"so what?" marketing

What looks good in the short term somehow doesn’t always stack up a year or more down the line. A wise person said, who’s seen it all before. We’ll see.

That’s the post.

Well, everyone’s read all the stuff about content marketing, and agreed it’s a far more appropriate strategy in today’s info rich world. But yet it’s quicker and easier to write a dodgy email and whack it out into the ether with no structure, hook or thought on what now or what next, so let’s just do that. Yep, keep trying to prod people with a stick, cos it’s that easy. And so it goes on. 🙂

I listen to the tech speak and observe how you built it and see how it does what it does and may or may not understand the true depths of the whats and hows, but then I probably don’t need to know all that. And then I take what I’ve seen and look at the potential market and its motivations and start to distill the whys – why choose us, why would I need this? And start to translate it into customer so the world out there, which probably doesn’t even realise it needs you yet, gets that little ‘aha’ moment where they first get it. They see you and they get how you can help them. Yep, maybe we should call it translation, not marketing.

I know what nurture means. It means to sustain, feed, grow. To marketers it means to email, slowly, or quickly ’til death us do part. Sorry content people and marketo admins. I know what you’re trying to do but maybe the software is veiling your view of the world. It seems that nurture is a good place for marketers to hide, behind white papers, blog posts and pipeline stats. I know – we’re supposed to be selling stuff, right? What if nurture could include the real time experience providing the info needed right then, to reduce abandonment and increase conversion. Wouldn’t that be nurture too? Just not as we’ve now defined it. Let’s move on.

Same old. Send the same message to enough people and it might just be right for someone. They do the work for you and sift through the junk. Not really smart or fair though is it? And you’re not learning a lot about your market. I prefer to take a little time to research, think, customise. Hook into what they last responded to so the penny might drop, and the conversation can continue. Waste my time if you like, not my customer’s. Then deploy the more relevant subject, personalised and appropriate content, via appropriate channels. Or you can just add to the noise. Fingers crossed.

Hasn’t it always been about content? Forgive me for missing or stating the obvious, but haven’t marketers always been challenged to put the ‘thing’ in front of their audience? The thing that informs, persuades, niggles and nurtures them into noticing, believing, having an interest in, ultimately following you? Whatever format that takes, static, digital, animated, physical, short or long format (I won’t go on, you get it), content has always been there. Whether that piece of content should be there is a different question. If it serves a purpose, informs, persuades etc then maybe so. If it’s just a waste of someone’s time – yours in its development and creation, the reader’s in getting that far – is a different matter. If the piece counts, makes a difference then go for it. If you look at it and think ‘ so what?’, respin. Oh, and don’t let the medium cloud the message. Just because it moves, doesn’t mean it’s good.

… that we all work for the same company. We may have different approaches but is that so bad? With the same goal in mind, we all want to sell the same stuff, to generate revenue and ultimately support a growing community of happy customers who extol the virtues of our employer. I might not go about it the same way that you would but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I might not agree with your approach either but that’s not to say it isn’t worth a try. Live and let live. Share the goal and values but let diversity take its path to delivery. It might work.

How annoying is that? You’ve researched, planned, scoped, written, created and delivered. But no response. It ‘missed’. What does that mean? You didn’t connect, you weren’t talking their language, they didn’t ‘get it’. So what now? Back to the drawing board; maybe not such a bad place for a marketer to be from time to time. Think again, refine, repurpose, resend. Measure. Second time round that complacency of knowing your market will have faded and you’ll be thinking like a marketer again. Focused on the right message to the right audience at the right time. Refreshing, isn’t it?