Tag Archives: content marketing

When I will style myself John E. Bredehoft, HubSpot Academy Content Marketing Certified…and when I won’t

TL;DR: Today I received HubSpot Academy certification in Content Marketing.

John Bredehoft HubSpot Academy Content Marketing certification, valid from April 18 2022 to May 17 2024.
Details at https://app.hubspot.com/academy/achievements/s17pbsb4/en/1/john-bredehoft/content-marketing

This post explains why it feels familiar to a previous post of mine, what this certification is, and when I will (and will not) use my shiny new HubSpot Academy certification. It also includes a different call to action than the one I usually use.

Deja vu all over again: remember my CF APMP certification?

While certification in and of itself does not necessarily indicate operating confidence, it provides some level of assurance that the certified person knows what he or she is talking about.

Which is why I pursued and achieved APMP Foundation certification (CF APMP) in September 2021.

John Bredehoft APMP Foundation certification, valid from 2021 to 2023.
Details at https://www.credly.com/badges/f177cbf8-e085-4fae-943a-1e418d86c872.

For those who don’t know, the Association of Proposal Management Professionals provides many benefits, including improved service to Bredemarket clients because of my access to the APMP Body of Knowledge.

It also provides a mechanism for proposal professionals to certify their mastery of the proposal field.

Which is great, if you’re a proposal professional.

But I also do other stuff.

What does it mean to be “Content Marketing Certified”?

My Bredemarket consultancy can be sliced and diced in several ways, one of which is to look at the proposals side of my business and the content marketing side of the business. The latter concentrates on generating content that attracts customers to a company’s offering, leading to revenue. At Bredemarket, I practice content marketing on two levels:

  • I create content for Bredemarket that attracts customers to use my services.
  • I create content for my customers that attracts THEIR customers to use THEIR services.

In a sense, Bredemarket itself acts as a laboratory in which I can try out ideas that I can subsequently implement with my customers, ranging from creating a targeted LinkedIn showcase page for one customer segment (local customers) to creating initial versions of “pillar pages” that I can continue to iterate and flesh out with additional content.

As you can see from the text of the certificate above, content marketing encompasses numerous subtasks:

  • Long-term content planning. Haphazard creation of content is not as beneficial as creation of content to achieve a particular goal.
  • Content creation. An important part of the process, but ONLY a part.
  • Content promotion. If you build it, they may not come. They have to know about it first.
  • Content analysis. Analyzing pertinent factors about the performance of the content.
  • Increasing results. Does the content increase revenue?

What about the shiny new designation that comes with the shiny new badge?

Unlike other certifications such as an academic degree, PMP certification, or my APMP Foundation certification, there is not a suffix that I can add to my name to tout my credentials. So I can’t call myself “John E. Bredehoft, HSA CMC” or something like that. (You should only use acronyms sparingly anyway.)

But I can certainly refer to my certification in certain circumstances.

Here’s a quic: which of these would be appropriate?

If you answer the correct question in this quiz…YOU GET NOTHING.

Picture of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka with the text "Golden tickets aren't my only promotional tactic."
Generated from https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/18672402/Willy-Wonka-Blank

A different call to action

If you read the Bredemarket blog on a regular basis, you’ve probably seen my usual three-bullet call to action ad nauseum.

So this time I’m going to use a different one.

If you will benefit from achieving a HubSpot Academy certification in content marketing, follow the link below.

You don’t need to be a paid user of HubSpot, or even a free user of HubSpot, to get this certification (although you will need a HubSpot account).

And the certification is not constrained to use of the HubSpot application; other tools are prominently mentioned in the course.

Timewise, I spent several hours a day over several days taking the course, including the time that I spent applying some of the suggestions.

To access the HubSpot Academy course in content marketing, go to

https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/content-marketing

Screen shot of sign up page for HubSpot Academy's Content Marketing Course: Get Certified in Content Marketing. FREE certification course.
From https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/content-marketing

Happy learning.

Iterating Bredemarket’s first pillar page

I’ve spent this afternoon posting messages to selected Facebook and LinkedIn pages, showcase pages, and groups talking about updates to blog content (and in one case a LinkedIn article).

If you look at the updated blog posts/LinkedIn article in question, you’ll see that they now start with this statement:

(Updated 4/16/2022 with additional benefits information.)

Then, when you scroll down the post/article to a benefits discussion, you’ll see this insertion:

(4/16/2022: For additional information on benefits, click here.)

This post explains

  • why I made those updates to the blog posts and the LinkedIn article,
  • how I added a new page to the Bredemarket website, and
  • what I still need to do to that new page to make it better.

(Why, how, what: get it?)

Why I updated selected blog posts and a LinkedIn article

I talk a lot about benefits on the Bredemarket blog, but all of the conversation is in disparate, not-really-connected areas. I do have a page that talks about the benefits of benefits for identity firms, but that doesn’t really address the benefits of benefits for non-identity firms.

Then, while I was taking a HubSpot Academy course, I found a possible way to create a central page for discussion of benefits.

A pillar page.

By Rama – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=638837

According to HubSpot, the need for pillar pages arose because of changes to Google’s search model.

Google is helping searchers find the most accurate information possible — even if it isn’t exactly what they searched for. For example, if you searched for “running shoes,” Google will now also serve you up results for “sneakers.” This means that bloggers and SEOs need to get even better at creating and organizing content that addresses any gaps that could prevent a searcher from getting the information they need from your site.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page

What does this mean?

Now, your site needs to be organized according to different main topics, with blog posts about specific, conversational long-tail keywords hyperlinked to one another, to address as many searches as possible about a particular subject. Enter the topic cluster model.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page

How I added a new page to the Bredemarket website

So I created the page https://bredemarket.com/benefits/ to work as the hub of a wheel of content regarding benefits.

But not all the content that I’ve written on benefits.

I’ve curated links to selected content (both on the Bredemarket website and on LinkedIn), provided a brief quote from the content in question, then provided a link to the original content for more information.

From https://bredemarket.com/benefits/

After that, I went out to each of the “spokes” in the topic cluster and linked back to the new content hub on benefits as illustrated above.

From https://bredemarket.com/2021/06/18/case-study-example-that-i-didnt-write/

What I still need to do to the new page on the Bredemarket website

At this point the people who REALLY know search engine optimization are shaking their heads.

“John,” they are saying to me, “that’s not a pillar page!”

They’re right.

It’s just a very crude beginning to a pillar page. It lacks two things.

Multi-layered keywords associated with the “hub” topic

First, simply linking selected “benefits” pages together in a wheel is extremely simplistic. Remember how search engines can now search for both “running shoes” and “sneakers”? I need to optimize my wheel so that it drives traffic that isn’t tied to the specific word “benefits.”

Choose the broad topics you want to rank for, then create content based on specific keywords related to that topic that all link to each other, to create broader search engine authority….

For example, you might write a pillar page about content marketing — a broad topic — and a piece of cluster content about blogging — a more specific keyword within the topic. 

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page

A logical organization of the pillar page

Second, a pillar page needs better organization. Rather than having what I have now-a brief definition of benefits, followed by a reverse chronological list of posts (and the article) on benefits, the pillar page needs to address benefits, and its relevant subtopics, in an orderly fashion.

Pillar pages are longer than typical blog posts — because they cover all aspects of the topic you’re trying to rank for — but they aren’t as in-depth. That’s what cluster content is for. You want to create a pillar page that answers questions about a particular topic, but leaves room for more detail in subsequent, related cluster content.

From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-pillar-page
Example of a REAL pillar page. From https://www.hubspot.com/instagram-marketing

HubSpot directs its readers to HubSpot’s own pillar page on Instagram marketing. Frankly I don’t know that I’d want to write something that long, but you can see how the pillar page provides an organized overview of Instagram marketing, rather than just a reverse chronological list of content that addresses the pillar topic.

More to come

So my pillar page on benefits certainly has room to grow.

But at least I’ve made an agile start with a first iteration, and the search engines can start processing the existing cluster of links as I make improvements.

And as I create additional pillar pages. I already have an idea for a second one.

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle: When Your Goal, Benefits, and Target Audience aren’t Enough

Via Bredemarket, I work with a number of clients who ask me to create content for them. Since last September, I have used an internal “kickoff guide” form to start my conversations with these clients.

Header of September 2021 Bredemarket Kickoff Guide

While I thought that this kickoff guide was pretty good, I just revised it to make it even better.

The September 2021 iteration of the Bredemarket kickoff guide

I developed the Bredemarket kickoff guide to address a number of issues, including the style limitations of Google Docs. But the primary issue that prompted the kickoff guide was the need to capture as much information about a client project in the early stages, to reduce later rework.

The primary set of questions that I asked was a set of questions that I’ve talked about ad nauseum (literally). Before getting into the nuts and bolts of the content itself, there were three critical questions that I asked the client:

  • What is the goal that you want to achieve with the content?
  • What are the benefits (not features, but benefits) that your end customers can realize by using your product or service?
  • What is the target audience for the content?

There were two reasons that I asked these questions. First, I believed that the client’s final collateral would benefit if I asked these questions. Second, I believed that Bredemarket would benefit by differentiating itself from other writers who just launched into “the facts” questions about the content.

Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday.
Joe “The Facts” Friday was not a content marketer. By NBC Television – eBayfrontback, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33340402

If I may pat myself on the back, these are pretty good questions.

But is there anything else that I should be asking?

Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle”

I’m currently taking a course from HubSpot Academy, and one of the instructors mentioned Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle.”

Golden Circle: Why in the center, surrounded by How, surrounded by What.
From https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/3-takeaways-from-start-with-why

This goes beyond a particular product or service, and addresses a company’s reason for being. Here’s what HubSpot says about the need for the “Golden Circle”:

…what Sinek found is that most companies do their marketing backwards. They start with their “what” and then move to the “how.” Most of these companies neglect to even mention “why.” More alarmingly, many of them don’t even know why they do what they do!

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

Contrast this with companies (Apple is an oft-cited example) that know why they do what they do, and effectively communicate this. It may be hard to believe this, but for Apple, the “why” question is even more important than the latest color of its products (current iteration: “it’s green”).

So can Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle help my clients receive better marketing collateral, and can it help me (and Bredemarket) differentiate myself from other writers? And if so, what do I have do to achieve these benefits for my clients and myself?

The April 2022 iteration of the Bredemarket kickoff guide

One part of the answer was to revise my kickoff guide. In the latest iteration, I precede my goal/benefits/target audience questions with three questions derived from Sinek’s “Golden Circle,” starting with the all-important “why” question.

(“Why”: it’s not just for multi factor authentication!)

Of course, I still have to use the revised kickoff guide with a client, but I hope to do this shortly in one way or another. If you could like me to use this kickoff guide with your firm to help create meaningful, relevant content:

Postscript: an example of repurposing

This post was repurposed from a comment that I made in the HubSpot Community in response to the course that I’m taking.

Ontario, California Fast Business Facts

City data from the U.S. Census Bureau, summarized in the text of the post.
Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ontariocitycalifornia/PST045221

The U.S. Census provides “quick facts” about U.S. jurisdictions, including business facts. While the business facts are ten years old, they still provide an indication of business health.

For Ontario, the U.S. Census Bureau has documented over 14,000 firms, over $4 billion in manufacturers shipments, and over $4 billion in retail sales. These figures have presumably increased in the last ten years.

If you own or manage one of these thousands of businesses, and you need to let other businesses know about your offerings, perhaps you should turn to the Ontario, California content marketing expert. Bredemarket can assist your firm with the following:

If I can help your business, or if you have further questions about Bredemarket’s B2B content creation services, please contact me.

Bredemarket content marketing services for small businesses in and around Ontario, California (the April 8, 2022 iteration)

A minor refresh to what I wrote on March 31, including an updated brochure.

Inland Empire B2B Content Services (April 8, 2022)Download

Here’s the text I recently added to my home page.

Bredemarket presently offers its services to identity/biometrics, technology, and general business firms, as well as to nonprofits. I offer my services to firms in my hometown of Ontario, California, as well as firms in Eastvale, Fontana, Montclair, Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, other cities of the Inland Empire West, and throughout the United States.

From https://bredemarket.com/

This post concentrates on the services that Bredemarket can provide to businesses in my local area. Read on if you own a small, arty business in the Emporia Arts District of Ontario…

Ontario, California Emporia Arts District.

…or perhaps a larger, less arty business north of Holt in Ontario, or perhaps even a business in one of the other cities that I mentioned, or one of the ones I didn’t (sorry Narod).

There are a lot of local businesses out there

Even if you don’t count sole proprietors (such as myself) or freelancers, there are somewhere around 7.7 million businesses in the United States. (This figure is from 2016; I’m not sure if it’s gone up or gone down in the last five years.) Now if you include sole proprietors in the total, then you’re talking about 32 million businesses. (This particular number may have actually increased over time.)

Obviously I can’t target them all. Well, I could try, but it would be a little ridiculous.

So what if I took a subset of those 32 million businesses and tried to see if Bredemarket could serve that subset?

The local small business persona

When you want to market to a particular group, you develop a persona that represents that group. You can then develop a profile of that persona: the persona’s needs, aspirations, and expectations; the persona’s underlying goals and values; and perhaps some other elements. The persona may be developed via extensive research, or perhaps via…a little less quantification.

When I initially looked at this topic last September, I concentrated on a particular persona, but my thoughts on this topic have evolved over time. While I will still serve artists as I initially proposed last September, I’m now thinking of other businesses that can best use the type of content that I provide.

For example, the business may be an incorporated business that is based on the Inland Empire West, provides its products or services to customers in the local area, provides excellent service that is loved by its existing customers, and needs to get the word out to new potential customers by creating content that can be downloaded from a company website, shared via a company social media account, or handed out at a trade show or other in-person event.

Regarding the values of this particular persona, you can probably already deduce some of them based upon the customer love for the company.

  • The business puts the customer first and strives to provide services that satisfy its customers.
  • However, the business also prioritizes the well-being of its employees.
  • While the business may not have explicitly articulated a vision, its actions testify to a vision of excellent service, customer satisfaction, and care for employees.

But what does this business need in terms of types of content? For my example, these businesses are ones that need customer-facing content such as the following:

  • A document (online or printed) that explains the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides, and that discusses the benefits that the product(s)/service(s) offers to the customers. This document may take the form of a product/service description, or it may take the form of a white paper. For example, your business might issue a white paper entitled “Seven Mandatory Requirements for a Green Widget,” and the white paper just might happen to mention at the end that your green widget just happens to meet all seven mandatory requirements. (Coincidence? I think not.)
Portion of the concluding section of a white paper in which Bredemarket provided the text.
Portion of the concluding section of a white paper in which Bredemarket provided the text.
  • A document (online or printed) that tells a story about how an individual customer benefited from the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides. You could call such a document a case study, or you could call it a testimonial. Or you could call it a casetimonial.

These types of documents are more valuable to some businesses than to others. Your average convenience store has little need for a 3,000 word white paper. But perhaps your business has this sort of need.

How many words should your content contain?

When I originally wrote this last September, I started off by discussing my two standard packages, based on word length. But now that I’ve thought about it a bit more, there are some questions that you need to ask BEFORE deciding on the content length. (We’ll get to content length later.)

(Owen Lovejoy) “How long should a man’s legs be in proportion to his body?”

(Abraham Lincoln) “I have not given the matter much consideration, but on first blush I should judge they ought to be long enough to reach from his body to the ground.”

Thomas Lowery, quoted at https://thelogcabinsage.com/how-long-should-a-mans-legs-be-and-2-other-lincoln-stories/
Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln. (Legs not shown.) By Hesler, Alexander, 1823-1895 – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3a36988.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=18705107

So how far away is the ground? Let’s ask some other questions first before we determine the answer to content length.

Bredemarket’s initial questions for you

Before I create a single word, I start by asking you some questions about your content to make sure our project starts on the right foot. (Even though I am left-footed.)

Bredemarket Kickoff Guide header.

  • What is the topic of the content?
  • What is the goal that you want to achieve with the content?
  • What are the benefits (not features, but benefits) that your end customers can realize by using your product or service?
  • What is the target audience for the content?

Once I’ve asked you these and other questions (such as a potential outline), we will both have a good idea of how long the final piece needs to be.

The length of the content also dictates the length and complexity of the review process.

Returning to the content length question

Once we have a good idea of the content length, there are three options that we can pursue to actually create the content.

If your content consists of 400 to 600 words, then I create the content using the process detailed in my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.

https://bredemarket.com/bredemarket-400-short-writing-service/

This has two review cycles with up to three days per review cycle.
Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service
If your content is longer, say 2800 to 3200 words, then I create the content using a similar (but more detailed) process through my Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service.

https://bredemarket.com/bredemarket-2800-medium-writing-service/

This has three review cycles with up to seven days per review cycle.
Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service
If your content falls between these two lengths, or is longer than 3200 words, or needs a more rapid delivery time, we’ll talk and come up with a solution. (And we’ll even come up with a spiffy name if you like)
For more services, see https://bredemarket.com/what-i-do/

If you can use my services, what are the next steps?

If I can help your business, or if you have further questions about Bredemarket’s B2B content creation services, please contact me.

SEO NVI, HRF VVI (Search engine optimization not very important, human readable format very very important)

I’ve been trying to add more local (Inland Empire West) content to the Bredemarket blog. Obviously I’m attempting to promote Bredemarket’s services to local businesses by writing local-area content such as these two recent posts centered on Upland.

City Hall and Public Library, Upland, California.
By Rockero at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3949535

Old SEO

Back in the old days, I might have done optimized for my local audience by going to the bottom of relevant pages on the Bredemarket website and inserting hundreds of words in very small gray text that cite every single Inland Empire West community (yes, even Narod) and every single service that Bredemarket provides. In the old days, the rationale was that this additional text would positively affect search engine optimization (SEO), so that the next person searching for “case study writer in Narod, California” would automatically go to the page with all of the small gray text.

Of course, that doesn’t work any more, because Google penalizes keyword stuffers or content stuffers who make these unnatural pages.

More modern SEO

I use more acceptable forms of SEO. For example, I’ve devoted significant effort to make sure that the two phrases biometric content marketing expert and biometric proposal writing expert direct searchers to the relevant pages on this website. (Provided, of course, that someone is actually searching for a biometric content marketing expert or a biometric proposal writing expert.)

First two results (as of April 1, 2022) of a DuckDuckGo search for biometric content marketing expert. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=biometric+content+marketing+expert&t=h_&ia=web

I believe SEO is important.

However, SEO is not very important (NVI).

(As an aside, I commonly distinguish between “important” stuff and “very important” stuff. And you also have to distinguish between importance and urgency; see the Eisenhower matrix.)

What is very very important (VVI)? Human readable format (HRF).

The two audiences: the bots, and the real humans

And SEO-optimized content may differ from human-readable content because of their different audiences. SEO text is written for machines, not people. In extreme cases, SEO-optimized text is unreadable by humans, and human readable format cannot be interepreted by machine-based web crawlers.

Machine readable and human readable formats. Olav Ten Bosch. From https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Machine-readable-and-human-readable-formats_fig1_327385570

Here’s a comparison:

Machine readableHuman readable
Easily parsed and processed by systemsEasily read by humans
Hard for humans to readHard for machines to read
Adheres to FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable)Communicates with humans via visual presentation
Example: machines have problems reading tables like this oneExample: humans can easily read and understand tables like this one
Google’s gonna hate me for putting this table into a post, but real human beings won’t. See https://control.com/technical-articles/machine-readable-vs-human-readable-data/ for a fuller explanation of the differences between machine-readable and human-readable data.

Here’s another example of how SEO-optimized text and human readable format sometimes diverge. I mentioned this example in a recent LinkedIn article:

I recently updated my proposal resume to include the headline “John E. Bredehoft, CF APMP,” under the assumption that this headline would impress proposal professionals. However, when I ran my resume through an ATS (applicant tracking system) simulator, it was unable to find my name because of its non-standard format. Because of this, there was a chance that a proposal professional would never even see my resume. I adjusted accordingly.

From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happens-when-proposal-evaluators-longer-human-bredemarket/
By Humanrobo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18947366

In this case, I had to cater to two separate audiences:

  • The computerized applicant tracking systems that read resumes and decide which resumes to pass on to human beings.
  • The human beings that read resumes, often after the applicant tracking systems have pre-selected the resumes to read.

I was able to come up with a workaround to satisfy both audiences, therefore ensuring that (a) my resume would get past the ATS, and (b) a human that viewed my ATS-approved resume could actually read it. It’s a clumsy workaround, but it works.

While that particular example is complicated by the gate-keeping ubiquity of applicant tracking systems in the employment industry, it is not unique. All industries are depending more on artificial intelligence, and almost all human beings are turning to Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and the like to find stuff.

These are our users (who use search engines for EVERYTHING)

There’s an old example of how dependent we are on search engines. In a famous case over a decade ago, people used the Google search engine to get to the Facebook login page, and were confused when a non-Facebook page made its way to the top of the search results. The original article that prompted the brouhaha is gone, but Jake Kuramoto’s summary still remains. TL;DR:

ReadWriteWeb posted “Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login“.

Google indexed the post.

The post became the top result for the keywords “facebook login”.

People using Google to find their way to Facebook were misdirected to the post.

The comments on the post were littered with unhappy people, unable to login to Facebook.

There are more than 300 comments on this post, the majority of them from confused Facebook users.

Despite the fact that RWW added bold text to the post, directing users to Facebook, and the fact that the post is no longer the top result for “facebook login”, people continue to arrive there by accident, looking for Facebook.

From http://theappslab.com/2010/02/11/these-are-our-users/

What if we can only optimize for one of the two audiences?

So people who create content have to simultaneously satisfy the bots and the real people. But what if they couldn’t satisfy both? If you were forced to choose between optimizing text for a search engine, and optimizing text for a human, what would you choose?

If it were up to Google and the other search engine providers, you wouldn’t have to choose. The ultimate goal of Google Search (and other searches) is to mimic the way that real humans would search for things if they had all of the computing resources that the search engine providers have. It’s only because of our imperfect application of artificial intelligence that there is any divergence between search engines and human searches.

But until AI gets a lot better than it is now, there will continue to be a divergence.

And if I ever had to choose, I’d write for humans rather than bots.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13018 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5480820

After all, a human is going to have to read the text at some point. Might as well make the human comfortable, since the bots aren’t making final binding decisions. (Yet.)

Bredemarket content marketing services for small businesses in and around Ontario, California (the March 31, 2022 iteration)

A lot has happened since I first wrote this description of Bredemarket’s local marketing services on September 1, 2021. Time for a content refresh.

The refresh begins with the reprint of the relevant text on my home page, which was just updated this week.

Bredemarket presently offers its services to identity/biometrics, technology, and general business firms, as well as to nonprofits. I offer my services to firms in my hometown of Ontario, California, as well as firms in Eastvale, Fontana, Montclair, Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, other cities of the Inland Empire West, and throughout the United States.

From https://bredemarket.com/

This post concentrates on the services that Bredemarket can provide to businesses in my local area. Read on if you own a small, arty business in the Emporia Arts District of Ontario…

Ontario, California Emporia Arts District.

…or perhaps a larger, less arty business north of Holt in Ontario, or perhaps even a business in one of the other cities that I mentioned, or one of the ones I didn’t (sorry Narod).

There are a lot of local businesses out there

Even if you don’t count sole proprietors (such as myself) or freelancers, there are somewhere around 7.7 million businesses in the United States. (This figure is from 2016; I’m not sure if it’s gone up or gone down in the last five years.) Now if you include sole proprietors in the total, then you’re talking about 32 million businesses. (This particular number may have actually increased over time.)

Obviously I can’t target them all. Well, I could try, but it would be a little ridiculous.

So what if I took a subset of those 32 million businesses and tried to see if Bredemarket could serve that subset?

The local small business persona

When you want to market to a particular group, you develop a persona that represents that group. You can then develop a profile of that persona: the persona’s needs, aspirations, and expectations; the persona’s underlying goals and values; and perhaps some other elements. The persona may be developed via extensive research, or perhaps via…a little less quantification.

When I initially looked at this topic last September, I concentrated on a particular persona, but my thoughts on this topic have evolved over time. While I will still serve artists as I initially proposed last September, I’m now thinking of other businesses that can best use the type of content that I provide.

For example, the business may be an incorporated business that is based on the Inland Empire West, provides its products or services to customers in the local area, provides excellent service that is loved by its existing customers, and needs to get the word out to new potential customers by creating content that can be downloaded from a company website, shared via a company social media account, or handed out at a trade show or other in-person event.

Regarding the values of this particular persona, you can probably already deduce some of them based upon the customer love for the company.

  • The business puts the customer first and strives to provide services that satisfy its customers.
  • However, the business also prioritizes the well-being of its employees.
  • While the business may not have explicitly articulated a vision, its actions testify to a vision of excellent service, customer satisfaction, and care for employees.

But what does this business need in terms of types of content? For my example, these businesses are ones that need customer-facing content such as the following:

  • A document (online or printed) that explains the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides, and that discusses the benefits that the product(s)/service(s) offers to the customers. This document may take the form of a product/service description, or it may take the form of a white paper. For example, your business might issue a white paper entitled “Seven Mandatory Requirements for a Green Widget,” and the white paper just might happen to mention at the end that your green widget just happens to meet all seven mandatory requirements. (Coincidence? I think not.)
Portion of the concluding section of a white paper in which Bredemarket provided the text.
Portion of the concluding section of a white paper in which Bredemarket provided the text.
  • A document (online or printed) that tells a story about how an individual customer benefited from the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides. You could call such a document a case study, or you could call it a testimonial. Or you could call it a casetimonial.

These types of documents are more valuable to some businesses than to others. Your average convenience store has little need for a 3,000 word white paper. But perhaps your business has this sort of need.

How many words should your content contain?

When I originally wrote this last September, I started off by discussing my two standard packages, based on word length. But now that I’ve thought about it a bit more, there are some questions that you need to ask BEFORE deciding on the content length. (We’ll get to content length later.)

(Owen Lovejoy) “How long should a man’s legs be in proportion to his body?”

(Abraham Lincoln) “I have not given the matter much consideration, but on first blush I should judge they ought to be long enough to reach from his body to the ground.”

Thomas Lowery, quoted at https://thelogcabinsage.com/how-long-should-a-mans-legs-be-and-2-other-lincoln-stories/
Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln. (Legs not shown.) By Hesler, Alexander, 1823-1895 – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3a36988.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=18705107

So how far away is the ground? Let’s ask some other questions first before we determine the answer to content length.

Bredemarket’s initial questions for you

Before I create a single word, I start by asking you some questions about your content to make sure our project starts on the right foot. (Even though I am left-footed.)

Bredemarket Kickoff Guide header.

  • What is the topic of the content?
  • What is the goal that you want to achieve with the content?
  • What are the benefits (not features, but benefits) that your end customers can realize by using your product or service?
  • What is the target audience for the content?

Once I’ve asked you these and other questions (such as a potential outline), we will both have a good idea of how long the final piece needs to be.

The length of the content also dictates the length and complexity of the review process.

Returning to the content length question

Once we have a good idea of the content length, there are three options that we can pursue to actually create the content.

If your content consists of 400 to 600 words, then I create the content using the process detailed in my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.

https://bredemarket.com/bredemarket-400-short-writing-service/

This has two review cycles with up to three days per review cycle.
Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service
If your content is longer, say 2800 to 3200 words, then I create the content using a similar (but more detailed) process through my Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service.

https://bredemarket.com/bredemarket-2800-medium-writing-service/

This has three review cycles with up to seven days per review cycle.
Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service
If your content falls between these two lengths, or is longer than 3200 words, or needs a more rapid delivery time, we’ll talk and come up with a solution. (And we’ll even come up with a spiffy name if you like)
For more services, see https://bredemarket.com/what-i-do/

If you can use my services, what are the next steps?

If I can help your business, or if you have further questions about Bredemarket’s B2B content creation services, please contact me.

And one more thing…

Scroll down to the bottom of my general “local” page for a special “locals only” discount code!

In marketing, move quickly PART TWO: THE OTHERS SPEAK

On March 23, I wrote a post entitled “In marketing, move quickly” (while noting that I didn’t move all that quickly in posting it). After citing stories from a local (unnamed) company, my own time as a product manager, an (again unnamed) international bank, and a (named) car manufacturer, I concluded as follows:

And if you can speed up production of a car, you can speed up production of marketing content and start putting your messaging on your Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts, as well as your website immediately so that your customers can get your message.

From https://bredemarket.com/2022/03/23/in-marketing-move-quickly/
By Malene Thyssen – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10119596

And if you think that the idea of moving quickly in marketing was an idea that I completely originated myself, you REALLY need to get out a bit more.

This post collects a few things that others have said about moving quickly.

Empower your employees (Jim McGinnis of Intuit)

In 2015, Forbes quoted Intuit’s Jim McGinnis, who had previously worked at technology company Activision and non-technology companies Pepsi and Procter & Gamble. He left Intuit in 2017 and has since worked at two other firms, including MyCase.

A more effective strategy to engage your audience is to communicate directly with them often and through multiple touch points. At Intuit, we empower all 8,000 employees to use social media and tweet regularly, but to do so in a smart and effective way that minimizes risk. We do this by instituting principle-based management and guidelines that everybody operates within. We also have a very strong and enduring values-based organization, with the first and most important value being “Integrity without Compromise.”

McGinnis believed that with the Intuit organization, his people were empowered to communicate quickly without waiting for multiple layers of approval (as is required in a “command and control” organization).

And McGinnis’ new company MyCase? One of its marketing messages is the ability to reduce the time spent on weekly billing to 20 minutes.

Excite your customers (Adam Fridman of Mabbly)

That same year (2015), Forbes competitor Inc. ran a piece written by Adam Fridman of Mabbly, a digital marketing agency. Fridman noted that competitors are not the only ones watching how quickly a company moves.

People simply aren’t satisfied with the status quo; they want something more and they want it now. Companies must work quickly to satiate their appetites because audiences will have no qualms about moving to another product or service. 

From https://www.inc.com/adam-fridman/4-reasons-speed-is-everything-in-business.html

Don’t forget your vendors and partners (Isaiah Bollinger of Trellis)

Isaiah Bollinger, co-founder and CEO of Trellis, reiterated the points others made about competitors and customers in a 2018 piece, but he added two other stakeholders.

If you are a slow moving business vendors will (stop) putting effort into the relationship because they can find better customers….

Partners don’t want to work with a slow moving business that can’t innovate. They want fast growing innovators that will bring big impact to their bottom line. 

From https://trellis.co/blog/why-moving-fast-in-business-is-so-important

Incidentally, Bollinger may have moved a little TOO quickly. You see where I inserted the parenthetical comment “(stop)” in the first paragraph above? That’s not what he (or his copywriter) wrote. But we all know what he meant. Check the video.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LViCLtEPU

Conclusion

So there are a number of benefits, and relatively little downside, to moving quickly. And even if you do fail, several of the people quoted above emphasize that you fail quickly, can correct just as quickly, and learn important lessons quickly.

And maybe I’m learning. I didn’t wait two days to post this.

In marketing, move quickly

I need to step up my act regarding marketing, both for Bredemarket and my clients. In both cases, it’s critical that the word gets out quickly to potential clients.

For example, I drafted this post on Monday, but am not getting around to posting it until Wednesday. That’s two days of views lost right there!

By Malene Thyssen – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10119596

I’m not the only one who needs to generate marketing material quickly.

The marketing goal, December 2021

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. The press release, in part, stated the following:

The Company has hired an international marketing firm…to support the Company’s efforts to increase revenue growth and brand recognition in the coming year.  The firm focuses on working with companies to develop comprehensive marketing strategies that identify competitive delineation, drive-focused campaigns, and develop sales leads designed to materialize revenue.  We expect their work to incorporate a website redesign, brand refresh, new strategic messaging and content, as well as focused video and digital campaigns that target markets such as [REDACTED].  We believe that a natural result of a formal marketing program, with a regular cadence of activity, will translate into market recognition of [REDACTED] as a highly-competitive brand that stands apart from the competition.

This sounds like an intelligent plan, or probably set of plans, that will address the firm’s strategic messaging, content, branding, and website, and a regular cadence of activity will keep the company visible. I certainly can’t argue with that.

The marketing results, March 2022

Well, now we’re three months into the implementation of this comprehensive marketing strategy. As an outsider posing as a potential customer for the firm’s products and services, what can I observe?

  • 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.

In short, as far as outside customers are concerned, the firm has not improved its marketing at all.

What happened? Did the international marketing firm concentrate on creating a stellar plan for the company’s content? If so, when will the content be available? Mid 2022? Late 2022? 2023?

Don’t go jumping waterfalls

When I was a product manager twenty years ago, my company used a “waterfall” product development method in which the marketing requirements document, engineering requirements document, design documents, test documents, and other documents were developed sequentially. While some companies still use the waterfall method today, others don’t because it takes so long to do anything.

These days, product developers are moving to agile methods to release products. And marketers are moving to agile methods also.

Agile marketing

Back in 2016, David Edelman, Jason Heller, and Steven Spittaels of McKinsey explained why marketing needs to be agile.

An international bank recently decided it wanted to see how customers would respond to a new email offer. They pulled together a mailing list, cleaned it up, iterated on copy and design, and checked with legal several times to get the needed approvals. Eight weeks later, they were ready to go.

In a world where people decide whether to abandon a web page after three seconds and Quicken Loans gives an answer to online mortgage applicants in less than ten minutes, eight weeks for an email test pushes a company to the boundaries of irrelevance.

From https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/agile-marketing-a-step-by-step-guide

The McKinsey authors then described how an agile marketing team organizes itself, sets goals, tests, and iterates.

The scrum master leads review sessions to go over test findings and decide how to scale the tests that yield promising results, adapt to feedback, and kill off those that aren’t working—all within a compressed timeframe.

From https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/agile-marketing-a-step-by-step-guide

While agile processes something result in things being wrong, the same agile processes can quickly correct the problem.

Back to the past

And waterfall methods can result in things being wrong also, especially when it takes so long to develop something that the initial assumptions have radically changed.

By en:user:Grenex – Wikipedia en, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2500249

It took John DeLorean eight years to change his car concept into something coming off the production line. By that time, the automotive environment had changed.

Despite promising early sales the queue of willing buyers had dried up by the end of year – the chill wind of recession had struck the US automotive sector, and stockpiles of unsold cars started to mount up, both in Dunmurry and dockside in the USA. The worst winter in 50 years also played its part.

From https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/de-lorean/dmc-12/the-cars-delorean-dmc-12/

This didn’t help DeLorean’s constant financing issues, and after DeLorean was caught (or entrapped by the FBI) in a $24 million cocaine deal, the DeLorean automobile was relegated to a movie prop.

If Agile processes had existed at the time, could they have reduced the 8-year gap from concept to the assembly line? Perhaps.

Conclusion

And if you can speed up production of a car, you can speed up production of marketing content and start putting your messaging on your Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts, as well as your website immediately so that your customers can get your message.

Don’t wait two days, or eight years, for things to be just right.

Three Redlands “Shacks” Restaurants Tell a Story. What’s Your Story?

Fielding Buck of the Southern California News Group (including my local Inland Valley Daily Bulletin) recently told a story about the opening of a restaurant in Redlands called Pizza Shack.

Google Street View, 1711 West Lugonia, Redlands, California. Image captured February 2022. Fair use.

Sounds like a nice place for pizza, but Buck’s story didn’t end there.

Pizza Shack, at 1711 W. Lugonia, Suite 104, has the same owners as Taco Shack and Breakfast Shack in other parts of town.

From Redlands gets a third Shack: Pizza Shack on Lugonia – San Bernardino Sun (sbsun.com). Repurposed at other SCNG websites.

I couldn’t confirm the common ownership myself, so I’ll take Fielding Buck’s word for it. After all, he’s a professional with a quarter century of journalism experience (check his biography, which lists his 1995 award from his time at the Desert Sun), so I’m sure he got his facts straight. And you know that I like people with a quarter century of experience.

As Buck noted, the other two “Shack” restaurants are also in Redlands.

  • Taco Shack is at 510 East State Street.
  • Breakfast Shack (couldn’t find a website, but I found an Instagram page) is at 615 West State Street.

The three “shacks” are all within three miles of each other, which means that you could start the day at Breakfast Shack, go to Taco Shack for lunch, and then walk the breakfast and tacos off before enjoying a Pizza Shack dinner.

From west to east: Pizza Shack, Breakfast Shack, and Taco Shack. Via Google Maps.

I had nothing to do with Fielding Buck’s story, or with the three “shacks” in Redlands, but this story caught my eye.

Does your Inland Empire business have a story to tell?

Perhaps you don’t own a restaurant, but you may be in another type of business that has a story that you want to share.

  • Perhaps it’s a shorter story of around 400 to 600 words.
  • Or maybe it’s a medium length story of 2800 to 3200 words.
  • Something that you could share in a blog post, a social media Facebook or LinkedIn post, or in a downloadable form on your website.
  • Something that speaks to your potential customers’ needs, and clearly communicates the benefits that your business’ product or service provides to your potential customers.

Bredemarket’s content creation process ensures that the final written content (a) advances your GOAL, (b) communicates your BENEFITS, and (c) speaks to your TARGET AUDIENCE. It is both iterative and collaborative. For the full process, read this.

Bredemarket can help your Inland Empire business tell that story. Even if you’re west of Redlands and don’t serve food.

(Psst: local readers should scroll to the end of this page for a special “locals only” discount.)

If you would like Bredemarket to help your business tell your story…

Inland Empire B2B Content Services from Bredemarket.