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As writers of marketing content, we at Write Angle think different. For example, we believe that content, and the professionals  who produce it, can influence product strategy to a much greater degree than most people assume.  Can’t think of a better way to honor the memory of our former colleague, Steve Jobs, who “thought different” and shared this belief.

Here’s what we mean. Lost in last week’s deluge of Jobs’ tributes was broader recognition of what really separated him from the pack for so long: his uncanny instinct for making it easier for people to do what they already enjoy doing. Jobs had an innate ability to immediately recognize what users actually wanted from products and services. Then he worked ferociously to deliver easier, better ways for them to get it.  Long before anybody touted the so-called  “product experience”, Apple was pumping out the best experiences imaginable.  The wild popularity of these products proved it.  Apple (Jobs) did not invent the personal computer, the graphical user interface, the mouse, the music player, the cell phone or the tablet computer.  But they sure as hell made each one drastically easier and more fun to use –not to mention irresistible.   Apple products are consistently cool.  How many technology offerings can claim this?

So what does all this have to do with what marketing-content creators and writers can do? Plenty. Most engineers and product marketers, especially in B2B land, are justifiably proud of what they invent and take to market.  Problem is, being so close to the device or service can create blind spots when it comes to buyers, customers and users of these inventions.  So, when the time comes to describe the offerings and differentiate them in marketing and selling efforts, it’s up to content creator — namely, the writer — to ask the penetrating questions and extract the comprehensive answers that inform this all-important differentiation.

1. What job are we are trying to make it easier for the user to get done?  What’s our stuff actually going to do for them to make their lives easier and/or more productive?

2. What core positioning statement do we want to weave throughout the content?

3. What are the distinguishing technologies/approaches that we need to cite to clearly establish competitive differentiation?

4. What tangible metrics or documented verification substantiates our claims?

5. What are the three most essential messages — the takeways — we want readers to understand?

Don’t forget that it’s never enough just to ask the right questions.  You have to know if and when you’re getting a complete answer and keep pushing until you’re there. The writer must come away with the content of a comprehensive, no-doubt-about-it answer — and then articulate it in a way that resonates with the reader.  Not simply regurgitate what was shared in the sourcing session.  In the process, the technical team — the product jocks — will have to do their own diligence and homework.  This forces the issue.  Steve Jobs knew it wasn’t so much about “knowing” his customers as much as knowing what they wanted to do — and then make it easier and less hassle for them to do it.  It’s no different in the B2B world.

So what does your team do to understand what your users are trying to accomplish with products in your category?  Equally important, does your marketing content communicate this understanding? What more can you do to ensure that it does?

Understanding your audience/readership is central to the success of any commercial publication.  Ever hear of a thriving news organization oblivious to what its audience of readers or viewers want?  In the same vein, marketers tone-deaf to the proclivities of their own market, the content that customers will pay attention to, are short-lived.  In marketing today, more than ever, quality content is defined as the kind of material to which your buyer relates and identifies with:

1.  It’s about them, not you.

2.  It describes their situations, not yours.

3.  It makes them, not your brand, most prominent in the story.

4.  It’s eminently readable and compelling: the terminology is theirs, the style is engaging, the language vivid.

5.  It informs, educates, provokes thought–and it inspires sharing.

The above, by the way, could describe the best and most shared content on the web, on any given day.  Which is exactly what we mean by the term market-alism.

What are you doing to instill these practices in your own content: web copy, white papers, case studies, etc.?   How does your team ensure that your “out-bound” efforts maximize “in-bound” inquiries and high conversions?

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.

It’s become a cliche in marketing to say that a case study is supposed to be more about about your user, not about you.  Still, reading a lot of case studies will convince you that a relatively few vendors have gotten this message.

Case studies are valuable selling tools because buyers rely on them in the purchasing process, specifically in the discovery phase of research.  What do they look for?  They want to know how people like them solved problems like the ones they want to solve.  They want to read about those people and those problems much more than read praises for any particular solutions.

Here’s a suggestion to keep your case studies honest. Review some recent samples and screen them for mentions of your company name vs. how many times the customer or user’s name was cited.  Just do a simple “Search in Document” if you’re using Word, for example.  Our own experience suggests that your user’s name should appear at least 50% more than yours.  If your name is cited 10 times, for example, the name of the user in the case should come up 15 times.  If you show up 20 times in the case, your customer should be referenced 30, and so on.  This rule-of-thumb does two things: it forces the writer to focus on the main character of the story, namely, the user.  This, in turn, makes the case study spotlight the benefits to the user in the eyes of the reader. It also makes for far more compelling reading.

How do your cases measure up?  How do you ensure that they are less about your solution and more about the problem you solved and the benefits you delivered?

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?

Case studies work. They sell. They drive people to your site. They enable you to be found online. They create interest, qualify leads, refresh content, build brand, and drive down the cost of sales.

There’s a catch, however: There are case studies and then there are self-serving, self-congratulatory loads of dreck that masquerade as “case studies”. What distinguishes the former from the latter? Clear descriptions of three things:

1. The most valuable benefit of the product or service being featured. This assumes that you understand what it is about the product that would arouse the attention (read: make somebody reach for their checkbook) of a user/customer/consumer. In other words, you know what your target customer holds dear. What they value most.

2. What it took the user in the case to adopt your product. What did he have to unplug? Undo? Buy extra? Learn? Re-learn? What was your product’s (or service’s) adoption cost?

3. The price. At very least, some order of magnitude of what your stuff costs relative to alternatives.

Those three elements constitute your value proposition. A value proposition is not an elevator pitch. It’s a quantifiable entity. And any case study that doesn’t communicate it is not worth the pixels on the screen. Your value prop is compelling only to the extent that the size of #1 (above) exceeds the sum of #2 plus #3.

Note: we understand the sensitivity of putting price information into case studies given the realities of negotiation. Just never lose sight of the fact that price is central to the customer’s definition of a value proposition. And this is only definition that counts.

Google just made a rare post to their Webmaster Central Blog. You can check it out here.

And, to ensure that the quality of everything you publish would pass Google muster as described above, here are some observations of our own:

What makes one piece of content superior to another today, especially when it comes to getting found online? According to Google, it’s nothing more or less than the quality that compels a reader to bookmark it, share it or recommend it. This means that social signals come into play to a great degree, as in social media.

Here are the questions you need to ask about everything you present to customers and prospects to ensure that your offerings are not only easy to find, but presented in the right context and contain the earmarks of authority they deserve. Note that this is what we at WriteAngle do routinely on your behalf:

1. What makes the information you’re presenting trustworthy and why would a reader recognize it as such?

2. What makes you confident that the material reflects expertise in the subject matter? Put another way, why are you confident that it would not be dismissed as shallow or thinly-veiled promotional fluff?

3. Again, in the case of website content, would you be comfortable sharing confidential information (contact, credit card, etc.)?

4. Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

5. What have you done to differentiate your content from that associated with “content farms” (e.g., are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines)?

6. Does the material provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?

7. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?

8. Why do you assume your existing customers would feel compelled to share it with their peers and associates?

These questions are our interpretations of the points Google raises in its post. We point them out because they substantiate and reaffirm our insistence that your content be well-written and obtainable exclusively from you. Your content must be your content.

Note also that Google intends to make hundreds of search-engine improvements in 2011 — more reasons to plan for identifiers that make your content unique and high-quality. These should include social-sharing buttons to prompt users to pass it along.

Nobody outside your company, except the analysts who follow you, wants to read about your product’s “success story”. What they want to read is a story about a customer, just like them, who had success. The fact that it was your product they had success with is incidental, not central, to the story.

Knowing this difference and how to craft a case study around it makes all the difference. If you want the case study you are paying good money to produce to have impact, be read, be referenced and shared, mention your product only in passing. Write about the customer’s experience: the problem, the hassles, getting the solution up and running and the happily-ever-after: how the solution solved the problem, cut costs and/or buffed revenue. In other words, write something that readers can identify and empathize with. Write to and for them. Anything less is prescription-free Ambien.