Tag Archives: content marketing expert

Pilots, Co-Pilots, and Marketing and Writing Services

I’ve always been amused by this bumper sticker saying.

"God is my co-pilot" license plate.
Flickr, david__jones, “God is my co-pilot.” Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

The phrase “God is my co-pilot,” taken from pilot Robert L. Scott Jr.’s World War II autobiography of the same name, superficially appears to depict a fervent religious devotion.

By United States Air Force – https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/105661/brigadier-general-robert-l-scott-jr/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92651184

But look at it again.

Military pilots have a huge reputation for supersized egos. Not that I necessarily have a problem with egos, but this must be recognized. And the phrase above bears it out.

  • Scott is the pilot, in charge of things.
  • God is the co-pilot, subservient to Scott’s every command. Heck, since Scott runs the show, God might as well be a mere passenger.

But this is not only a religious issue.

Who controls artificial intelligence?

If you’re going to employ generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) to create your written work, you need to decide who will be the pilot, and who will be the co-pilot.

  • You could send the prompt off to your favorite generative AI tool and let it shape the words you will communicate to your customers. In this case, the tool is the pilot, and you’re just the co-pilot.
Designed by Freepik.

(The perceptive ones among you have already noted that I treat text and images differently. In the image above, I clearly took the co-pilot’s seat and let Freepik pilot the process. My raving egotism does not extend to my graphic capabilities.)

This concept of AI as a co-pilot rather than a pilot is not just my egotistical opinion.

GitHub Copilot. From https://github.com/features/copilot

When GitHub implemented its generative AI coding solution, it named the solution “GitHub Copilot.” The clear implication is that the human coder is still running the show, while GitHub Copilot is helping out its boss.

But enough about generative AI. Heaven knows I’ve been spouting off about that a lot lately. Let’s turn to another topic I spout off about a lot—how you should work with your content creator to generate your content marketing text.

Who should pilot a content marketing project?

Assume for the moment that your company has decided NOT to entrust its content marketing text to a generative AI tool, and instead has contracted with a human content marketing expert to create the text.

Again, there are two ways to approach the task.

  • The first approach is to yield all control to the expert. You sit back, relax, and tell your content marketing consultant to do whatever they want. They provide the text, and you pay the consultant with no questions asked. The content marketing consultant is the pilot here.
  • The second approach is to retain all control yourself. You tell the content marketing consultant exactly what you want, and exactly what words to say to describe your best-of-breed, game-changing, paradigm-shifting, outcome-optimizing solution. (That last sentence was painful to write, but I did it for you.) The content marketing consultant follows your exact commands and produces the copy with the exact words you want. You are the pilot here.

So which of these two methods is the best way to create content?

As far as I’m concerned, neither of them.

Which is why Bredemarket doesn’t work that way.

Can two people pilot a content marketing project?

By Alex Pereslavtsev – http://www.airliners.net/photo/Transaero-Airlines/Boeing-777-212-ER/1984464/L/, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16594678

Bredemarket’s preferred content creation process is a collaborative one, in which you and I both control the process. While in the end you are the de facto pilot since you control the purse-strings, Bredemarket emphasizes and follows this collaborative approach.

Throughout this collaborative and iterative package we both pilot the process, and we both contribute our unique strengths to produce the final written product.

Are you ready to collaborate?

If you have content marketing needs that Bredemarket can help you achieve, let me know and we’ll talk about how to pilot a content marketing project together.

Qualitative Benefits and Inland Empire Marketing

Are you an Inland Empire business who wants to promote the benefits of your products and services to your clients? If so, don’t assume that these benefits must be quantitative. You can use qualitative benefits also.

Benefits

Before we talk about quantative vs. qualitative benefits, let’s talk about benefits themselves, and how they differ from features.

As Kayla Carmichael has noted, features answer the “what” question, while benefits answer the “why” question.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/3-takeaways-from-start-with-why

She explains that your clients don’t care if your meal kit arrives ready to heat (a feature). Your clients care about saving time preparing meals (a benefit).

Quantitative benefits

In certain cases, the client may be even more impressed if the benefits can be expressed in a quantitative way. For example, if you know that your meal kit saves people an average of 37 minutes and 42.634 seconds preparing meals, let your client know this.

Am I the only one mouthing the words “these are the days of our lives” to myself? CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2949924

But maybe you don’t know this.

  • You haven’t paid for a survey of your existing customers to see how much time they’ve saved preparing meals.
  • Or maybe the data just isn’t available at all.

The power of qualitative benefits

A lack of quantifiable data won’t stop your marketing efforts, though, since qualitative benefits can be just as powerful as quantative ones.

I’m going to take the marketer’s easy way out and just cite something that Apple did.

I’ll admit that Apple sometimes has some pretty stupid marketing statements (“It’s black!“). But sometimes the company grabs people’s attention with its messaging.

Take this July 2022 article, “How Apple is empowering people with their health information.”

You probably already saw the words “empowering people” in the title. Sure, people like health information…but they really like power.

By Andreas Bohnenstengel, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61536009

Later in the article, Apple’s chief operating officer (Jeff Williams) emphasizes the power theme: “…they’re no longer passengers on their own health journey. Instead, we want people to be firmly in the driver’s seat.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Apple has referred to empowering the individual. The company has done this for decades. Remember (then) Apple Computer’s slogan, “The Power to Be Your Best”? If you missed that particular slogan, here’s a commercial.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5S9VvMMxhU

There are zero statistics in that commercial. It doesn’t say that the Macintosh computer would equip you to jump 5% higher, or sing on key 99.9% of the time. And Apple Computer didn’t claim that the Macintosh would equip you to draw bridge images 35.2% faster.

But the viewer could see that a Macintosh computer, with its graphical user interface, its support of then-new graphic programs, and (not shown in the ad) the ability to distribute the output of these graphic programs via laser printers, gave Macintosh users the power to…well, the power to be their best.

And some potential computer buyers perceived that this power provided infinite value.

As you work out your benefit statements, don’t give up if the benefits cannot be quantified. As long as the benefits resonate with the customer, qualitative benefits are just fine.

What are your benefits?

Let’s return to you and your Ontario, California area business that needs content marketing promotion. Before you draft your compay’s marketing material, or ask someone to draft it for you, you need to decide what your benefits are.

I’ve written a book about identifying benefits, and five other questions that you need to answer before creating marketing content.

Click on the image below, find the e-book at the bottom of the page, and skip to page 11 to read about benefits.

Feel free to read the rest of the book also.

See https://bredemarket.com/iehow/

Marketing Ontario, California businesses through blog posts

I just added a page to the Bredemarket website entitled “Blog posts for your Ontario, California business.”

Now that’s Ontario California, not Ontario Canada.

From https://cboardinggroup.com/10-funny-things-about-ontario-airport/.

Let me quote a little bit from the page I just created.

For example, let’s say that an Ontario, California content marketing expert wants to target businesses who need blog post writing services. This expert will then create a web page, and possibly a companion blog post, to attract those businesses.

From https://bredemarket.com/iew-ontario-blog/

You’re now reading the “companion blog post.”

Why did I write the companion blog post?

If I’m going to talk about blogging, I need a blog post to go with it, right?

The other purpose of this blog post is to direct you to the web page. I don’t want to repeat the exact same copy from the web page on the blog post, or the search engines will not like me. And you may not like me either.

If you’re an Ontario, California business who is looking for an effective method to promote your firm, and a description of how to move forward, go to the Bredemarket web page “Blog posts for your Ontario, California business.”

Why should I read the web page?

Needless to say, you only need to read the web page if you’re an Ontario, California business. Well, I guess Fontana businesses can read it also; just ignore the video with Mayor Leon and substitute a video with Mayor Warrent instead.

The web page addresses the following topics, among others:

  • Why do you want to use content marketing to promote your Ontario business? (The web page also addresses inbound marketing.)
  • Why do you want to use blog posts to promote your Ontario business?
  • How can an Ontario business create a blog post?
  • How can an Ontario business find a blog post writer?
  • What should you do next?

If you’re asking yourself these questions, go here to find the answers.

And what about social media?

Perhaps you’re reading this blog post because you learned about it on social media.

The web page includes a paragraph on promoting blog posts via social media, if that interests you.

By Jason Howie – https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonahowie/8583949219, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57309554

Yes, that’s an old picture. Although some websites still reference Google+ today.

Technology firms and qualitative benefits

If you are a technology business who is communicating the benefits of your products or services, don’t assume that these benefits have to be quantified. Qualitative benefits can work just as well.

CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=308760

But what are benefits?

As Kayla Carmichael has noted, features answer the “what” question, while benefits answer the “why” question.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/3-takeaways-from-start-with-why

She notes that a company’s clients don’t care if your vacuum cleaner has a washable lifetime filter. That’s just a feature, or what the product does.

Your clients care about eliminating extra costs, which is the benefit that the washable lifetime filter provides, and why the client should care.

How do you discover benefits?

Let’s say your boss tells you to write about the washable lifetime filter. Imagine that you’re conversing with one of your clients, and you tell them that your vacuum cleaner has a washable lifetime filter.

Now imagine that your client responds…

…”So what?“

You respond that the client only has to buy one filter, rather than buying a new one every few months.

“So what?”

(Yes, your client may ask the “so what” question several times, like a small child. And you should do the same, to dive down into the true benefits of a particular feature.)

By Mindaugas Danys from Vilnius, Lithuania, Lithuania – scream and shout, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44907034

To the client’s last “so what” question, you respond that the client will save money!

Now the client is impressed and knows why they should care about your washable lifetime filter.

Quantitative benefits are great

In certain cases, the client may be even more impressed if the benefits can be expressed in numeric form.

For example, let’s say that a disposable vacuum cleaner filter costs $35 and lasts for 6 months. I have no idea whether these numbers are accurate; my last name isn’t Hoover, after all.

By Marion S. Trikosko – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsc.03262.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64381
By Library of Congress – http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/thumbnail339.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71911329

Whoops, not those Hoovers. I couldn’t find a picture of William Henry “Boss” Hoover or son Herbert William Hoover Sr.

Back to my guesses about disposable vacuum cleaner filters. If my numbers are correct, you can tell your client that your washable lifetime filter can save the client $700 over a ten-year period. Depending on your price points, the savings may be more than the cost of the vacuum cleaner itself. (Again, I’m not Hoover, so don’t quote me.)

With a couple of fancy leaps of logic, you could then say to the client:

“Would you like to MAKE money by buying this vacuum cleaner?”

Hey, whatever works. I’m a marketer, not a salesperson.

But qualitative benefits can be just as great

You can’t always quantify benefits, because to quantify benefits you need data, and you may not have the data close at hand. The data may not even exist.

This won’t stop your marketing efforts, though, since qualitative benefits can be just as powerful as quantative ones.

I’m going to take the marketer’s easy way out and just cite something that Apple did. I’ll admit that Apple sometimes has some pretty stupid statements (“It’s black!“).

But sometimes the company grabs people’s attention with its messaging.

Take this July 2022 article, “How Apple is empowering people with their health information.”

You probably already saw the words “empowering people” in the title. Sure, people like health information…but they really like power.

By Andreas Bohnenstengel, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61536009

There are more examples within the article:

  • Referring to an underlying report, the article states that “The first section describes Apple’s focus on personal health and fitness features on Apple Watch and iPhone that offer actionable, science-based insights.” So what? It turns out these actionable, science-based insights “help protect users’ health and safety.”
  • Apple’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, is quoted as saying “We believe passionately that technology can play a role in improving health outcomes.” Nice, but Williams subsequently returns to the power theme: “…they’re no longer passengers on their own health journey. Instead, we want people to be firmly in the driver’s seat.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Apple has referred to empowering the individual. The company has done this for decades. Remember (then) Apple Computer’s slogan, “The Power to Be Your Best”? If you missed that particular slogan, here’s a commercial.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5S9VvMMxhU

There’s not one statistic in that commercial. It doesn’t say that the Macintosh computer would equip you to jump 5% higher, or sing on key 99.9% of the time. And Apple Computer didn’t claim that the Macintosh would equip you to draw bridge images 35.2% faster.

But the viewer could see that a Macintosh computer, with its graphical user interface, its support of then-new graphic programs, and (not shown in the ad) the ability to distribute the output of these graphic programs via laser printers, gave Macintosh users the power to…well, the power to be their best.

And some potential computer buyers perceived that this power provided infinite value.

As you work out your benefit statements, don’t give up if the benefits cannot be quantified. As long as the benefits resonate with the customer, qualitative benefits are just fine.

What are your benefits?

Before you draft your marketing material, or ask someone to draft it for you, you need to decide what your benefits are.

I’ve written a book about benefits, and five other things that you need to settle before creating marketing content.

Click on the image below, find the e-book at the bottom of the page, and skip to page 11 to read about benefits.

Feel free to read the rest of the book also.

See https://bredemarket.com/techhow/

What Technologists Should Do Before Commissioning Thought Leadership Pieces

“Thought leadership” is the rage in all sorts of enterprises, including technology companies.

By CrisNYCa – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94532194

But should you hop on the bandwagon? And if you do, how should you proceed?

Why technology thought leadership is important

Should you hop on the thought leadership bandwagon? I suggest that you should.

Why? Michael Brenner’s “The Smart CIO’s Guide to Thought Leadership in Tech” explains.

Tech is the fastest-changing industry in the world. New innovations, tools, and capabilities are continuously reshaping the way every company does business….

Companies of all types, then, turn to tech thought leadership to understand emerging trends and potential disruptions.

For CIOs and other tech thought leaders, this presents a huge opportunity. Establishing yourself as a tech thought leader gives you a wide audience and a platform for increasing your brand’s (and your own) visibility.

From https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/thought-leadership-in-tech/

Benefits for your business and yourself? Sounds like a win-win to me. Be sure to read Brenner’s article for more of his thoughts.

Who should write the thought leadership piece?

Ready to be a thought leader? You need to get someone to write the thought leadership piece.

  • You could write it yourself.
  • You could have someone write it for you.
  • You could work with a writer and collaboratively create the piece.

How you work is up to you. Perhaps you have communication experience and know how to convey technical thoughts to non-technical audiences. Or perhaps you dread writing and would love to pass that task to someone else.

Now what?

Once you’ve decided who will write your thought leadership piece, you don’t want to just start typing. You need to prepare.

Whether you’re writing the first draft, or someone else is writing the first draft, you need to specify your needs for the piece.

And ask some questions before you start writing.

Click on the image below to find out what questions you need to ask.

See https://bredemarket.com/techhow/

How Bredemarket’s Six Questions Support Strategic Content Marketing

(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.)

Just for fun, I’m going to challenge my assertion that there are six questions that your content creator must ask you before creating content.

I ought to know about these six questions. As a content marketing expert, I wrote the book on the topic.

To download this e-book, go to https://bredemarket.com/2022/12/18/six-questions-your-content-creator-should-ask-you-the-e-book-version/.

If you haven’t read the e-book, the six questions are:

  1. Why?
  2. How?
  3. What?
  4. Goal?
  5. Benefits?
  6. Target Audience?

The idea is that your content creator hosts a kickoff session, asks you the six questions, and only then starts to create the content in question—the blog post, case study, or whatever.

Are the six questions overkill?

But simplicity advocates may argue that those six questions are five questions too many.

Analysis paralysis may prevent you from moving forward at all, much less realizing your content creation goal. Perhaps you should be more efficient and just put pen to paper and, as the shoe people say, just do it.

By http://www.seeklogo.com/nike-classic-logo-99493.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48024270

I found a content marketing expert who agreed with this assertion, and wrote a post entitled “In marketing, move quickly.”

That content marketing expert was…well, it was me.

I ran across a local company (which I will not name) that issued a press release in December 2021. In part, the press release mentioned the local company’s new dedication to the marketing function.

From https://bredemarket.com/2022/03/23/in-marketing-move-quickly/

The company had hired an international marketing firm “to develop comprehensive marketing strategies….We expect their work to incorporate a website redesign, brand refresh, new strategic messaging and content, as well as focused video and digital campaigns.”

So, when I wrote the “In marketing, move quickly” post three months later, what had this international marketing firm accomplished in the interim?

The website has a full slew of data sheets on the company’s products, and I found a 2017 brochure that effectively served as a white paper. But that’s it; no other white papers, and no case studies describing happy customers’ experiences.

The company’s YouTube channel has two videos from 2021.

The company’s Facebook page hasn’t posted anything since 2017.

Neither of the company’s LinkedIn pages (yes, the company has two LinkedIn pages) has any posts.

From https://bredemarket.com/2022/03/23/in-marketing-move-quickly/

Now I have no visibility into this particular company, but I’ve been around the block to guess that the international marketing firm was probably still in the analysis stage, optimizing synergies according to “out of the box” criteria, to ensure bleeding-edge revenue maximization.

No, the six questions aren’t overkill

After reviewing what I wrote before in that blog post, I realize that my e-book lacks a very important point.

Don’t spend three months answering the six questions.

I shouldn’t HAVE to say this, but perhaps it’s safer to explicitly say it.

Now practices can very from consultation to consultation, but it’s very likely that a content creator and their client can breeze through those six questions in half an hour or less.

Or maybe the client can answer the questions on their own before the meeting.

If your content marketing expert schedules six one-hour meetings (or worse still, workshops) to address the six questions, run away!

(Is the content marketing expert billing by the hour?)

And the six questions create a content strategy

There’s something else that I failed to explicitly say in my e-book.

Not only do the answers to the six questions benefit that one piece of content, but they benefit everything else that your company does.

For example, let’s say that a content marketing expert is working with a gourmet ice cream shoppe (not a shop, but a shoppe), and the proprietor (Jane Cold) answers the “how” question as follows:

At Jane’s Gourmet Ice Cream Shoppe, we keep the internal dining temperature below 50 degrees Fahrenheit to ensure that our guests enjoy ice cream as it was meant to be enjoyed. We inform our guests of our temperature policy beforehand to ensure they bring proper attire.

By Edward S. Curtis – This file was derived from: Inupiat Family from Noatak, Alaska, 1929, Edward S. Curtis.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24953870

Now let’s say that the piece of content in question is a social media post describing a new farkleberry ice cream flavor. (Thanks, Live Eat Learn.)

By Eric Hunt – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85068643

While the content marketing expert will use the answer to the “how” question to create the content, the ramifications go far beyond the social media post itself.

  • Perhaps the new flavor could be branded “Frigid Farkleberry” to suggest how the ice cream should best be enjoyed.
  • Maybe in addition to branding, the “how” answer may even influence pricing. Perhaps prices incorporate the number “32,” as in a single-scoop price of $4.32. (Yes that price is high, but after all this is an ice cream shoppe.)

And what of future social media posts?

Let me clue you in on a little secret: once your content marketing expert has asked the six questions for the first piece of content, the kickoff is much quicker for subsequent pieces of content.

Chances are the basic “why” and “how” won’t change, although some of the later questions such as the target audience could change for each individual piece of content.

So without explicitly trying to do so, the six questions have created a de facto content marketing strategy. After creating five pieces of content, you’ve essentially defined your company’s mission, purpose, and differentiators, and may have defined as many as five separate vertical markets along the way.

Not a bad investment of thirty minutes of time.

(But a terrible investment of three months of time.)

An exercise for you

Normally this is the point where I’d tell you to contact me if you want to use Bredemarket’s content marketing expertise. But this time I’m going to do something different.

  • Why don’t you think of a piece of content you want to create?
  • Once you’ve decided on that, why don’t you ask yourself the six questions?
  • Once you have the answers, why don’t you see what type of overall content marketing strategy you can shape, solely based on those six responses?

What I Missed About QR Codes in 2021

A lot has happened with QR codes since I last wrote about them in October 2021. (For example, the Coinbase Super Bowl ad in 2022, and its demonstration of security risks.)

Now that I’m revisiting my October 2021 post on QR codes, I wish I could change one word to make myself look smarter.

See if you can guess which word I want to change.

I have since chosen to adopt QR codes for some of my Bredemarket work, especially in cases where an online reader may need additional information.

From https://bredemarket.com/2021/10/15/a-qr-code-is-not-a-way-of-life/

Did you find it?

Instead of writing “online,” I should have written “offline.”

I don’t know whether I just made a typo, or if I intentionally wrote “online,” but I shouldn’t have.

Why QR codes rarely make sense online

Because if you’re online, you don’t need a QR code, since you presumably have access to a clickable URL.

But if you’re offline—for example, if you’re watching a commercial on an old-fashioned TV screen—a QR code makes perfect sense. Well, as long as you explicitly identify where the QR code will lead you, something Coinbase failed to do in 2022. “Just click on the bouncing QR code and don’t worry where you’ll go!”

But there’s one more place where QR codes make sense. I didn’t explicitly refer to it in my 2021 post, but QR codes make sense when you’re looking at printed material, such as printed restaurant menus.

Or COVID questionnaires.

Which reminds me…

What I didn’t tell you about the Ontario Art Walk

…there’s one story about the Ontario Art Walk that I didn’t share in yesterday’s post.

After leaving Dragon Fruit Skincare, but before visiting the Chaffey Community Museum of Art, I visited one other location that I won’t identify. This location wanted you to answer a COVID questionnaire, which you accessed via a QR code.

I figured I’d do the right thing and answer the questionnaire, since I had nothing to worry about.

  • I was vaccinated.
  • I was boosted.
  • I hadn’t been around anyone with COVID.
  • I didn’t have a fever.

I entered the “right” response to every single question, except for the one that asked if I had a runny or stuffy nose. Since I had a stuffy nose, I indicated this.

But hey, it’s just a stuffy nose. What could go wrong?

When I finished the questionnaire, I was told that based on my answers, I was not allowed in the premises, and if I was already in the premises I should leave immediately.

Which I did.

And which is why I didn’t write about that particular location in yesterday’s post.

Bredemarket, pressing the flesh (sometimes six feet away)

But back to non-health related aspects of QR codes.

The Ontario Art Walk was actually the second in-person event that I had attended that week. As I noted on Instagram, I also went to a City of Ontario information session about a proposed bike lane.

Now that COVID has (mostly) receded, more of us are going to these in-person events. My target market (businesspeople in the United States) is mostly familiar with the century-old term “press the flesh.” While it usually applies to politicians attending in-person events, it can equally apply to non-political events.

Whenever I go out to these local events, I like to have some printed Bredemarket collateral handy in case I find a local businessperson looking for marketing services. After all, since I am the Ontario, California content marketing expert, I should let relevant people in Ontario know this.

In those cases, a QR code makes sense, since I can hand it to the person, the person can scan the QR code on their phone, and the person can immediately access whatever web page or other content I want to share with them.

On Saturday, it occurred to me that if I ran across a possible customer during the Ontario Art Walk, I could use a QR code to share my e-book “Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”

Unfortunately, this bright idea came to my mind at 5:30 pm for an event that started at 6. I dummied up a quick and dirty page with the cover and a QR code, but it was…dirty. Just as well I didn’t share that on Saturday.

But now that I have more time, I’ve created a better-looking printed handout so that I’m ready at the next in-person event I attend.

If we meet, ask me for it.

Making myself look less smart

Well, now that I’ve gone through all of this trouble explaining how QR codes are great for offline purposes, I’m going to share the aforementioned handout…online.

(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.)

Which has probably prompted the following question from you.

“Why?”

Four reasons:

  1. It gave me the excuse to post the question “Why?” above, thus reiterating one of the major points of the e-book.
  2. Because I felt like sharing it.
  3. Just in case you don’t make “Event X” that I attend in the future, you can experience the joy of printing the flyer and scanning the QR code yourself. Just like you were there!
  4. To demonstrate that even when you provide a piece of content with a QR code, it’s also helpful to explicitly reveal the URL where you’ll head if you scan the code. (Look just below the QR code in the flyer above.) And if you receive the flyer in online form rather than printed form, that URL is clickable.

Bredemarket’s Two Step Target Segment (Persona) Definition Process

I’ve said before that there are six critical questions that you need to ask before creating content. One of those six questions is to ask who the target audience will be for the content.

By David Shankbone – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2786722

How do you decide who your target audience is?

And how do you decide who the target segments are within that target audience?

The professional marketer’s way to define a target segment

A few months ago, some marketers were writing eight pieces of content. At one point, they stepped back and defined personas that corresponded to these eight pieces of content.

Personas? What’s that?

Let’s use Aurora Harley’s definition:

A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user of the product. A persona is an archetype instead of an actual living human, but personas should be described as if they were real people.

From https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona/

Harley shared an example of a persona (go to her article to see it) that incorporated a lot of detail:

  • A name (in this case, “Rosa Cho”)
  • Biographical details (job title, age, city of residence)
  • Behavioral details (what motivates her, her frustrations, her goals)

Why all the detail? Because this detail allows us to think of this abstract persona as a living person. As marketers design their product, they can reference this persona and ask themselves if Rosa Cho would like this content.

So all you have to do is build the personas.

By Universal Studios, re-released by Realart in 1953. – http://www.basilrathbone.net/films/sonoffrankenstein/page3.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69818036

But how do we create Rosa Cho and her persona friends? Do we need weird science to perform this feat?

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

How to create a professional persona in 9 steps, or 4 steps

When professional marketers at large companies create personas, they often use a persona creation process.

For example, Arthur McCay has defined 9 steps in persona creation, as an aid to people who are befuddled with the whole persona creation process.

  • The first of these 9 steps is to perform research to obtain reliable data (rather than mere hypotheses) about your persona. This research may be based on your own knowledge, on interviews with customers and customer-facing salespeople, or on data sources (including web analytics).
  • The remaining 8 steps use this research to segment the audience into individual archetypes, decide on the layout (what the persona will contain), and fill in the details. I’m not going to reproduce all of McCay’s content; you can see all 9 of his steps here.

If you’re someone who thinks that 9 steps is too many steps, perhaps you’ll prefer Louis Grenier’s 4 step process. Although frankly it’s pretty much the same.

  1. Choose questions for your survey
  2. Set up a survey on a popular page
  3. Analyze your data
  4. Build your persona

OK, the emphasis is slightly different, but in both cases you assemble data (McCay uses multiple sources, Grenier uses a survey), analyze it, and then create the personas.

And I’m sure there are a variety of other methods to create personas. If you want to go down the persona creation route, choose the one that works for you.

Why personas?

But why create personas?

Because marketing research emphasizes that persona creation is better than the alternative.

As every professional marketer knows, the data-driven method of persona creation is necessary to create accurate personas. As McCay states:

It is important to keep in mind that a persona is a collective image of a segment of your target audience (TA). It cannot be the face of the entire TA. Nor can it be just one person. You need somewhat of a golden middle.

From https://uxpressia.com/blog/how-to-create-persona-guide-examples

Note that you should never base your target segment on the attributes of a single person. That’s going to skew your data and perhaps overemphasize some quirk of the individual person.

  • For example, if your company were marketing to part-time consultants, and chose to market to me rather than a persona created from data, then your company would erroneously conclude that all part-time consultants have prior experience with FriendFeed and an interest in orienteering.
  • This is not accurate for other part-time consultants, 99.99999% of whom have never heard of FriendFeed and think that orienteering is some form of Japanese study. (It isn’t.)

If you aspire to be a professional marketer, don’t read this

As professional marketers will tell you, using a real person rather than a constructed persona to define your target audience (or target segment) is an absolutely terrible thing to do.

But be terrible.

For some of you, I recommend that you consider using a real person as a starting point.

Large multi-million dollar businesses can devote the resources to the surveys, interviews, analytics, and other steps necessary for thorough persona creation.

But what if you’re a small business and don’t have the time or resources to do all that?

Don’t tell anyone, but you can cheat.

Don’t read this either: two steps to define a target segment

So you’ve read the warnings above, but you’re ready to ignore them and forgo you chance at a Super Duper Marketing Research award (application fee $899, not counting the cost of the awards dinner).

Without further ado, here are Bredemarket’s two steps to define a target segment.

  1. Start with a real person.
  2. Adjust.

If you read above, you realize that this method has severe problems, especially if you skip the second step altogether. By starting your focus with a real person, you could inadvertently create marketing text that emphasizes individual eccentricities that are relatively unimportant.

Is your content true north, or magnetic north?

But if you use your smarts to adjust and generalize the original person, you have a quick and dirty way to create your persona.

Rather than collecting extensive survey results and deriving an artificial persona from those results, you start with a real person.

An example

For example, let’s say that my company Bredemarket is targeting local businesses that need content or proposal creation.

I could start with a real local person who could use Bredemarket’s services, and then adjust that real biography and behavioral attributes as necessary to remove the oddities.

Or I could start with a non-local person and adjust as necessary to make the person a local person, filling in biographical and behavioral details as needed.

Either way, the end product is a quick and dirty persona that Bredemarket can use to target local businesses.

But what do professional marketers do in reality?

But are quick and dirty personas too dirty to use? Shouldn’t we stick to professional marketing techniques and create fictitious personas?

For example, when you create your Rosa Cho persona, how do you depict the persona? Do you use an illustration, or do you use an image of a real person?

One response from a content marketing expert:

Personally prefer illustrations…

From https://www.designernews.co/stories/69356-ask-dn-do-you-use-real-peoples-photos-for-creating-user-personas-or-you-go-for-illustration-option

Another from another content marketing expert:

I prefer real photos. I think they help people empathize with the persona more than an illustration.

From https://www.designernews.co/stories/69356-ask-dn-do-you-use-real-peoples-photos-for-creating-user-personas-or-you-go-for-illustration-option

Obviously both answers are wrong, however. Right?

  • A real photo is obviously a terrible thing to use, because it is based on a real individual and ignores all of the research that you performed to create the rest of the persona.
  • And illustrations can be fallible, since chances are that they don’t incorporate all of your research either. (Does the median 34 year old freelancer from Seattle really look like the illustration? Or does the illustration more accurately depict a 35 year old from Tacoma?)

Let’s face it: persona creation is not merely a science, but also an art. And sometimes you may take artistic license. This content marketing expert gives you permission to do so.

TL;DR Do what you want

There are valid arguments for a 4 step, 9 step, or 96 step (heh) persona creation process.

And there are valid arguments for just winging it.

The important thing is to target somebody when creating content, or having someone create content for you.

Which is why Bredemarket asks customers who their target audience is in the first place. It’s all in Bredemarket’s most recent e-book; read this post to find out how to download the e-book.

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

I love repurposing.

So I’ve repurposed my October 30 blog post into an e-book.

This gave me an opportunity to revisit the topic and add critical information on wildebeests, George (H.W.) Bush, and Yogi Berra.

But more importantly, it allows me to share my thoughts with a wider audience.

If you missed the October blog post, I state that there are six critical questions that your content creator must ask before creating content. These questions apply whether your content creator is a consultant, an employee at your company, or you.

The e-book discusses each of these six questions:

  1. Why?
  2. How?
  3. What?
  4. Goal?
  5. Benefits?
  6. Target Audience?

And as I note in the e-book, that’s just the beginning of the content creation process.

Whether you intend to use Bredemarket as your content creator, use someone else as your content creator, or create your own content, the points in this e-book are helpful. They can be applied to content creation (case studies, white papers, blog posts) or proposal work, and apply whether you are writing for Inland Empire West businesses or businesses anywhere.

And if you read the e-book, you’ll discover why I’m NOT sharing it on the Bredemarket Identity Firm Services LinkedIn page and Facebook group.

You can download the e-book here. And you can be a content marketing expert also.

(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.)

Does Every Blog Post Need a Call to Action?

Does every blog post need a CTA?

No.

Let me explain.

What is a call to action?

No, not the Western Electric kind of call. By Jonathan Mauer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50534668

For those who are not familiar with the term, a “call to action,” abbreviated as CTA, is just what it sounds like: a summons to do something. So if you want to call it a STDS, feel free. (Although I wouldn’t.)

Of course, calls to action have been used long before the digital world appeared. For several decades, automobile dealer Cal Worthington (and his dog Spot) wanted people to come to his car dealerships, so in between the entertaining animals, the call to action “Go see Cal” was repeated in commercials like this one.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hT2oP–NSU

And things haven’t changed in the 21st century, except that most of us have retired the dog Spot. For example, some of my blog posts include the following call to action:

These three bullets, when used, are preceded by a statement such as “If I can work with you to create your written content, please contact me.” Or whatever makes sense for the particular blog post.

But not all of my posts include the three CTA bullets.

Posts for awareness don’t need CTAs

(UPDATE 7/24/2023: Upon further reflection, I should have said “Posts for awareness don’t ALWAYS need CTAs.” See my updated blog post, “Awareness Calls to Action.”)

Take my post from last Saturday, “Candy Street Market is coming.”

Candy Street Market, 110 W Holt, Ontario, California

This post simply talked about a new candy store in Ontario, California, but never talked about Bredemarket’s content creation or proposal writing services.

So why did I write a post that doesn’t directly lead to business?

For the awareness.

The awareness of Bredemarket doesn’t equal the awareness of Kleenex. But I’m working on it. By kimubert – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40263441

Ever since I exited some of my prior identity-related markets in the spring of 2022, I’ve pivoted my marketing activity and am concentrating more on serving local firms in California’s Inland Empire. This isn’t a new activity; I’ve targeted local businesses since September 2021. But since I am no longer serving my former clientele of companies that identify individuals using fingerprints, faces, and identity documents, the local business is obviously extremely important.

But the locals need to know that I’m here.

Hence I wrote about a local candy store to provide awareness to businesses that Bredemarket is out there.

If their curiosity is piqued, then perhaps they’ll subscribe to the blog or explore what I do to find out what Bredemarket can do for them.

And even if not, at least the readers know another place to get candy in downtown Ontario.

CTAs on some posts wouldn’t be prudent

And then there are posts in which a CTA plain doesn’t belong.

I already linked to one such post above: my April 22 post announcing my change in business scope.

In short, the post let people know all of the business that I wouldn’t accept in the future.

Why post a call to action after announcing that?

And how would I word it? “If you are a biometric identity company that needs content marketing or proposal writing services, don’t call me”?

It comes down to goals

But you don’t need to detailed list of do’s and don’ts to determine which blog posts need CTAs.

It all boils down to one simple question:

What is the goal of the blog post?

As I stated in October, one of the six questions that you (or your content creator) should ask before starting work is about the goal for the piece of content.

  • Do you want people to keep you in mind if they need your product or service in the future? (“That guy knows Ontario, and he writes content; maybe he can help me.”)
  • Do you want people get more information on something (such as a service description)?
  • Do you want people to contact you personally if they want more information?
  • Do you want people to pull out their credit card immediately and buy something?

The answers to those questions will shape the final content, whether a CTA is needed, and the type of CTA.

This post DOES have a CTA

So let’s say you’re an Inland Empire business that needs a content marketing expert to write a blog post for you.

And let’s say that you have specific goals for this blog post.

And you’re targeting a particular audience for this blog post. (Maybe candy lovers.)

And you realize that buyers aren’t persuaded by a list of features you offer, but by a list of benefits for them. (Yes, benefits are important.)

Before Bredemarket writes a blog post for you, I’ll ask you about these items and others (see the list here), to make sure that my work is aligned with what you need.

So do you want to talk to me about that blog post that your business needs?

Here’s the call to action. Talk to me.