If your humor has evolved to a point where the very idea of an IPVM account on TikTok amuses you—and if my use of the word “evolved” amuses you further—then perhaps Bredemarket offers the background and experience to help you convey your
First, the video is 3 minutes and 40 seconds long, which for me is long. And why you won’t see it on Bluesky or Instagram. But you will see it here; it’s already scheduled.
Oh, and I talk. The video alternates between shots of me at Bredemarket world headquarters and shots of textual/image descriptions incorporating Canva’s finest AI-generated music. If you’ve seen my other videos you know the…um…score.
I start by introducing the subject of “marketing and writing services” and identifying MY hungry people (target audience).
Then I explain, in detail, what Bredemarket’s “CPA” services are NOT…and what they ARE.
Then I do something that some sales professionals would NEVER do—reveal my pricing up front.
Finally, my call to action is for interested prospects to book a meeting with me on my CPA page. If you don’t already have the link to that page, you’ll get it on Monday.
Well, that’s that. Come back Monday at 8:00 am Pacific Standard Time / 1600 GMT.
My current two categories for go-to-market collateral, “external” and “internal,” are not sufficient. I want to fix that, but I’m still thinking through things, such as what to call the third category. As of this moment, my best option is “intrinsic,” based upon my conversations with my good buddy Gemini.
My current two categories for go-to-market collateral
Based upon go-to-market efforts that stretch back a decade (even before I formally became a Product Marketing Manager), I have traditionally divided go-to-market output into two categories.
22 types of content Bredemarket can create.
External content for your hungry people (target audience), such as articles, blog posts, social media, case studies, white papers, and proposals. This content goes to CEOs, marketers, engineers, IT staff, and many others at the companies that buy from you.
Internal content for the people in the company who talk to your hungry people, such as battlecards, sales playbooks, and scripts for trade show demonstrations. This content goes to salespeople, marketers, product managers, customer success folks, and many other employees and contractors.
Some content can either be external or internal, depending upon the audience.
Simple and straightforward, right?
My emerging third category
But during a current go-to-market effort for a client, I realized that these two categories are insufficient, since both the client and I are creating content that will never been seen by either the external clients or the internal clients.
I’ll give you two heavily redacted and anonymized examples for a #fakefakefake machine.
AI-generated by Google Gemini.
Bob wrote a Word document that listed the pain points that MegaCorp’s client encounter when trying to put green round widgets on their end customers’ beanie caps.
Judy created a picture with stick figures that showed how clients can use the MegaCorp WidgetPlacer 2000 for their beanie cap production needs.
Bob and Judy (names from this song) are NEVER going to show that document or that picture to the customers, or even to the company’s own account managers.
So why create it?
Because they will be the initial guides as the go-to-market team creates all the other external and internal collateral for the effort.
These foundation documents are a critical part of the go-to-market effort. Without them, the subsequent go-to-market collateral will be a contradictory mishmash of stuff, and you’ll need to undertake a lot of effort to align all the content after the fact.
And the third category is…
…well, I don’t know what to call this third category yet.
“Internal internal content” seems a bit silly.
“Foundational content” seems a bit grandiose.
“Bob and Judy” content seems like an independent TV show.
If we call the first category “external” marketing content for customers, and we call the second category “internal” marketing content for employees, then what do we call the third category which is only for the people who create marketing content for customers and employees?
Gemini’s first batch of answers:
Internal Marketing Content for Marketing Teams
Marketing Team Communication
Marketing Team Resources
Internal Marketing Tools
Brevity is NOT a strength of generative AI. Even when I specifically instructed Gemini to provide single word responses, I got hyphenated words:
Intra-marketing (combining “intra” for within and “marketing”)
Meta-marketing (implying a higher-level perspective on marketing)
Team-marketing (emphasizing its focus on the marketing team)
The fatal flaw is that not all the people on a go-to-market team are marketers. (This is my fault because of the prompt I wrote.)
And if I lop off the last part of each compound phrase, two of my options are “team” (too generic) and “meta” (NO).
And “intra” is too close to “internal internal.” But perhaps it’s a start. So I asked Gemini for words similar to “intra-” and got this response:
The prefix “intra-” means “within,” “inside,” or “inner.” Here are 12 words that convey a similar meaning:
Inward: Turning or moving toward the inside.
Internal: Existing or occurring within something.
Inner: Situated or located within.
Intrinsic: Belonging to or inherent in the nature of something.
Interior: The inside part of something.
Intramural: Occurring within a school or institution.
Intranet: A private computer network within an organization.
Intravenous: Administered into a vein.
Intracranial: Situated or occurring within the skull.
Intracellular: Existing or occurring within a cell.
Intralingual: Relating to or occurring within a language.
Intrajugular: Situated or occurring within the jugular vein.
I kind of like “intrinsic,” but I’ll sleep on it.
In the meantime, what would YOU call the third category?
If you don’t remember, “Why ask why? Try Bud Dry” was a short-lived advertising tagline from a short-lived Budweiser product from some short-lived part of the early 90s…
But “why ask why” is not just an old advertising slogan. It’s also an excellent question in its own right.
If you’ve read my writing for any length of time, you know I spend a lot of time on the questions why, how, and what.
Heck, I even wrote a book about those (and three other) questions. Then I rewrote the book when I came up with a seventh question.
But during the last few years I failed to realize one true power of these interrogative questions—and other interrogative questions such as who (an important question for identity folks).
But a recent pitch excelled in its, um, genericism. Here’s the relevant part:
I run a white-label marketing company and am reaching out to ask if you need help with content creation? I work with several other marketing agencies on campaigns like Airbnb’s.
I’m not sure how Bredemarket relates to Airbnb, but it really doesn’t matter because they have worked on campaigns LIKE Airbnb. So I do not know what they’ve done. (Although ghostwriters have this problem.)
Ghostwriters like me. But I’ve never worked for companies like Airbnb.
I recently sent out a mailing that was hopefully much more targeted. I knew my hungry people (target audience), so even though it was a mass mailing (OK, not “mass”), it was relevant.
If you didn’t receive the mailing, you can view the repurposed version here.
Contact Bredemarket if you need content that benefits from my 29+ years of identity/biometrics experience.
This week has been a busy week in Bredemarket-land, including work on some of the following client projects:
Creating the first deliverable as part of a three-part series of deliverables.
Reworking that first deliverable for more precision.
Preparing to start work on the second deliverable.
Drafting a blog post for a client.
Gathering information for an email newsletter for a client.
Following up on a couple of consulting opportunities that take advantage of my identity/biometric expertise.
Creating a promotional reel based upon the grapes in my backyard. (Yet another reel. I plan to reveal it next week.)
Engaging in other promotional activities on Bredemarket’s key social media channels.
Plus I’ve been working on some non-Bredemarket deliverables and meetings with a significant time commitment.
But there’s one more Bredemarket deliverable that I haven’t mentioned—because I’m about to discuss it now.
The task
Without going into detail, a client required me to repurpose a piece of third-party government-authored (i.e. non-copyrighted) text, originally written for a particular market.
Shorten the text so it would be more attractive to the new market.
Simplify the presentation of the text to make it even more attractive to the new market.
The request was clear, and I’ve already completed the first draft of the text and am working on the second draft.
But I wanted to dive into the three steps above—not regarding this particular client writing project, but in a more general way.
Step 1: Rewrite
When you’ve worked in a lot of different industries, you learn that each industry has its own language, including things you say—and things you don’t say.
I’ll give you an example that doesn’t reflect the particular project I was working on, but does reflect why rewriting is often necessary.
When I started in biometrics, the first two industries that I wrote about were law enforcement and benefits administration.
Law enforcement’s primary purpose is to catch bad people, although sometimes it can exonerate good people. So when you’re talking about law enforcement applications, you frequently use a lot of terms that are negative in nature, such as “surveillance,” “suspect,” and “mugshot.”
Benefits administration’s primary purpose is to help good people, although sometimes it can catch bad people who steal benefits from good people. So when you’re talking about benefits administration applications, you tend toward more positive terms such as “beneficiary.” And if you take a picture of a beneficiary’s face, for heaven’s sake DON’T REFER TO THE FACIAL IMAGE AS A “MUGSHOT.”
These two examples illustrate why something originally written for “market 1” must often be rewritten for “market 2.”
But sometimes a simple rewrite isn’t enough.
Step 2: Shorten
Now I don’t play in the B2C market in which crisp text is extremely necessary. But it’s needed in the various B2G and B2B markets also—some more than others.
If you are writing for more scientific markets, your readers are more accustomed to reading long, academic, “Sage”-like blocks of text.
But if you are writing for other markets, such as hospitality, your readers not only don’t want to read long blocks of text, but actively despise it.
You need to “get to the point.”
Tim Conway (Sr.), as repeatedly played during Jim Healy’s old radio show. Sourced from the Jim Healy Tribute Site.
In my particular project, “market 1” was one of those markets that valued long-windedness, while “market 2” clearly didn’t. So I had to cut the text down significantly, using the same techniques that I use when rewriting my “draft 0.5” (which a client NEVER sees) to my “draft 1” (which I turn over to the client).
But sometimes a simple shorten isn’t enough.
Step 3: Simplify
If you know me, you know I’m not graphically inclined.
Someday I will reach this level of graphic creativity. Originally created by Jleedev using Inkscape and GIMP. Redrawn as SVG by Ben Liblit using Inkscape. – Own work, Public Domain, link.
But I still pay attention to the presentation of my words.
Remember those long blocks of text that I mentioned earlier? One way to break them up is to use bullets.
Bullets break up long blocks of text into manageable chunks.
Bullets are easier to read.
So your reader will be very happy.
But as I was editing this particular piece of content, sometimes I ran into long lists of bullets, which weren’t really conducive to the reading experience.
Question
Answer
What does this mean?
Why are long lists of bullets bad?
Because with enough repetition, they’re just as bad as long blocks of text.
Your readers will tune you out.
How can you format long lists of bullets into something easier to read?
One way is to convert the bullets into a table with separate entries.
Your readers will enjoy a more attractive presentation.
What do tables do for your reader?
They arrange the content in two dimensions rather than one.
The readers’ eyes move in two directions, rather than just one.
Hey, wait a minute…
Yeah, I just plugged my seven questions again by intentionally using the first three: why, how, and what.
You can go here to download the e-book “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”
I don’t have the skill to make WordPress tables look as attractive as Microsoft Word tables. But even this table breaks up the monotony of paragraphs and lists, don’t you think?
So what happened?
After I had moved through the three steps of rewriting, shortening, and simplifying the original content, I had a repurposed piece of content that was much more attractive to the “hungry people” (target audience) who were going to read it.
These people wouldn’t fall asleep while reading the content, and they wouldn’t be offended by some word that didn’t apply to them (such as “mugshot”).
So don’t be afraid to repurpose—even for a completely different market.
I do it all the time.
Look at two of my recent reels. Note the differences. But note the similarities.
The identity/biometrics version of the reel.
The Inland Empire version of the same reel.
So which of Bredemarket’s markets do you think will receive the “grapes” reel?
Bredemarket’s services are grouped into two distinct and separate functions: content marketing (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and proposals (RFI responses, RFP responses, sole source letters, etc.).
My division of my services makes sense in the real world. After all, in some employment situations, content marketing and proposals employ distinct and separate sets of employees.
But other companies are different. In fact, I’ve seen employment ads seeking marketing/proposals managers. Sounds like a lot of work, unless the company submits few proposals or performs minimal marketing.
And in many companies there are NOT dedicated proposals specialists. Which is why Bredemarket makes its money by helping the salespeople at these firms get the documents out.
Time for the truth
And if we’re truthful with ourselves, content marketing and proposals are pretty much the same thing.
I know this angers some people, who insist that they are content marketing professionals or proposal professionals, with all the proper certifications that a mere mortal could never attain. Or they did attain it, but it lapsed. Or is about to lapse unless I renew it in time.
But hear me out. I’m going to list four aspects of a particular document, and you tell me whether I’m talking about a piece of marketing content, or a proposal.
The document describes benefits the customer will realize.
The document targets one or more sets of people hungry for the solution.
The document shall be in Aptos 12 point, single spaced, with 1 inch margins, and shall not exceed 20 pages.
Guess what? From that description you CAN’T tell if it’s a piece of content or a proposal.
Yes, I know some of you thought item 4 was a dead giveaway because it sounded like an RFP requirement, but maybe some company’s brand guidelines dictate that the firm’s white papers must conform to that format. You never know.
And I know that when you get into the minutiae, there are certain things that proposal writers do that content marketers don’t have to worry about, and vice versa.
But at a high level, the content marketer already knows 90% of the things they need to know to write proposals. And vice versa.
I’m going to describe one example of how Bredemarket has helped its customers, based upon one of my client projects from several years ago.
Stupid Word Tricks. Tell your brother, your sister and your mama too. See below.
I’ve told this story before, but I wanted to take a fresh look at the problem the firm had, and the solution Bredemarket provided. I’m not identifying the firm, but perhaps YOUR firm has a similar problem that I can solve for you. And your firm is the one that matters.
The problem
This happened several years ago, but was one of Bredemarket’s first successes.
The firm that asked for my help is one that focuses on one particular biometric modality, and provides a high-end solution for biometric identification.
In addition, the firm’s solution has multiple applications, crime solving and disaster victim identification being two of them.
The firm needed a way to perform initial prospect outreach via budgetary quotations, targeted to the application that mattered to the prospect. A simple proposal problem to be solved…or so it seemed.
Why the obvious proposal solution didn’t work
I had encountered similar problems while employed at Printrak and MorphoTrak and while consulting here at Bredemarket, so the solution was painfully obvious.
Qvidian, one proposal automation software package that I have used. But there are a LOT of proposal automation software packages out there, including some new ones that incorporate artificial intelligence. From https://uplandsoftware.com/qvidian/.
Have your proposal writers create relevant material in their proposal automation software that could target each of the audiences.
So when your salesperson wants to approach a medical examiner involved in disaster victim identification, the proposal writer could just run the proposal automation software, create the targeted budgetary quotation, populate it with the prospect’s contact information, and give the completed quotation to the salesperson.
Unfortuntely for the firm, the painfully obvious solution was truly painful, for two reasons:
This firm had no proposal automation software. Well, maybe some other division of the firm had such software, but this division didn’t have access to it. So the whole idea of adding proposal text to an existing software solution, and programming the solution to generate the appropriate budgetary quotation, wasn’t going to fly.
In addition, this firm had no proposal writers. The salespeople were doing this on their own. The only proposal writer they had was the contractor from Bredemarket. And they weren’t going to want to pay for me to generate every budgetary quotation they needed.
In this case, the firm needed a way for the salespeople to generate the necessary budgetary quotations as easily as possible, WITHOUT relying on proposal automation software or proposal writers.
Bredemarket’s solution
To solve the firm’s problem, I resorted to Stupid Word Tricks.
I created two similar budgetary quotation templates: one for crime solving, and one for disaster victim identification. (Actually I created more than two.) That way the salesperson could simply choose the budgetary quotation they wanted.
The letters were similar in format, but had little tweaks depending upon the audience.
Using document properties to create easy-to-use budgetary quotations.
The Stupid Word Tricks came into play when I used Word document property features to allow the salesperson to enter the specific information for each prospect, which then rippled throughout the document, providing a customized budgetary quotation to the prospect.
The result
The firms’ salespeople used Bredemarket’s templates to generate initial outreach budgetary quotations to their clients.
And the salespeople were happy.
I’ve used this testimonial quote before, but it doesn’t hurt to use it again.
“I just wanted to truly say thank you for putting these templates together. I worked on this…last week and it was extremely simple to use and I thought really provided a professional advantage and tool to give the customer….TRULY THANK YOU!”
Comment from one of the client’s employees who used the standard proposal text
While I actively consulted for the firm I maintained the templates, updating as needed as the firm achieved additional certifications.
Why am I telling this story again?
I just want to remind people that Bredemarket doesn’t just write posts, articles, and other collateral. I can also create collateral such as these proposal templates that you can re-use.
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.
Last week I prepared a presentation for a conference organizer, thinking that I would give the presentation at the conference in question. Instead, the organizer emailed the presentation slides to selected conference attendees. The attendees probably liked it that way.
But I still wanted to give the presentation.
And I also wanted to generalize the presentation so that it applied to ALL technology companies, not just the ones who were attending the conference.
So I recorded myself giving the presentation “Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services.” It’s ten minutes long, and you can view it now.
Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services (April 9, 2024)
If you’re watching this video on your laptop, be sure to keep your smartphone handy because at the end of the video I display a QR code to obtain more information. Just point your phone at the QR code.
Of course, if you’re watching this video on your smartphone, you can’t read the displayed QR code. So just go to https://bredemarket.com/drive-tech/ instead.
Bredemarket 