B2B content is broken. It always has been, but the pandemic has exposed the problem like never before.
The rising adoption of marketing tools and platforms has leveled the playing field for leading firms and startups alike. It’s more cost-efficient than ever, but it’s not cost-effective to blanket the market with cheap but poorly targeted messages. All that guarantees is that more people will be turned off and will click away from content that sounds more like a conference-hall presentation than the one-on-one conversation every message should be.
In a nutshell, the language of business is too often generic, and addresses audiences en masse instead of appealing to individual needs in both content and tone. In turn, the business of language is too often broken when writers and clients fail to work in a collaborative, creative targeting partnership. It’s what I strive for in producing both editorial and media content.
What can you do to improve your content? I can’t tell you in a short rant, but here’s a quickie roadmap:
- RETHINK your approach to reflect the reality of message and media consumption: It’s intimate. Engage individuals, not people, and don’t assume SEO, SEM, analytics and a marketing automation platform can do it all.
- POUNCE on hiring creative people who “get” that mindset and offer new ideas to light-up your audience(s). People who believe good content provides an opportunity to engage, differentiate and promote click-through to your also well-crafted landing pages, webinars, blogs, reports … all content you post, publish, track and measure.
- IMPROVE good copy with a tighter collaboration between your best content creators and your data geeks to close the feedback loop in “realer real time” than you currently do. Close the gaps, adjust your market appeals and engineer incremental gains — practice actual teamwork for continuous improvement.
Change your mind, change your culture. It’s your best inoculation against mediocrity.