Making Marketing Content Count

A recurrng problem in marketing is making content that counts. Even if you do have great technology marketing writing -- i.e., writing that's clear, technically accurate, gets right to the point, appropriately applies a large toolkit of rhetorical devices, and so on — that may not be enough. The difference between marketing content that is technically flawless (in both senses) and content that has traction can be huge.

Part of that difference is knowing what to write about. The best writing won't "work" (even if persuasive) if it focuses on the wrong value. That's not an issue of style or grammar or how you organize your headings -- it's about target selection.


Here's an example: In the months before my client, Acterna, was acquired by JDSU (last August), I was asked to write Acterna's corporate slide deck -- the company's presentation of its core value proposition.

That value proposition was Acterna's leadership in products that test and measure IP network infrastructures from the physical media on up. The value target Acterna wanted to select was what I call "the fundamental truths": better customer service, better performance, and so on. I convinced them that doing a good job of saying what everyone else says might not be the best way to go. Instead, focus on what's truely unique about Acterna that delivers on those fundamental truths.

In Acterna's case, I boiled it down to a single line: "To win anywhere in broadband you first have to win everywhere.

In othe words: If IP service providers don't have it all in terms of network test and measurement, then they remain competitively disadvantaged because what were previously separate technologies have now become interdependent.

In terms of traction, this value target has several benefits that the fundamental truths (by themselves) don't:

• It speaks to current day customer challenges
  
• It sells whole solutions rather that just point solutions
• It sets up barriers to competitors who can't sell whole solutions
• It demonstrates thought leadership (i.e., brand equity)
  
• Even given all this, it still sell the fundamental truths, but without being a cliché
  

The presentation was delivered as a PowerPoint that included a short video at the beginning. You can stream the video (it works in both QuickTime and Windows Media Player) by clicking here. You can download the rest of the presentation (as a PDF) by clicking here.