But content marketing is different. The best content marketing tends to be narrowly targeted, focusing on a very specific audience. That’s how we maximise relevance, earn downloads and reward engagement.

Of course, there’s no need to be too narrow. and if a single piece of content can cover more than one target audience, why not go for it? It saves time and money and raises your Return on Content. Unfortunately, it’s not always a good idea to try to kill two birds with one content stone. In fact it’s rarely a good idea. Here’s why:

Different people ALWAYS have different perspectives, agendas and issues

• A board member has a different view of the world than a junior manager (where seniority is the dimension of differentiation)
• A test engineer has a different set of challenges than a sales director (the target’s discipline is the dimension)
• A hospital administrator cares about different things than a high school administrator (market sector)
• An existing customer has a different view of you than a cold prospect (degree of familiarity with your company)
• A Chinese manufacturer has different concerns than a French one (region)

Pick almost any meaningful dimension and you’ll find your prospect base starts to divide itself up along that spectrum.

The key questions are:

– How important are these differences in the context of the story you want to tell?

-- What are the penalties for addressing more than one target audience in the same piece?

Let’s go to the whiteboard please, Janice.

Here are two targets – Persona A and Persona B.
They have some things in common but lots that are not shared:

You’ve got a few options for targeting A and B with content:

• Aim for the common ground– keeping your story in the lavender zone; this is good if that zone is still compelling enough to both A and B. The downside: you’re often forced to leave out really good parts of your A story or your B story.

Tip: Signal the scope of the piece in the title and the introduction, then tell people up front who it’s for and why: “This piece is for A and B — we know you’ve got a lot of differences but here’s what you have in common and why this piece is great for you.”

• Try to tell the whole A + B story– signalling to the reader that ‘this bit applies to A’ and ‘this bit applies to B’. The downside: B people get bored during the A bits and vice gets bored during the versa.

Tip: Sidebars that clearly signal “Hey Mr A! Read this bit!” can help you balance your agenda without boring the pants of of one target or the other.

• Do a piece of content for A and another for B– This lets you tell your best story to each audience. The downside: it costs more and takes more time.

Tip: Use broader, more generic content to buy time while you develop your targeted, persona-specific stuff.

Of course, it’s great if your target audiences have a lot more in common, so the middle ground contains most of your goodies:

But sometimes, you cant fake it. Your two targets have so little in common that almost every paragraph contains a fork in the road and every sentence needs a conditional:

B2B Content Relevance & Alienation
There are two tests to help determine if the piece you’re developing really ought to be two pieces:

The Relevance Test – lumping two audiences together means each will have to wade through things that are not relevant – that’s a negative experience and can lose readers.

How much of your content is actually irrelevant to A or B? Can you make it relevant by explicitly building bridges? If a third of your content has no relevance or resonance for one target or the other, it’s probably time to split the piece.

The Alienation Test – Even if there’s lots of common ground, a single message that’s gold dust for A can be a major turn-off for B. One example: when marketing some kind of media (trade show, magazine…) one audience (the exhibitor or advertiser) is selling to the other (the visitor or reader). In this case, talking all about how the former will enjoy a ‘captive audience for your sales team’ will be perfume to A and skunk juice to B.

Is there any important message to one audience that will actually alienate the other? These need to be managed carefully — and lumping both targets together is rarely the answer.

Of course, sometimes — like on the home page – you have to address the issue and find the most compelling common ground. But if there are significant relevance or alienation issues, you want to stream people off of that common ground home page as quickly as possible so you can look them in the eyes and sell to them without fear.

Why this matters
As a reader, you know when you’re reading a great piece of content: it seems to almost have your name on it. It’s aimed at a spot right in the middle of your forehead. It uses the language you use to describe the challenges you face in terms you recognise.

You also know when a piece is not quite aimed at you. It uses unfamiliar language; is pitched at the wrong level (too techie, not techie enough); talks about problems you haven’t experienced and skips over ones you have.

The penalties of badly targeted B2B content marketing
Making a piece to target two different audiences forces some bad things to happen:

– You’re forced to use generic language – instead of language that’s specific to one of the audiences.

To a hospital administrator, “increase asset utilisation” is a bore, but “double your operating room throughput” resonates. But you can’t say that if you’re also targeting high school administrators with the same piece.

– You talk about abstract ideas – instead of concrete realities.

To a marketing director, ‘improve process efficiencies’ is ho-hum jargon while ‘get more campaigns to market faster’ is lean-forward stuff.

– You’re forced to ‘couch’ your killer messages – instead of letting them fly.

‘For people like A, this widget halves costs and for people like B it’s doubles revenue.’
‘Finance guys love it because it saves money; engineers love it because it improves performance.’

Yuk.

The Bottom Line
(because all lines have bottoms have and all bottoms, alas, have their lines):

Non-specific, abstract, couchy talk sucks. While specific, concrete and direct talk moves mountains and blows away molehills.

‘All things to all people’ results in boring work. While relevant points told in familiar language feels ‘just for me’.

Great content hits people between the eyes. And mediocre content falls at their feet with a pffffttt.

The time to discover which of the two piles your next piece of content marketing  falls into is at the outline stage – where the problem will leap off the page and kiss you full on the lips (but in a bad way).  That’s reason enough to always do an outline stage.

The Reco: do occasional broad-brush content marketing but, as a rule, do more pieces and make each one highly targeted, with a persona so clear you can talk to it.

How about your own experiences? Any pieces you wish you had split into two or three? Any that spanned different audiences but worked just fine?
We’d love to hear about it.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B lead generation, Copywriting, persuasion, Thought Leadership

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We’re big believers in the power of a great FAQ section on a B2B website — not just for customer support but for marketing.  So here’s our FAQ on FAQs:

What’s an FAQ?
For some, it’s a list of questions that people really do ask a lot. For others, it’s more like a list of questions you wish were frequently asked.

What’s it good for?
An FAQ does a few things that other forms of communication don’t do quite as well:

1) Let you tell your story in an informal, conversational  way from the user’s perspective

2) Address some common objections – without having to bring them up in the main ‘product’ copy

3) Provide a level of customer support – helping customers use your products and helping prospects make the right decisions

Who should use them?
Every website can justify an FAQ section but not every site needs one. We like FAQs for companies that are introducing a new category or new application because these tend to generate lots of questions about where the new thing fits into people’s lives. We did one for PressRun because they were pioneering a way to turn print magazines into tablet apps.

What makes a good FAQ?
I’m glad you asked that. A good FAQ is clear, well-organised, gives short answers, uses an open, conversational voice and links a lot to helpful content (on your site and — god forbid — elsewhere).

How many questions should I include?
Twelve. Unless you’ve got a really complicated story, then put in as many as you like, organised by topic for easy navigation.

How promotional should I be?
Go ahead and promote, but don’t be crass. The beauty of FAQs is that they feel like a friendly, open, honest view of your business. If you ask stilted questions like, “Why is your widget so popular among IT departments struggling to stay on top of power consumption ?” people will probably figure out that this is not really a list of questions that are frequently asked. It is a brochure in very poor disguise.

Why do so many leading technology brands choose to work with Velocity?
See what I mean?

Can I use my FAQ to pimp some of my content?
Indeed you must. You’ve produced lots of content that’s useful to your target audience. It would be malpractice not to steer people to this content in their hour of need. Again, don’t be crass about it. Make sure the content is relevant to the question.

Can I use my FAQ to bring up sensitive issues I’d rather not flag in the main web copy?
Yep. FAQs can be a really good place to raise and counter a common objection without broadcasting that objection to on your home page. For AppCentral, the enterprise app store folks, we covered issues like, “How is Mobile App Management different from Mobile Device Management?” and “Why can’t we just use the iTunes App Store?”

What if I can’t think of twelve good questions?
It doesn’t matter. Nobody counts.

Really?
Really.

You sure?
Well, some people do. So you might as well make a few extra ones up.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing agency, Copywriting, persuasion, SEO, Web Marketing, writing

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One of the toughest hurdles: the email subject line. Just like any B2B marketer, their subject lines have to meet a few critical criteria:

• they have to attract attention
• they have to deliver the main benefit
• they have to vary so recipients don’t feel they’ve already deleted this one
• they have to avoid words that clearly signal spam
• they have to inject a sense of urgency

Sound like a familiar set of criteria?

Well, maybe we B2B marketers can learn a few things from the resourceful, highly committed folks peddling (mostly fake) Viagra.

Here are some of the compelling subject lines I’ve received in the last 60 days, grouped by strategy, with a few illuminating notes. In the immortal words of the first legitimate Viagra marketing campaign, let the dance begin:

The brand appeal
High quality Pfizer  [Simple but a bit dull -- and doesn't Pfizer make other drugs too?]

The medical approach
Dr Max make your penis on 3cm more!    [No offence, Dr Max but could I see that Med school diploma?]
For sure, you will feel more pleasure after of a short course of enhancing.

The caveman
Become the carnal monster     [I want to please my partner, not EAT her]
Increase your phallic strength     [Not sure heavy lifting is the point, but the towel trick does impress]
Larger bone today  [A personal favourite. It's got it all.]
You need Blue-Pill    [“Tarzan be back in moment. Jane don’t move.”]

The say what?
If there will be only girls around, will you be ready?     [Form an orderly queue, ladies, I'm just off for a short course of enhancing.]

The Top Gear appeal
Full control of your love stick.    [I'd settle for partial control]
Empower your pollinator.      [New meaning to the term 'deflower']

The highly personal
Your wife take deep.     [Hey, back off buddie.]
Your wife need your attention? Solve all the problems with IT. [How can the techies help?]
You want to impress your girlfriend tonight?  [I thought this was about my wife]

Translated by Google
Does your cock renounce to work? Bring through him to this illness!      [From Chairman Mao's little blue book?]
Any, even the most dirty desires will come true with our male enhancing set
Your private xxx life will be so good that you wont help from boasting it.

The poetic
Become master of amorous genre     [You and Kahlil Gibran]
Empower your body for love        [Julio Iglesias lyric]
Turn your bedroom life into a volcano of pleasure    [Rubber sheets recommended]
Add more spice to your bedroom life
Have Great Long Spicy Nights in Bed!
IT consultant of perfect love making art  [Again with the IT guys…]

The nudge-nudge, wink-wink
Back-and-forth all night!
[This could have been spam for ping-pong tables – I didn’t open it]

The endearingly enthusiastic
This is what you need for sex!    [bless]
Solving ALL love making problems in a matter of few minutes

FUD
Your weekend will not be good without good nights
Make sure that you made your woman happy tonight.
Over 10 million men made their women happy, and you?  [As long as 10 million men didn’t make MY woman happy]
Impotency has broken thousand of families. Protect your home!    [You know, you're right. I want to be a responsible father.]
What’s Your Hall of Shame.     [Hmmm... the hall... never thought of that.]

The playground taunt
Hey, are you the guy who cannot make love?   [Okay asshole, step outside]

And these are only from the last 60 days.

The B2B Principles of Viagra Spammer
What have we learned here? Well, there’s so much to take away but here are some pre-digested principles for the lazy:

• If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again – Viagra spammers never give up
• Keep that thesaurus close to hand – if you have a hand free
• When in doubt, use an exclamation point! – it always creates excitement!
• Refrain, at all costs, from using the term “love stick’ – even if it is one of your SEO keyphrases
• It’s okay to sell through fear – but try to stop short of outright public humiliation of your target audience

Onward and… um… upwards.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Copywriting, Email marketing, persuasion, writing

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Let’s face it, most B2B copywriting is not very good.  Here are ten reasons why:

1. Not being clear about what you want your audience to do.
All good writing starts with this and all bad writing doesn’t.

2. Not being clear about why they should do it.
You just need three powerful reasons.

3. Not saying why they should believe you.
Support your reasons with facts and logic.

4. Failing to take a view.
Good writing starts with a clear world view and an opinion about the issues the reader cares about. “The world is like this. That’s why you need our widget.”

5. Not doing your homework.
Lazy writing is bad writing. Research pays dividends.

6. Putting on your ‘writer’s voice’.
This is a killer. Forget your writing voice, use your speaking voice.

7. Failing to structure your ideas.
Good writing takes people on a trip. Structure is the path.

8. Treating your audience like a decision-making robot.
B2B buyers are human beings first. Lighten up.

9. Being too abstract.
Good copy is concrete and specific, uses an active voice and uses the second person (you) a lot.

10. Being a wuss.
Good writing is confident. Bad writing lacks the conviction that it’s worth reading. So it isn’t.

Any other causes of bad B2B copywriting you’d like to share?

—–

Photo: Flickr Creative Commons: Forbidden Emotions

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Copywriting, persuasion

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Ashley Friedlein of Econsultancy just turned us on to this excellent TED Talk (TED is a fantastic series on ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’). It’s by Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, and it’s all about the power of beliefs in marketing. Great leaders and great companies start with beliefs not facts, policies, products or services. He cites Apple, Martin Luther King and the Wright brothers among others but the idea is just as powerful for any company and any B2B marketer.

The essence of Simon’s talk: People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it.

He bases this on brain research that shows that the neocortex, which is responsible for our rational processes (and language) is not the part of the brain that drives decisions. Decisions (and feelings) are controlled by the limbic system. In other words, when we throw features and functions at people, we can’t change their behaviour. But when we start with beliefs, we talk directly to the part of the brain that drives decisions and behaviour. Then people can rationalise their feelings of trust and loyalty with the feature/function stuff.

For Velocity, this plays right into our own belief that B2B buyers are human beings first and engineers or IT Directors second. People buy from people they like and trust. Our first job on behalf of our clients is to earn that trust by communicating the client’s beliefs and passions.

That’s why something that might seem a bit silly (like a stop-motion Lego Man film for a vertical search product) does so much to bring prospects closer and pave the way to a sale. Or why a pair of hugging salt & pepper shakers can boost registration to an exclusive conference.

Two questions:

Do you really know what your company believes?
You know WHAT you do but do you know WHY you do it?

Are you sharing those beliefs with your customers and prospects?
How are you explicitly communicating your beliefs and how are you demonstrating them?

If Simon Sinek is right (and we think he is), these could be the most important questions of your career..

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Copywriting, persuasion, Thought Leadership

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That about sums it up.

B2B is a lot simpler than the gurus would have you believe. After all the e-tomes and blog posts and webinars it really all boils down to two words — and you can see them painted on almost every street in the land.

Of course, with enough effort, even this simple imperative can be screwed up:

The death of clarity

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B, B2B content marketing, B2B marketing agency, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Corporate Message Development, persuasion, writing

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Velocity, the London-based business-to-business marketing agency, ran out of tea today in an uncharacteristic demand forecasting error.

The agency, which recently acquired a large red teapot to support and enable its growing workforce, is now crippled by a complete lack of the beverage that contributes 50% of staff body mass and 76% of all good ideas.

“We’re…,” said MD Stan Woods, “We’re just…”

The agency very recently purchased a Tetley 160-bag super-pack with 50% extra free, bringing the total to 240 bags.

“I couldn’t believe how fast it went,” said Neil Stoneman, comatose sack of meat, “I went to make tea and boiled the kettle and got the teapot ready and when I took down the super-pack, it was really, like, light and I looked inside and I was like, whoah.”

Gesu Baroova, quivering mass of translucent jelly, concurred, “Pllbllbph… brbrbrbrbr fzzzz,” said Baroova.

“What’s the big deal?” asked Doug Kessler, creative director and conspicuous American. “I mean, jeez, drink coffee.” Unfortunately, Doug said this during an all-agency Work In Progress (WiP) meeting at which he was the only attendee.

The agency has no plans to go and get more tea at this time because the agency has no plans at all. None. In fact, when you actually stop and think about it, this whole B2B marketing thing is feeling completely… futile. What’s the bloody point?

No wait. Lucy just went and got some more. Never mind.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, Corporate Positioning, persuasion, Tea

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Boring copy is all the same:

It uses the passive voice
“The interaction is further enabled by automated screen-scrape optimization technology…”

It’s jargon-soaked
“…utilizing a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) that combines traditional Business Process Management (BPM) with Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) into a seamless, scalable Blah-De-Blah (BDB).

It’s abstract instead of concrete
“…enabling better processes through systematic automation of yadda-yadda-yadda.”

It’s all in the 3rd person
“The software helps financial services companies better manage their customer-facing…”

This last point is rarely talked about but is especially crippling. Pick up your last data sheet. Now go through it and change the third person phrasing into second person singular: the subject is “You” (the reader).

You’ll have to rewrite the copy to make it sound right. And once you do, you will have made it better. More engaging. More down to earth. More personal.

I’m not suggesting you only use the 2nd person. That would be weird. But try using it and see if it doesn’t help you focus on a specific reader or listener — and help them focus on your message.

Case in point: you’ve probably noticed that the first half of this post is written in the third person. The second half is written in the second person singular. And it’s just that extra notch more engaging. Don’t you think?

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B, B2B marketing, communication, Copywriting, Marketing, persuasion

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But credibility is a funny thing. It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes us believe one person and not another; or believe one claim while remaining suspicious about a very similar claim made by someone else.

To make sure your message is believed, you can’t have too many credibility-builders (though spending too high a proportion of your reader’s attention on credibility issues might backfire by making you appear desperate). In general, more credibility is better.

Let’s look at the top cred-builders:

• Statistics – ideally independently generated
• Awards – the fairy dust of the credibility business
• Accreditations – sometimes essential, other times a hygiene issue
• Analyst attention and endorsement – can go a long way for some customers in some markets
• Media attention and endorsement – the better the source, the more it adds to your cred
• Lists of customers – if you’ve got ‘em, flaunt ‘em
• Testimonials – more credible than you’d think; the good ones have a ring of truth
• Case studies – often boring and ignored; if you can get them read, they’re worth their weight in gold
• Your resources and assets – just being big and solid and here to stay builds credibility
• The credentials of your team – hard to get this into every conversation, but never hurts
• Other successful products – winners breed winners
• Your company’s commercial success – the trick is to not to focus on the growth but the reasons behind it

Softer signals that indicate credibility:

• Your reputation – the only way to control it is to execute brilliantly in every department
• The way you speak – a straight, open, honest tone of voice does wonders for credibility
• The way you look – clean, inviting design says clear thinking and user-friendliness
• The way you behave – personal interactions can wipe away all of the above or double it

The last credibility builder is probably more important than the first sixteen but is usually undervalued: good, solid logic.

If your argument makes sense and is built on premises that the audience accepts, they will believe you. If it’s built on shaky foundations or makes little leaps of faith, they won’t.

At Velocity, we often break down our clients’ stories into a diagram that shows the steps to a sale — the things people have to believe in order to progress to ‘Yes’. Sometimes the path shows four easy steps separated by simple logic. Other times, it’s seven or eight steps, some separated by yawning chasms — the zones where we’ll have to work extra hard to get prospects to the next step.

The sixteen credibility-builders are all important. But without the seventeenth – a good, strong case – you’re supporting a false front. Spend some time analysing your own steps to a sale. Make sure you’re not asking people to take leaps of faith. Build an argument that earns every step and you’re more than half the way home.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, credibility, logic, persuasion, selling

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The author, Carmine Gallo, refers to the Jobs approach as a ‘ten point framework’. Really it’s just a list of ten tips, but they’re excellent tips. If you follow them, your presentations will be much better — and many of the tips apply to written communication, too.

Lately, we’ve been exploring ways to deliver really powerful web seminars and these tips will all come in handy. I won’t paraphrase them but I do recommend the article.

And since writing the draft of this post, John’s CEO, Paul Ostergaard, sent a link to this terrific presentation on Identity 2.0 by Dick Hardt, founder of Sxip Identity. It’s an entertaining, funny introduction to a concept that Sxip is evangelising and an excellent example of how to sell a technical, abstract story without being technical or abstract.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B, Content, Marketing, persuasion, presentation, selling, writing

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