Category: Content Marketing

Lois Lowry’s The Giver turns the idea of a Utopian society on its head. Built on the ashes of an apocalypse, this Community eliminates suffering and strife by converting to “Sameness.” Unfortunately for them, Sameness bleeds out every shred of memory, creativity, and color.

Something like a lot of B2B content marketing.

When did we decide that rote sameness is the mark of a professional piece of content?

Look — you’re a good writer or you wouldn’t be in marketing. And content creation is critical. But does it have to be you? You strive to help your clients hit their marketing objectives and sales goals. You position and focus and plan the content that reels in the leads. You don’t stop until you fill that sales funnel — in fact, you don’t stop at all.

So let people like me help you, people whose businesses are founded on taking your strategies, messaging, facts, logic, and stories; and expertly creating lead-reeling content. For as long as you need us to.

Find out how your content marketing writer can improve your business. Download “How B2B Content Writers Help Their Marketing Clients Succeed.”

“Benefits, benefits, benefits,” or as I prefer to call it, “Benefits, shemefits.” How often do you see — or probably write — a grocery list of benefits in your white paper? I’ve done it myself, but now I see the light.

Of course people need to know what your offering is going to do for them, but a dry list of bulleted phrases doesn’t cut it.

Let’s look at the difference in an IBM white paper and web page about SmartCloud. If you break down the listed benefits you get something like this:

• Schedule and hold online meetings.
• Safely share files.
• Chat with other approved users.
• Manage your projects.
• Network with prospects.

Granted that in a real piece of content there would be some explanation after each bullet point. But you would still have a dry bulleted list of unrelated information that doesn’t paint any pictures. So instead of a benefits grocery list, IBM wrote this:

“The SmartCloud Notes solution was designed to let you work seamlessly with people inside and outside of your organization. You can meet online, share files, chat, manage projects, network with potential clients, schedule meetings and send and receive mail anywhere, anytime. Whether you work remotely, manage remote teams or need one place to bring colleagues, partners and vendors together, our offerings help you transform your business into a social business.”

Is it great literature? Hardly. Is it kind of vague? Kind of. But does it illustrate a complex offering’s benefits in the context of the prospects’ environment? Yes. And that’s the point.

There’s an adage in fiction writing that works very well: “Don’t tell. Show.” In your white papers — heck, in most of your content — illustrate the benefits. Tell the stories. Present the facts and persuade; argue rationally, sum up neatly. And punch it up with stories, visuals, and a human approach.

Great comment from Anthony Lombardo on the mythical convergence of  B2B and B2C marketing approaches. I could not agree more.

… B2B trends follow B2C with a good 12-24 month lag, sometimes even more. That gap is shortening though, and the two seem to be on converging paths. So right now you can innovate on B2C, then double your ROI by repackaging for B2B – or at least that’s the thought. But that doesn’t work. B2C focuses around a single user and impulse buying. B2B is slower, requires support of the entire buying team, and is much less likely to succeed with impulse tactics. While some of the technology will be shared between B2B and B2C, the application of that technology is a lot more complicated and specific to the market.