Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
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.
Dear 17X Certified Resume Writer,
You may think your marketing tactics and sequence are foolproof. But they’re not. Read on to see why.
And if you’re NOT a 17x certified resume writer, skip to the bottom to see how the resume writing market lacks differentiation. But what about YOUR market?
From observing you and dozens of your 17x certified resume writing competitors that I’ve encountered (and over 14,000 of your competitors that I haven’t encountered), here are the marketing tactics and sequence that ALL of you are using, and why they are COMPLETELY ineffective.
So this is why your tactics don’t work.
If you’re a regular reader of the Bredemarket blog—that’s a joke; if you haven’t read my LinkedIn profile, you certainly haven’t read the Bredemarket blog before—then you know that I recently wrote a post entitled “Five Reasons Why 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Fail.” It approached your marketing tactics from a different perspective.
But one afternoon when I received three separate LinkedIn InMails from three separate 17x certified resume writers in the space of five minutes, I figured that I needed to address this issue again, in a more pointed fashion. (Yes, I iterate.)
Now I don’t want you to read the entirety of my January 8 post. I know that you are very busy searching for “open to work” people to ask your canned question about their desired position. But I do suggest that you read the fourth of my five reasons why your pitches fail, and take the steps to ensure that you don’t sound exactly the same as your thousands of competitors.
Hope this helps.
That’s all I have to say. 17x certified resume writers can stop reading here.
Seriously.
Stop. Get to work.
OK, time for me to talk to the rest of you. It’s just me, you, and the wildebeest.
Frankly, I doubt that any of the 17x certified resume writers have even made it to this point of the blog post. Like I said, they’re too busy seeking their next prospects.
But the whole 17x certified resume writer market strikes me as one which is sorely lacking in differentiation, competitive analysis, and customer focus. The vast majority of people who provide resume services don’t even attempt to say why their services are superior and the services of their 13,999+ competitors are inferior. And the vast majority focus on themselves rather than the specific needs of their prospects. Why should I choose one of these 17x certified resume writers, and not one of their competitors?
But it’s not enough to take a look at a lack of differentiation in one market. Now I have to take a look at myself. Have I done an adequate job of differentiating Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services from those of my other content marketing competitors? I already know that Canva content creator G from Ray of Social is a much better singer than I am.
And perhaps you should take a look at yourself. Have you done an adequate job of differentiating YOUR company from the competition? Do your prospects have a reason to choose you?
If you are employed by a technology firm and need your content to stand out from the crowd, let me explain why Bredemarket’s services can drive content results, how I provide services that no one else does, and what we will do together to create that content your company desperately needs.
Just in case these questions come up.
I think the three words “why customers benefit” say it all.
Why should you work with Bredemarket to craft your customer-focused blog post about your product or service?
Get started today at https://bredemarket.com/contact/.
We relate to firms as entities with personalities…and particular tones of voice. Could you imagine Procter & Gamble speaking in Apple’s tone of voice, or vice versa?
And one more thing…Charmin. Now in black.
(Thunderous applause and royal adoration with no indifference whatsoever.)
Firms take care to speak in a particular tone of voice. Which means that the people writing their copy have to speak in that same tone of voice.
I have spent time thinking about Bredemarket’s own tone of voice, most recently when I delved into the “royalty” aspects of the Bredemarket family of archetypes. In that family “Sage” is most dominant, but there are also other elements.
In Bredemarket’s case, my sage/explorer/royalty/entertainer tone of voice is visible in Bredemarket’s writing. At least in Bredemarket’s SELF-promotional writing.
But MY tone of voice makes no difference to my clients, all of whom are focused on their OWN tones of voice. And Bredemarket has to adjust to EACH CLIENT’S tone of voice.
My hope is that if you see two pieces of ghostwritten (work-for-hire) Bredemarket work for two different clients, you WON’T be able to tell that they were both written by me.
I’ve addressed the topic of adaptation before, where people don masks to portray characters that they are not.
At the time I said the following:
So when Bredemarket or another content marketing expert starts to write something for you, should you fret and fuss over what your archetype is?
If you feel like it. But it’s not essential.
What is essential is that you have some concept of the tone of voice that you want to use in your communication.
From https://bredemarket.com/2022/10/30/donning-archetypes/
I then led into…well, something that is long outdated. But the gist of what I said at the time is that you need to determine what your firm’s tone of voice is, so that your writers can consistently write in that tone of voice.
So if Bredemarket works with you to create your content, how will I know your desired tone of voice? By one of two ways.
As we work through the seven questions that will shape your content, I ensure that I understand the tone of voice that you want to adopt in your content.
And with the review cycles interspersed through the content creation process, you can confirm that the tone is correct, and I can make adjustments as needed.
Unless you absolutely insist that I use a hackneyed phrase like “best of breed.” That requires a significant extra charge.
Do you want to drive content results in your own tone of voice with Bredemarket’s help?
When a customer approaches your firm to do business, the top-of-mind concern of the customer is the customer’s own problem.
If you would like to know more, see this curated collection of Bredemarket blog posts on the topic of customer focus.
The marketing experts insist that calls to action must emphasize urgency.
If you want a prospect to do something, stir up the necessary emotions: fear, fear of missing out (FOMO), anger, whatever. The call to action should emphasize that they act NOW. TV Tropes provides a few examples of these calls to action:
“If you call before midnight tonight, we’ll give you a special bonus!”
“Call in the next 5 minutes for a special bonus!”
“Call quickly because we’re only giving this offer to the first 100 callers.”
From https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IfYouCallBeforeMidnightTonight
Of course, you don’t need to advertise on television to use these lines. It’s just as easy to use these messages online, as in the Walmart example above, or in this example.
A lot of marketers (and for that matter, a lot of scam artists) listen to the advice of marketing experts. As a result, we are bombarded with “act now” advertising.
In fact, we are bombarded with so much of this junk that we end up tuning it out.
In the end, NOTHING is urgent.
Or is it?
Urgency is one thing, but importance is another. Which is why the Eisenhower matrix distinguishes between the two.
For example, your firm’s website may be in urgent need of an upgrade. Perhaps the information on the website is out of date or completely incorrect. (Maybe you DON’T support Windows XP any more.)
But is that important?
Incidentally, I have some thoughts about the use of “importance” in the Eisenhower matrix, but I’ll save those for another post.
Of course, this assumes that the issue is urgent. Perhaps it’s not urgent at all. As I said before, a lot of sellers like to create a false sense of urgency.
As a consultant, I often find prospects and clients who believe that a particular issue is NOT urgent. You can easily get that Walmart+ membership a few days later, at a minimally higher price. And you can easily wait on updating your online content.
If something is not urgent, then you have two choices depending upon the issue’s importance.
Compounding the issue is that if you DO update your website, you’re NOT going to see an immediate return on investment.
It takes longer than three days for content marketing to yield results. One source estimates four to five months. Another source says six to twelve months. Joe Pulizzi (quoted by Neil Patel) estimates 15 to 17 months. And all the sources say that their estimates may not apply to your particular case.
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/26/on-trust-funnels/
So if a content marketing update isn’t going to yield immediate results, what’s the rush? Spending time making the updates, or even spending the time managing someone else to make the updates, takes away from tasks that yield financial results NOW.
If your outdated content is not urgent but is important, then there’s no rush to take care of the issue.
You can delay it for weeks or even for months, and you’re NEVER going to have a problem.
Until…
…a competitor with up-to-date and accurate content swoops in and loots your prospects AND your existing customers away from you.
(Are you worried?)
Why would old content cause you to lose a customer? Because your outdated information demonstrates that you don’t care about your customers. After all, you’re not focused on your customers’ need for up-to-date information on your products and services.
(Are you angry?)
And if you lose enough prospects and customers to result in a revenue drop, then you may lose your job. Then you won’t have to worry about the company’s outdated content any more. Problem solved!
(Are you scared?)
Of course, there’s the other alternative that I discussed earlier in this post, in which your content issues are urgent, but they’re not important enough to devote your own resources to them.
In that case, you can contract the work out to someone who will perform the majority of the work in updating your content.
(While retaining a say in your content. That should make you happy.)
And I know where you can contract that work. Bredemarket.
Bredemarket can help you create content that converts prospects and drives content results. Why?
If you’re sold on using Bredemarket to create customer-focused messaging, there are three ways to move forward with your content project. Or you can just join the Bredemarket mailing list to stay informed.
If you create a single piece of collateral for your product or service and say that you’ve completed your job, “you’re doing it wrong™.”
Product marketers and content marketers know that you’re just starting.
John Bonini advises that you separate the content from the channel.
What most companies practice is not actually content marketing. It’s channel marketing.
They’re not marketing the content. They’re marketing the channel.
From LinkedIn.
You can express a single thought on multiple channels. And as far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier.
Incidentally, that’s why I object to the “expert” advice that I master one social media channel first before branching out into others.
If I adopt that strategy and ONLY market on LinkedIn and ignore Instagram and TikTok, I am automatically GUARANTEEING that the potential Instagram and TikTok audiences will never hear about my offer.
I’ve expressed my thoughts on this social media “expert” advice before:
The latter post, entitled “How I Expanded 1 Idea into 31 Pieces of Content,” described how…well, the title is pretty self-explanatory. I created 31 pieces of content based on a single idea.
The 31 pieces of content, published both through the Bredemarket channels (see above) and via my personal channels (including my jebredcal blog and my LinkedIn page), all increased the chance that SOMEONE would see the underlying message: “Your prospects don’t care about your technology.” Each piece of content was tuned for the particular channel and its target audience, ensuring that the message would resonate.
As I often say, repurposing is good.
Speaking of repurposing, I’ve already adapted the words above and published them in four different ways (this is the fourth)…and counting. No TikTok video yet though.
And if I can do this for me, I can do this for you.
Bredemarket can help you create content that converts prospects and drives content results. Why?
If you’re sold on using Bredemarket to create customer-focused messaging (remember: your prospects don’t care about your technology), or even if you’re not and just want to talk about your needs, there are three ways to move forward with your content project. Or you can just join the Bredemarket mailing list to stay informed.
I constantly preach that firms should not adopt “me too” messaging. Ideally, a firm’s messaging should not copy its competitors, but should instead state why the firm is better than all others, and why all the other firms are worthless in comparison.
But when a firm differentiates itself, there is always a danger that the firm will forget one important thing: how will the customers react to the firm’s differentiated messaging? Will the differentiation turn the customers off?
Trust me, it can happen.
Some time ago, I was working for a multinational firm that clearly differentiated itself from all of its competitors. This multinational had been around for some time and was known for its particular tone.
I’m not going to reveal the name of the particular multinational firm, or the tone it radiated.
But the tone used by that multinational was just as powerful as the tone IBM exuded in the mid-20th century.
In the 1950s and 1960s, “Big Blue” meant a particular style.
IBM acquired an image of an army of men (this was the mid-20th century, after all), all wearing blue suits and white shirts.
Even as late as the 1980s (and beyond), the men of IBM had the look:
The men of IBM didn’t wear facial hair and wore only white shirts….IBM wanted to make sure they did not offend a prospect or a customer. Research had shown them that some people don’t like facial hair…so no facial hair. Research had also shown that people assume a degree of professionalism with a white shirt that may not be assumed if a person wore a blue or yellow shirt. So white shirts it is!
From https://bulanetwork.com/4004-dont-be-offensive-ibms-white-shirt-strategy/
Let’s leave the theoretical example and return to the situation at my distinctive multinational.
Now the multinational that employed me long ago didn’t have a “blue suit-white shirt” dress code, but in other ways the multinational had a distinctive tone that radiated from the executive level down to the ranks of the worker bees like myself.
When my multinational sent its marketing collateral out to prospects who used a very different tone than that used by the multinational, the prospects hated it. The marketing department received multiple complaints from salespeople whose clients were repelled by the material.
One of my coworkers surveyed the negative campaign reaction with dismay. The coworker had joined the company after the marketing tone was adopted. My coworker asked a simple question: “What type of customer focus group testing was conducted before we used this tone on a marketing campaign?”
“We didn’t conduct any focus group testing,” my coworker was told. “We didn’t need any.”
In retrospect, I guess we did need to test the messaging before we delivered it.
If you’ve been reading recent Bredemarket blog posts, you’re probably not surprised that this is turning into yet another blog post about customer focus. But how do you balance a firm’s distinctive differentiators with a focus on its customers?
If you follow these and similar steps, then it (almost) doesn’t matter if your firm’s generic messaging is antithetical to the values of your prospects. Because your prospects won’t get generic messaging, but messaging that is focused for them.
All of us talk about customer focus. Heck, I just spent the past few days talking about it 31 times, starting here.
But when you are talking about customer focus, make sure that you are talking about the customer’s true focus.
Let me explain.
(See the alternate interpretation at the end of the post.)
Back in 2015, Scott Faucheux wrote a piece on what he called consumer focus. When talking about the voice of the consumer, Faucheux said this:
Many marketers (and most non-marketers), when asked to consider the VOC, will ask themselves, “What would I do if I were in that consumer’s shoes?”
From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wwcd-what-would-consumer-do-scott-faucheux/
Sounds reasonable, but Faucheux points out an inherent flaw in this approach.
[T]he perspective considered would be based on how I would respond if I were placed in that situation, which is still anchored in my own personal biography and is therefore subject to my own personal biases.
From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wwcd-what-would-consumer-do-scott-faucheux/
But even if you understand the true voice of the customer, you might go in the wrong direction. Bill McDonald describes what happens when you take VOC as gospel:
The basic concept behind “voice of the customer” calls for you to sell to his or her stated needs. After all, your customers (clients/prospects) know their situation and what they need. Right?
From https://pleinairestrategies.com/2017/07/3-reasons-to-ignore-voice-of-customer/
But this assumes that the customer knows what they need. Often they may not know what they truly need.
To stand out from the crowd, you need a different approach. You need a way to lay the groundwork for change by telling prospects something they don’t already know about their status quo situation.
From https://pleinairestrategies.com/2017/07/3-reasons-to-ignore-voice-of-customer/
I won’t go as far as McDonald and say that VOC should be ignored. Instead, VOC should be augmented by probing questions—and responses—that go beyond “we need a better mousetrap” surface solutions.
Maybe your customer needs a hungry cat.
As for me, when I hear the phrase “walking in my shoes,” I don’t think about shoes. I think about a song.
Bredemarket