Most trainers, consultants, and professional coaches agree that their content is the real value that drives their marketing campaigns. After all, their knowledge is what they are selling, so content is really just a product teaser for the whole business. Unfortunately due to writer’s block, complacency, or self-delusion, the content created for marketing can be poorly constructed resulting in communications with little value.

Earlier this year we wrote about some guidelines for constructing good content but the last section of engaging content that can be a challenging judgment call. After all no one intends to write, shoot, post bad content . . . but it happens all the same.

Here is a recent example of an email tactic sent by a business consultant:

“Don’t fall in love with the product or service you sell because people won’t pay what you think its worth. They’ll only pay for the value they see.”

I think the intended message was:

“Gut check your product or service to stay objective about the value. In that way you’ll come to a level playing field with those interested in what you are offering which will make for more productive conversations. “

But that’s my interpretation and giving the benefit of the doubt to a newsletter that has had valuable information in the past.

Boiled down it says, “People only pay for the value they perceive.” While the content is true, it’s obvious to the point of cliché. It’s the equivalent of a digital marketer saying “Content is king” as a tactic. It should have been the intro to a real insight, not the climax of the email.

In the spirit of the tactic I received, don’t fall in love with the content you create. Always make sure that what you are delivering is something worth your audience’s time. Sure, you’ll get a few free passes on content that’s not as hard hitting as some of your best insights but it’s best not to rely on your audience forgiving you because they’ve gotten value in the past.

After creating content spend some time away from it and then see how you feel about it later. Better yet have a trusted colleague review your content to provide criticism or enhancements. Getting some separation or outside feedback helps keep an objective viewpoint on whether your content is really worth your audience’s time.

Everyone needs a chance to get away from work for a while. However, when it comes to trainers, consultants, and professional coaches, one person’s vacation can become a vacation from the firm’s marketing. With some planning and effective use of available digital marketing tools, there is no reason that vacation schedules should result in a lull in marketing.

Typically the suggestion that marketing not take a vacation is met with one of two excuses.

1. It’s only (insert amount of time).
   The fact of the matter is that in digital marketing the expectation is real time responses. There’s not a lot of patience for delays. Even a day’s gap can lead to disinterest about something that in the moment was a priority. If the gap affects the assigned schedule of communications, it can disrupt consistency and have a lasting negative impact if it’s a communication your audience has come to expect.
2. I’ve got (whichever digital marketing element the marketer finds important) covered, the rest can wait.
   Good digital marketing campaigns are built so that one channel reinforces the other. Removing one channel weakens the others. The entire process should be set up to function in someone’s absence either through automation or temporary responsibility reassignment.

The concept sounds simple but can be complex when analyzed. As an example, we have a client who owns a sales training firm that was taking a two-week vacation. The client was proactive in reviewing their digital marketing campaigns and asked us to fill in a few gaps that would exist in their absence.

We reviewed the plan for the two-week period and found that it looked solid. Emails and social media posts were pre-set and authorized by the client so that there was no delay in the approval and send process. All supporting promotions for the time period were set up on the website so that materials could be requested and delivered and events could be registered and confirmed, both in an automated way.

It looked pretty solid until the end of our review when we realized that while the requested material would be automatically delivered to the requester, the notification went to the owner who would be on vacation. So a follow up on the lead would be delayed until the owner returned from vacation or checked in to their email account. As a workaround we rerouted the notifications for the two week period to distribute to a few consultants in the firm that could follow up with a lead in the owners absense and set text message notifications so the owner had a record of leads for the time period.

This illustrates how a simple step in the process can undo a marketing campaigns goal of generating leads or sales. It also shows that overconfidence in the process or automation can result in critical errors. Even the best and most efficient marketing systems require human input. Make sure that the systems will continue to function if one of those people is absent.

It’s great to understand your audience and the personas of your target market. It’s equally important to know how these audiences interact and make sure that an agenda to engage one group does not alienate another target group. As marketing campaigns are planned, it’s important to identify which channels might cross audiences and ensure that the messaging to one audience is not counterproductive to another.

Marketing is often looked at as a means of generating leads or sales, and for the most part that covers it. Every so often, however, marketing is consulted on other business facets like recruiting. Recently a CEO of a client launched a presence on LinkedIn via the marketing department to support an HR agenda to attract millennials to the company. This agenda was initiated because there was a number of technology openings within the company that HR felt millennials would be better suited to perform.

So the CEO launched several LinkedIn posts about how valuable millennials could be to a company and why he thought it was critical to current companies’ future to bring them on board. The LinkedIn posts garnered some interest and HR was pleased to see an increase in application for their open technology positions.

To further promote the CEO’s presence on LinkedIn, an internal communication was sent asking employees to follow the CEO’s posts. Many of the employees did so and were greeted with the CEOs recent posts. The problem was that many of the employees were not millennials and felt the articles were dismissive of the contributions other generations could and had made to the company.

Marketing had to deal with comments on LinkedIn from current employees that felt marginalized .HR had to do damage control for current employees that took exception to the content. To further diminish the productivity of the campaign, the CEO had no plans of continually doing posts so the original three articles became an obvious self-serving attempt at boosting recruiting rather than a valuable commentary on business development. The lack of ongoing quality content for the targeted audience meant that followers dwindled or disappeared.

While this example has as much to do with HR as it does with marketing, it’s a great example of how marketing agendas can backfire when channels cause them to cross audiences. This is especially true for web content or social media posts which make the content available to anyone who finds it. Even channels like email that make it possible to restrict access to a target group still have cross audience capabilities via forwards and replies.

It’s best to review any marketing campaigns from the perspective of your unique audiences. If you find that particular communications are dismissive or alienating to a different target audience, it’s worth restructuring the campaign to be more inclusive.

Image courtesy of  tiverylucky / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Most trainers, consultants, and professional coaches have an unfair advantage with their internet and email marketing. The advantage is that their core product, knowledge, lends itself perfectly for powerful content marketing.

However this advantage is often squandered with poorly constructed messages, uncompelling overview information, or a lack of actionable information for fear of “giving away the farm.” Below are some guidelines for making your valuable knowledge into compelling content marketing.

Make Text Scannable

Huge blocks of text turn readers off. This can be paragraphs that go on for twenty lines or more, or pages of text without section headers. In other words, text that looks like a wall. These sorts of things subtly tell readers the text is going to be hard to read.

Simply breaking text up and making it scannable would help a lot of business content. People are far more likely to read something online if it appears to be a quick read.

Three simple changes can make a huge difference:

• Break paragraphs into five lines or less
• Use section headers
• Use bullet points wherever possible

Write Clearly

If you can get past the long dense type in many content pieces, the next obstacle you’ll run into is the copy. A lot of content marketing is, in fact, hard to read. There are long, overly-elaborate sentences peppered with acronyms and jargon that prevents anyone except seasoned experts from understanding it.

Target content so that a fourth or fifth grader can comprehend it. That’s the level of copy that people respond to best. This is not because people are stupid but rather because there is limited time to focus. This doesn’t mean the content should be dumbed down but rather simplified so that it’s easy for readers to digest.

Use Images

Use images to break up the text and to magnify the points made by the words. Try to use one image on every other page/email/social media post.

Focus on the Audience

The question that should be top of mind for any content marketing is “What’s in it for them?” Your brand and product or service might be part of what’s in it for them, but even if they do decide to buy, they will still be 99% focused on what’s in it for them.

Use Data

Odds are good you’ve got quite a lot of information about what your audience is interested in. You probably know which pages people like and which reports they download the most. Use that data. Make more content similar to what has worked in the past.

Ask Questions

We are no longer involved in a simple one way broadcast. Internet marketing is interactive. Engage in a conversation. Ask your readers what they think.

Make the Content Engaging

A lot of content marketing is regurgitated information, copy and pasting from training materials, or unrefined reports. These things can all be used as inspiration but are unlikely to engage your audience without some re-thought and re-work.