Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
For many B2B salespeople, this isn’t the holiday season. It’s the last month of Q4, and some are sweating.
Product marketing can’t help here. Maybe 17 months ago, but even the best conversion content can’t help in the next three weeks or less.
So start now to plan for success in 2026 and 2027. Talk to me about your content.
Bredemarket is not a B2C business, and 99% of Bredemarket’s business is already conducted online. But even I need to remind myself that my prospects and clients may not be in an office—not even a home office—when they do business with me.
I still receive “snail mail” at home. And every time I look at it I get enraged.
In fact, I’m this close to opening most of the pieces of mail, removing the postage-free reply envelope, and returning it to the originator with the following message:
Thank you for contributing to rampant identity theft.
How do companies, possibly including YOUR company, contribute to identity theft? Read on.
Let me provide an example, heavily redacted, of something that I received in the (snail) mail this week. I won’t reveal the name of the company that sent this to me, other than to say that it is an automobile association that does business in America.
John Bredehoft
[HOME ADDRESS REDACTED]
John Bredehoft…
You and your spouse/partner are each eligible to apply for up to $300,000.00 of Term Life Insurance reserved for members – and with Lower Group Rates ROLLED BACK to 2018!
… SCAN THIS [QR CODE REDACTED] Takes you right to your personalized application
OR GO TO [URL REDACTED] and use this Invitation Code: [CODE REDACTED]
So that’s the first page. The second page includes a Group Term Life Insurance Application with much of the same information.
And there’s the aforementioned return envelope…with my name and address helpfully preprinted on the envelope.
What could go wrong?
Now obviously the sender hopes that I fill out the form and return it. But there is a very good chance that I will NOT respond to this request, in which case I have to do something with all these papers with personally identifiable information (PII).
Obviously I should shred it.
But what if I don’t?
And some dumpster diver rifles through my trash?
Thanks, sender, you just exposed me to identity theft.
But there’s another possible point at which my identity can be stolen.
What if this piece of snail mail never makes it to me?
Again, I’ve been exposed to identity theft.
All because several pieces of paper are floating around with my PII on it.
Multiply that by every piece of mail sent to every person, and the PII exposure problem is enormous.
Now I’m sure some of you are in a self-congratulatory mood right now.
John, don’t tarnish us with the same brush as junk mailers. We are ecologically responsible and don’t send snail mails any more. We use email, eliminating the chance of pieces of PII-laden paper floating around.
Perhaps I should break the news to you.
So you’re just as bad as the snail mailers.
If you’re a marketer sending PII to your prospects and customers…
Stop it.
Don’t distribute PII all over the place.
Assume that any PII you distribute WILL be stolen.
Because it probably will.
And if you didn’t know this, it won’t make your prospects and customers happy.
It’s a simple question. “How much does the product cost?”
But some salespeople treat this like a nuclear secret and will only release the information after you sit through a 90 minute timeshare presentation.
Well, my rates haven’t changed since May.
Let’s talk.
And yes, I even provide my prices in video form.
After years of silence
and indifference
I gave up
and stopped chasing
(Imagen 4)
The next time I send something to a company that claims a “bias for action” as one of its Key Super Duper Principles, I plan to call the company five minutes later and say, “Hey, it’s 9:53. I submitted a request at 9:48. Why aren’t you talking to me yet?”
The same goes for all Key Super Duper Principles. If a company says something is critically important…then its customers, prospects, partners, employees, and competitors will all be watching to see if the company is serious.
(Imagen 4)
Have you friends frequently and warmly connected with you…until they didn’t? Becoming former friends, ignoring and abandoning you, becoming silent and indifferent?
Sales prospecting can be similar. Someone eagerly wants your product or service immediately. But they delay in getting back to you, plead that other critically important issues have arisen, then go silent entirely, their former desire evaporated.
I’m sure some hard-boiled salespeople believe EVERY prospect can convert, but it ain’t so. And my earlier advice applies to business prospects as well as to personal relationships:
“If my former friends’ focus is elsewhere, my focus won’t impede on theirs.”
(Imagen 4)
Companies ask you to register for webinars with your corporate email address and job title.
But how many companies NEVER confirm your registration?
There are at least three reasons why you may never get that confirmation email:
And of course there’s a third reason: the company evaluated your registration and determined you’re not a qualified prospect. Maybe you work for a competitor. Maybe you won’t buy and will instead try to sell—which the company will deduce by my job title of “Product Marketing Consultant.”
Disqualification can be legitimate. The purpose of an awareness webinar, like an awareness blog post, is to identify prospects who will become buyers.
But over-disqualification has its price. If my registration for your webinar is never confirmed because of my “Product Marketing Consultant” job title…well, I guess I can’t talk about your webinar, can I?
Mitratech allowed me to attend its TPRM-focused “frame, assess, respond, and monitor” webinar…and I talked about it.
Just a thought.
Case studies are powerful marketing collateral for companies.
Why?
Because if you select your subjects carefully, your prospects will say, “That subject is just like me. And the company’s solution solved the subject’s problem. Perhaps the solution will solve my problem also.”
Ideally a company would want to publish dozens of case studies, so their prospects could find one case study—or perhaps two or three—that describe the exact same problem the prospect is encountering.
But case studies are by definition more difficult for a company to create.
Perhaps that’s why there are so few published, recent case studies.
On Tuesday I had the occasion to visit four technology websites.
And the approvals don’t just involve the end customer.
A former friend interviewed many customers but was only able to complete one case study; the approvals from company legal, other company executives, and the end customers were overwhelming, delaying the other case studies.
So how do you expedite case study creation and approval?
Here are three tips to expedite the creation of case studies.
If the sales rep, program manager, or the subject itself can provide the basic facts beforehand, then the interview can simply consist of confirming facts and filling gaps.
Whether you use the STAR method (situation, task, action, result) or some other method (I prefer the simpler problem, solution, result), take the facts you gathered above. Then fit them into the outline and into the story you want to tell. Then see what pieces of the story are missing.
Since the subject has already consented to the case study, they should consent to the meeting being recorded.
The most efficient way to do this is with one of the popular AI note takers, which lets the case study writer review the actual words from the interview without going back and forth through a video recording.
And AI note takers are more efficient than the way I used to transcribe case study interviews.
Here are three tips to expedite the approval of case studies.
The language of the contract with the subject may have clauses regarding publicity.
If the subject wrote the contract, then it may prohibit any promotional publicity whatsoever, or it may dictate that any publicity must be approved by a high-level governing board in a foreign country.
If the provisions are onerous or impossible, don’t use that subject and find another.
Let your approvers know what’s coming, and when you think it will come.
Once I submitted a case study for pre-approval even before the results were available. This subject had a lengthy approval process, so I wanted the approvers to see the first part of the case study as soon as possible.
While the case study may be critically important to you, it may be merely important (or even inconsequential) to the lawyer with 50 other tasks.
From the lawyer’s perspective, it may be better if the company does NOT publish the case study. Fewer potential lawsuits that way.
Do everything you can to expedite the approval. If the CEO is demanding a published case study in three days, say so.
If not…well, that’s why you’re a salesperson. Oh, you’re NOT a salesperson? You are now.
You don’t have to go it alone. If your staff is stretched, or if your staff has never written a case study before, Bredemarket can help. Visit my content for tech marketers page.
(Imagen 4)
This week I’ve been expanding an internal document for a Bredemarket client.
I guess I could call it a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document for salespeople, although it contains more than just the FAQs.
Why expand it? Because we added new FAQ categories.
(Right now a lot of you are making notes to scrub Windows 10 from your marketing collateral. Good for you.)
Of course, FAQs aren’t the only content that product marketers create. There are others.
If you need help creating or maintaining your content, Bredemarket can help.
Bredemarket