Tag Archives: benefits

What is Your Tone of Voice?

We relate to firms as entities with personalities…and particular tones of voice. Could you imagine Procter & Gamble speaking in Apple’s tone of voice, or vice versa?

And one more thing…Charmin. Now in black.

(Thunderous applause and royal adoration with no indifference whatsoever.)

Designed by Freepik.

When you contract with a writer

Firms take care to speak in a particular tone of voice. Which means that the people writing their copy have to speak in that same tone of voice.

I have spent time thinking about Bredemarket’s own tone of voice, most recently when I delved into the “royalty” aspects of the Bredemarket family of archetypes. In that family “Sage” is most dominant, but there are also other elements.

Bredemarket’s top archetypes: sage, explorer, royalty, and entertainer.

In Bredemarket’s case, my sage/explorer/royalty/entertainer tone of voice is visible in Bredemarket’s writing. At least in Bredemarket’s SELF-promotional writing.

But MY tone of voice makes no difference to my clients, all of whom are focused on their OWN tones of voice. And Bredemarket has to adjust to EACH CLIENT’S tone of voice.

  • If I’m writing for a toilet paper manufacturer, I will NOT delve into details of how the product is used. Then again, maybe I will. Times have changed since Mr. Whipple.
  • If I’m writing for a cool consumer electronics firm, I definitely WILL delve into product use…if it’s cool.
  • If I’m writing for a technologist, I’m not going to throw a lot of music references into the technologist’s writing. I will emphasize the technologist’s expertise.
  • If I’m writing for a firm dedicated to advancement, I’m not going to throw ancient references into the firm’s writing. I will emphasize the newness of the firm’s approach, using the firm’s own key words.

My hope is that if you see two pieces of ghostwritten (work-for-hire) Bredemarket work for two different clients, you WON’T be able to tell that they were both written by me.

When your writer dons your mask

I’ve addressed the topic of adaptation before, where people don masks to portray characters that they are not.

By JamesHarrison – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4873863

At the time I said the following:

So when Bredemarket or another content marketing expert starts to write something for you, should you fret and fuss over what your archetype is?

If you feel like it. But it’s not essential.

What is essential is that you have some concept of the tone of voice that you want to use in your communication.

From https://bredemarket.com/2022/10/30/donning-archetypes/

I then led into…well, something that is long outdated. But the gist of what I said at the time is that you need to determine what your firm’s tone of voice is, so that your writers can consistently write in that tone of voice.

Creating content with your tone of voice

So if Bredemarket works with you to create your content, how will I know your desired tone of voice? By one of two ways.

  1. You tell me.
  2. I ask you.
Bredemarket’s first seven questions, the October 30, 2023 version.

As we work through the seven questions that will shape your content, I ensure that I understand the tone of voice that you want to adopt in your content.

And with the review cycles interspersed through the content creation process, you can confirm that the tone is correct, and I can make adjustments as needed.

Unless you absolutely insist that I use a hackneyed phrase like “best of breed.” That requires a significant extra charge.

Do you want to drive content results in your own tone of voice with Bredemarket’s help?

Here’s how.

Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You: the e-book version

No, this is not déjà vu all over again.

If you’re familiar with Bredemarket’s “six questions your content creator should ask you”…I came up with a seventh question because I feared the six questions were not enough, and I wanted to provide you with better confidence that Bredemarket-authored content will achieve your goals.

To no one’s surprise, I’ll tell you WHY and HOW I added a seventh question.

If you want to skip to the meat, go to the WHAT section where you can download the new e-book.

Why?

Early Sunday morning I wrote something on LinkedIn and Facebook that dealt with three “e” words: entertainment, emotion, and engagement, and how the first and second words affect the third. The content was very long, and I don’t know if the content itself was engaging. But I figured that this wasn’t the end of the story:

I know THIS content won’t receive 250 engagements, and certainly won’t receive 25,000 impressions, but maybe I can repurpose the thoughts in some future content. (#Repurposing is good.)

From LinkedIn.

But what to repurpose?

Rather than delving into my content with over 25,000 impressions but less than 250 engagements, and rather than delving into the social media group I discussed, and rather than delving into the Four Tops and the Sons of the Pioneers (not as a single supergroup), I decided that I needed to delve into a single word: indifference, and how to prevent content indifference.

Because if your prospects are indifferent to your content, nothing else matters. And indifference saddens me.

By Mark Marathon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72257785

How?

Eventually I decided that I needed to revise an old piece of content from 2022.

The first questions in the Bredemarket Kickoff Guide, BmtKickoffGuide-20231022a. No, you can’t have the guide; it’s proprietary.

I decided that I needed to update my process, as well as that e-book, and add a seventh question, “Emotions?”

What?

For those who have raced ahead to this section, Bredemarket has a new downloadable e-book (revised from an earlier version) entitled “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.” It includes a new page, “Emotions,” as well as minor revisions to the other pages. You can download it below.

Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You (October 22, 2023)Download

Goal, Benefits, Target Audience, and Emotions

You’ll have to download the e-book to find the answers to the remaining four questions.

Your Prospects Don’t Care About Your Technology

By Intel Free Press – https://www.flickr.com/photos/intelfreepress/8652715478/sizes/o/in/photostream/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27917712

Technologists, you know how tough it is to create a technology product.

  • You have to assemble the technology, or perhaps create the technology yourself.
  • You have to work on the most minute details and make sure that everything is just right.
  • It takes a great deal of effort.

What if your product story is ignored?

But when you want to tell the story about your product, and all the effort you put into it, your prospects ignore everything you say. You might as well not be there.

Designed by Freepik. And yes, you need to woo your prospects.

Do you know why your prospects are ignoring you?

Because they don’t care about you. It’s all about them.

People want to satisfy their own needs

But the “it’s all about me” attitude is actually a GOOD thing, if you can harness it in your messaging. Let’s face it; we all have an “it’s all about me” attitude because we want to satisfy our needs.

  • You want to satisfy your own needs because you only care about selling your product.
  • I want to satisfy my own needs because I only care about selling Bredemarket’s services. (I’ll get to the selling part later.)
  • And your prospects want to satisfy their own needs because they only care about their problems. And because of your customers’ self-focus, they’re only going to care about your product if it solves their problems.

So when it’s time to tell the story about your product, don’t talk about your technology.

Adopt a customer focus

Instead of talking about you, talk about them.

From the Gary Fly / Brooks Group article “7 Tips for Implementing a Customer-Centric Strategy,” at https://brooksgroup.com/sales-training-blog/7-tips-implementing-customer-centric-strategy/

Adopt a customer focus and talk about things that your prospects care about, such as how your product will solve their problems.

  • Do your customers struggle for visibility, or awareness? Will your technology help their visibility?
  • Do your customers struggle when considered against the competition? Will your technology help them stand out?
  • Do your customers struggle to make money (conversion)? Will your technology help them make money?
  • Do your customers require better ease of use, speed, accuracy, or other benefits? Do the features of your technology provide those benefits?

In short, your customers need to understand how you can solve their problems.

How do you adopt a customer focus?

But how can you make sure that your story resonates with your prospects?

Perhaps you need a guide to work with you to craft your story. Yes, I can serve as a guide to solve YOUR problem.

If you’re interested in how Bredemarket, the technology content marketing expert, can help you create a customer-focused story for your prospects, find out how to create technology content that converts…

Create Technology Content That Converts

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.

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 Estimation.“

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.

Bredemarket logo

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.

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

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!

Bredemarket logo

You Need a Laptop AND a Smartphone For This To Work. Or You Don’t.

If you are reading this on your laptop (or your desktop), point your smartphone to the QR code on your laptop (or desktop) screen to read my first e-book, “Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”

(UPDATE OCTOBER 22, 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 are reading this on your smartphone, just click on this link: https://bredemarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/bmteb6qs-2212a.pdf.

As I said before, QR codes are sometimes useful, and sometimes not.

If you want to know the “why” about the e-book-see what I did there?-visit my announcement of the e-book. You can view the e-book there also.

By the way, I just checked my WordPress stats. Since this e-book was published in December 2022, it’s been downloaded over 160 times. I hope it’s helping people.

There’s a Reason Why “Tech” is a Four-Letter Word

By Tomia, original image en:User:Polylerus – Own work (Vector drawing based on Image:Profanity.JPG), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3332425

We often use the phrase “four-letter word” to refer to cuss words that shouldn’t be said in polite company. Occasionally, we have our own words that we personally consider to be four-letter words. (Such as “BIPA.”)

There are some times when we resign ourselves to the fact that “tech” can be a four-letter word also. But there’s actually a good reason for the problems we have with today’s technology.

Tech can be dim

Just this week I was doing something on my smartphone and my screen got really dim all of a sudden, with no explanation.

So I went to my phone’s settings, and my brightness setting was down at the lowest level.

For no reason.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

– Arthur C. Clarke, quoted here.
From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202613

So I increased my screen’s brightness, and everything was back to normal. Or so I thought.

A little while later, my screen got dim again, so I went to the brightness setting…and was told that my brightness was very high. (Could have fooled me.)

I can’t remember what I did next (because when you are trying to fix something you can NEVER remember what you did next), but later my screen brightness was fine.

For no reason.

Arthur C. Clark, by ITU Pictures – https://www.flickr.com/photos/itupictures/16636142906, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64344486

Was Arthur C. Clarke right? And if so, WHY was he right?

Perhaps it’s selective memory, but I don’t recall having this many technology problems when I was younger.

The shift to multi-purpose devices

Part of the reason for the increasing complexity of technology is that we make fewer and fewer single-purpose devices, and are manufacturing more and more multi-purpose devices.

One example of the shift: if I want to write a letter today, I can write it on my smartphone. (Assuming the screen is bright enough.) This same smartphone can perform my banking activities, play games, keep track of Bredemarket’s earnings…oh, and make phone calls.

Smartphones are an example of technologial convergence:

Technological convergence is a term that describes bringing previously unrelated technologies together, often in a single device. Smartphones might be the best possible example of such a convergence. Prior to the widespread adoption of smartphones, consumers generally relied on a collection of single-purpose devices. Some of these devices included telephones, wrist watches, digital cameras and global positioning system (GPS) navigators. Today, even low-end smartphones combine the functionality of all these separate devices, easily replacing them in a single device.

From a consumer perspective, technological convergence is often synonymous with innovation.

From https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/technological-convergence

And the smartphone example certainly demonstrates innovation from the previous-generation single-purpose devices.

When I was a kid, if I wanted to write a letter, I had two choices:

  1. I could set a piece of paper on the table and write the letter with a writing implement such as a pen or pencil.
  2. I could roll a piece of paper into a typewriter and type the letter.

These were, for the most part, single purpose devices. Sure I could make a paper airplane out of the piece of paper, but I couldn’t use the typewriter to play a game or make a phone call.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1216813

Turning our attention to the typewriter, it certainly was a manufacturing marvel, and intricate precision was required to design the hammers that would hit the typewritter ribbon and leave their impressions on the piece of paper. And typewriters could break, and repairmen (back then they were mostly men) could fix them.

A smartphone is much more innovative than a smartphone. But it’s infinitely harder to figure out what is wrong with a smartphone.

The smartphone hardware alone is incredibly complex, with components from a multitude of manufacturers. Add the complexities of the operating system and all the different types of software that are loaded on a smartphone, and a single problem could result from a myriad of causes.

No wonder it seems like magic, even for the best of us.

Explaining technology

But this complexity has provided a number of jobs:

  • The helpful person at your cellular service provider who has acquired just enough information to recognize and fix an errant application.
  • The many people in call centers (the legitimate call centers, not the “we found a problem with your Windows computer” call scammers) who perform the same tasks at a distance.
By Earl Andrew at English Wikipedia – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17793658
  • All the people who write instructions on how to use and fix all of our multi-purpose devices, from smartphones to computers to remote controls.

Oh, and the people that somehow have to succinctly explain to prospects why these multi-purpose devices are so great.

Because no one’s going to run into problems with technology unless they acquire the technology. And your firm has to get them to acquire your technology.

Crafting a technology marketing piece

So your firm’s marketer or writer has to craft some type of content that will make a prospect aware of your technology, and/or induce the prospect to consider purchasing the technology, and/or ideally convert the prospect into a paying customer.

Before your marketer or writer crafts the content, they have to answer some basic questions.

By Evan-Amos – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11293857

Using a very simple single-purpose example of a hammer, here are the questions with explanations:

  • Why does the prospect need this technology? And why do you provide this technology? This rationale for why you are in business, and why your product exists, will help you make the sale. Does your prospect want to buy a hammer from a company that got tired of manufacturing plastic drink stirrers, or do they want to buy a hammer from a forester who wants to empower people to build useful items?
  • How does your firm provide this technology? If I want to insert a nail into a piece of wood, do I need to attach your device to an automobile or an aircraft carrier? No, the hammer will fit in your hand. (Assuming you have hands.)
  • What is the technology? Notice that the “why” and “how” questions come before the “what” question, because “why” and “how” are more critical. But you still have to explain what the technology is (with the caveat I mention below). Perhaps some of your prospects have no idea what a hammer is. Don’t assume they already know.
  • What is the goal of the technology? Does a hammer help you floss your teeth? No, it puts nails into wood.
  • What are the benefits of the technology? When I previously said that you should explain what the technology is, most prospects aren’t looking for detailed schematics. They primarily care about what the technology will do for them. For example, that hammer can keep their wooden structure from falling down. They don’t care about the exact composition of the metal in the hammer head.
  • Finally, who is the target audience for the technology? I don’t want to read through an entire marketing blurb and order a basic hammer, only to discover later that the product won’t help me keep two diamonds together but is really intended for wood. So don’t send an email to jewelers about your hammer. They have their own tools.
By Mauro Cateb – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90944472

(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.)

Once you answer these questions (more about the six questions in the Bredemarket e-book available here), your marketer or writer can craft your content.

Or, if you need help, Bredemarket (the technology content marketing expert) can craft your content, whether it’s a blog post, case study, white paper, or something else.

I’ve helped other technology firms explain their “hammers” to their target audiences, explaining the benefits, and answering the essential “why” questions about the hammers.

Can I help your technology firm communicate your message? Contact me.

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Blog About Your Identity Firm’s Benefits Now. Why Wait?

As content creators accelerate information generation and distribution, content consumers demand information NOW. Perhaps my prediction of five-minute content creation hasn’t occurred—yet—but firms need to distribute their messages as fast as possible.

OK, maybe not as fast as Brazilian race car driver Antonella Bassani, but fast enough. Fair use, from https://www.racers-behindthehelmet.com/post/first-historic-pole-position-and-podium-for-antonella-bassani-in-porsche-cup-brasil. Photo credits: Porsche Cup Brasil.

This Bredemarket blog post discusses a rapid way for identity/biometric firms to communicate the benefits of their solutions and capture their prospects’ attention immediately.

  • Blogging provides the rapid content generation your identity/biometric firm needs.
  • Benefits are essential in your blog post to help convert your readers.
  • Bredemarket can generate a benefits-laced blog post for your identity/biometric firm…with no learning curve necessary, allowing you to distribute your message quickly.

Why blogging?

While my consultancy Bredemarket creates identity content in a variety of customer-facing formats, including white papers, case studies, and e-books, one of my favorite ways to write about identity is via blog posts.

From https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/08/catching-financial-fraudsters-with-physical-evidence/

Why?

  • Blog posts provide an immediate business impact. It’s easier to create a blog post than it is to create a downloadable document. If Bredemarket needs to generate content for its self-marketing, I can get a blog post out in two hours, if not sooner. For a breaking news story, your company’s blogged take may hit your prospects before they’ve even heard about the breaking news story in the first place.
  • Blog posts are easy to share. You can’t just post your blog content and let it sit there. While over 200 people subscribe to the Bredemarket blog, that means that almost 8 billion people will never see it. I increase my viewing odds (slightly) by resharing my blog posts to my hundreds of additional followers on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms.
  • Blog posts are easy to repurpose. Once people have read your blog post, your work is not done. It’s easy to repurpose blog content into other forms. For example, I created an e-book from a blog post.

Why benefits?

However, if your identity/biometric blog post merely consists of a list of features of your product or service, then you’re wasting your time.

From https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/08/scientists-automate-key-step-forensic-fingerprint-analysis. Credit: Chugh et al., Hanacek/NIST.

If your post simply states that your new latent fingerprint station captures print evidence at 2000 pixels per inch, most of your prospects are going to say, “So what?”

On the other hand, if your post talks about how your latent fingerprint station’s high capture resolution benefits your prospects by helping experts to solve crimes more quickly and getting bad people off the street, then your prospects are going to care about your product/service—and will convert from prospects to paying customers.

Why Bredemarket?

That little tip about benefits vs. features is just one of numerous tips that I’ve picked up over my many years as an identity/biometric blog expert. And you can benefit from my ability to start writing immediately because I require no learning curve. My 29 years of identity/biometric expertise comes in handy when your firm requires identity blog post writing.

OK, perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say that I can start writing immediately. Before I type a single word, we need to ensure a common understanding of why we’re writing this blog post. If you want to know how we achieve this common understanding, read the e-book I mentioned earlier.

If you are ready to purchase my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service to create a blog post (or other short content) describing the benefits of your identity/biometric product or service, then we should start talking sooner rather than later.

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