Whether small or large and bloated, your company is going to need to get into the marketing content game, especially when, according to Hubspot,
- 96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders.
- 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
- B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost 3X more traffic than those blogging 0-1 times per month.
With a reality like that you need to be producing content. But if you’ve ever tried, you know creating good marketing content is not as simple as assigning an intern to the task.
So just hire somebody. Duh, you say, but there a few challenges with that. You can actually screw up your own chances of getting a producer to give you her best when you insist on:
Speaking business-book-ese
Hiding your strategy map
Editing like a professor
Writing for your writer
Skipping cloud tools (Google Docs)
So let’s help you avoid these traps.
Speaking business-book-ese
“Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.”
– Warren Bennis
The most interesting about this flub is it is an honest attempt at being an evolved human being.
As a writer, here’s what happens: you attend a client meeting in order to kick off your project. You want specifics on the client’s views, faux pas, and guidelines.
However, they have read the latest business books and probably even attended some interesting courses on collaboration and creativity. So the meeting gets packed with phrases like:
“We want you to have the freedom to…”
“When it comes to…we’re flexible…”
“We’re in this…together….”
As a writer, you’re getting really pumped, thinking to yourself, “Golly, these folks really want me to spread my wings and fly”—only to find out later they’d rather clip them.
You, as a writer, are then caught off guard by the comments like:
“This is not in keeping with our style standards.”
“We expected…precisely…”
“While working with our firm, we expect…”
In a world obsessed with messages about “compassionate CEOs,” “wisdom of crowds,” and “authenticity,” there can be a tendency to think we, as a global business culture, have arrived at this place where speaking from the heart matters more than Legal. It doesn’t. We haven’t.
Want to know what never goes out of style? Clear and specific communication.
If you know Legal or Operations gets their undies in a twist with every new marketing piece produced, then make it clear to the producer you’re working with.
Better to have them cautious on the project’s front end and ease up in time then to have start relaxed only to become restrained.
Hiding your strategy map
“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.”
-Mike Tyson
Every piece of content is not created equally, each one best serves a specific reader (or buyer) at a certain stage in the buyer process. Anyone producing your marketing content should be able to peek at your map on this.
It makes a difference. Depending on who the piece is speaking to and their place in the buyer’s journey, your messaging would have to change in levels of specificity (concerning the mention of your product in the content).
- When people are in the awareness phase and a bit unsure about why they’re in pain, it doesn’t make sense to whack them on the head with the latest features of your company’s new hit product The Whamo 5000. They don’t even know they have a problem yet.
- When people are in the consideration phase and have just gotten some clarity—meaning, they know what the problem is—it still doesn’t make sense to tout the many ways the Whamo 5000 can also work better, faster, and cheaper than the competition.
Just because you’re hungry doesn’t mean you’re ready to sign-up for a French Cooking Class. Likewise, just because problems become clear for your potential customers doesn’t mean they’re ready to pull the trigger yet.
- It’s only when people are in the decision phase, when:
- They know they have a problem.
- They specifically know what the problem is and how to solve it.
- Now they are ready to decide on the right solution.
When you can talk about Whamo 5000, how awesome it is, and its many remarkable qualities. At the point of decision, talking with buyers that way makes sense for their current phase of the buyer journey.
Editing like a professor
“I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.”
– David Ogilvy
Oxford comma or not?
Healthcare or health care
Periods at the end of bullets
These are important, because they can disrupt your branding, and something you can easily take care of in your content style guide. The problem comes when company men and women take it upon themselves to correct innocuous parts of a message.
Thing like:
Can’t versus cannot
Using confusion versus chaos
These are less matters of brand and clarity and more matters of personal preference.
Writing for your writer
“Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.”
-Eric Sevareid
This one is fairly simple. Here’s a short story from Evernote CEO and Co-founder Phil Libin:
When I was just getting started as a CEO, I had a stupid way of thinking about employees. I thought that I was pretty good at doing a large number of things and I could do most of my employees’ jobs better than they could…
So I woke up. And I made a new rule.
Everyone who reports to me has to be much better at doing his or her job than I could ever be…This is a great way to manage, and it reduces a lot of stress.
If you went to the trouble of hiring this person to produce your marketing materials, it behooves you to let them do that.
This may seem common knowledge but every project seems to have one failed writer in it who cuts out entire sections of text, only to rewrite it in their own words.
You don’t have to be a writer–that’s the joy of bringing on one to offload some of your marketing materials. Learn to embrace delegation and enjoying being more hands-off for once.
Skipping cloud tools like Google Docs
“fear of change
is like standing under a hot shower
and knowing the moment you’ll turn it off
you’ll be freezing cold”
― Erik Tanghe
I was working with an advertising agency when I was first introduced to Google Docs, the Big G’s word processing cloud solution. I had no idea why they wanted to me to use this fancy thing and why people who did seemed to rave about it.
Then I learned.
How Google Docs helps with marketing content
The main reasons you’ll want to start using Google Docs for your marketing content:
- It automatically keeps track of updates
- It makes editing seamless
- It notifies you of requested changes and edits
- It removes the need for maintaining/locating files
As you get into producing lots of content pieces, it can be hard to keep track of everything: which is meant for what, who wrote it, and the necessary iterations it’ll need to go-through to stay on track until completion. With cloud tools such as Google Docs, many of these abilities are baked into the product.
Also, it really shines when it comes to editing. You get an email notification that someone has requested you make changes, then you click through to your document and proceed to accept or reject edits made by your colleague(s). Interestingly, this makes for a healthy back and forth during the content creating process.
PREPARE YOURSELF TO CREATE YOUR BEST CONTENT EVER
Surprise: we, as in the human race, are not perfect. That humble statement extends to you and your specific content producer as well. As straightforward and obvious as that sounds, many content producers, writers, project managers, and plain ol’ managers constantly forget it.
We expect our help to be tethered to their devices 24 hours a day, awaiting to execute our instructions within the second–and perfectly. This doesn’t happen.
Likewise, content producers and writers, somewhere deep inside, expect their work will be accepted like the Mona Lisa, an international treasure for the ages to behold. They imagine there won’t be a need to touchup their stuff, for it will be glorious. This doesn’t happen either.
Human processes require human solutions, which include:
- Humility
- Empathy
- Redirection
- Patience
You will have to apologize for giving incomplete (false) information at times as they will need to say sorry for missing the accurate (true) information you do send out. You will both be caught in meetings and other engagements where you would rather not respond.
But if you are both able to stay the course, powered by the melding of minds for purposes greater than yourselves, then great things can happen.
Remember these simple to follow when getting help producing content:
- Choose clear and specific information over speaking business-book-ese.
- Be clear on who you’re trying to reach and why. Stop hiding your strategy map.
- Remember clarity not editing like a professor is necessary for effective marketing.
- Writing for your writer is a misuse of his/her and your talent.
- Avoid skipping cloud tools like Google Docs to make editing and tracking document changes more seamless.