about when they discovered you. It’s obvious why your keyword strategy is, in a word, key.  But don’t forget to see if, and how much, traffic is being generated by words other than what you’ve been optimizing for. When you uncover them, start creating content around them.

5. Finally, there are the visitors, the actual number of unique individuals who have been to your site. An important read-out, yes, but not of primary importance. It is not a reflection of your site’s intrinsic strength of content.  Which is what you need most. You want your site to draw traffic on its own, by virtue of its content.  Some of your visitors may have influenced by off-line promotion or off-site campaigns.  Good, but not cost-effective. You want your web site to self-sustain. And this is exactly what great content enables.