Nothing Bad Will Happen if You Don’t Update Your Content…Right?

The marketing experts insist that calls to action must emphasize urgency.

If you want a prospect to do something, stir up the necessary emotions: fear, fear of missing out (FOMO), anger, whatever. The call to action should emphasize that they act NOW. TV Tropes provides a few examples of these calls to action:

“If you call before midnight tonight, we’ll give you a special bonus!”

“Call in the next 5 minutes for a special bonus!”

“Call quickly because we’re only giving this offer to the first 100 callers.”

From https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IfYouCallBeforeMidnightTonight

Of course, you don’t need to advertise on television to use these lines. It’s just as easy to use these messages online, as in the Walmart example above, or in this example.

A lot of marketers (and for that matter, a lot of scam artists) listen to the advice of marketing experts. As a result, we are bombarded with “act now” advertising.

In fact, we are bombarded with so much of this junk that we end up tuning it out.

In the end, NOTHING is urgent.

Or is it?

Is a task important?

Urgency is one thing, but importance is another. Which is why the Eisenhower matrix distinguishes between the two.

For example, your firm’s website may be in urgent need of an upgrade. Perhaps the information on the website is out of date or completely incorrect. (Maybe you DON’T support Windows XP any more.)

But is that important?

• If an issue is urgent and important, you would have updated your website already to avoid being fired.
• If an issue is urgent but not important, then it’s something that you could delegate to a content marketing expert. (Ahem. We’ll revisit this later.)

Incidentally, I have some thoughts about the use of “importance” in the Eisenhower matrix, but I’ll save those for another post.

Is a task urgent?

Of course, this assumes that the issue is urgent. Perhaps it’s not urgent at all. As I said before, a lot of sellers like to create a false sense of urgency.

As a consultant, I often find prospects and clients who believe that a particular issue is NOT urgent. You can easily get that Walmart+ membership a few days later, at a minimally higher price. And you can easily wait on updating your online content.

If something is not urgent, then you have two choices depending upon the issue’s importance.

1. If an issue is not urgent and not important, then why bother taking care of it at all? Let it slide.
2. If an issue is not urgent but is important, then you had better do it…but there’s no rush. You don’t have to take care of it before midnight tonight. Next week will do…or the week after that.

Compounding the issue is that if you DO update your website, you’re NOT going to see an immediate return on investment.

It takes longer than three days for content marketing to yield results. One source estimates four to five months. Another source says six to twelve months. Joe Pulizzi (quoted by Neil Patel) estimates 15 to 17 months. And all the sources say that their estimates may not apply to your particular case.

From https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/26/on-trust-funnels/

So if a content marketing update isn’t going to yield immediate results, what’s the rush? Spending time making the updates, or even spending the time managing someone else to make the updates, takes away from tasks that yield financial results NOW.

If it’s not urgent but is important…

If your outdated content is not urgent but is important, then there’s no rush to take care of the issue.

You can delay it for weeks or even for months, and you’re NEVER going to have a problem.

Until…

…a competitor with up-to-date and accurate content swoops in and loots your prospects AND your existing customers away from you.

(Are you worried?)

Why would old content cause you to lose a customer? Because your outdated information demonstrates that you don’t care about your customers. After all, you’re not focused on your customers’ need for up-to-date information on your products and services.

(Are you angry?)

And if you lose enough prospects and customers to result in a revenue drop, then you may lose your job. Then you won’t have to worry about the company’s outdated content any more. Problem solved!

(Are you scared?)

But if it’s urgent but is not important…

Of course, there’s the other alternative that I discussed earlier in this post, in which your content issues are urgent, but they’re not important enough to devote your own resources to them.

In that case, you can contract the work out to someone who will perform the majority of the work in updating your content.

(While retaining a say in your content. That should make you happy.)

And I know where you can contract that work. Bredemarket.

Bredemarket can help you create content that converts prospects and drives content results. Why?

• Bredemarket asks the right questions. (“Why” is the first, by the way.)
• Bredemarket creates many types of content.
• Bredemarket collaborates with you.

If you’re sold on using Bredemarket to create customer-focused messaging, there are three ways to move forward with your content project. Or you can just join the Bredemarket mailing list to stay informed.

• Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you.

• Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
• Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
• Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.