Tag Archives: strategy

(Imagen 4)

I have positioned Bredemarket so I can fill the gaps in a Chief Marketing Officer’s existing content plan, or a Chief Revenue Officer’s proposal plan, or a Chief Strategy Officer’s existing analysis plan.

But what if you don’t have a plan?

Bredemarket can help you too.

This post describes how I can plug into your existing plan, or how I can help you create a plan if you don’t have one.

But first let’s dispense with the theory of how to properly do things, because it’s silly.

What theory says

If you read LinkedIn for any length of time, you will run across content marketers and copywriters and other Professional Content Experts.

These 17x certified PCEs are all too willing to tell you The Correct Way For Companies To Engage With Writing Contractors.

Because the way your company engages with contractors I s completely wrong.

Here is The Correct Way:

“When engaging with a contractor, you must provide the contractor with a detailed content brief that answers all 42 questions your contractor will ask or may ask. Failure to do this brands you as a failed substandard company.”

Bull.

Bredemarket rarely receives any kind of brief from my clients. Sometimes we get a paragraph. Or sometimes we just get a couple of sentences:

“A local Utah paper ran an article about how our end customer used our solution to solve world hunger. Here’s the article; get additional information from the guy quoted in the article and write a blog post about it.”

These two sentences would drive a Professional Content Expert up a wall, because they don’t answer all 42 questions.

So what?

It’s a starting point. If I were given that, I could start.

So forget the theory of The Correct Way For Companies To Engage With Writing Contractors, and just start writing (but thinking first).

If you have a plan (or at least an idea)

Many of my clients have a content, proposal, or analysis plan—or at least an idea of what they need. There are many times when I simply plug in to a client’s existing plan. Here are some examples:

• One client’s CMO needed a twice-a-month series of blog posts to promote one of their company’s services. The service featured multiple facets, so I had plenty to write about. So I plugged into the existing system and wrote.
• Another client needed a series of case studies to grab the attention of their prospects. Again, the client’s product addressed multiple markets, and the variety of customer case studies gave me plenty to write about. So I plugged into the existing system and wrote.
• Multiple clients have asked me to manage and/or write proposals for them. Two of the clients (one being SMA) had very well-defined capture management and proposal processes. The others didn’t—I was the de facto expert in the (virtual) room—but they knew which Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI) required a response. So I plugged into the existing system and wrote.
• Multiple clients (mainly in the identity/biometric realm) have asked me to perform analyses. Whether they had an established analysis process or not, they knew what they wanted. So I plugged into the existing system and wrote.

So I easily completed these one-off (or twelve-off) tasks, responding to my clients’ well-defined requests.

But others face the challenge of not knowing what they want.

If you don’t have a plan

Let’s say that my messages about being afraid of competitors stealing from you have resonated.

And you know you have a content black hole.

But how do you fill it?

Good question.

And perhaps you already know how you and I will figure out the answer.

The seven questions again

You may have seen me push my free ebook “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”

I think I’ve pushed it a time or two.

The beautiful thing about the seven questions is that you can not only apply them to a particular piece of content such as a blog post, but to an entire content-proposal-analysis strategy.

And here I DO mean strategy, not tactics.

There are other methods to derive a strategy, but this is as good as any.

As a reminder, the seven questions are:

• Why?
• How?
• What?
• Goal?
• Benefits?
• Hungry People (Target Audience)?
• Emotions?

So if you book a free meeting with me to figure out a strategy, we can work through these questions to jointly understand your company, your products, and the material you need. I haven’t the slightest idea how our conversation will progress, but perhaps I may end up asking you questions like this:

• WHY do your competitors suck?

• HOW do your prospects make purchasing decisions?

• WHAT do your salespeople need to close deals (conversion)?

• What are your GOALS to move prospects through your funnel?

You get the idea. As we talk through things, perhaps you and I will get ideas about how Bredemarket can help you.

Or maybe not. Maybe it turns out you need a web designer, or a videographer, or a demand generation expert, or an accountant.

But if we determine that Bredemarket can help you, then we can create the plan and figure out how I can best execute on the plan. A competitor analysis? A series of blog posts? We will figure it out.

Then I’ll plug into the new existing system and write.

A call to action

Your content, proposals, and analyses will presumably incorporate a call to action.

It’s no surprise that this post also has one.

Visit my “content for tech marketers” page, read about what we can do together, and book a free 30 minute content needs assessment. You can book it at the top of the page or the bottom, whatever turns you on.

But let’s move. Your competitors are already moving.

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers