So perhaps this is a good time to ask the question: do certifications matter?
Does my HubSpot certification, or my graduate degree, or my undergraduate degree, or the super-secret certification that I’m still pursuing (more later), anything more than a (digital) piece of paper to hang on the wall? Is this a substantive achievement, or does it just show that I was successful playing the certification game?
My HubSpot certification only has true meaning if I use the knowledge while creating content.
The identity/biometric company never formally learned how its references to renamed companies and non-existent companies were repelling those very companies…and the prospects who knew the website information was inaccurate.
It could have learned…if it had met with me. But it chose not to do so.
NOTE TO SELF: INSERT STRONG FEAR UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT PARAGRAPH HERE. TAKE OUT THESE TWO SENTENCES BEFORE POSTING THE FINAL VERSION!!!
(By the way…while the identity/biometric company never received this information formally, it did receive it informally…because such information is presumably critically important to the company.)
How many other companies are in the same situation, with:
My mini-survey shows that of the 40+ identity firms with blogs, about one-third of them HAVEN’T SAID A SINGLE THING to their prospects and customers in the last two months.
Is there a 29-year veteran of the identity industry, an identity content marketing expert who can help the companies fix these gaps?
There may be a variety of reasons for this. Perhaps your current employees are too busy doing other things. Or perhaps writing terrifies them so much that they think ChatGPT-generated content is actually a GOOD thing. (Read the content. It isn’t good.)
So you’re thinking about outsourcing the work to a content writer. One who has created content for multiple technology firms, including 9 returning clients. Here are four examples.
But how does outsourced content writing work?
How Bredemarket works with you to create content
Maybe you need an outsourced content writer because your current textual content is not compelling to your prospects, or perhaps it’s non-existent (for example, a LinkedIn company page with zero posts).
If you approach Bredemarket with your outsourced content writing request, here’s how we will work together:
For this example, let’s assume that you need between 400 to 600 words of text to post to your company blog or to your company LinkedIn account, and therefore are purchasing my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.
This is the most important step in the entire process, and I don’t write a word of text until you and I have some agreement on WHAT I am going to write.
I start by asking seven questions about the content, your product, and your company.
Why?
How?
What?
Goal?
Benefits?
Target Audience?
Emotions?
I ask some additional questions which I won’t discuss in detail here. For example, you may specify the subject matter experts or articles I need to consult.
Once we’ve worked through ALL the questions, either in a synchronous meeting or asynchronously via email, I have a good idea of what the written content needs to say.
This benefits you because I love doing this, communicating your benefits to your prospects using the framework upon which we agreed in the kickoff.
Unless we agree on a different schedule, I get that first draft to you in three days for the next important step.
Step 3: First draft review
This is where you come in. Your task is to review my draft within three days and provide comments. And if I don’t hear from you within three days, you’ll hear from me. Why?
The first reason is my pure self-interest. The sooner I complete the project, the sooner I get paid. Those cold dead hands need some nice gloves.
The second reason is of mutual interest. We want to complete the project while we’re focused on thinking about it, and while it is critically important to us.
The third reason is for your own self-interest. You have a content gap, and it’s in your interest to fill that gap. If we get this draft reviewed and move forward, that gap will be filled quickly. If we don’t move forward, the gap will remain, your efforts to contract with Bredemarket will be for naught, and you’ll still have an uninteresting website and dead social media accounts.
Step 4: It depends
What happens after the first draft review varies from client to client.
Some of my clients love the first draft and don’t want to change a thing.
Some of my first drafts have embedded questions that you need to answer; once those questions are answered, the content is ready.
Some of my first drafts may need minor changes. In one case, I was asked to remove a reference to a successful hack that occurred at a well-known company; unbeknownst to me, the company was a customer of another division of the client in question. Whoops.
Occasionally more substantive changes are required, and I end up creating a second draft in three days, and you review it in three days.
In the end, we have a piece of content that is almost ready for publication.
Step 5: Finalize and publish
While the words may be ready, the entire piece is not.
I’m not a graphics person, and usually a written piece needs some accompanying images to drive the message home. I may suggest some images, or I may suggest that the client reuse an image from their website, or I may just ask the client to select an appropriate image.
Once the text and images are ready, you publish the piece. Normally I don’t have access to your website or social media accounts, so I can’t publish the piece for you. Only one client has given me such access, and even for that client I don’t have COMPLETE publishing permission.
For short projects such as a Bredemarket 400 project, I usually bill you when you publish the piece, although in certain circumstances I may bill you once the text is complete.
Are you ready to outsource your content marketing?
While other content marketers may work differently, we all have some type of process for our outsourced content writing.
If you’re ready to move forward with Bredemarket for outsourced content writing, contact me.
I recall one product in particular (not a Segway, but a biometric product housed in a tower) that was an impressive fusion of algorithmic and mechanical excellence. The complex design that went into developing the tower product resulted in a device that performed its function superbly.
The complex engineering also caused the product to have such a high price that no one would ever buy it…but I digress.
But there was another issue with the product. I was writing proposals at the time, and we certainly could have written up a product description that emphasized the product’s lengthy set of features.
But the people receiving our proposals wouldn’t have cared one bit.
Prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists
You see, prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists.
If your product stops terrorists from boarding airplanes, then and only then will they care about your company or your product.
If your product can’t stop terrorists from boarding airplanes, or if there is another product that is better at stopping terrorists from boarding airplanes, then your prospects won’t care about your product.
So how do you get prospects to care?
You don’t get prospects to care by talking about your extensive feature lists.
Let me give you a tip. If you find an employee at the prospect’s company who wants to spend a lot of time talking about your extensive feature lists, that employee probably DOESN’T have the authority to approve the purchase.
The people who DO have the authority to approve the purchase don’t have time to talk about extensive feature lists.
The approvers want to know, in 30 seconds or less, how your solution BENEFITS them.
Do you need help explaining your benefits?
Talking about benefits rather than features is just one tactic to successfully appeal to your prospects.
If you need help ensuring that your written materials (blog posts, white papers, web pages) resonate with your prospects, you can ask Bredemarket to help you.
I’ve previously written about the “messy middle,” or the way that people REALLY decide on what to purchase. It’s not as logical as the theories suggest.
Kevin Indig’s article touches upon a lot of topics, most of which I won’t discuss. Read his article. Instead, I’m going to focus on the second of Indig’s three items (on attribution model limitations) because it intersects with my interests, including the trust funnel.
Instead of trying to figure out where to be, try to be everywhere. It’s more important to understand where your competitors are, and you’re not….The surround sound approach seems intuitive but is a very different approach to what’s happening at companies today….Surround Sound doesn’t mean to do everything, but to carefully observe where competitors are and pull even.
At this point I only want to interject that you should also carefully observe where competitors AREN’T.
But what are the analysts going to analyze? What they can.
We should also rethink the numbers we look at. Recurring visits and the average number of visits until conversion reflect user behavior and improvements better than bounce rate or pages per visit since users hop around so much.
While much of the activity remains invisible to us, we can still look at the activity that we CAN see.
Some things remain secret
And yes, much of the activity does remain invisible. A former coworker messaged me on Sunday with a question, and he closed his message with the following.
Btw, enjoy your posts
From a private message.
I’m tossing that message over to Bredemarket’s chief analyst.
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.
Unlike some other attractions that bombard you with sight, sound, and speed, Storybook Land asks you to board a slow-moving boat while your host or hostess…tells stories.
And many businesses depend on storytelling. My consultancy Bredemarket has helped many of them tell their stories.
Over the last month, Bredemarket has told the following stories for its clients:
Once upon a time, a faraway country passed legislation to protect its citizens from evil robbers. Here’s how [COMPANY]’s solution can help the country and its citizens stay safe from the big bad wolves. (Online content)
Once upon a time, a couple’s son disappeared and went on a long journey. Here’s how [COMPANY]’s solution helped reunite the family. (Online content)
Once upon a time, a firm paid a lot of money for some beans that appeared to be worthless. Here’s how [COMPANY]’s solution helped the beans to grow. (Online content)
Once upon a time, [COMPANY]’s solution was offered to some people, but [COMPANY] wanted to offer it to many more people. Here are some other people who could benefit from the solution. (Private market/competitor analysis)
It’s too early to tell if everyone lived happily ever after, but hopefully they will.
Identity/biometrics firms don’t just create social media channels for the firms themselves. Sometimes they create social media channels dedicated to specific products and services.
That’s the good news.
Here’s the bad news.
[REDACTED]
As I write this, it’s March 3. A firm hasn’t updated one of its product-oriented social media channels since February 20.
That’s February 20, 2020…back when most of us were still working in offices.
It’s not like the product no longer exists…but to the casual viewer it seems like it. As I noted in a previous post, a 2020 survey showed that 76% of B2B buyers make buying decisions primarily based on the winning vendor’s online content.
Whether I’m creating content for Bredemarket or creating product marketing material for an employer (past or future), it’s important to ask some critical questions first.
My LinkedIn profile contains the three simple words “why customers benefit.” Not “what producers feature”—why customers benefit. Those three words encapsulate my approach to marketing…well, until I come up with three different words. Or two.
Song by Annie Lennox. Original reel on the Bredemarket Instagram account.
Bredemarket 