Marketing Interactions

Content Marketing for Customers Instead of Prospects

I recently received an email from someone who's read my book. He asked how to go about creating content to nurture and retain customers rather than prospects. I love this question as so many B2B marketers are solely focused on lead generation at the expense of building relationships with customers.

Customers you have are highly valuable. Marketers need to start paying attention to the entire lifecycle - including the development of post purchase relationships.

Just as you'd map content to the buying cycle, you can create a content map for the customer lifecycle.

The major difference in getting started with a customer nurturing program is the starting point. Their status quo is different than a prospect's.

• They already have your product.
• The problem you educate prospects about solving is solved.

Given those assumptions, create a baseline for their current situation by considering what the questions are that they need answered to move them from the status quo of the points above. Examples could include:

• What opportunities are now available with that original problem solved? Fixing one can open up the possibility of fixing another that was unseen at the time.


• How can you help them move from "beginner" status to "expert" status in how they use your product? In other words, how can you help them get even more value than they ever hoped to get when they made the original purchase?


• Why should they ante up for a support or services contract?


• What other related products could help them achieve new strategic objectives?


• Were other departments affected by the change your product brought that you can now help to solve?

As you create your customer nurturing strategy, you need to consider that their expectations are different than your prospects. They expect you to know them, as well as their situation and which products they're using. And, rightfully so.

They expect personalized, valuable communications, not blanket emails that could be for anyone. (Okay, that's similar to prospect expectations) In essence, the threshold for screwing up is much lower, so take care and do the proper planning.

The one thing I want to make really clear is that the content you create for prospects is not the content your customers want or need. This should become obvious when you answer the questions above.

The best part about customer nurturing is that you can actually gain access to them to truly learn what content will be most helpful. You should have a way to segment them appropriately given what you know about them. You've also got access to the service people who support them. A veritable treasure trove of information exists if you'll just go after it.

Customer attrition is largely based on indifference.

Replacing customers is very costly.

I highly recommend that you put customer nurturing programs at the top of your priority list for 2011. If you want to prove accountability and contribution to revenues, this is a great way to gain traction with your company.

Don't forget that your customer content marketing strategy isn't just about marketing programs but can impact customer service and support interactions as well as account management activities. What content do those people need to help nurture your customers?

Don't forget about the word of mouth and referrals that can come from highly satisfied and loyal customers. Nurturing customers can also pay high dividends in net new business. Especially in a social business environment. Just saying...

"Top of Mind" is B2B Marketing Schmaltz

Sometimes I wonder if we ever stop and think about the marketing terms we use and what they really mean. Do we use them as excuses not to dig deeper into what will make our marketing more effective? Or, are we just satisfied with the surface level, instead of motivated deeper to make sure our intentions are realized in the execution? Or, perhaps, it's just that good enough is good enough. I don't think so. Not in this market.

Yep, you guessed it. I'm on a bit of a rant.

There are some phrases that - as they're commonly applied to B2B marketing - are, well, schmaltz. In case you're not sure what schmaltz means, Dictionary.com seems to be split between 1. exagerrated sentimentalism and 2. fat or grease. I think you can apply a little of both to this one.

In order to give 2011 a running shot at excellence, let's disabuse ourselves of this ridiculous notion:

Staying "Top of Mind" will get you more sales.

Theorectically this is possible. But not based on the way it's currently put into practice by most B2B companies. Especially if the message you use to stay top of mind has no value to your audience, but serves simply to make marketers feel like they've done their job because they can check a communication off their list. "Got our logo in front of our database. Job done." 

Nope - you really didn't. Consider that:

• Most email is not memorable.
• Most messaging is oriented in the wrong direction (about what the company sending it wants, not what the audience wants/needs).
• Most email is deleted without being read or acted upon.

Given just those 3 realities, how do you think your current messaging will help you stay top of mind?

Get over the "top of mind" idea and replace it with the "best recognizable value" idea.

[recognizable is the pivotal word, in case you're wondering]

I'm really tired of the companies who mistakenly believe that their shoddy, self-serving emails will have me think of them favorably, should the need arise. Trust me, it's the same for your prospects. In reality, those companies are training me that they are the last company I'd call if I need what they sell.

Why? No recognizable value has been received to date, so why should I think that would change? What do you think your prospects think about your emails?

Go take a look at your email messaging and see which of the following Kudos you'd give it:

• The subject line is specific.
• The greeting isn't cheesy. 
• The message delivers on the subject line.
• The message is personalized for the audience based on interests, and hopefully, buying stage.
• The message is about something they want/need.
• The call to action offers them something useful - even if they don't buy or fill out a form or request a call with your sales rep.
• There are no huge blocks of text to slog through.
• The sentences are short and clear with no jargon in sight.
• The gist can be understood in less than 20 seconds. (that's if you get their attention in the first place)
• If they don't download the graphics, the message still makes sense.

The best way to do this is to send your marketing emails to your own inbox and get the full experience. When's the last time you did that?

What other marketing phrases do you think should be outed as SCHMALTZ?

Don't Put Your B2B Email In a Box

Email is used by most B2B marketers for a variety of purposes—many of which are executed distinctly, sometimes without visibility across the organization. There's brand awareness, lead generation, customer retention and loyalty, driving web traffic, promoting sharing with colleagues and on social networks, lead nurturing, newsletters and more. However, as more and more of B2B marketing targets prospects and customers via digital channels, it's becoming critical not to put your email in a box.

The traditional measures of clicks and opens are no longer sufficient for managing your email programs. Clicks and opens will not get B2B marketers to the accountability for contribution to revenues they're looking for.

By "In a Box" what I mean is that email programs cannot be considered as standalone activities. In fact, treating them as such can cause a variety of problems:

• Frequency. This one is very common. Demand generation creates a nurturing campaign and decides frequency in a vacuum. They are often unaware of how many other emails their prospects or customers may be receiving.
  
  Consider an example. Let's say that you design a nurturing program based on a particular problem-to-solution scenario. Unknown to you, the prospect is also subscribed to the company newsletter put out by corporate marketing. Oops, the sends go out on the same day. Additionally, a product manager has decided to send a series of emails announcing the launch of a new product--unrelated to the story you're telling. The email hits the prospect's email two days later. Oh, and the events manager is hosting a webinar so she's sending email invitations for the event that week, too.
  
  All of a sudden your unsubscribe rates go up or your opens and clicks go down. What may be a mystery to you is your audience saying - "Whoa, Nellie!"


• Activity. If you're not monitoring what happens after the click in an email, how do you know if your emails are actually on point for your audience?
  
  Let's say that they click on the link to an article, but see some other content about a different problem and spend time exploring that topic. They read an article and click over to a blog post discussing an aspect of solving the problem. But, you don't track any of that behavior and continue sending them nurturing emails focused on a topic that they've told you isn't their priority—but you weren't listening.
  
  What if they download a whitepaper and that activity places them into a related nurturing program, but they're already in another? Do you know?


• Attention. Your prospects are busy. They are distracted easily. Essentially, if you're only measuring clicks, not what happens after the click, you'll never know if they spent 5 seconds on your content, scanned it or settled in for a nice read because what you're saying has timely value for them.


• Change in Status. Whether a prospect transitions to sales or becomes a customer, or makes some other type of transition, their communication needs and preferences will change. For example, if a prospect downloads a trial version of your software and then buys it, does your drip campaign know? Or do you send emails telling them their trial is about to expire and continuing to try and sell to them?
  
  If the prospect transitions to sales, is your nurturing program continuing, but out of sync with whatever communications the sales rep is sending?

I can tell you right now that all of these are the norm, not the exception. The oversights made by B2B marketers who only consider one email program at a time are irritating to prospects, and customers, alike.

Part of this problem is caused by marketers becoming giddy about the ease of publishing content and clicking the send button. Another part is the lack of visibility and coordination with cross-departmental programs using the same databases - or, even worse, multiple databases that have dupes.

Do your company and your audiences a favor and don't put your email In a Box.

Is What You Don’t Know Tanking Your B2B Content Marketing Efforts?

Earlier this year, Frost & Sullivan conducted an Executive Benchmark Assessment that asked 250 B2B marketers to provide information about their marketing processes. What they learned shores up just how critical it is for marketers to develop personas they can use to help them improve the outcomes of their marketing programs.

Here are a couple of sobering statistics:

• Less than 25% say the demand they generate satisfies their sales teams.
• Only 33% have an effective lead nurturing process.
• Barely 53% said they have sufficient content to support multiple messages.

These results are an obvious indication that marketers do not know their prospects well enough to engage them across the course of their buying process to sales readiness. Personas can change that.

“A persona takes a segment of your company’s aggregate customer profile and fleshes it out with detailed information that represents real prospects in specific circumstances.”
– eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

When I work with clients, I ask them to tell me about their target markets and who they consider to be their ideal leads. What I usually learn is a few titles, company size, and a range of industries that the client targets. When I try to drill down and get more specific details, by asking marketers to tell me about their leads’ roles and responsibilities, the responses are far too broad to be meaningful.

For example, our leads are CIOs in companies with more than 500 employees in the financial services industry who are responsible for the data center.

That limited knowledge is a start. But it’s not enough to help you create compelling content. How would you even know where to begin? This is why companies have such a hard time generating content about anything other than their products and solutions. That’s what they know.

Take a look at the types of things you need to learn about your prospects:

• What problem(s) are they trying to solve that your products address? You need to boil this down to the core problem. “Improving the data center” is not good enough. Think about the “why” behind the problem/priority the prospect is working to address.


• What is motivating them to solve the problem? [career advancement, company objectives, an increasing number of remote workers, business continuity, compliance regulations, etc.]


• What obstacles could be standing in their way? [CFO, legacy infrastructure, fear of change, etc.]


• Who influences their decision? This can be co-workers, superiors, end users and even other vendors or processes that may be impacted by the implementation of a new solution. Influencers can also include peers external to their company—and usually does.

Do you see how when you apply this type of discovery and research to a specific problem, it narrows the field of possibilities for you to address. This makes it easier to develop content that provides information prospects will recognize as valuable and engage with to learn more.

In order to fully flesh out your persona, you need to really get to know about your prospects’ roles and responsibilities, as well as their industries. A prospect’s role is what they do for the company in comparison to their responsibilities which are the outcomes they must achieve.

Remember the description up above of the CIO responsible for the data center? Well,  that’s not quite on target. The CIO doesn’t necessarily run the data center, but has staff covering that role. What the CIO may be responsible for is the alignment of IT services to business objectives. Improving the data center may be one way of achieving that outcome.

If you were to send this CIO content about a solution that improves the data center by using virtualization to reduce the number of servers the company uses, resulting in cost savings, your content may go unnoticed. However, if you address the ways in which virtualization impacts the delivery of IT services to business users, you may get his attention.

Do you see the difference?

This is why it’s imperative to get to know your prospects really well. In an environment of information overwhelm and digital self-education that keeps vendors at arm’s length, your content must rise above the noise by attracting prospects’ attention and keeping it through recognizable relevance and value.

Is persona development in your plans for marketing in 2011?

B2B Marketing Stocking Stuffers & Holiday Cheer

With the holiday break approaching, there are four resources I thought you might find useful to help you think about what you'd like to improve and add to your B2B marketing plans for the coming year.

Pour yourself a glass of egg nog and settle in with this:

The Top 10 B2B Marketing Mistakes - created by Dianna Huff

This eBook compiles and share insights collected from 34 marketers, crossing a wide swath of expertise within the industry. What I love about this eBook, is the conversational style Dianna employed and the way she weaved together the massive amount of input she and Mac McIntosh received to create a very useful resource. Not only does the guide clearly explain the mistakes, but it provides tips on how to correct them.

Because there's so much meaty information in the eBook (Go Download it Now), I know you won't want to miss them, so here's a countdown of the top 10 along with my witty comments:

10. Not Marketing the Website (Being invisible is not the goal)

9. Not Taking Advantage of How People Process Information (Love this one!)

8. Not Paying Attention to the Details (Oops isn't good enough)

7. Jargon (Yes, it still persists)

6. Not Testing (Your gut won't cut it)

5. No Offer (You definitely need to correct this)

4. Wrong Messaging (Can you say Delete?)

3. Wasting Lead Opportunities (Go toss money down a hole!)

2. Website Not Optimized (if you don't care, who will?)

DRUM ROLL...

1. No Marketing Strategy (Don't waste a minute - fix this first!)

Go Get Your Copy

Next Up: The Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring by Marketo

Marketo puts out some great content and this guide presents you with more than 50 pages  of "how to" information covering lead scoring from what it is to using it to improve your revenue cycles and align marketing and sales.

If you've been thinking about lead scoring, but stumped about where to start, this is your chance to get a jump on it for the new year. Not only does it tell you what to do, but also what to avoid. It even discusses how to make scores useful for sales and it even takes a stab at helping you integrate social media activities into lead scoring.

There are plenty of charts and worksheets to help you get started in mapping out your lead scoring model.

I suggest a nice mug of Hard Rocker Cider for your deep dive into lead scoring. Get Your Copy.

The 3rd Treat in Your Stocking:

Now that you know what you'd like to accomplish with lead scoring, you may want to take a gander at a the B2B Marketing Automation Active Market Map created by Software Advice for their Marketing Automation Guide. Here's a pic, but go see it live to roll your mouse over the vendor logos and get the low down on each platform.

You may wish to swill a Cuppa Good Cheer while perusing your options...

Don't overlook the Toe of Your Stocking:

And, finally, take a listen to Joe Payne, CEO of Eloqua, discuss what's needed for a new breed of marketer in his interview with the folks at Software Advice.

In the video, Joe discusses the need for marketers to become analytical thinkers, why the marketing trifecta includes technology, process and creativity (for those of you who were wondering) and how revenue performance management can impact marketing accountability. Lauren Carlson wrote a great post on the takeaways.

Shake up a Candy Cane Swirl to accompany this thought leadership discussion.

Is Marketing a Numbers Game?

I get very frustrated when I hear salespeople talk about numbers in relation to sales. Like if you need $X in revenues, then you need to generate X number of leads because you'll only close X% of them. That kind of thinking gives permission to lose deals because a rep is only expected to close a certain percentage.

Seems to me that's setting most sales reps up to only ever make the X%. Research shows that only 50% of reps are making quota today.

What's interesting is that marketing's #1 challenge is generating high-quality leads. Likely because they've been tasked with front-loading the top of the funnel with as many "leads" as possible so that sales reps could make that convoluted formula work. Therefore, the focus on volume over quality has meant that they weren't defining quality, but rather a type of contact that might have some interest in acquiring something your company sells. And, dare I say, sometimes not even that.

After all, I get tossed to sales teams at the download of a white paper I'm accessing for research. If most of those companies ever bothered to look at my website they'd realize that I'm not, nor will I ever, become their customer.

So does this fascination with formulas keep sales and marketing from alignment?

Marketing is being charged with generating more qualified leads as well as accountability for doing so.

Sales is charged with meeting a revenue quota which many of them thinks is defined by a formula.

Yet one of the outcomes of generating quality leads means less volume because you've removed the unlikely candidates and extended the dialogues with those who remained. But it also means those leads will have a higher propensity to convert into customers.

What do you suppose that does to the sales formula?

If we turn it on its head, what will happen?

What if your company said to sales: Here's 10 high-quality leads. Close 6 of them. How would that change the sales process? What would it do to collaboration between marketing and sales?

What would it take to empower marketers to share a better story and for salespeople to have better conversations that provide more recognizable value to prospects?

What would it take for marketing to provide leads with quality high enough for sales reps to be able to close 6 out of 10?

A Leaf on the Marketing Blog Tree

I'm honored to have my leaf on The Blog Tree created by Eloqua with JESS3. And I especially like my lofty view from the top. But, what inspires me most about the Blog tree is that I'm reaping the benefit of all the other leaves as they send their insights and expertise up the tree to feed my thinking and let me play with their ideas.

One day, as the tree grows, there will be leaves above me that will hopefully find value from what I send up the tree.

In their post about The Blog Tree, Eloqua refers to the new book Content Rules as their inspiration for re-imagining a list. They've taken a simple—but boring and overused—idea of creating a resource and added context and creativity. They've presented something all of us are familiar with in a different way.

But, even better, they've tied us all together by showcasing relationships. I read most of the blogs on the tree. The blogs and bloggers featured here tirelessly share and spread ideas. I learn something from each of them. Sometimes an idea they share takes me down a path for an entirely different perspective than I've previously had. Sometimes I feel a rant coming on. And at other times I think, "sheesh - I wish I'd thought of that first!"

The point is that ideas are not created in a vacuum. They grow legs (or leaves) when you share them.

But the true takeaway is to go evaluate your content and the way you've always done it. Now, re-imagine how you can change it to surprise, delight, educate and inspire your target audiences.

 

Sales Support as B2B Marketing Leadership

I saw this Tweet from Adam Needles during Dreamforce and it's really bothering me. In all fairness to Stacey - I don't have the actual context, so I'm taking this at face value for this post.

@abneedles: "Good marketing doesn't matter. What matters is sales." via @staceyepstein at @Dreamforce #DF10 #B2B

My first knee-jerk reaction was something along the lines of, "Are you bleeping kidding me?" I couldn't believe that sentence would come from a VP of Marketing. Then I took a few (read a lot) of deep breaths and considered that perhaps what she meant was that if marketing doesn't result in sales, then it doesn't matter how brilliant it is.

Okay - that I can get behind, because truly at the end of the day, revenue must be the outcome of both marketing and sales. Then I saw this Tweet:

@abneedles "Salespeople feel they ... translate what they see as marketing's theoretical arguments into a practical message." @staceyepstein #DF10 #B2B

If this is indeed true, which could be illustrated by the hours that salespeople spend re-inventing or creating their own collateral, then marketing needs to step up. They're obviously missing the translation capability to get to the ground level of their buyers' perspectives.

This said, if salespeople really believe this, then why aren't they taking steps to show marketing how to translate? According to Sirius Decisions, buyers are 70% of their way through the buying process by the time they allow a sales conversation. If sales truly believe that marketing is irrelevant, then it would seem prudent to help them correct that misstep considering how much longer marketing has impact on the buying process before sales gets involved.

Why does it feel like marketing is the one who's supposed to do all the heavy lifting in the marketing-to-sales alignment endeavor?

Wouldn't it make sense to have sales actually help ensure that the 30% of time they get with a prospect is positioned to help them close deals? Or, even better, what if by working with marketing your salespeople could get into the buyer's process earlier - expanding the time they have to impact the buyer relationship? Ever considered that?

Marketing at 30,000 feet no longer counts. It's too far out of reach to be relevant to the people grasping with issues your offerings address. Vague pleasantries (as I call them) are from the old school of universal umbrella branding and awareness. The problem is time. There's less of it - a lot less. Specificity counts. Take that a step further to personalized specificity and you're a heck of a lot closer to content that buyers will find interesting.

Next up, the Tweet about a perspective that could put marketers back in the basement:

@abneedles Sounds like our session-track speakers int he sales/marketing alignment session see marketing in a sales-support role. Yikes. #DF10 #B2B

But, does it have to? The interpretation is dependent upon how "sales-support" is defined. If you consider that everything marketing does is focused on helping sales sell more by helping buyers buy (or it should be), then we are in a sales support role. However, sales support doesn't mean subservient. Adam gets to that with this Tweet:

@abneedles In a Web 2.0 world, #B2B marketing must become the leader of a holistic demand gen process -- not just tactical lead gen. #B2B #DF10

And, consider that sales doesn't have all the answers either. When exactly does that practical messaging translation come into play given this statistic?

KBlalock: RT @cahidalgo: 31% of reps r not prepared to speak to a prospect at time of first engagement via IDC #B2B #df10

Could this be due to a lack of respect for the work marketers are doing to get to know prospects well enough to catch and keep their attention for longer periods of time as cycles increase? Perhaps it's because many reps are schooled in products and solutions, but not so much about their prospect's reality, industry trends, influencers and competitive alternatives (Hint: Think beyond the obvious competitive choices).

This Tweet points out an interesting observation:

hoovers: RT @abneedles Sales-driven marketing is 'like driving with the rearview mirror.' via McAfee marketer #B2B #DF10

This is because salespeople are usually concentrating on the end-stages of the deal. They aren't paying attention to all that time prior to transition that's involved in the development of a sales-ready opportunity. If you only look at the buying process from the point at which sales will agree to pursue leads, you've missed a lot. (Read 70% of their buying process).

This Tweet gets to the goal. This is where marketing can create a noticeable impact. The skill sets that marketing needs to evolve are based on achieving this:

abneedles: Now listening to a top marketer at @InformaticaCorp talk about getting to predictable revenue via marketing. #B2B #DF10

As a final thought, consider that sales support is not just about your sales team. It's also about your buyers. Marketing needs to support the needs, priorities and interests of both. The more proactive they are about doing this, the more of a leadership role they can attain. Developing end-to-end lead management processes is a great place to start.

After all, isn't leadership about supporting the evolution and sustainability of success?

I missed being at Dreamforce this year. But, I'm thankful for all the Tweets that shared what was going on and made me think.

Are You Letting the Competition Drive Your Marketing?

I hear from B2B marketers and salespeople all the time about their competition. Propose a new messaging theme and the first thing they say is, "What will BIG competitor do?" or "How do we explain that against what BIG says they provide?" If your first response to the development of messaging and content is to think about the competition, you're giving them the power to own the market.

Yes, you heard me. Being reactionary and defensive with your messaging, content and conversations means you're not being true to your company. You're letting your competition define you.

What this behavior really says is that: You're a follower. You're an also ran. You're second choice.

Every market has a BIG vendor, a perceived leader — [despite the claims of most companies that they are the leading provider of... — but that's a different blog post] but that doesn't mean they get to dictate how you go to market, your passion for what you do or your success.

Figure out where they shine and where they don't. No company shines everywhere — trust me. Let them have their shiny parts and go play where the sun doesn't shine for them — but is brilliantly blazing hot for you.

Consider the following opportunities:

• Niche plays. Where can you focus that BIG is not?


• Tone and Style. Is BIG stuffy and academic? What parts of your brand are distinct from their tone and style? Play them up. Different people are drawn by different styles and tones. If BIG is stuffy and academic, be conversational. Be the company people want to speak with.


• Evaluate your customers. Where do you win the most? Build that story. In other words, play to your strengths. Don't try to play to BIG's.


• Who do they target? Does BIG focus on a specific buyer type? Can you create content and messaging that gets you in through another door? How can you build relationships that have enough influence to get you to the table? In a complex sale, there are many people involved. Influencers are growing in importance. Don't overlook them.


• What sandboxes can you own? Is BIG great at producing videos but their blog is a bit sparse? Are they producing huge white papers, but not short-form articles that take deeper dives into tight topics that buyers care about? Are they doing webinars that are really product demos, not educational forums? 

All of us have competition. We can either bow to them or we can go out and change the game by engaging our markets differently.

This does not mean go out and take a wild-ass flyer. This means to study your markets from a variety of angles and develop content and conversations they're interested in, but not necessarily getting elsewhere.

As soon as you stop focusing on BIG, you'll see a path open up to build the market reputation that pulls buyers to you, checkbooks in tow.

Writing is a Critical B2B Marketing Skill

I was reading an article written by Denny Hatch (a long-time copywriting expert) discussing why professional copywriting is critical for marketing where he shared this story he recalled:

"What do you do?" a guy at a cocktail party was asked.

"I'm a brain surgeon," was the reply. "What do you do?"

"I'm a writer."

"Ah," said the brain surgeon. "I've often thought that when I retire I'd like to try some writing."

"And when I retire," said the writer, "I plan try a little brain surgery."

The story resonated with me for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because I see a lot of B2B marketers without the passion or skill for developing content. I'm not talking about branding or corporate positioning as such. I'm talking about content creation and development that keeps pace with the demands of prospects and customers across their buying process or lifetime relationship with the company.

Writing is a skill. It's a skill that gets rusty if you don't practice it...a lot. The last few years, the role of marketing has changed from that of a conductor to the need to become an active participant. Instead of coordinating external sources for short-term campaign execution, marketers need to take real-time action. That means writing.

Things like blog posts, commenting in discussion groups, sharing on social media, creating articles for nurturing programs, email messaging and more. Sure, you can still outsource writing projects, but some of these arenas for participation require real-time content development with a personalized touch.

For example, if an immediate informational need arises and your agency says - sure, I can have that for you in two weeks - you've just missed an opportunity if you can't step up to the plate and write engaging content that can be published now.

[If you don't believe me, David Meerman Scott just published a book about Real-Time Marketing. Ann Handley's book Content Rules has also just been released making it a bit difficult to ignore the momentum heading in this direction.]

The other consideration is that there are certain mediums that require you to paricipate directly, without the help of a writer. LinkedIn is a case in point. Although not formal, the way you write is still a reflection on both you and your company.

All of this said, here are 4 things I think may be stopping marketers from improving their writing skills:

• Thinking every content asset must be a masterpiece of formatting and graphic design.
• Lack of understanding that short article formats work well if the content provides meaty, useful insights. An 800 word, tightly-focused article is more than ample for engagement and asks for less time than a bigger piece. Your prospects and customers are crazy-busy. You know that, right?
• Not knowing buyers and customers well enough to write for them — being unsure how to flip focus from company and products to address their needs can be a huge obstacle marketers need to overcome.
• Unsure of where to start. Think of this as blank-page syndrome that results from a lack of content strategy.
• Being crazy-busy yourselves.

Yes, that last one will likely rise to the top. But here's the thing. Writing isn't optional. If marketers are going to succeed with content marketing and marketing on the Internet, we're going to have to close the writing gap and step up.

Marketing is driven by content. The Internet, publishing technology and social media will only demand more fuel (content) to feed the beast. Your best plan of action is to start tuning up your keyboards and flex those writing muscles. You're going to need them in top form to create competitive advantage for your company.