Ever have the nightmare about standing in front of an audience to speak, and having no idea what to say?

Evidently that's how salespeople feel every day. To stop the nightmares, they are writing their own content, regardless of what marketing provides them. So says a survey covered on MarketingProfs this week, stating that confidence in corporate and sales message is weak. The article states:

Dissatisfaction with sales messaging is so high that many sales teams have taken matters into their own hands: Nearly three-quarters of salespeople (74%) say they rewrite messages and tools created by marketing departments at least sometimes, including 41% who rewrite collateral frequently and 10% who always do it.

The reasons are many, beginning with the age-old misalignment between Marketing and Sales. But a growing danger to marketing is commoditized content: the temptation to churn cheap content to drive a quantity (or automated marketing processes), not quality.

The sales force, in their one-on-one conversations with prospects, has specific questions to answer and objections to counter. Their answers can't be commoditized. Imagine this conversation in a sales meeting:

Prospect: Your company is the smallest and least known of the vendors on our short list. How will you convince our CEO that you'll give us the level of service we need?

Sales Rep: We are a global technology company leading how the world connects, interacts and transacts with business. Our assisted- and self-service solutions and comprehensive support services address the needs of retail, financial, travel, healthcare, hospitality, gaming, and public sector organizations in more than 100 countries." [See our Corporate Jargon Quiz for more fun.]

While marketing budgets are tight, it's tempting to churn out copy that doesn't say anything. But the result may be jargony, fluffed-up copy--or very basic stuff that a salesperson would never use.

Successful marketers will avoid the temptation. They will create content, driven by a content strategy, that answers prospects' questions--and stays in the sales representative's slide deck.

Labels: commoditized content, confusing corporate writing, content strategy, sales support

As content strategists, we stress to our clients the importance of repurposing content in all channels. This post titled "6 Things the iPad Means for B2B Marketers" by Steve Woods of Eloqua, describes the new opportunities of Apple's iPad as one of those channels. Number 3 of the 6 is particularly interesting:

Books and whitepapers become interactive: as books and whitepapers are more and more read on devices like an iPad, rich interactive aspects become increasingly possible. Embedded videos within a book, links for more detailed exploration of topics, and interactive experiences to highlight a point all become possible, allowing us to rethink the book and whitepaper formats entirely.

The iPad--and other technology that will inevitably follow--will not only provide new channels for repurposing content, it will up the ante.

There is a lot of talk surrounding the iPad's potential to revitalize print media--but not just from the economic standpoint of selling more newspapers and magazines. The iPad will revitalize the formats. The boring white paper will become a thing of the past--the interactive, fun-to-read, fun-to-play white paper will take its place.

Of course, we have had the ability to create rich media content in the web browser for a long time now. For some reason, readers have not demanded media much more rich than a PDF file for e-books and white papers. YouTube has made video a viable channel, but rich media remains rare and expensive to produce.

Will the sheer portability of the iPad change the media formats for marketers, just as the iPod changed the format for music? Are thought-leading marketing executives ready to engage their audiences in bold new ways?

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, technology, white papers

A survey by Spiceworks reveals that IT pros--key influencers in B2B buying cycles--are increasingly resistant to downloading white papers, because of the registration forms. In an interview on the Savvy B2B Marketing blog*, Jay Halberg of Spiceworks says:

Those that do share their [contact information when downloading a white paper] obviously don't mind doing so, but they DO mind a pesky vendor that calls them 10 times over the next 30 days. We also found a lot of people – more than 75% – DON'T sign up for papers requiring registration, which means the vendor is missing the opportunity to share and disseminate their knowledge.

B2B marketers are asking, "Is the White Paper Dead?" Of course not--the white paper is simply a medium for content. But what is rapidly aging the white paper as a tactic may be the over-reliance on automated marketing systems and processes--compounded by the incredible pressure on sales teams to close a deal.

I myself am wary about offering my contact information in a reg form because on several occasions, I have hit the submit button and gotten a call from a sales person trying to close me--within a minute.

If we can all relax a little bit and remember that great content is a better way to qualify prospects than registration forms. Great content helps educate prospects and lets them "self select" and raise their hand when they are ready. Prospects become buyers when it's their idea--not when they get enough phone calls and register for the webinar.

That's why B2B marketers are adapting their content strategy to thought leadership. To this end, white papers must deliver useful new information that plants the seeds of the idea to buy. Ten vendor calls in 30 days kill the seed. (Ardath Albee's post, "When Thought Leadership Isn't", and comments there, provided inspiration.)

By the way, The Content Factor's white papers are "Free Downloads." --without reg foms.

* Interview by Stephanie Tilton on the Savvy B2B Marketing blog, discovered via Dale Underwood's blog, B2B Conversations Now, which was recently aggregated in the B2B Marketing Zone.

Labels: lead generation, thought leadership, white papers

Here's #10 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #10:
Great Web content is dynamic and changing.

Your business is constantly changing. (If you were in a static industry, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog.) New opportunities are emerging. Prospects have new questions and concerns that must be addressed. So your website can’t be static.

News releases are dynamic content—and they give you an often-overlooked way to leverage more traffic to your website. “Getting coverage for your business in mainstream media can be hugely beneficial in bringing a swathe of new visitors to your site, and building inbound links from the media and from all the other people who comment on it,” writes Internet marketing consultant Ken McGaffin.

Every time you create a significant new information paper, write a release and send it out on a wire service.

A related tip: If you have to rely on IT to keep your website current with fresh content, you might be in trouble. Invest in a content management system.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: business to business (B2B), content marketing, ten hallmarks of great web content, web copy writing

Here's #9 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #9:
Great Web content is interactive.


Use cool tools as “link bait”—something other sites will read about and want to link to. For instance, create a handy web-based calculator for a need common to your audience. Maybe it’s a mortgage comparison calculator for borrowers. Or an ROI calculator for software buyers. Or a calculator to help farmers determine how much herbicide to mix.

Other potential tools could include color selectors, product selectors, or video demos. Whatever the tool is, just make sure it’s “cool,” relevant and well-publicized.

The use of video content in Internet marketing is soaring. YouTube has found that 37 percent of its users have purchased something offline that they saw advertised on YouTube. The company offers this advice to marketers who want to make effective use of video:

• “Just because you have video doesn’t mean it’s good or meaningful to the people in your market. Either modify it so it is, or don’t use it.”

• “Check everything you intend to post on YouTube to make sure it represents your brand and moves your mission forward.”

TechTarget’s “2009 Media Consumption Benchmark Report 2: Closing the Gap.” also confirmed that technology buyers are using social communities in the decision-making process. “A very high percentage of the buyers indicated they now consider social communities to be one of the major places they'd go for information on the Web,” said Marilou Barsam, senior VP-corporate and client marketing at TechTarget.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: content marketing, social network content, ten hallmarks of great web content, web copy writing

Here's #8 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #8:
Great Web content is easy to find and easy to scan.

According to David Talbott, a content expert at Studio B, most people who find your content won’t go on to read it unless it passes their scan test. What will pass? Talbott calls it “brain-friendly” content.

“You can force your brain to do things you need to do, like read a boring white paper the boss sent you, but that’s hard work. Brain-friendly content gives brains what they need, so that they keep reading.”

Any content you control—whether it is an email, a white paper, a landing page, or a product page—should be inviting to read. No dense paragraphs or endless scrolls. Use lots of subheads, bulleted lists, callouts, sidebars, charts and photos with captions, and other devices that break up the pages and help the reader determine whether the full text is worth reading.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: content marketing, ten hallmarks of great web content, web copy writing

Maybe it's New Year's resolutionism that is inspiring content marketers in the blogosphere to confront their norms. Several posts this week throw down the gauntlet.

• Copyblogger reports: "Dragon Slaying 101: How to Use Heroic Language to Battle Boring Copy". It's an engaging post on using the metaphors of the heroic quest to invigorate blogs and articles.
• Steve Woodruff, in "Disperse the Jargon Cloud," Steve Woodruff reminds us why we get lulled into using jargon, and what to do about it.
• MarketingProfs reposted a thoughtful article by Dana Vanden Heuven,"Thought Leaders Should Violate Expectations." He describes the characteristics that separates true thought leaders from the jargon slingers.
  

Here's an excerpt from Dana Vanden Heuven's "Thought Leaders" post:

Violating may sound like a harsh word. In fact, its original meaning, that is "to break or disregard" is so often overshadowed by the more malicious definitions that we often see it associated with. (see, expectations at work right there. Think of the first thing that came to mind when you way the word "violate" in the title―I bet it wasn't pretty.) However, when thought leaders violate expectations, they simply break the mold and deliver an unexpected insight, action idea, nugget of information or the all important "Aha! moment" that resets your thinking to their frequency and puts you on a different plane.

Here's a New Year's toast: may we violate expectations, battle mediocrity, and slay dragons in 2010.

Labels: confusing corporate writing, content marketing, web copy writing