No matter the field, a good writer should always cater to the needs of their audience, but there may be no more fickle reader than a dedicated marketer. Well-versed in all the tricks of the trade, these folks are both less susceptible to click-bait tactics, and more even more likely to be frustrated if the content they’ve been steered towards fails to deliver. So in this high-stakes world of marketing to marketers, how can we ensure that you’ll be able to create content that drives real value?
Rob B is a 5-Star writer at WriterAccess
Consider their motivation
For even the most seasoned writers, it can help to go back to basics in reflecting on your target persona and asking why they’d take the time to listen to what you have to say. Ultimately, people read for two reasons: entertainment and information. You can deliver on either or the pair, but failing on both counts is a great way to torpedo your time-on-page.
Personal education is the primary driving factor in the decision to take time out of one’s day, so be sure your reader walks away with a few easily-digested talking points to summarize their experience. One should never sacrifice quality and risk of diluting the value of the message, but the ability to mix in light humor can be especially valuable in long-form content to keep the reader engaged and in a positive frame of mind. While certainly more popular in a B2C environment, there’s a time and place for silly memes in the B2B world where textual levity fails.
Keep a pulse on their world
The long-term value of evergreen content is enticing, but if we’re being cognizant of the reader’s desire to learn then there’s no substitute for timely topical information. Developing authority status around your personal brand as a writer imbues your messages with more weight, so if your audience cares about mobile web development then you darned well better care about mobile web development as well.
To wit, if you reference the Mobile-geddon of 2015, then you darned well better be adequately informed on the impact of the Mobile-geddon 2.0 of 2016 so as to provide informed insight unavailable elsewhere. An advanced warning that a marketer’s organic traffic might drop 10-25% overnight due to a slight tweak to Google’s algorithm is potentially invaluable, but providing one valuable nugget is a fluke and providing two is a pattern, while providing continued value is what creates a dedicated advocate for life.
Tie it to data
Marketing is a blend of both art and science, and while you sacrifice quality at your peril, it’s important to remember that marketing is a data-driven science. Good marketers measure everything thatmoves, and compete not only against others in their space for market share but against themselves in a never-ending quest for optimization.
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Imagine the following scenario: a business’s website receives 1,000 new monthly visitors, with 2% converting to leads on their main landing page, and half of that group turning into paying customers. Pop in your average LTV of a customer – let’s say $5,000 – then the funnel represented here generates $50,000 in new business each month. If the copy on that landing page is tweaked, or the color of the CTA button is changed, and that conversion rate bumps up even a half a percent to 2.5% then now you’re generating an extra $12,500 / month from the same 1,000 visitors. Optimize that landing page and then increase your monthly traffic and you’re really cooking with gas.
Your marketer audience has trod through the internet’s deserts for far too long, so give them actionable advice that can be put to work in a hurry and they’ll thank you.
Make it interactive
Savvy marketing is about creating conversations, both with your audience and enabling conversations with theirs. Providing soundbytes, talking points, and conversation starters opens up windows to new ideas and opinions, which is really the essence of thought leadership. One of the best ways to do so is to make your content interactive, and that requires more than a mere comment section at the bottom of a blog.
Accompanying your content with a relevant questionnaire or survey allows readers to engage in a more tactile way, opening up the conversation and enabling you to more easily create a dialogue rather than simply shouting through a megaphone. Having already acknowledged the desire to learn, a hidden part of us likes to talk about ourselves, so a blending these two traits with a deftly deployed poll lets readers see how they stack up to others and gets the competitive juices flowing.
Put a bow on it
Most marketers want to learn and they want to put that information to use so if you’re up to speed on their areas of concern you can help guide a conversation and create real value by driving measurable results.
5-Star writer Rob B specializes in projects for digital mediums, such as marketing copy for websites, blogs and social media. He is adept at synthesizing large research projects into digestible themes and messages.
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