Uncategorized – Page 142

Creating a Business Page on Facebook for Your Inland Empire Company

There are Inland Empire companies that have an online presence, and companies that don’t.

Yes, the Ontario Convention Center has an online presence, on the web and elsewhere. Picture by Mack Male – originally posted to Flickr as Ontario Convention Center, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9512928

If your Inland Empire company doesn’t have an online presence, one quick way to create one is to create a business page on Facebook.

This post outlines the benefits of establishing an online presence via a Facebook business page. It also provides four examples of Facebook business pages. Finally, the post addresses the thorny question of creating content for your Facebook business page.

Why Faceboook may be the best online presence for your business

For the first time in years, I attended an Ontario IDEA Exchange meeting at AmPac Business Capital on Tuesday afternoon. There was a mixture of attendees: some who had established several businesses, some like me who had run one business for some time, and a few who were just starting out in business.

The ones who were starting out were still trying to figure out all the things you need to do to start a business: figuring out why the business exists in the first place, getting the appropriate business licenses (and in some cases professional licenses), printing business cards (or creating the online equivalent), setting up SOME kind of way to track prospects and customers…and establishing an online presence.

Now some businesses choose to establish their online presence by creating a website.

I believe that this is the best way to establish an online presence since you have more control over the content. Plus, there are several alternative ways to create a business website (I use WordPress, but you can use SquareSpace, Wix, or any of several other website builders).

But even the simplest website can involve a lot of complexity—bredemarket.com currently has 57 pages, not counting tag pages and individual blog post pages.

For many small businesses, it may be much easier to create a Facebook business page then to create an entire website.

Facebook business pages are free. (Well, unless you run ads.)
Facebook business pages are easy to create.
Facebook business pages potentially reach billions of people, including your prospects and customers.

Creating a Facebook business page

So how do you create a Facebook business page?

There’s no need for me to document all of that in detail, since many have already done so.

Starting with Facebook itself.

As long as you have a personal Facebook profile, and as long as you can provide basic information about your business (category, address, areas serviced, email, phone number, website, hours, etc.), you can create a Facebook page from your laptop or desktop computer by following these steps:

From the Pages section, click Create new Page.

Add your Page name and category.

Add your Page’s bio and click Create.

(Optional) Add information, such as Contact, Location and Hours, and click Next.

(Optional) Add profile and cover photos, and edit the action button, and click Next.

(Optional) Invite friends to connect with your Page, and click Next.

Click Done.

From https://www.facebook.com/business/help/473994396650734?id=939256796236247

Don’t worry if you don’t have all the optional items, such as a page cover picture. You can add them later. This will get you going.

Other guides to creating Facebook business pages are available from Buffer (with pictures), Hootsuite (with pictures). Sprout Social (with pictures), and a number of other sources.

But before you create YOUR Facebook business page, let me show you four varied examples of EXISTING Facebook business pages.

Four examples of Facebook business pages

Let’s take a look at some pages that already exist. Perhaps one or more of these will give you ideas for your own page.

The artist page (Paso Artis)

Paso Artis is a European business whose proprietor is a painter who sells her paintings.

From https://www.facebook.com/paso.artis/about

The menu options at the bottom of the picture above (some of which cannot be seen) illustrate some of the elements you can include in a Facebook page. Here are just a few of the page elements that Paso Artis uses:

Posts. This is the equivalent of a blog on a website, and allows you to post text, images, videos, and other types of content.
About. This is where you provide contact and other basic information about your business.
Shop. Facebook allows you to include a shop, which Paso Artis uses to sell her paintings.

From https://www.facebook.com/paso.artis/shop_tab

Photos. As you can imagine for an artist’s page, photos of the artwork are essential.

The shirtmaker page (Shirts by Kaytie)

(UPDATE 10/20/2023: Because Shirts by Kaytie is sadly no longer in business, I have removed the, um, live links to her Facebook page.)

Let’s leave Europe and go to Illinois where we find another artist, but her work is not displayed on paintings, but on shirts. Here is the Shirts by Kaytie Facebook page.

From https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095322638655

You’ll notice that Shirts by Kaytie has a different menu item order (and different menu items) than Paso Artis. For example, Shirts by Kaytie doesn’t have a Facebook “shop” element; you need to contact her directly to purchase items.

But Shirts by Kaytie certainly has photos.

From https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095322638655&sk=photos

The marketer/writer page (Bredemarket)

Enough of such exotic locations as Europe and Illinois. Let’s head to California’s Inland Empire and look at my favorite marketing/writing services Facebook page, the Bredemarket Facebook page.

From https://www.facebook.com/Bredemarket/

I’d like to point out two things here.

First, Bredemarket (unlike Paso Artis and Shirts by Kaytie) provides services rather than tangible products. Therefore, I chose to include a “Services” element as part of my Facebook page.

From https://www.facebook.com/Bredemarket/services

Second, Bredemarket has chosen to implement Facebook’s “groups” feature. In Bredemarket’s case, there are three separate groups that focus on various aspects of Bredemarket’s business. Inland Empire businesses can read the content in the Bredemarket Inland Empire B2B Services group and not get bogged down in out-of-area identity discussions about the change from FRVT to FRTE. (They’re missing out.)

From https://www.facebook.com/Bredemarket/groups

The local technology champion page (Startempire Wire)

I saved the Startempire Wire Facebook page for last because it makes terrific use of Facebook’s capabilities.

From https://www.facebook.com/startempirewire

By the way, if you are an Inland Empire business—especially an Inland Empire startup technology business—and you have never heard of Startempire Wire, STOP READING MY POST and go follow Startempire Wire’s Facebook page NOW. Startempire Wire is THE news source for Inland Empire startup tech information, and is a strong champion of the IE tech community.

So what does Startempire Wire’s Facebook page offer? Posts, photos, weekly videos, and the “Inland Empire Startup Scene” group. All of the content is jam-packed with information.

Facebook pages are essential to these firms’ strategies

Now in some cases the Facebook pages are only part of the online presence for these firms. Both Bredemarket and Startempire Wire have their own web pages, and both firms are also active on other online properties such as LinkedIn. (Bredemarket is almost everywhere, but not on Snapchat.) But Facebook is an essential part of the outreach for all four of these firms, allowing them to reach prospects and clients who are only on Facebook and nowhere else.

Perhaps a Facebook page is a perfect solution for YOUR firm’s online presence.

Let’s talk about content

But creating a Facebook page is not enough.

You need to populate it with content, such as images, videos…and posts.

And if your Facebook page doesn’t have any content, it’s useless to your prospects. As I’ve preached for years, an empty page makes your prospects and customers question whether you exist.

Now I’m not saying that you HAVE to update your Facebook page daily, but it’s a good idea to add new content at least once a month.

But what if you aren’t a writer, or don’t have time to write? Do you have to resort to ChatGPT?

Heavens no. (I’ll say more about that later.)

Well, online content creation is where Bredemarket comes in. I help firms create blog posts, Facebook posts, LinkedIn articles, case studies, white papers, and other content (22 different types of content at last count).

Does your product (or company) need these 22 content types?

Let me help you populate your Facebook page (or other online content).

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

The 22 (or more) Types of Content That Product Marketers Create

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

(Updated blog post count 10/23/2023)

I mentioned something in passing in Bredemarket’s recent go-to-market post that I think needs a little more highlighting. So here is a deeper dive into the 22 types of content that product marketers create. (Well, at least 22. I’m probably missing some.)

And by the way, I have created all 22 of these types of content, from blog posts and battlecards to smartphone application content and scientific book chapters. And I can create it for you.

Taylor Swift "22" single cover. — By “22” (Single by Taylor Swift) on 7digital, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39857014

“But John,” you’re saying, “Don’t you know anything? Content is created by content marketers!”

Read on.

The NON difference between product marketing and content marketing

If you consult with the experts, they will tell you that there is a distinct division between product marketing and content marketing, and that they are two entirely separate disciplines.

Janus, two-headed. — By Loudon dodd – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7404342

Why is it that so many business-to-business (B2B) marketers confuse product marketing with content marketing?

Because it requires a lot of discipline. That’s why.

B2B marketers who get it right understand the difference between these two fundamentally different types of marketing, what their purposes are and how to use them correctly.
From https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2019/08/27/is-your-business-confusing-product-marketing-and-content-marketing/?sh=2edf86f51d88

There certainly is a difference—if you work in a firm that enforces strict definitions and separation between the two.

U.S. - Mexico border. — No dark sarcasm in the blog post. By US Border Patrol – Department of Homeland Security, United States Border Patrol http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/photos/sand-dune-fence.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11951642

Some firms (especially startups) don’t have the luxury to enforce such definitions. They don’t have separate teams to create awareness content, consideration content, and conversion content. They have one team (or perhaps one person) to create all that content PLUS other stuff that I’ll discuss later.

One-man band. — sin, a one-man band in New York City. By slgckgc – https://www.flickr.com/photos/slgc/8037345945/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47370848

For example, during my most recent stint as a product marketing employee at a startup, the firm had no official content marketers, so the product marketers had to create a lot of non-product related content. So we product marketers were the de facto content marketers for the company too. (Sadly, we didn’t get two salaries for filling two roles.)

Why did the product marketers end up as content marketers? It turns out that it makes sense—after all, people who write about your product in the lower funnel stages can also write about your product in the upper funnel stages, and also can certainly write about OTHER things, such as company descriptions, speaker submissions, and speaker biographies.

Creating external content and internal content

Man holding a huge pencil. — Designed by Freepik.

And when you find a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” person, you’ll naturally want to get them to write other things.

As a result, I’ve written a ton of stuff over my last 29 years in identity/biometrics. It didn’t take a great leap for me to self-identify as the identity content marketing expert and the biometric content marketing expert (and other expert definitions; I’m an expert in creating expert titles).

I’ve compiled a summary of the types of content that I’ve created over the years, not only for Bredemarket’s clients, but also for my employers at Incode Technologies, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, Motorola, and Printrak.

Not all of these were created when I was in a formal product marketing role, but depending upon your product or service, you may need any of these content types to support the marketing of your product/service.

It’s helpful to divide the list into two parts: the external (customer-facing) content, and the internal (company-only) content.

10 types of external content I have created

External content is what most people think of when they talk about product marketing or content marketing. After all, this is the visible stuff that the prospects see, and which can move them toward a purchase (conversion). The numbers after some content types indicate the quantities of pieces of collateral that I have created.

Articles
Blog Posts (500+, including this one)
Briefs/Data/Literature Sheets
Case Studies (12+)
Proposals (100+)
Scientific Book Chapters
Smartphone Application Content
Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter)
Web Page Content
White Papers and E-Books

Here’s an video showing some of the external content that I have created for Bredemarket.

Bredemarket Work Samples, August 2023. Previously posted at https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/14/bredemarket-work-samples-the-video-edition/

9 types of internal content I have created

While external content is sexy, internal content is extremely important, since it’s what equips the people inside a firm to promote your product or service. The numbers after some content types indicate the quantities of pieces of collateral that I have created.

Battlecards (80+)
Competitive Analyses
Event/Conference/Trade Show Demonstration Scripts
Plans
Playbooks
Proposal Templates
Quality Improvement Documents
Requirements
Strategic Analyses

And here are 3 more types

Some content can either be external or internal. Again, numbers indicate the quantities of pieces of collateral I have created.

Email Newsletters (200+)
FAQs
Presentations

Content I can create for you

Does your firm need help creating one of these types of content?

Maybe two?

Maybe 22?

I can create content full-time for you

If your firm needs to create a lot of content types for your products, then consider hiring me as your full-time Senior Product Marketing Manager. My LinkedIn profile is here, documenting my 29 years of experience in identity/biometric technology as a product marketer, a strategist, and in other roles.

Or I can consult for you

But if your firm needs a more limited amount of content and can’t employ me on a full-time basis, then you can contract with me through my consulting firm Bredemarket. For example, I could write a single 400-600 word blog post or short article for you.

Or 2 blog posts/articles.

Or 22 blog posts/articles. (The more the merrier.)

Do you need these services?

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

And yes, I know this post had two separate calls to action. What do you expect from a guy who thinks product marketers are content marketers?

And here’s one for the Swifties. No, it’s not “Taylor’s version.” But we all know that she is the only person who can reconcile differences between so-called standards bodies, since any standard Swift champions will become the de facto standard.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgFeZr5ptV8

Does Self-Focus (Rather than Customer Focus) Lead to Blandness?

45 million years ago, in 2018, Amanda Retzki pointed out a danger that can occur when firms talk about their accomplishments rather than focusing on their customers’ needs: bland, “me too” text.

One of the biggest reasons so much marketing today sounds the same (“exceptional customer service,” “commitment to quality,” “expertise that adds value,” etc.) is that companies fall back on what’s easy and what they believe they’re supposed to do: talk about themselves.

Seems like it should make sense, but it doesn’t.

Turns out, this “learn more about us!” approach will put you in the fast lane to bland, overused, cookie-cutter marketing (and results)….

If everyone follows the same marketing approach, everyone ends up with the same results: mediocrity.
From https://www.weidert.com/blog/tips-to-differentiate-company-marketing

By Slastic – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7260831

(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)

If I may talk about myself for a moment (but hopefully in a differentiating way), this is one of the main benefits of my inclusion of the “why” question as part of the six questions that I like to ask potential Bredemarket clients. When I ask one of my prospects why their company exists, I get some valuable answers that help differentiate the prospect from everyone else.

As I said in a previous post on product positioning:

If your product suddenly disappeared from the world, would your target audience (or, in marketing-speak, personas) care?

Would your target audience be just as happy with the competitive offerings, or would the target audience lose out if your product’s distinctive benefits were suddenly no longer available?
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/28/quick-thoughts-on-product-positioning/

Hopefully, the world WILL feel a loss if your product disappeared.

But too often a company’s products appear to be just like the products from all the other companies, which makes the consideration phase (where prospects try to differentiate between products) difficult.

For example, I am familiar with a particular industry that has over 80 competitors. And most of those competitors use the word “trust” as a key part of their marketing strategy. (Not just a tactic; a strategy.) Spend some time reading the websites of all of the companies in this particular industry, and you’ll see the word “trust” so many times that it will become mind-numbing.

*Dionne Quintuplets – School Days*, painting by Andrew Loomis, 1938. By Andrew Loomis – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/7797309642/in/album-72157631099965608/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56000992

Here are a few examples:

power a world of digital trust

The Ultimate Guide to Trust & Safety

Businesses have just 10 minutes to establish trust

Optimize Identity Verification for Growth, Innovation, Trust

how to prioritize trust and safety
Various sources.

How can you tell the companies apart?

Only one company dares to buck the trend: Black Ink Tech, who champions (and has trademarked) the slogan “Truth Over Trust™.”

Then again, Bredemarket can’t talk. I shudder to think of the count of times that I’ve used some form of the word “collaborate.”

We all need to avoid blandness and stand out by exhibiting customer focus.

Bottles of Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. — The pride of Irwindale. Fair use. From https://www.huyfong.com/

Do you need to differentiate your offering from others?

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

Quick Thoughts on Product Positioning

I’ve already talked about product launches in my recent On “Go-to-Market” post, but having worked in product marketing for some time, I know that there are a lot of tasks that your firm has to perform even when you’re not launching a new product.

One of those tasks is product positioning. And it’s important.

Product positioning isn’t quite as complex as global positioning (a factor of authentication, by the way). By Paulsava – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47209685

Six questions for product positioning

There are some complex ways to define product positioning, probably even at the level of Shipley 96-step complexity. But when I can, I gravitate for the simple.

Here’s how I define product positioning:

(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)

Why your product (or service) exists.
How your product benefits your customers.
What your product is (but note that I asked the first two questions before this one).
Other facets of your product (goal, benefits, target audience—if this is new to you, catch up by reading my e-book on the six questions your content creator should ask you).

Why the questions matter

If your product suddenly disappeared from the world, would your target audience (or, in marketing-speak, personas) care?

Would your target audience be just as happy with the competitive offerings, or would the target audience lose out if your product’s distinctive benefits were suddenly no longer available?

Choose one (food) to go forever. Reproduced at https://josephmallozzi.com/2020/10/01/october-1-2020-lets-chat/

There are a number of popular memes that ask you to remove one popular food from a list of foods. What would happen if, instead of asking about pizza and tacos, you asked your target audience about your product and eight others? Would your product survive the cut, or would your prospects happily dump it?

Position your product so that it always remains top of mind for your prospects.

Answer the questions above.
Create content that is focused on the customer (not focused on your firm).
Create content that explains benefits (not features) to your prospects.

The Temperamental Writer’s Temperament

Since I have self-branded myself as the “temperamental writer,” it makes sense to explore what other people say about the writer’s temperament.

Curiosity

By Tom@HK – https://www.flickr.com/photos/gracewong/ – https://www.flickr.com/photos/gracewong/312922826/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9621314

Rob Bignell:

If there is an overarching temperament that is important to all fiction writers, curiosity about life and others arguably is paramount.
From https://inventingrealityeditingservice.typepad.com/inventing_reality_editing/2013/10/what-is-a-writers-natural-temperament.html

This also applies to non-fiction, Rob. Trust me.

Inquisitiveness (or not)

Zadie Smith:

Some writers won’t read a word of any novel while they’re writing their own. Not one word….Try to recommend a good novel to a writer of this type while he’s writing and he’ll give you a look like you just stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife. It’s a matter of temperament. Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra — they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even.
From https://advicetowriters.com/advice/a-matter-of-temperament-1

Perhaps I’m wrong, but in the world of non-fiction, writers MUST hear at least some members of the orchestra. To comment on the world around us, we need to know what is happening in the world around us. We can’t make up our own Narnia and write to it, because our audience lives in the real world.

Choleric, Melancholic, Sanguine, or Phlegmatic

K.M. Weiland:

The first step in learning how to maximize your personality’s pros and minimize its cons is to figure out your basic personality type. One simple approach is that of the “four temperaments” approach (popularized by Tim LaHaye, among others), in which human personalities are narrowed down into four basic categories: choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic.
From https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/whats-your-writing-personality/

Heck, I’ve already spent time figuring out my Jungian archetype. I didn’t exactly relish re-examining myself on the Tim LaHaye model.

But I reviewed Weiland’s summary of the four temperaments anyway, and decided that I exhibit some of the traits of the melancholic writer:

Natural bent toward writing
Detail-oriented
Precise

By Publisher: R. Prudent. Paris. – Own collection., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52055282

The other temperaments vary greatly.

But what does this mean for firms needing content?

You can get any content marketer to write your words, but you’d be better off getting a curious, inquisitive, precise one who isn’t going to sit back and let a bot do all the work. (The whole “bot” thing is what riled up my temperamental nature in the first place.)

And by the most amazing coincidence, I know a content marketing firm that exhibits all of these “temperamental” capabilities.

My own firm, Bredemarket, that serves identity/biometric, technology, and local (California’s Inland Empire) firms that need blog posts, white papers, and other types of written content.

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

Tweaking a Call to Action, For Me and For You

I just took a look over the last few calls to action that Bredemarket has published.

Whatever you need, talk to me. And be prepared for me to ask you six (or more) questions.

And if you’re reading this post in Janury 2025, thank you. If you want to talk to me about content creation, some of these links may still work!

Perhaps Bredemarket, the technology content marketing expert, can help you select the words to tell your story. If you’re interested in talking, let me know.

If I can help your firm:
From various Bredemarket blog posts.

All of my most recent calls to action were variations on “Contact me.”

And all the CTAs werre kinda so-so and yawn-inducing.

By Basile Morin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87999584

Other CTA ideas

Since I was open to other ideas, I viewed @yourfavcontentcreator_’s recent Instagram reel with four suggestions. Two of them didn’t make sense for Bredemarket’s business, but the first and fourth resonated with me.

I’ve reproduced those two below.

👉 “Get started on your journey to [desired outcome] today.”
👉 “Ready to see real results? Explore our [product/service] now.”
From https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwVKzmrOHj0/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D

If her ideas resonate with you, be sure to follow her Instagram account @yourfavcontentcreator_.

A false start, and a new hope

At first I thought I’d simply incorporate “journey” into my CTA…

Don’t stop believin’ in your content!

…but then I decided that “results” would be better.

At the same time, the CTA has to be Brede-distinctive, captivate prospects better than “contact me,” and ideally appeal to all of Bredemarket’s target audiences (identity/biometrics, technology, local).

So, identity/biometric and technology firms, will the paragraph below the logo make you MORE likely to engage with Bredemarket for marketing and writing services? If not, I’ll continue to tweak it in an agile fashion.

From bredemarket.com.

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

ICYMI: Gummy Fingers

On “Go-to-Market”

After I slept on my “trust funnel” post, I decided that it was too long and took the entire “go-to-market” section out. But I saved it and am sharing it with you here.

This little piggy went to market

By Rklawton – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=735848

(Yes, I know that the little piggy didn’t go to market to do their own shopping. But bear with me here.)

If you are creating content as part of the formal launch of a product or service, you are creating SOME type of go-to-market (GTM) plan.

Perhaps it’s a well-defined plan.
Perhaps it’s a simple document.
Maybe it’s a haphazard dictate to “go to market in three days.”

About the “three days” thing

(C, I told you I was going to write this.)

Oh, and by the way, you can’t go to market in three days, even if someone says you can. You can’t. Or if you do, there will be significant gaps or inaccuracies.

In her LinkedIn Learning course, Deirdre Breakenridge prefers to define a four-month go-to-market plan, with specific deliverables for every one of the months in the plan. Of course, she admits that this is ideal, and sometimes you can’t take a full four months to bring a product or service to market. Whether you take four months or six months or even two months, GTM execution for any robust product or service needs a significant amount of time to get all the pieces together.

One of the reasons that it takes months to execute a GTM plan is because a GTM plan requires inputs from several departments, including

product,
marketing,
product marketing (if it is separate from the first two departments),
engineering,
customer success/customer service,
finance,
sales, and
legal.

You won’t get all of THEM to produce inputs, or even agree what the inputs should be, in three days. It takes time.

But there ARE teeny tiny GTM efforts

One exception to the four-month guidance: if your “product” or “service” is VERY small (like a single blog post), you can obviously go-to-market much more quickly.

For example, here’s my Asana-based “GTM plan” for a single blog post, “I Changed My Mind on Age Es t imation.“

From the private Bredemarket Asana Content Calendar, back in the days when Twitter (TW) was still Twitter.

Sometimes. At other times I skip Asana altogether and just take pictures and post stuff, like what I did with my “Coldest Beer in Town” and “Classy by Definition” posts from earlier today. Variety is good.

Back to normal GTM

But when your product or service is more complex, then you need to plan your GTM campaign and make sure that it answers all questions about your product or service.

There are all sorts of GTM guidelines out there, and I was part of a team who collaboratively created three different flavors of GTM guidelines over the course of several months, starting with the complex and ending with the ridiculously simple. And the team STILL couldn’t get the other teams to agree on the parameters of the guidelines.

I’m not going to dictate MY ideas on GTM guidelines, but I will say that whatever guidelines you create, make sure that by the time a GTM effort created under these guidelines is finished, both your prospects and your employees will gain the appropriate understanding of your product or service, and the GTM content will answer all of their questions.

(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)

If you don’t know what questions to ask, my six questions (why, how, what goal, benefits, target audience) can be adapted for GTM purposes.

What about your GTM content?

Are you executing a go-to-market plan and need to create some content?

Do you need customer-facing external content (blog posts, white papers, whatever)?
Do you need employee-facing internal content (FAQs, battlecards, whatever)?

Regardless of the content you need, Bredemarket can help you. Here’s a list of the types of content I’ve created over the years:

Articles • Battlecards (80+) • Blog Posts (400+) • Briefs/Data/Literature Sheets • Case Studies (12+) • Competitive Analyses • Email Newsletters (200+) • Event/Conference/Trade Show Demonstration Scripts • FAQs • Plans • Playbooks • Presentations • Proposal Templates • Proposals (100+) • Quality Improvement Documents • Requirements • Scientific Book Chapters • Smartphone Application Content • Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter) • Strategic Analyses • Web Page Content • White Papers and E-Books

Whatever you need, talk to me. And be prepared for me to ask you six (or more) questions.

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

On Trust Funnels

Kasey Jones alerted me to the phrase “trust funnel,” and I’ve been thinking about it and its relationship to content marketing. Here are my thoughts.

The sales funnel

Many of us are familiar with the concept of sales funnels. The idea is that there are a bunch of people at the top of the funnel, and people move through the sales process.

Like sausage making.

As people move down, the funnel gets narrower and narrower as some people exit the funnel. At the bottom of the funnel, there is a very small hole that represents the customers who have converted, or who have actually purchased something.

In a rare instance of my championing simplicity, I like to use an easy three-step sales funnel model with awareness, consideration, and conversion.

From Venn Marketing, “Awareness, Consideration, Conversion: A 4 Minute Intro To Marketing 101.” (Link)

You may use a more complex sales funnel, but the exact number of steps in the funnel really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that your content marketers create content that addresses each step in your funnel.

In early steps of the funnel, the content goal is to ensure that prospects know that you’re out there and you have a solution that benefits the prospects.
In later steps of the funnel, the content goal is to move prospects to the point where they will purchase something from you, rather than purchasing it from one of your competitors or not purchasing anything at all.

Some of the approaches to sales funnel-based content marketing are based upon the faulty assumption that people progress through the funnel in a logical and predictable manner. In the logical model, you present an awareness piece of content, then follow that with a consideration piece of content, then finally present content to convert the prospect into a customer.

It’s all very orderly.

Like sausage making.

But people are not sausages

Well, **MOST** people aren’t sausages. Fair use. From https://www.halloweenexpress.com/oscar-mayer-weiner-package-adult-costume-a2-GC1704.fltr

This model of the rational buyer is not always reflected in reality because people are not pieces of meat (except for the guy above). Here’s what Magdalena Andreeva says about “the messy middle”:

It’s about time we redefine the classic marketing funnel. It describes the user journey as a rather linear path, while the reality is a lot more messy, complex, and unpredictable.

Let’s scrap the dated marketing funnel and try to map out the real user journey.

It starts with a trigger, and then it goes into an almost infinite loop between exploration and evaluation – over and over again. And finally, the user exits the loop by making a decision or a purchase.
From https://hop.online/digital-strategy/how-to-influence-the-messy-middle-of-the-buyer-journey/

From https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-journey/navigating-purchase-behavior-and-decision-making/

No, it’s not logical, but people are not logical.

Oh, and in addition to assuming logic, standard content creation methods assume that your firm knows where every buyer is on their journey. This assumption is essential so that your firm can detect a prospect in the awareness phase and take the necessary steps to move them downward into the funnel (or toward the endless loop pictured above).

Kasey Jones and the trust funnel

I mentioned Kasey Jones at the beginning of this blog post, based upon something she shared on LinkedIn. She started with an inconvenient truth that blew the second assumption out of the water.

Your buyers will probably never like or comment on your posts.
Kasey Jones LinkedIn post, 8/25/2023. (Link)

So much for all of those fancy tools that identify the sources of interaction with your content. They don’t work if people don’t interact with your content.

Yet Jones notes that these people are still buying. Three of them reached out to her in the last two weeks.

Each mentioned my content as why they wanted to work with me.

But they have never, not once, engaged with anything I’ve done on here.

Still, they were in my trust funnel, just the same.
Kasey Jones LinkedIn post, 8/25/2023. (Link)

This is where I noticed that word “trust funnel.”

It’s different from the sales funnel that we are laboriously tracking in our customer relationship management (CRM) tool. For content marketers, these things literally pop up out of the blue from a “trust funnel” that we know nothing about, even though we’re building it with our content.

If I wished, I could name multiple examples of people reaching out to me because of my content or Bredemarket’s content.

Jones’ point in all this was to emphasize that you need to keep on creating “scroll-stopping content” to attract DREAM (her capitalization) clients.

Even though you don’t know who you are attracting.

You’re not a sausage grinder making sausages. You’re a flower attracting bees.

By The original uploader was Y6y6y6 at English Wikipedia. – Original image located at PDPhoto.org. Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Drilnoth using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7365698

Now I could end this discussion right here with Kasey Jones’ comments, but I thought I’d perform a LinkedIn search to see who else was talking about the trust funnel.

And I found Kevin Schmitz.

Kevin Schmitz and the trust funnel

Schmitz approached the topic from a different perspective in his post from earlier this week. He focused on a particular piece of content: a person’s LinkedIn profile and activity.

Schmitz asserted that if someone approaches you with a meeting request, and the person’s LinkedIn presence is (his words) “bare bones,” you’re less likely to take the meeting. But if a meeting requester posts engaging, relevant content, perhaps you’ll take that call.

Schmitz went on to say:

Your presence on LinkedIn is not a “lead funnel”.

It’s a “trust funnel”.

We work so damn hard to establish trust in the meeting.

Yet, most of us are person 1 (the “bare bones” person) with an uphill battle each and every meeting.
Kevin Schmitz LinkedIn post, 8/22/2023 ot 8/23/2023. (Link)

If you’re interested, Schmitz’s post goes on to suggest ways to make your LinkedIn presence more engaging.

The meaning for content marketing

So what does the idea of “creating content that resonates with your invisible trust funnel” mean for content marketing?

Most people realize (or I hope they realize) that organic content often does not have an immediate payoff, especially for complex B2B sales. Even if I write the most amazing automated biometric identification system (ABIS) content for a Bredemarket client, the client won’t get orders within the first three days of posting the content. (I’ll have more to say about “three days” in a future post discussing go-to-market efforts.) Even if I am the biometric content marketing expert. (I’ve been working on promoting THAT piece of content for a while now.)

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.

But Bredemarket (and I in my personal communications) will continue to cater to that invisible trust funnel and see what happen.

And if you’re reading this post in Janury 2025, thank you. If you want to talk to me about content creation, some of these links may still work!

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

Coldest Beer in Town

HK Food Store, Grove & 6th, Ontario, California.

Illogical marketing slogans like “coldest beer in town” are fascinating.

If you take a moment to think about it, every mini mart and liquor store in town has to chill beer to the exact same temperature before it freezes, so no store will have colder beer than any other store. (For the specifics, including the effect of ABV on alcohol freezing temperature, see Oxbow Tavern’s blog post.)

But liquor store marketers know that we DON’T take a moment to think about it. When it’s hot and we want beer, we want the “coldest beer in town.”

Well, while it was hot this morning, and while the HK Food Store was open (unlike the C & M Classy Mart a couple of miles northwest), I opted NOT to get the coldest beer in town. I wasn’t carrying a beer bottle opener, and I didn’t feel like breaking the law by walking down Grove Avenue with a beer bottle hidden in a paper bag.

My loss.