The definitive science of creating "EFFECTIVE Marketing Content"

For your business to be successful, you need to manage the relationships that you have with your prospects, customers and stakeholders. While managing these relationships at different levels right from a suspect stage till the contract closure stage, you will need different forms of ‘effective marketing content’.  What is this ‘Effective’ marketing content then?

Content comes in different forms and takes the shape of different marketing artifacts (e.g. Flyers, Brochures, Articles, White papers, Blogs, Website content, email newsletters, Press releases, Case studies, Customer testimonials) at different points in time. For it to be effective, it should meet the objectives and the purpose at different levels in the buying cycle.

Here are some characteristics of great & effective marketing content

1)  Compelling & Engaging

With the initial few paras/words/subject headers/abstract, it should feel compelling to go through the details included. It should engage the attention of the reader and arouse enough curiosity.

2)  Relevant & Fulfilling

Having generated the curiosity, the promised value should be delivered (fulfilled) by the content. This avoids the negative effect of disappointing the reader and also increases the chance of the content being further distributed / recommended amongst peer communities.

3)  Convenient and user friendly

Content should be simple, convenient and in an appropriate format. Content should be designed, specifically for print or for electronic views.  

How do you go about generating such kind of content then?

It takes a lot of efforts and planning, but here are some things you can do: 

1)    Research

a.  Research your target audience, who is going to consume the content

b.  Understand the objectives, that you need to achieve with the content

c.  Research your competitors to understand what they are talking about

d.  Research your target industry to look for any signs of any trends/implications developing and how these are going to be affecting your target audience.

2)   Generate content repositories and filter

a.  Gather all reference content that you feel can be re-used in some way to meet the above objectives.

b.  Do Intelligent Tagging and maintain your content repository well, so that you can get to the content that you want, when you need to.

3)   Write, Refine, Package & Publish

a.  Define your content headers and start populating content. If you keep looking at your repos, you may never be able to start. Focus on your objectives

b.  Refine content in line with the objectives

c.  Package, as appropriate for the format in which it is going to be used. Use Design effectively

d.  Publish content

Let me know your thoughts !

Atul

http://www.xenia-consulting.com/

Linked IN – http://www.linkedin.com/companies/1015090

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=129562663721686

Twitter - https://twitter.com/xeniaconsulting

Leveraging the 'power of four' to ensure responses to your email campaigns !

There are so many emails hitting your target customer's email box on a daily basis. Add to this the fact that most of the emails would be read/filtered using Blackberries. How do you make sure that your email gets read in this crowded INBOX. 


Here are four  things that you need to pay special attention to 
1) Subject lines - cannot be sales offers, cannot sound like promotions. Keep your subject line short, but compulsive for the person to read. An effective way may be to use references of other persons that the recipent works with or is friends with. An example could be "Re : Conversation with Bob", where Bob might be his boss at work. There are many ways to find out co-workers, thanks to social networking


2) Reference - If your subject lines are strong and thoughtful, you have successfully navigated the first step and your email has been opened. you have to incentivize the person to read through and that is your next challenge.  Build on what you used while framing the subject,build a strong reference case. Of course you cannot fake it, and you have to be genuine. An example could be " I spoke with Bob Fisher's office and was told that you would be the person responsible to discuss about improving profitability options for your company"


3) Content - Make it personal - If your target customer has gone through the first two parts, most likely he would read through the rest of the content as well. Make sure that it is short and never more than 1 or 2 paras at the most. Don't beat around the bush, make the offer relevant for the person that you are trying to reach. Answer the"Whats in it for me" syndrome. Also try and make it as personal as possible. Use customer name as often as possible in your content. 


4) Precise Next Action - Once you have gone this far, define very clearly what you want the next action to be. Offer times for a follow-up discussion rather than keeping it open to next week/next month. There should be enough in your content to fetch you a response. Just as the role of a CV is to get you a job interview, the role of effective content in point 3 above is to get you to the defined next action. 


Let me know your thoughts/feedback. 
Happy selling

Regards
Atul 

http://www.xenia-consulting.com/

Linked IN – http://www.linkedin.com/companies/1015090
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=129562663721686
Twitter - https://twitter.com/xeniaconsulting